Interview Intro

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:00:00] Welcome to the Voxgig Podcast. We talk to people in the developer community about developer relations, public speaking and community events. For more details, visit voxgig.com/podcast. All right, let's get started. 

‍

This one is a deeply insightful conversation, with Salma Alam Naylor. If you're thinking of getting into Twitch, this is the podcast for you. We go deep on all the angles, what to watch for and how to prepare. I'm personally feeling very encouraged after talking to Salma. We also talk about all the things that have been happening in developer relations this year and where the industry is heading. Okay, let's talk to Salma. [0:00:43]

‍

Main Interview

Salma Alam Naylor

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:00:44] Salma, welcome. I am so delighted to have you here today on the Fireside with Voxgig podcast, because I get to interrogate you about Twitch, which I've been completely scared of, but know I have to eventually start maybe trying out. You have done really well on Twitch. Just take us through how you got started and how's it going?  [0:01:05]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:01:06] Thanks for having me, Richard, great to be here. This is a journey; I still can't believe that I have been streaming for three years. It feels incredibly longer but also incredibly shorter, because you still never, ever know what you're doing. Streaming is ridiculously complex and difficult and comes with so much investment in the gear that you have to buy. But the reason we do it is for love, for community and for fun. 

‍

I got into it during the first lockdowns of the pandemic of 2020. At the time I was working as a tech lead and I'd been doing that for quite a few years. And for those of you who have moved up into management in tech, you realize that you write less and less code and you do more and more PowerPoint presentations and spreadsheets and- [0:02:02]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:02:02] Misery. 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:02:03] -Jira project maps and whatnot. And I felt my skills were stagnating. And in order to keep up with what my team were doing, I needed to keep on top of the new tech and keep my skills fresh. So, that was in the back of my mind at the beginning of the pandemic; that time caused a lot of people to do some soul searching. 

‍

And through a very weird series of events, I discovered that people were livestreaming coding on Twitch. And I thought this was extremely fascinating, very new to me. Had no idea that people have been doing this for years. Twitch is known to be a gaming platform; isn't it? [0:02:44]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:02:44] Yeah. 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:02:46] And so, I started watching some of these streams; I started getting involved in the chat and in some of the communities.. And then I noticed there were two gaps in the market in 2020, in what I was seeing on Twitch in the Science and Technology category. That was what it was back then, science and technology; that was the only category we had. 

‍

And most of the people who were streaming coding at that time were men, and those men were mainly streaming back-end development as well. Now I'm not a man and I am also not a back-end developer; I'm a front-end specialize. So, I thought, why not bring those – fill those two gaps in the Twitch market that I can see right now. And I can learn some stuff in public; I can build some stuff in public. I can see how it goes and I can keep my skills fresh. And use what I've learned through pair programming with all of these viewers, and then take it back to my job. I still remember my first stream very well. And- [0:03:50]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:03:50] Is it still live on Twitch? Can we still look at it? [0:03:52]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:03:52] No. I streamed to a total of three viewers, and the most active person in the chat was a 17-year-old from Lithuania, who was telling me about his troubles with his parents. I will never forget that. But I also thought at the time, hmm, what's going on? What is this? What have I signed up for? 

‍

This quite interesting thing to remember that Twitch, it's not necessarily about what you do on stream; it's who you are and it's how you communicate. Twitch is based on building human relationships and community, regardless of what you do. Because I haven't just streamed coding in my streaming career. I've done a live improvisation on music stream with my husband. Just last week, I did a PC build stream with my husband, and I also sometimes stream my cross-stitching. And people still show up. 

‍

So, the point of Twitch is about community. I got started and I felt like I really liked this, because it was a combination of lots and lots of different skills and experience that I've had over the years. So, there was the tech thing; that was the hook to bring people in. But then there was – I'm a qualified teacher as well; I used to teach music in high schools. So, there was that teaching aspect that I could offer as well, and while I was doing the thing, I could help people learn the thing at the same time. 

