--- title: "The Dare Dialogues - S01E06: PR Married with DevRel" description: "Remember the US sitcom Married with Children? In this week's episode of Dare Dialogues, Tim and Leoni explore the relationship between PR and DevRel (Developer Relations). While PR might be seen as a dirty word in the developer world, there are fundamental similarities between the two." date: "2024-06-27T11:44:59.000Z" url: "https://timbenniks.dev/videos/misc-streams/000-uq4ufq0ypt4" youtube_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq4uFQ0Ypt4" playlist: "misc-streams" image: "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uq4uFQ0Ypt4/maxresdefault.jpg" tags: ["developer-experience", "product-strategy", "devrel", "career"] --- # The Dare Dialogues - S01E06: PR Married with DevRel Remember the US sitcom Married with Children? In this week's episode of Dare Dialogues, Tim and Leoni explore the relationship between PR and DevRel (Developer Relations). While PR might be seen as a dirty word in the developer world, there are fundamental similarities between the two. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq4uFQ0Ypt4 ## Transcript the recording has started hello everybody so welcome on this very warm and sunny day for the fifth episode of the Dare dialogues and today with me Tim benck and um hey and I'm sure oh I I hope you've seen the crazy funny poter poster we made for this episode um defr Mar PR married with defil because that's what we want to talk about today exactly and uh it's a bit of a dare uh for us as well because we are about to find out where the overlap lives and um um for me having been in PR technology PR for about 25 years I have to say I think the overlap is massive but we're going to find out because um defal is a relatively new um uh um um area so um and Tim knows everything about that oh you wish it's too wide ranging but we'll get into it okay let's find out um shall we start by sharing what we think the definition of the other's profession is I like that okay I'm gonna have a hard time though because I don't really know yeah but that that's a that's a really good start point do you want to start describing what you think public relations Is yes and while I do that look at this my dog escaped and I found her now I hope she listens all right let's go oh she's listening nice anyways um so public relations I have to confess that I don't know as much about this but I don't know why maybe because it's no I couldn't tell you why but what I think it is is someone who understands the brand they work for really well they know what words they can say to describe the brand they're able to um go anywhere and kind of give the elevator [ __ ] somehow MH the same time I'm making sure my dog comes in we go um also if there is a new press release the pr person will write it stuff like that does that make any sense if I say it like this I think so but as you as you speak about it I I immediately um think I know some differences between how you would describe what a devel is okay so let me try now to yes to describe what I think a de death rail is so already in in the wording the the way you talk about it you describe a person right yes true the pr rep um and I was going to think about the profession as a whole um so would you say that when you say def rail that is a person or is that a job or a profession oo there are distinctions in our job description that sometimes it can be a person and sometimes it's a job rle right so if you are an evangelist uhuh you are a person yes your personal brand is kind of connected to that but death is so wide ranging um that it's a lot of the times it's also internal facing right and so then um you have you have sub roles inside that but let me not go continue and say that what do you what else do you think is Def right so okay um so let's assume the person um then I think what a def rail does is build relationships for a company a product a brand um with developers which is the distinct audience and that it will use trustworthy um materials from the product from what you know putting themselves in the shoes of the developer and making sure that they see the stuff that is interesting for them um and and not the marketing blah um that you said that I'm going to be talking about that in the section sure yeah is that somewhere close to what it actually is yes I think so I think if you look at it from like there's different opinions here because it's relatively new like you said but um I think developer relations is doing the same as public relations but scul down to developers and all the actions and things that we do as death RS are catered to just that because developers as an audience are probably the hardest audience you'll ever see they don't trust anything right and they're being bombarded with new stuff all the time that they constantly need to check and test does it fit does it fit my opinion right and most of the time it doesn't work even though it was sold already and so developers are in ently distrustful of anything you say right so what do you do to make that work and that's and so the actions you do is like doing a press release or writing a marketing like blog post with SEO titles or that's that's just not gonna gonna work no totally doesn't right and so I think it's probably the same thing and I see it personally as somebody who inspires and empowers an audience right huh I like that I like that um I would like to I I would like to comment now first on um what what PR actually is yes please and then I'll then I'll take the the the view from the overall profession and not a specific person sure so what the role or profession um is looking to do is build trust with the public you know public relations it builds relations it builds trust with the public and what the public is is different for every company is different for every organization like and and there are different subgroups in that public um so if you look at it that way you could say developers is a subgroup of that and we also talk to politicians and consumers and to um you know uh CEOs of some types of companies Etc and we have a different approach for all these areas to build trust with them um uh trust is the is the key outcome and the the uh and how you do that is very different from politicians or journalists or developers um and often PR public relations is confused with media relations interesting did you think it was media relations I don't know what media relations Is oh then your audience is journalists ah all right okay sure sure that makes sense yeah so there is media relations which is part of public relations and then clearly media influences public so you have you have a direct the desire to build trust with the public with with different groups in the public but you use media well that's not a nice word you work with media to influence the other audiences um and that's really how PR works and ideally um I'm not saying that it's being done well always but ideally PR steers away 180 degrees from SEO steers away 180 degrees no not 90 degrees from marketing so while marketing I think is dirty is a dirty word for developers I think it's also a dirty word for PR so there's I think there's a lot more overlap than I thought but there's one distinct difference that I'm noticing now most