The downside to developer relations

Ted Neward: Probably the fact that, as we said earlier, it's not well known yet, so I spend as much time talking about what it is as I do about strategies within it. But that will correct itself over time.

That's not something that I can educate my boss about and suddenly everything will correct itself. My boss actually has a fairly good idea about what developer relations is and for the most part, he leaves it to me to define the rest.

Technically, I'm not even a developer advocate: I'm in management. So, it's about making my team successful and not about what I do. My job is basically meetings and emails. Scott, the former sports writer, told me that the thing that he really likes about the job is that on any given day he walks in and says, "Do I feel like writing code today? Then I'll work on a sample. Do I feel like writing an article today? Then I'll work on a blog post."

Geertjan Wielenga...