‍

And also, I've been a performer my whole life; grew up with music. And in my 20s, I was also a comedian, and I was on stage and I was a musician onstage, touring the country, festivals and things like that. So, there's my performance, there's my teaching and there's my tech stuff. And that all came together to make my Twitch stream and how it all came to be. And since the 2020, since I discovered Twitch streaming – it sounds weird and cliched, but it changed my life. 

‍

It made – maybe because it was coupled with the pandemic, and how everyone went online. But I feel like my life is so much fuller of different people from around the world. I have this global community spread across the world, from Japan to the West Coast of America, to India and Australia. And it all comes together in my Discord server. 

‍

Every Twitch streamer has a Discord. I didn't want to make one initially, because I thought, I don't need that stress and that hassle. But my Discord server is also very active. People are learning; people are engaging with each other and forming relationships, all because I decided to go live on Twitch one day. So, it's pretty nice, and- [0:06:52]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:06:52] If you'll pardon the pun, it sounds like you had a symphony of skills that you could bring together. [0:06:58] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:06:59] Yeah, a cacophony maybe. [0:07:02]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:07:02] Yeah, perhaps. One question I had for you was, you have a sort of brand persona. Oh my God, that sounds like such a terrible marketing term, but you have a sort of user name that you use, that you've built up. Was that deliberate? Did that happen by accident? White Panther, by the way, is what I- [0:07:22]

0:07:22.3

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:07:22] Yeah. So, funny story, it was not on purpose. About eight months before I started streaming on Twitch and started engaging in the other communities on Twitch, I signed up to Twitch to watch a friend's charity stream. And that was the only time I'd used Twitch before; that was November 2019. And at the time I was involved with Extinction Rebellion in Manchester. [0:07:57]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:07:58] Fantastic. 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:07:58] The tech team of Extinction Rebellion Manchester. And when that team formed – we're still in touch now – when that team formed, I had my tech lead head on and thought, right, we need a team name; we need code names. We need an identity in order to come together during this time of activism. And the code names we chose were a color and an animal, and I chose White Panther. White Panther was my – the last username when I signed up to on something. 

‍

So, when I signed up to Twitch, I chose White Panther, and I put the stupid four and the three in, because there was no – White Panther without the four and the three had already been taken. So, that's how I signed up to Twitch, and then I thought – when I started streaming, I had none of the panthers, and I had none of that identity when I started streaming. And then I employed a designer to make the most of my stupid joke name, and it all went from there. So, it was an accident. [0:09:02] 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:09:02] And it works wonderfully; it's awesome. And the lead speak name actually works; it's pretty cool. [0:09:08] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:09:10] It's very unfortunate that when I'm building my website and building things for screenreaders, and I have a text to speech reads out my name.  It's YP4N3R, which is a meme in itself these days. If I had thought about – if I had thought about that before I started streaming, I probably wouldn't have chosen that. But there are- [0:09:42] 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:09:42] But does it matter; does it matter in the end? [0:09:44] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:09:44] I don't think it matters, and there are plenty of people who succeed no matter what their handle is, and I guess I am an example of that, even though it's a bit of a joke. But it's something to latch onto; isn't it? [0:09:55] 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:09:57] Yeah, fabulous story, and it's amazing the way things happen by serendipity sometimes. I have to ask. The one thing that holds me back – and maybe a lot of people, even if they do work in developer relations and it's something they should be doing – from live coding, from streaming is, when I code, I'm very quiet and I like to think and I do nothing for five minutes. Or I'm just bashing away at experiments.

‍

A lot of the streamers that I've watched – and our mutual friend, Matteo Collina, is great at this. He can keep a dialogue going. Is that a separate skill; is that something you have to practice? Does – do you end up developing it? How do you get over that deathly silence issue? [0:10:45]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:10:48] I think it's something that anyone can develop, and it does need practice. I don't remember ever not having that skill, because I've always naturally been in front of an audience or in front of a classroom of children, where you're doing multiple things at once. So, it's about maintaining three trains of thought at any one time. 

