The Developer Care Package, 2016 Edition

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  Ted CarstensenPlatform Director
  Heavybit

In this time of thanks and giving I thought it would be helpful to assemble a care package for everyone with long trips, and longer weekends, fast approaching.

The following selections are pulled from our community of developer facing companies and advisors as well as our very own educational library; a resource filled with articles, videos, and podcasts focused on helping you take your developer products to market.

Bookmark and download these items for what will surely be a well deserved respite from the upcoming festivities. If you prefer, grab the transcripts and enjoy in considered silence.

For the product focused

GraphQL has been a popular topic within our community recently, and for good reason: by all accounts GraphQL is a huge opportunity for product teams building APIs (which is everyone, right?)

Step 1: For those who don’t know, GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. Learn more in this Introduction to GraphQL from Heavybit member Runscope.

Step 2: Dive into this episode of JAMstack Radio, featuring GitHub’s Platform Engineering Manager Kyle Daigle. Kyle shares what he believes makes GraphQL such a great query tool, especially for open-source projects.

Step 3: Finish your GraphQL journey with the GraphQL + Serverless Framework Starter Kit from a recent Serverless meetup, and behold the efficiency wonders of wrapping your REST API in Serverless GraphQL.

If that doesn’t get you through the weekend and you’re ready to explore the ecosystem even further, check out Meteor’s Apollo project.

If you’re already a GraphQL expert, check out Practical Product, a podcast that will help you define the right product to build, and Don’t Make Me Code, a podcast that explores developer experience (DX) design and the unique challenges you face when building developer products.

For my marketing friends

Watch DevGuild: Demand Gen

Late last month we put on a 200 person single-track conference that was laser focused on Demand Generation. Last week we released the videos from the event, and if you’re in a marketing role at a developer company, you can’t miss them.

Guillaume Cabane, Segment’s VP of Growth, gave a presentation on 1:1 Personalization at Scale. In his talk he details mindblowing workflows for targeting your users in ways never possible before.

In one example, Guillaume shares how an ecommerce site used Segment, Customer.io, and Amazon Turk to discover whether a customer had a swimming pool. Customers who did have a pool were then sent personalized emails featuring deals on pool toys and furniture, and conversion skyrocketed. How much recurring revenue are you leaving on the table by not enriching your customer data?

Later in the day, we assembled a panel of top marketing executives in the developer company space. Watch as Twilio’s VP of Global Demand & Growth Marketing Nicolas Draca, Zendesk’s VP of Global Enterprise Marketing Julie Knight-Ludvigson, and Trello’s CMO JD Peterson discuss what it takes to become a marketing leader in a developer focused startup. The group provides actionable advice on working with your managers and your teammates to further your career. Watch the panel on the DevGuild website.

Listen

If you’d prefer to listen, check out The Pitch Room, a podcast focused on developer marketing, public relations, and analyst relations. Learn about aligning your sales and marketing teams from Qubole’s Marcy Campbell, and take notes as LaunchDarkly’s Andrea Echstenkamper outlines how to build a multi-channel marketing strategy.

For the salesperson in all of us

Watch

If you’re an early stage developer company founder and you’re struggling to close your first sales, take an hour and watch Fred Stevens-Smith’s Speaker Series talk. Fred outlines many of the mistakes founders make, indeed mistakes that Fred himself made, and provides concrete steps to get your sales process in top shape.

If you’ve already got a great sales process, why not sit back and watch as Morgan Mackles presides over the Heavybit Sales Master Class? In our first three classes Morgan interviews top sales executives Mark Roberge, Lincoln Murphy, and Bridget Gleason.

Listen

Our sales focused podcast Road To Growth features interviews with the top sales leaders in our community. Learn about customer success, how sales tactics can be applied to your fundraising process, the importance of a healthy developer community, and how best to build compensation for your early sales hires.

Something else?

If you don’t see something here that interests you, search our Library for anything you need, and if there’s something you need that we don’t have, let us know on Twitter and we’ll help you find it. Have a wonderful holiday, we’ll see you on the other side!