People who are suited to advocacy

Kirk Pepperdine: When I look at the good tech advocates today, such as Josh Long, Simon Ritter, or Heinz Kabutz as Java Champions, they're Java Champions because they're good advocates of the tech.

What makes them good advocates is that they're first and foremost entertaining, and that's part of the job that I don't think people recognize. They're entertaining in how they present the information that they want to deliver to the audience, so it's not just a matter of delivering the information.

First, you have to have good content. I think you have to deliver that in a way that's consumable by the audience, and keeping their interest is important. If you're a dull, boring speaker, I think there's a certain percentage of your audience that will tolerate the boring bit just to get the information, but you won't bring new people in. You'll probably lose them very quickly. The people who are engaging and have a deep understanding of the tech are the people who are going to be successful at advocating their particular tech stacks.

Geertjan Wielenga: Would you say that developer advocacy really lends itself to extroverted people?

Kirk Pepperdine: Surprisingly enough, I think that some of the people that are very good at this are more introverted than extroverted. Without giving names, I would say that some of the better advocates I know are rather introverted.

Those people are just able to set that aside somehow and focus on delivering the message.

They don't think about the audience in the sense that they're there and you actually have to talk to them. Some people are just able to do that. Introverts will be nervous before going up on stage and afterwards, they will need to be alone for a while to wind down.

I'll talk to people and they'll say, "How do you do an all-day event? After a one-hour talk, I'm basically finished." I find that after a one-hour talk, I'm finished too, but there's a different energy level that's required in a one-hour talk compared to when you're doing an all-day seminar workshop. The one-hour talk is like a sprint and the workshop is more like a marathon, so you just pace yourself differently.

In a one-hour talk, you're trying to pack a message into it and that requires a lot of energy. With a workshop, you never feel that pressure to draw the audience in and get them engaged with whatever it is that you're speaking about.

Geertjan Wielenga: There's more to developer advocacy than purely standing on a stage at a conference, right?

Kirk Pepperdine: Yes, you're right. There's plenty of behind-the-scenes work that goes on. I think the interesting part is that the good advocates will spend time making sure that they're just working with the tech.

The better ones are very enthusiastic about what they're doing and that enthusiasm certainly comes off in the talks. They're saying, "Look at this really cool thing that I'm able to do! Here are some ideas for how you might be able to use this and it should hopefully make your life better."

The talks become a byproduct of the process. You call me a developer advocate, but I've never thought of myself as one: I'm just doing stuff. I'm seeing people struggling and I'm helping them to make their life easier. It's not that I'm advocating anything: I'm just sitting looking at developers saying, "Dudes, you guys are struggling here and I can help."

Geertjan Wielenga: How, then, would you identify yourself and where does developer advocacy fit into what you do?