‍

You're solving the problem with the code in your head and you're thinking ahead about the logic that you need to produce, whilst you're talking out loud about it. Which might be slightly different, because you also need to cater for lots of different types of developers in your audience. You can't just be speaking in code and jargon; you have to break concepts down in order to make the content accessible for people, so there's that. 

‍

And you also have to keep up with the chat, and the chat could have multiple conversations going on at any one point. And that is a skill that makes people keep watching you. If – there are times when I have to say, "Right, I'm ignoring you. I'm not looking at chat. I need to just solve this problem really quickly in my head without you getting involved." But once that's acceptable once you've built up that rapport of being able to do all those things at once, that is the key to a successful stream. [0:12:18] 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:12:19] I watch Matteo regularly, and I've only looked at a few of yours, but I've always been bad at front end, so I might start learning a little bit. Do you use the chat – what I've seen him do is use the chat to help solve problems, so that he doesn't have to sit there for five minutes, if someone goes, "How do I do this thing?" And then it's solved in the chat and that keeps it moving. [0:12:44]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:12:45] And that's one of my other favorite things about Twitch streaming, is – because one of my favorite things about working in tech, working with people, working in a team, is that pair programming experience when you're in the zone and when you're both working on the same problem and there's a back and forth. And when you pair a program, it's automatically better from the very beginning. 

‍

And when you're Twitch streaming, sometimes you could be pair programming with over 100 developers, which can get a little bit stressful, because you have to filter out some of the silly suggestions and some of the meme suggestions. But yes, that's another reason why people show up to Twitch streams, because they want to learn stuff; they want to get involved with something that you're building. They also want to help practice with they know and help teach what they've learned. 

‍

And there's a difference though between solving problems together and what we always call on my stream backseat coding. Because some people can come in and completely derail – try and derail a solution by coming in with their very specific solution to a very specific problem that has nothing to do with what you're trying to solve. So, you have to learn how to filter that out as well; otherwise, that can derail you completely, which has happened to me many times. 

‍

So, it's a balance between taking suggestions from chat and also saying:  "Actually, let me figure this out first." But most of the people who come and watch my stream now, they're either learning tech – they're just starting out – or they are very seasoned people, or they are – they're in very different stages of their career. 

‍

So, the fact that less experienced developers can see this process and the fact that more experienced developers can also help other people in the process I think is very valuable. And I never would have – before the pandemic, before this whole Twitch streaming, I never would have said – my – a piece of advice that would have never come from my mouth is, find a community. Find a group of people who like the same tech stuff or who all work in the same place. I used to think that work and other stuff was very separate. 

‍

But we are all online now, aren't we, and I think this is a great way to build relationships. Have you ever been on a team at work or wherever, where you go through some really bad times, that that brings you closer together. It's the same thing on Twitch, because you go through the journey together. There's another bug; this isn't working. Why isn't it compiling; why did it not deploy? 

‍

And you go through the same pain and joy together, which brings you together, even though I don't know who these people are a lot of the time. They're not all in my Discord and I don't know all of them by name. but you go through the same things together, and that's what brings people together and why people keep coming back to watch me. [0:15:47]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:15:48] And is that my – we were chatting just a little bit before we went on – is that why – you're saying you can't take your Twitch recordings and put them onto somewhere like YouTube, because you lose that community context. [0:16:00] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:16:01] That's exactly the right word, community context. People have been watching me for over three years, so there's in jokes; there's memes; there's context. There's the journey that they've been on. And to just go and flip a switch and start – it'd be starting all over again if I went somewhere else. Now that's not to say I haven't considered it but also, there's a very different audience on these different platforms as well. 

