Skill

Developer Communities

A developer community can drive adoption for years, or turn into a cost nobody can explain. This skill helps you decide what kind of community you need, how to run it and measure its health, how to set up champion programs, meetups and virtual events, and where the community team should sit. It draws on practitioners from Twilio, MongoDB, DigitalOcean and others.

Draws from
Peggy Rayzis, Patrick Woods, Mary Thengvall, Matt McClure, Caroline Lewko, Don Goodman-Wilson, Jono Bacon, Mike Stowe, Tamao Nakahara, Dave Nugent, Jesse Davis, Surbhi Rathore, Brian Rinaldi, Sam Noland, Jeff Atwood, Rachel Chalmers, Jade Wang, Dave McClure, Meghan Murphy, Adrian Cockcroft, Nick Gottlieb, Stormy Peters, Brian Douglas
Free with Crucible
Developer Communities
Built from 23 library pieces

Use it when you're

  • Deciding whether you need a community, and what kind
  • Choosing an engagement model
  • Measuring community health
  • Starting a champion or advocacy program
  • Planning meetups and virtual events
  • Balancing what the community wants with what the business needs
  • Deciding where the community team should report

Try it with your agent

Once Crucible is connected, describe your situation. The agent loads this skill and works through it with you.

Use the Developer Communities skill to help me decide whether our community team should report to marketing or product.
Use the Developer Communities skill to plan our first local meetup, from objectives to follow-up.

The talks and articles behind it

This skill was built from these pieces in the Heavybit Library. All of them are free to read or watch if you want the source material yourself.

Podcast · 2026
Is AI Killing Open Source Software? with Stormy Peters
Listen
Video · 2023
Authentic Communities in the Era of AI
Watch
Article · 2023
Using Brain Chemistry to Build 0-to-1 Developer Communities
Read
Video · 2021
Community Lessons from GitHub, Google & GitLab with Jono Bacon
Watch
Video · 2021
Community Strategies from Early to Late Stage w/ Auth0, DigitalOcean, LaunchDarkly, GitHub
Watch
Video · 2021
So, You Want a Community: 3 Considerations with Orbit
Watch
Article · 2021
3 Lessons from 4 Years of Running Virtual Developer Events
Read
Article · 2020
Why Developer Communities are Essential for DevTools Startup Growth
Read
Video · 2019
Building Vibrant Developer Communities
Watch
Article · 2019
3 Lessons from DevRel Experts on Building Developer Communities
Read
Article · 2019
Developer Support Best Practices
Read
Video · 2018
Crossing the Chasm: From Community to Commercialization
Watch
Video · 2017
Civilized Discourse… But How?
Watch
Article · 2016
So You Want To Host A Meetup? Pt. 1: Getting Started & Objectives
Read
Article · 2016
So You Want to Host a Meetup? Pt.2: Promotion & Audience Targeting
Read
Article · 2016
So You Want To Host A Meetup? Pt. 3: Program Design & Audience Follow-up
Read
Video · 2016
Building Successful Developer Communities
Watch
Video · 2016
DX and Open Sourcing at Netflix
Watch
Video · 2015
User-Driven Product at Stack Overflow & Stack Exchange
Watch
Video · 2015
Q&A: Building a Global Community
Watch
Video · 2014
Rules for Radicals and Developer Marketing
Watch
Video · 2014
Building and Leveraging an Open Source Developer Community.
Watch
Video · 2014
The ROI of Community
Watch
More in developer relations and community

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