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My Notes From Adam DuVander’s Developer Content Marketing Workshop At DevRelCon London

I know what you’re thinking right now.

“It’s been umpteen weeks since you’ve written on this blog and THIS is what you’re going to write about?!?”

Yes, I totally used quotes because THAT is EXACTLY what you’re thinking.

Yeah, that’s right, THIS is what I’m writing about – so sit back, buck up, and get ready for a totally bumpy ride.

First, let’s focus on the AUDIENCE

1. Where do they work?
2. What languages do they use?
3. How how much experience do they have?
4. Do they tinker on nights / weekends or only at work?

Do you have multiple audiences what are the differences?

Starting with the last question, just to be contrarian, I…. wait. No, my brain just melted off. Because am I answering this question as a Red Hat employee? As an IBM employee? As the RDO Community Manager? As the OpenStack Liaison? Or as Rain the Dancing Engineer Fierce Woman?

When I talked with Adam about my melting brain he suggested focusing on the similarities among them to find the buckets OR to go ahead and entirely separate out personal from professional.

But this is being published HERE; therefore, my audience on groningenrain.nl is:

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Fighting Acedia: Developing Mental Resilience

TRIGGER WARNING This article or section, or pages it links to, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.

In the midst of recovery, I bought entirely too many books for self help, distraction, and work.

And along the way, I read a lot of Medium and ThoughtCatalog and in those meanderings I came across the Freakonomics Peak Project which is basically about becoming GREAT at something.

I joined.

Because I want to become GREAT at mental resilience.

I know.

Odd, right?

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Big Breath In Big Breath Out

TRIGGER WARNING This article or section, or pages it links to, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.

Needless to say, life is a bit rough right now.

There’s a lot going on.

But.

I’m trying to focus.

To take things one day at a time and just keep swimming. Baby steps.

Last night P and I both had horrible nights. When the alarm went off – let me take a minute to explicitly state that the alarm was not my normal alarm clock, but the Littles having an animated discussion over the pros and cons of solid food versus formula – when THAT alarm went off, I groaned and asked P if he could help out this morning and he replied that he didn’t get to sleep until sometime south of four in the morning.

Ew.

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Silence Is Golden

Except when it’s not.

TRIGGER WARNING This article or section, or pages it links to, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.

Saturday night I went to a party.

I haven’t been to a party in… forever? Ten forevers? It’s been a while.

And I drank a bit. And I talked with people. And I’d say pretty much NO ONE knew that I’m sick.

And so when I started to get triggered. And triggered. And triggered.

I tried to act cool. Stay calm.

I just kept leaving conversations and finding somewhere else to hang out.

But then the whole party started playing this game, (DRUNK) Table Topics. And the questions themselves were triggering. So when this kid near me, who is not a Toastmaster and has no idea about quietly letting the speaker have the floor, started speaking with me about my twins, I broke all semblance of respect for the speaker or the game and focused only on that conversation.

And when others were trying to shush me, I asked him to join me in the hallway to continue our talk.

So we did.

And I ended up going home around midnight, well later than planned. I slept in. The rest of the weekend was navigating the awesomeness of a hangover plus toddler plus twins plus life.

I thought I was relatively fine.

And then Monday happened.

I got up with the Littles. Got them off to daycare. Normal morning routine.

Nothing to indicate anything was off.

But.

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How To Pass The Torch Without Dropping All The Balls

Spoiler Alert: communication is key.

I’m putting together an abstract with a couple of fellow #DevRel liaisons on how we managed to pass (and drop!) responsibility of an open source community. We’ll submit to a couple of upcoming conferences over the next year and see what happens.

Cause you never know until you try.

We’ll talk about the exact tips and tricks we used to get the knowledge WRITTEN DOWN. What’s one thing we learned from each other. What’s one thing we totally dropped the ball on – D’OH!

And a bunch of other brilliant things.

To My Fellow Collaborators,

I’m excited to live with you. And laugh with you.

To cry with you.

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