‍

There was a streaming platform that was new a couple of years ago called Glimesh; they are no longer running. But Glimesh seemed to offer a fairer cut for streamers than Twitch do, in terms of revenue. And so, quite a few people in my Discord who are also streamers started streaming in Glimesh. But there's also the problem of, you can't just move a whole community and user base from one platform to another. 

‍

Case in point, like we've been seeing with Twitter or X, that the platform's changing and going a little bit weird, but – and then there's all these other alternatives. Mastodon and Bluesky and Threads. You can't move a community like that from one place to another. It's very jarring; it doesn't work. And so, once you build your community somewhere you have to roll with it. 

‍

There are some things I do do on YouTube, which – I sometimes cut down versions of my streams that I can tell a good story with and put them on there. But it's not like YouTube content; it doesn't do very well, because it's live content. And there's a very big difference between the live content that you create, the ephemeral content and then the more structured, scripted content that you would normally create for a platform like YouTube. [0:17:50]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:17:50] And that is – yeah, that – and it is really good to know, because part of what I thought about Twitch was, great, I can double dip. I can get a YouTube channel out of it as well. But that's not the case. [0:18:01]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:18:02] No. A lot of people do upload their full streams to YouTube, mainly as an archive, because Twitch only keeps streams for 14 days for affiliates and 60 days for partners. So, if you want to have some place online to archive what you've done, then – a 

and download it later on, then great. 

‍

But I am a big believer that people are not searching YouTube for 3-4-hour streams that happened on Twitch, on a completely different platform. So, it's about tailoring content for the platform that you're on, if you want to be successful. I dabbled in TikTok for a while, not on TikTok anymore, but again, I was trying to repurpose the content that I created on Twitch. 

‍

And that didn't work either, because TikTok content is very specific, in a very specific style. The stuff that does well on TikTok is very TikTok-y; the stuff that does well on Twitter is very Twitter-y etc. And it's a lot of work to be a content creator, or whatever you want to call it, across all these different platforms that have different purposes and different styles. [0:19:10]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:19:12] And the other thing at scares me about it is – this is probably more relevant to Twitch – is you're effectively a community moderator as well. You have to deal with the enthusiastic ones and the people who behave badly as well and all that stuff. Is that much of an issue? [0:19:31]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:19:32] It used to be more of an issue than it is now. I do have a team of moderators as well in my Discord. [0:19:40]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:19:40] Part of your community who help? Right, okay. [0:19:41] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:19:41] Yes, exactly, yes. So, a team of moderators in the Discord and on Twitch. But a lot of the time when I am streaming, they are working, so a lot of the time, yes, I do need to moderate my own channel. Now it's – Twitch have put a lot more safety features in place over the last few years, since I started streaming, in terms of us detecting suspicious accounts and adding more safety features for if you've got where people call a hate rage, where lots of people come in and say naughty things. 

‍

I used to get – now I'm not going to mince my words, but I used to get sexually harassed a lot on Twitch, because that's the kind of thing people like to go and do online when they're anonymous. And also, there's the issue of, oh look, I've never seen a woman coding before. What's this? Blah, blah, blah. It's like- [0:20:35] 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:20:35] That has to be old at this stage, right? [0:20:37] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:20:38] It's got to be, right, but you know. So, for the last year or so, I'd say that either my blocked words list or my moderation settings or my community has settled down enough that I don't need to deal with that right now anymore. But that is a huge risk for new streamers, because some of the things that happened to me near the beginning made me want to never stream again. It was pretty harrowing, some of the things that were said to me at the time. [0:21:04]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:21:06] Amazing that – is it because Twitch has made more of an effort to deal with that now? [0:21:11] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:21:12] I think they have. There's always going to be more to do, but there are definitely more features in place for that kind of safety. But then the bad actors will find another way round things again eventually and then Twitch will need to keep up again. But this is a risk on any platform, isn't it? 