people that are in developer relations are in fact the same kind of like they are their own audience right like someone in developer relations tends to be a developer not always but a lot of the time yeah you come from a long background you're quite senior and you have done the thing yes um that the people do that you talk to now yes can I say can I say something most people that are in media relations have studied journalism there you go so it's actually we are so it is like a kind of a marriage there then so it's quite yeah so mi I in in mi my team has a journalism background um and then went into PR um I have a Linguistics background and then went into technology PR which interesting I wish I had a a more like as a developer you you don't really learn how to write or speak much it's a very cerebral thing and I wish I had learned more of that I've learned it on the way like if you can write a good paragraph like this is very interesting thing that you might have in PR as well let's say there's a new release of something it changes things yes you have to kind of pre-answer most of the questions that the audience will have in your announcement because if you don't do that they will steamroll you instantly is that the same um in PR yeah and I'd like to take it further I I I don't think a good Rel good press release is the release that you have all the answers to when questions come because the best release steers the questions exactly yes because you know what is in this new news that will change the world that shows that talks about something that's possible tomorrow that wasn't possible yesterday um and that is what you have to kind of really put in the middle and make the talk about um and if you failed to do that then either the news wasn't big enough which is often the case um or um you haven't researched it well enough yeah because I can imagine like this is I have a few things I always use when I have to create something as a Dev and so it needs to be concise precise simple language and needs to use the terms you actually use right so it's not like we now added AI to this toothpaste and it's now amazing like that's not concise and precise you have no idea what the toothpaste does now no right but I guess that's so close to PR I'm learning a lot I love it it's actually very similar in the actions or the you know the tasks that you take yeah to to do the job yeah cool I I think I think the the biggest difference between defil and PR I could even call defil Dr which I did in the first place and you were like what's that what the heck is that made a lot of sense to me um U I think the main difference is because you have a different audience or a specific audience you have to give them specific materials um and you know and I think that is the main difference while the general principle is exactly the same You're Building trust and give them what they need to um to understand it to trust it to like it to want to engage with it um I tend to just have an audience who doesn't do any of those things ever so I have to show like I am the expert to and get some social proof yeah and the interesting thing is of the higher ability of a death r or an evangelist or something like that is basically the social proof that you can bring to the job isn't that crazy so you have to demonstrate that you can do it yeah you have to have a like it's not for all jobs and like mainly I'm generally in the in the Outreach and awareness side of things yeah and on my end of the spectrum if I don't have a profile at all publicly it's a lot harder to get that job right so I people kind of know me for my history and luckily I've had you know great luck in a lot of projects I learned the hard way but I did have success because of that I can land the job and actually start saying things that people trust faster the kpi is almost how fast do they trust you when you say something do you think that is more related to your profile or to the story and the stuff that you deliver weekly I think the you know the first foot in the door is the profile way if you then after that say things that are stupid it's it's over fast right it goes really fast yes so you have to say the right things and and you know what this is a fun thing that maybe PR doesn't have as a def you can say the wrong things and go on a live stream and then screw it up and then learn in public go over the iterations and then say it again and it TS to be fine and that actually gave them more trust because you're now a normal human that is also a developer that also struggles I'm not sure you can do that with like PR sometimes and that that that is interesting because I do really think that there is there's that difference as well PR people tend to be more from the background while you are very much in the foreground um yes sometimes to my detriment or to the company estment because you cannot have one person be the face of a company right versus the company being the face of the company I'd rather have customers be the face of the company right right yeah and I think the pr person is pitching the story is pitching the people is pitching the company um to audiences it's also pitching the tech experts to their audiences to do the story hardly ever do they do the story themselves on stage Oh okay that's cool because Dev RS do their story on stage that's half the job right yeah so that is that is fascinating so partly partly you are ah so what is a real difference I think is that you are influencing developers and being the influencer at the same time while PR people are looking for the influencers and work with them and work through them yeah it's a that's a different thing and also what I should say and give a little bit of nuance here my side of how I do this gig is like that we just discussed right but there's a ton of Dev RS that say marketing public stuff no no no no I'm going to talk to the community in my slack or my Discord or on Twitter and I'm doing just enablement or I'm doing just um documentation Ed I am not going to like there are ideal to do exactly there are idealist developer relations people who are only in it for the human success which is a very Noble thing to do with a product that actually could potentially change somebody's life if it works well right like a product like canva where if you're not a designer suddenly you are a designer you can make your own business and you can take off yeah right yeah um they have probably a lot of people who are in this death ra side of things that is super educational Community Driven because they're marketing takes care of the the rest right and so that's a very different approach and I am lucky enough now to work at HRA where we have a quite of a range of people right right one of our people low they are incredible at this human aspect at the education making certification programs getting started guides I couldn't do that for the life of me I'm a user of those things and then I Inspire others by somehow micro influencing them right and you see so you have different angles to this gig right yeah but you know what's really funny when we go back in time to and this is probably answering one of the questions you might have had later there's this I want to know since when is this a job exactly I'll go into that so the I think