Starting your advocacy work
Bruno Borges: Getting started is tough. As you mentioned earlier, sometimes there is an eternal fight to justify that role. That's actually a good way to start, but it's a painful way to start, just because you not only have to do the job, but you have to justify it. I think a good way to begin is simply by performing the expected tasks that a developer relations team would perform without being asked to do that. That would be a side job for sure.
Once you realize that you can actually do this role, that is the moment that you go with a business plan to your company outlining what you have done over a period of time and what the outcome of that was. Maybe the outcome was content, product feedback, customer support, community engagement, or all of that. Most importantly, you need to show what the value was. If you aren't able to convince the company that this work is important, then you should get a full-time job elsewhere.
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