‍

And the representation of women in tech is still not equal with men, and there's even more under-represented groups as well in the industry. So, you're automatically going to be a target. No offence to you, Richard, but as a white man streaming on Twitch, I don't think you'll get many problems with that. [0:21:53] 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:21:54] No. It is very sad. It's – we have women junior engineers working for us, and we encourage everybody in the company to build their public profiles; it's great for their careers. And write open source, go on Twitter, whatever. But it is really sad to see that some of them are held back, because of this issue. Really frustrating, because you've great engineers who could be making super contributions, but they have to protect themselves. [0:22:24]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:22:24] Yeah, and even now, you have to protect yourselves and that's it. And sometimes protecting yourself is about not doing a thing. And when I write my technical content as well, I write it and I proofread it and I test it and everything. And then I have to go through it and pre-empt any of the questions I might get from what we call the Reply guys. 

‍

And I have to put disclaimers in and I have to make sure I've covered every single base, so that after I've published something, there's very little room for that kind of interaction. I'm all up for feedback; I'm all up for a discussion and a debate. But there are people who are online just to pick a fight and to assert their egos, and to have that done to you live is quite jarring. 

‍

And I think I did just once stop a stream when something happened, because it was so bad. But thankfully, thigs feel like they're getting better in my end of the woods, but maybe also unfortunately, I'm also a lot more resilient to it, which is a shame to say that I've had to get to that point, but I am more resilient to it, because I hate to say I'm used to it, but I am. 

‍

But also, it's about putting up pre-emptive barriers to that kind of interaction. Even before Twitch put a lot of safety features in place, I made my own safety features with my own personal Twitch bot. And I've put some things in place like to time out everyone in the chat and to lock everything down. But Twitch now do that, but a lot of streamers were – a lot of coding streamers especially were building those kind of safety features into their own software for Twitch before that happened. Maybe that's probably why Twitch did it, to be honest, but- [0:22:24]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:24:19] But communities had to build their own things first. [0:24:21]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:24:22] Yes. 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:24:22] And I guess – you said you had been a teacher before and a comedian, so you had built a little resiliency around dealing with that. [0:24:33] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:24:33] Yes, there's definitely that. Behavior management in classrooms is very much like behavior management in Twitch class. [0:24:43]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:24:43] With adults. It's so sad; isn't it? [0:24:44] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:24:44] Yeah. About redirecting the conversation or ignoring certain parts of the conversation, focusing on particular things. I made quite a few mistakes in my early teaching career in that kind of context, and you take everything with you in a different context and learn how to adapt it to that. So, it's all about how you manage, moderate and interact with people. And it's the tone you set for your stream is the tone that people adopt or the tone that attracts the right people. 

‍

And I've always said that, especially with my Discord. I've always wanted to be extremely welcoming, extremely inclusive, extremely accessible and not gatekeeper-y, and I don't want to start tech fights or anything like that. So, I attract the people – my community attracts the people that are looking for that kind of place. [0:25:39]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:25:40] And you say that explicitly, so it's understood. [0:25:42]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:25:42] Absolutely, yeah. And I make that's what everyone who's part of the community upholds as well. [0:25:48]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:25:48] Talk to me about the Discord. That's a separate server that you run. Do you use a service? Do you run your own one? And do you have to- [0:25:53]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:25:53] Run, yeah. It's just from my – I just run my own Discord server, that anyone can join via the Invite link on my Discord or via my Twitch profile or whatever. And it's just – and I've also – I've got a stream team as well, because I'm a Twitch partner, so I'm allowed to be a leader of a team on Twitch. 

‍

So, you can add whatever you want to your team. And so, the Discord is also to serve the Twitch team, so we've got quite a lot of other tech streamers in that team as well. The Discord is integrated with my Twitch bot, so every time someone in the team goes live on Twitch, there is a notification in Discord. So, anyone who's online in the Discord at the time can go and watch them and get that notification if they want, if they've turned off Twitch notifications or whatever. 

