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DevGuild Recap: Beyond Jan 29

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The Day in Pictures & Tweets
Next Steps
5 min

This month Heavybit held its first DevGuild – an event that brought together 209 developer evangelists and community advocates to discuss the philosophies and tactics necessary to rally contributors and communities.

Our committee of organizers had a hunch that evangelists would be a talkative bunch, but in addition to the thoughtful onsite discussions, attendees shared 620+ event-related updates reaching an online audience of more than 60,000 people. In addition to checking out our 5 Ignite presentations, attendees also shared updates about some of the thought leaders in the room. The unconference format of this event meant that the discussions onsite and via social media were extremely engaging for all those interested in the space.

Here’s a recap of the day incorporating some of the best comments and photos from attendees.

The Day in Pictures & Tweets

In addition to capturing the conversation online, Heavybit members Spark and Keen IO also captured the foot traffic of the event itself by placing lazer sensors throughout the space.

.sensors are cool, so is analytics – our powers combined at #DevGuild @spark_io @keen_io pic.twitter.com/i9PIPaxioX



— Maggie Jan (@jandwiches) January 29, 2015

Keen IO’s Josh Dzielak acted as the day’s emcee, offering background on why we think Developer Evangelism is crucial to building communities and companies.

MC, @keen_io open-sourcerer @dzello kicks off #DevGuild. “Software may be eating the world.. community is feeding it” pic.twitter.com/eaMZBnf5RX



— Neil Mansilla (@mansillaDEV) January 29, 2015

Room full of social geeks at HeavyBit #DevGuild event. Want to grow your API? You need these folks! pic.twitter.com/TDxwFe1Nt3



— Laurel Kline (@geekshe) January 29, 2015

For the first hour of our event, 5 speakers (Github’s Kelly Shearon, Heroku’s Leigh Honeywell, Electric Imp’s Matt Haines, Keen IO’s Tim Falls and Salesforce’s James Ward) took the stage to inspire conversation for our unconference sessions.

Shortly after, Iron.io’s Developer Evangelist Stephen Nguyen got everyone out of their seats with an icebreaker activity. DevGuild topic keeper and Runscope Dev Evangelist Neil Mansilla snapped a shot of the icebreaker as it was happening.

Attendees then used stickers to vote on their favorite topics and Mansilla organized the board and tallied the votes.

This is how Dev Evangelists vote. #DevGuild pic.twitter.com/d9GZy4FFRK



— Kristine Pinedo (@Kristine_Pinedo) January 29, 2015

DevGuild attendees then broke into unconference groups to discuss topics like Content Strategy, Internal Evangelism, Measuring Success and Hackathons. A complete list of final topics is available on the Wiki.

Breakout session on content strategy at #DevGuild. pic.twitter.com/9pv81OSKY7



— caroline fernandes (@EastVillageWest) January 29, 2015

Unconference session on hackathons being facilitated by @mager #DevGuild pic.twitter.com/CZ4MUpJGEH



— Neil Mansilla (@mansillaDEV) January 30, 2015

Just happened to bump in to my Java #thinkinginjava hero @BruceEckel at #DevGuild in San Francisco- how cool is that? pic.twitter.com/9zYUyQY2ML



— Marek Sadowski (@blumareks) January 29, 2015

As part of our commitment to communities (both on and offline) we ended the day on a high note with happy hour drinks and announcing that we’d raised $2735 from our ticket proceeds for Canon Kip Center. The organization offers housing and meal services to homeless Seniors just two blocks from the DevGuild venue in SF.

Thanks to @heavybit for hosting amazing Dev Evangelism event #DevGuild Such a tiny awesome world 😺 pic.twitter.com/7KLZ8ZseT4



— Yuriy Dybskiy (@html5cat) January 30, 2015

Happy Hour @heavybit brings #DevGuild to a fun close. pic.twitter.com/3WcyRBgTaT



— caroline fernandes (@EastVillageWest) January 30, 2015

Next Steps

As next steps to the inaugural DevGuild unconference, we want to thank everyone who helped make this event possible including the committee, speakers and attendees who ensured there was no shortage of inspiring discussion and interesting debate. This event was created to start a larger conversation around developer evangelism and as next steps, here are a couple ways you can plug into the community:

  • Keep the Conversation Going: We set up a Developer Evangelists Google Group for those who want to chat further. We’ll continue to release photos and videos as they come available and we’ll offer those updates via @heavybit and the Google Group.
  • Jobs and Opportunities: We just launched a job page for anyone hiring or looking for a position in developer communities.
  • More Events: If you’re interested in attending other Heavybit events, subscribe to the Heavybit newsletter.

Again thanks to all those who attended and made this event possible. We look forward to expanding DevGuild with you in the near future.