DevRelCon San Francisco 2016 is a wrap!

This event was started as a one day single track conference for technical evangelists, developer advocates and anyone interested in developer relations in London by @matthewrevell. @mewzherder and I partnered with him to bring the event to the United States.

The inaugural event had 15 speakers, 15 sponsors, 100+ attendees from 10 different countries (from the United States of America and around the world to Japan).

The craft of #DevRel has become mainstream in the past few years. You can call us as a technology evangelist, developer advocate, API evangelist, platform evangelist, or any other name. And yes we can passionately debate about what is the right name. But essentially we help other users, whether they are developers, customers, architects, partners, or any body else, be an effective user of our technology/stack/product. We have our tools, tricks, metrics, highs and lows, common issues and connect at multiple levels. But still there is no event that talks about us a community.

This effort is to provide #DevRel community a platform to come together and discuss the topics that matter to us.

What makes this conference unique?

• This event is by #DevRel, for #DevRel, and to #DevRel
• Learn from the leading practitioners in the craft of #DevRel
• You learn best practices, horror stories, and lessons learned from the trenches
• You meet similar minded people – whether you are a one person startup or leading/participating in a team of 100s of #DevRel. Everybody learns!
• No selling products, services, and surveys. Sponsors surely play an important role but as organizers, we are leaving and breathing #DevRel every day. This is our passion and purpose!

Twitterverse was quite active through out the conference! ~1500 tweets were well scattered through out the day with the highest frequency during @codepo8‘s session:

Generated using TalkWalker social media search.

Here are some tweets that capture the feedback from #DevRelCon …

Had an amazing time at #devrelcon. Both the London and SF events have been fantastically useful. Looking forward to the next! @devrel_net

— Brandon West (@bwest) April 17, 2016

Thanks, @devrel_net for having me at the most awesome show! It was a blast! #DevRelCon pic.twitter.com/yDvkpMDsTV

— jbaruch (@jbaruch) April 17, 2016

Thank you @mewzherder @arungupta @matthewrevell and all the volunteers for putting together an amazing event. 🍺🍺#DevRelCon

— Ravi Yadav (@RaaveYadav) April 17, 2016

Yes #DevRelCon we should do it again. It was awesome! Thx to volunteers organizers sponsors etc. pic.twitter.com/DgGa5t1e3a

— Andrew Byrne (@AndrewJByrne) April 17, 2016

Thanks to #DevRelCon for putting on a great event. Really pleased with the folks I’ve met and the conversations I’ve had today 😎💯

— Sam Houston (@samhouston) April 17, 2016

Awesome speaker roster at #DevRelCon – great job, @arungupta, @matthewrevell & @mewzherder! pic.twitter.com/gBkmkZ12zC

— Pat Patterson (@metadaddy) April 17, 2016

We are pleased with the results for a community-driven, volunteer-based first shot at this conference in the US!

Content and the speakers are the backbone of any conference. A very warm thanks to @beardigsit, @adamd, @timfalls, @DevRelChap, @gracefr, @codepo8, @kestelyn, @joshmarinacci, @grepory, @jbaruch, @rhatr, @dn0t, @qiqing, @bwest for taking time out for our inaugural event and showing that #DevRel matters!

Many thanks to all the great sponsors – @twilio, @mparticles, @intuitdev, @developer_media, @bemyapp, @awscloud, @hitchhq, @devrelco, @atlassian, @sendgrid, @microsoft, @oreillymedia, @sv_code_camp, @heavybit and @womenwhocode. We are glad that they believed in our first time event and showed their enthusiasm and support. This allowed us to not put our personal $$ 😉

A special thanks to @MSFTReactor for their generosity with time, $$ and space. @TobiahZarlez stayed on site all day for streamlined operations at the facility.

It takes a village to run a conference! And this event was certainly not possible without the support of fantastic and very helpful volunteers. In particular, @nlycskn, @yenerm, @c_r_w, @jbaruch and @gwendalpointeau were very instrumental in making sure the attendees were well fed, speakers were micd, sessions were recorded, and they were finishing on time. And there were plenty of students from the University of San Francisco (@usfca) to help out as well.

And of course, this was not possible without countless hours put in together along with @mewzherder and @matthewrevell.

Over all, a very satisfying, humbling and an extreme learning experience!

Check out the complete photo album.

All sessions were recorded and will be released in the coming weeks.

Where do you find further information?

• Follow @devrel_net for latest updates
• Follow @vdevrelcon for an upcoming virtual DevRelCon
• Join Virtual DevRelCon meetup
• If you are in/around Bay Area, join meetup.com/bayteg/ and meetup.com/DeveloperAdvocates/

Stay tuned!