‍

So, it doesn't just serve me and the people who watch my stream, but it serves everyone else in the team and the wider community that watch those streamers as well. And a lot of the streamers, yes, they do have their own Discords and own communities as well. But my – I'm trying to bring as many people together in one place. Some of the members of the stream team purposely don’t have their own Discord and they want to bring people to the Claw Discord, my Discord as well, to grow that. 

‍

Because sometimes it can be – sometimes you can be in so many Discord servers and it's very overwhelming.  And so, I didn't want to start one at the beginning because there are too many Discord servers, but it turned out to be a good thing. And it's for the community. I don't like to say it's mine, because I'm not even the lead mod on it; I have someone for that who's amazing. I just take part in it and try and bring people together in it. So, it is good to have that offline place to- [0:27:46]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:27:46] Because my first question is, that has to be moderated as well and you have the same issues there, and it takes effort to run it and keep it safe, and that kind of thing. [0:27:55]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:27:55] Yes. Again, a team of moderators, and all the moderators on Twitch are moderators on Discord as well, people I trust. I've got a team of about 10-12, and across different timezones on purpose. But we've got a really nice place going on. It's relatively small Discord wise; there's just under 700 members, and not all of them are active all the time. 

‍

We've got a really strong core group of maybe about 50 people who are active every day, and we've got this co-working channel where you can go in; put your camera on. And there's no audio, but you can feel like you're in a remote office, and that's in use every day. There' a sense of community around jobs and working and general tech stuff as well. [0:28:39]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:28:40] Amazing. It sounds wonderful and cozy. It's brilliant. [0:28:44]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:28:44] It is; it is. 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:28:45] This gives me an opportunity to move into another topic, which grinds my gears as they say, which is, a lot of companies this year undervaluing the power of community and the power of developer relations. How on earth would you put a monetary value on your community? It has some sort of existential value, because as you said, it literally – you feel like it's changed your life. 

‍

And I've previously participated in building a community around a company for commercial purposes. And yet that community was critical to the financial success of that company, and part of the reason is, we had no clue how to do any sort of measurement. We weren't interested in funnels or any of that sort of stuff. It seems like there's perhaps a point in developer relations right now where people have to come to terms with the idea that it is immeasurable maybe. [0:29:52]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:29:54] The key thing to keep in mind, that's very difficult for companies to let go of, is that people don't follow and engage with brands. They follow and engage with people and human beings. So, people come to my Twitch stream to watch me; they come to my Discord to be part of something centered around my Twitch stream and that's how it came to be. Whether I work for this company, that company or that company, people will still come to watch my Twitch stream. 

‍

But companies feel like they need to own something; it needs to be the theirs. They want their share of voice and they want their name out there. But you look at these companies' YouTube channels or these company Twitch channels. A lot of tech companies started streaming during the pandemic, and these tech channels – these Twitch channels owned by dev rel departments or tech companies, they'd be streaming to four people at a time for two hours. [0:31:06]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:31:06] Yeah, you do see that. [0:31:06] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:31:08] Yeah, it's still going on; isn't it? And I don't know why people are doing it. But you come over to some of these – I hate this word – tech influencer streams; they're streaming to hundreds of people, some of them thousands of people. And companies need to realize that they need to use people, human beings and their existing communities, in order to see more value more quickly. 

‍

Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars creating the most perfect YouTube video and uploading it to your company account, pay someone who has a community, an engaged community, $10,000 to do some work on your product, to make a video, to write a technical talk – to write a technical blog, a tutorial, and do a few Twitch streams. 

‍

And the – you'll automatically look more trusted, because people don't listen to companies. And this is – there's a loyalty thing with individuals as well. For example, when I first started working for Netlify, quite a few people in my Discord were like, "I'm moving all of my projects from Versel to Netlify now you work for Netlify." 

‍

And it's a trust thing. Once someone trusts someone, they will listen to whatever you have to say, regardless of whatever tech you are promoting or talking about or working with. And Jason Lengsdorf says this a lot; he believes that the new model for dev rel that's probably emerging is that model, where companies don't dev rel departments anymore. But they are contracting that type of work to community members with influence and with existing audiences. 

