Comments on: Developer Advocate versus Technical Evangelist; When names change the tone

By: Nitin Reddy Katkam

Nitin Reddy Katkam — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:38:05 +0000

“Fan of Gears” doesn’t really sound like a job title. It suggests that you like Google Gears or Gears of War or the manual transmission in a car.

Developer Advocate sounds nice – you try to make the developers heard and work as their representative.

By: Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:07:07 +0000

If you work for Google, it doesn’t matter what your title is because of your market share. The question is what works if you’re not working for a Google. :-)

By the way, a Google advocate should be using Blogger, not WordPress. :-)

Guy

By: Brad Neuberg

Brad Neuberg — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:29:00 +0000

Hi Niall, at its heart, do you want an engineer who can also do evangelism, or a sales person who can do some engineering? I would argue that what you want is a geek and a person that loves technology and can do serious engineering, but who can also present to people and work with others. I’d rather have this than a sales person that has a bit of experience with technology. Thats why I think advocacy and evangelism should be rooted in the engineering part of an organization, or as I like to tell others ‘I’m a mutant engineer’ :)

As an aside, much of advocacy involves feeding info and external feedback to the folks building a product. If you are in sales they will completely discount what you have to say; however, if they see you as a fellow engineer and respect your technical ability because you’ve proven yourself they will listen to you much more. I spend a huge amount of my time doing internal technical advocacy, so its important to have that credibility.

Brad

By: dion

dion — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:47:37 +0000

Nice thoughts Niall. There is the balance of trying to sell your religion vs. participating in the global community and getting your point across as you participate. The more radical the idea, maybe the more evangelism needs to be done.

It is tough to sell religion though, especially to developers! They often don’t want words they want actions. That is why advocating via code is often the best path to a developers heart.

By: Niall Kennedy

Niall Kennedy — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:22:21 +0000

OK, so I thought more about this and it may warrant an entirely separate blog post. But a quick comment here first.

Evangelists help develop a market where none existed before. You first have to get the religion before you have developers in need of an advocate. Your PC should be connected to a network (Eric Schmidt’s gig at Sun). Your webapps should be offline enabled (Gears). Your web performance sucks (exceptional performance).

If no one gets your religion you have no developers in need of an advocate. You foresee the future of the world and need others to catch up with your vision. Once you have market validation you have a developer base in need of an advocate.

By: dion

dion — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:36:19 +0000

@duecorda,

I like “Fan of Gears” too, although when you spell it out as “fanatic” it sounds worse that it is ;) I consider myself a Gears Fan myself!

@Al,

Thanks a lot for the comment.

By: Al

Al — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:53:48 +0000

Reallly, Really liked this Dion, thanks for sharing it, anything that helps reduce zealotry is good in my mind, and the religious connotation is something that is frequently expressed by such zealots so I think you hit the nail on the head.

regards
Al

By: duecorda

duecorda — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:31:55 +0000

Nice.

I used to introduce myself “Fan of Gears”. Cuz me (may some others) don’t like the word “evangelist”. But now you gave new title of mine =)

By: dion

dion — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:07:57 +0000

Niall,

There are pros and cons to choosing where it fits. I personally like having it be part of engineering, as you then don’t have the same pressures that you would if you were in marketing (easier to do what is right IMO).

Being part of the product itself is key for many of the roles, as if you aren’t embedded then you won’t be deep enough in the technology. I am learning that there is room for a couple of different types of people though. You want people narrow on a technology but deep (e.g. know everything there is to know about Android). You also want generalists who work across multiple teams and can tie things together (e.g. an Open Web advocate that works with Gears, App Engine, Ajax APIs, …). It is interesting to find the right balance.

Cheers,

Dion

By: Niall Kennedy

Niall Kennedy — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:45:58 +0000

Why is this considered an Engineering function and not Marketing? Is the employee a member of the product team (Maps, Analytics, Search, etc.) or a member of a separate part of the org?