‍

And I hate to say it but he's probably right, because you can reach more people that way through individuals, and maybe you can employ three, four, five very prominent individuals for a particular campaign, to reach even more people exponentially. Rather than plugging away on your own brand social media and your own brand YouTube. YouTube shorts on a database company YouTube channel, no-one's subscribing to that; no-one's clicking Subscribe on that. [0:33:36]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:33:36] It's bloody boring. 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:33:38] And you've got to bring personality to it. And one of the things that we talk about a lot in tech marketing, because it is marketing, is that developers don't like to be marked to by companies, but they will be sold to by individuals. For example – one of the funniest examples of this is that I have a desk vacuum. It's a tiny little hand-held desk vacuum, and I used it on stream once. It wasn't sponsored; I just had this desk vacuum. And 5-10 people went and bought a desk vacuum after they saw me use my desk vacuum, because they didn't know they needed it. 

‍

And it's that kind of thing; once you – and one of my friends who I used to work with was raving to me about this keyboard cleaning brush. I needed that in my life; I bought it straight away. And the same thing happens with tech. I'm not going to be inclined to buy the cleaning keyboard brush if I see an ad on Twitter for the keyboard cleaning brush. But if someone tells me, someone I trust and know, tells me how good it is, I'm going to buy and use it. 

‍

And I'm going to love it because it's going to remind me of them. And the same thing applies to tech products, frameworks, databases, hosting platforms or whatever. You can be sold that by someone you trust and known and love and are engaged with, much more effectively than by an anonymous brand behind a logo. [0:35:09]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:35:10] Salma, you really hit the nail on the head here. Because if I think about it as a developer myself, I'm not just assessing the features of a framework or a SaaS tool or an API. I also want to know that there's a community that I can get answers from that will have my back when my boss is at me for a deadline yesterday and the thing doesn't work and I don't know how to fix it. [0:35:38]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:35:38] That's it. That's it. [0:35:40]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:35:41] And it's not – and maybe because a lot of the companies that are doing dev rel are SaaS companies and their mindset is all around funnel marketing and metrics driven marketing and conversions. [0:35:56]

‍

Salma Alarm Naylor:  [0:36:00] This is also-

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:36:00] That is just completely alien, right? [0:36:01]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:36:02] Yes, and it's also why I am a big believer that dev rel should not be in a marketing department. [0:36:09]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:36:09] Right. That's a big argument, yeah; that's a big argument. [0:36:12]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:36:12] Where does it sit? Is it in product; is it engineering, is it in marketing? Is it its own thing? And the core – at the core of dev rel is that it looks different in any different company and it looks different as well depending on the individuals that are in that team, because of the different skills that people bring to this role. 

‍

But ultimately, you need to be able to work effectively with engineering, with product and with marketing to do the right job at the right time, rather than being – if you are put under marketing, you are generally put in a box of creating content and marketing materials, whether that be in the form of video or written or short social media posts or whatever. When you're put under engineering, you might be a little bit more confined to just building SDKs or example repositories and things like that. 

‍

And so, as dev rel people who are in dev rel know that it's an absolute mix that changes every single day. And that's one of the reasons why the job is so appealing and so exciting, because you might be going to speak at a conference one day and do a podcast another day and then build a sample app the next day and write a tech tutorial the next day. 

‍

But ultimately, again, how do you – like you say, how do you show value when you are all over the place? So, maybe putting dev rel under one particular department is an effort to align with goals that are in that department to show that yes, we are valuable, but actually, it's just such – it's a weird; it's a unicorn thing, isn't it? [0:37:53]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:37:53] Isn't it? 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:37:54] That's what people say. And- [0:37:55]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:37:55] Maybe it's like a hygiene factor and it does need to live by itself. Because I wouldn't buy from a SaaS company or a doctrine API that didn't have a decent website and a GitHub with some sample apps. Maybe the – maybe it just – and then if they have a community on top of that and some community members that are active, have Twitch streams or speak at conferences or whatever, it just gives me enough confidence as a developer that it's a real thing and I will get supported. [0:38:24]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:38:26] What's also tough though with that is, I've seen some job adverts for dev rel roles saying, "You must have over 5,000 followers on Twitter." And- [0:38:40]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:38:40] Yeah. That's almost a meme now itself in terms of, oh my God. [0:38:42]

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:38:44] Sometimes – clearly companies are clearly seeing the value of having a presence online, but it's not necessarily about your followers on Twitter whatsoever. It's about how you engage with other human beings and how you help people and how you solve problems and how you proactively find the issues that other developers might be coming up against. 

‍

Whereas brands here are seeing the value of, this person's pretty popular; they could sell our tech to quite a lot of people online, that's not all of dev rel. That's only one tiny part, and you can do a very good job at dev rel with not being on Twitter at all. I think what happens is, companies – again, because there's not – some companies don't even have dev rel team leaders. They'll have a group of dev rel ICs, individual contributors, underneath a marketing department with a marketing manager who are leading them. 

‍

And as someone who has never been a developer and as someone who has never been on the receiving end of Dx, developer experience, then you don't know what it looks like yourself, because you don't know what you need as a developer. But you need to put that trust in the people you've hired into that role, and I see a lot of that not happening. A lot of dev rel roles have been put into a box; like you must do this, you must produce X amount of content. You must bring in X amount of signups. 

‍

And it's a weird thing to say, but I feel like dev rel, the value of dev rel is in the feeling that you create in response to your tech or your brand or your company. It's like, how people – successful dev rel can be measured maybe on how does your brand make people feel, based on the activities of your dev rel or your external facing teams. It's a bit like that quote by Maya Angelous – and I probably will get it wrong – but:  "People won't remember what you did, but they'll remember how you make them feel." 

‍

And that's what I try to do in my Twitch streams as well. It doesn't matter what I do in my Twitch stream, but as long as I make people feel welcome and happy and cool and kind and – then people will stick around. And it's the same thing with dev rel and companies. Make people feel good when you're using – when they're using your tech, and they will keep using it. [0:41:20]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:41:23] Yeah, that is a really hopeful note to end on. This has been so great, tons and tones of notes. My personal agenda is, wanted to know about Twitch, but so insightful as well on the dev rel end of things. And so many of these questions are all up in the air at the moment. I would say, again on another note of hopefulness, I have spoken to and interviewed quite a few marketing managers now on this podcast who are willing to learn and who understand that marketing to developers needs to be done differently. So, there is hope; there is- [0:41:58] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:41:58] There's hope. 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:41:59] -definitely hope. 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:41:59] That's good to know, yeah. [0:42:00]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:42:01] Salma, thank you so much, wonderful stuff. And I will see you on Twitch, I guess. [0:42:05] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:42:07] Thanks, Richard. I look forward to seeing you on Twitch as well. [0:42:09] 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:42:10] Yes. I'll – you've encouraged me to take a first few faltering steps. But I need to get – obviously, this is already a podcast, but you have such an awesome background, I have to say. That's- [0:42:21] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:42:22] Thank you. 

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:42:23] It's really well laid out. All right, with that inspiration, thank you so much, Salma. Take care. [0:42:26] 

‍

Salma Alam Naylor:  [0:42:27] Thanks, Richard. Bye-bye. [0:42:27]

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:42:27] Bye-bye. 

‍

Endnote

‍

Richard Rodger:  [0:42:29] You can find the transcript of this podcast and any links mentioned on our podcast page at Voxgig.com/podcast. Subscribe for weekly editions, where we talk to the people who make the developer community work. For even more, read our newsletter. You can subscribe at voxgig.com/newsletter, or follow our Twitter @voxgig. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. [0.42.58]

‍