the very first one a guy called oh I don't know his first name his last name was kwasaki he worked at Apple in the 80s G kwasaki yes I think so I know him well there you go and so this person actually had to talk to developers to evangelize their platform right to actually get people to use it right and then I think there's another Super famous guy I forgot his name and you know you know what funny Tim kavasaki is also considered to be a PR hero there we go interesting in our in our team he's famous so this person is then a PR hero with a focus on Tech right which is totally fine because then you had someone in like 2002 when Amazon web services just came out like the AWS stuff yeah Jeff not basos another Jeff and he he was also doing that stuff and but the person that influenced me because I'm slightly younger was in 2008 he started in like 2003 he's his name is Chris Hilman he's German but lives in the UK and he started work at Yahoo and then he went to Mozilla then he went to Microsoft and so his type of death ra is different than a lot of others because he's evangelizing the use of standards in technology on the web so an idealistic take this is how you implement an image this is how you do accessibility and in 2007 I think in them was the first conferences I attended and I had been doing the job for a bit but I didn't know so much and he was one of the speakers and because of him I'm still doing this so that was real evangelism and I think around that time he was working at modella so he was preaching about how to do accessible forms in Firefox you know this browser yeah yeah yeah of course but he was so epic at explaining why this is such a cool job to do and why you should try and keep doing it because he showed a US immigration for it's like look how bad this is right there will always be a job for you all these youngsters in the audience were like yes that's true and since then like of course I would have kept on doing this job but that really um put the fire under the ass so would say yeah I so that's a real evangelist and now he's still active and he he's great amazing I'll look him up I had not heard of him um so so when do when would you say defr became a formal job or profession or area I think do you know and yeah maybe not really I have an opinion here because my friends in this space will maybe have to correct me if I'm wrong but I'll just go ahead and and give it a stab yeah I think when like this is the thing death r source and it's amazing when companies have money uhhuh product companies H product companies have money yeah when startups product companies have money because then like a Dev does not attribute to your annual recurring Revenue not really it's a longterm play it's a trust play abut so when there is money when there is time when there is space to figure out how do we say certain things or people love what we we do right um how do we grow the team to do even more of it when that happens that R flies and I think it it has been around for quite a while like at Microsoft for sure but when it really started really really taking office when like companies like nlii and twio and all of those start to explode onto the scene with lots of investment lots of um people using their tools they needed to evangelize properly what that was and it clearly started before that but this is when it was huge all the best people started to work at these companies and they hired all the big shots that were either YouTubers or having some sort of influence and they like formalized this job even more than it's already formalized and then you see um when times change we're buying power like this is the thing buying power of technical people is way lower now of course and do marketing and developer relations towards these people that have no buying power anymore will look really bad to boards looking at hey how do you move the needle towards our Target right and then you see things changing up then you suddenly see product Le growth companies killing the free team going you know what you're going to have to pay now and then half the death team has nothing to do anymore so it's really um up and down pendulum or would you not would you not say that the def rail team has a changed job when that happens um yes but a lot of people don't don't do that right okay yeah yeah yeah right um how is that with PR I think when times are bad you might need more PR I'm not sure you need more devro yeah so um there is absolutely a a counter economic move there with PR so yes when the company has reputational issues when the company has to go through bad weather Etc there is a clear need for PR yes um um is that always done that way no so I think in practice it is not always invested in as would be ideal I think for the same reasons as you just described like it's hard to defend the ROI isn't clear it is absolutely it's not part of marketing it's not contributing to Leen it is part it's contributing to um company reputation which is clearly quite crucial um but it's noty put price on that's the thing and mature companies that understand what a brand means it works a lot better and it's interesting to see how in younger startups where where death ra for example is put in which team because all the people I know around me are in different teams as deaths some who do you report who do you report to for example in my case where I work now we're in marketing right okay and so of course the angle towards developer relations is slightly different based on where you are in which team because you also see quite often that developer relations is basically its own pillar and they call it developer experience so you also have like a little bit more product Focus but you're on your own so you have your own organogram let's say with a bigger team and sometimes like at certain companies the def the developer experience team owns the documentation and the marketing website sometimes right right and then you have others where um developer relations Is much closer to the product because developer relations people because they have to say something about the product developers they have to be patient zero and try everything right so they inform the product a lot from how people use it and how they use it and so that's yet another angle to it and people who are in a product team as developer relations have a much more inward Focus they might work more on let's say repository of demos that sales and parking people can use right okay yeah yeah yeah and so Dev is almost as informative to the company itself as to the outside yeah and I think that is that is a next um very big similarity between devell and general PR is that you are partly outwardly talking to audiences but also you are the eyes and ears you hear responses you see how people engage you see how people like stuff that you've been saying that really informs your company that really informs how you talk about things and how you should but for me personally that's my whole job right I I thrive on understanding what happens in the space being reactive and doing something yes and I think that you know what that's why we do this that's why D dialogues exist as well right yeah yeah now yeah and I think so when we talked about this um in prep we said that dare would be if you are in defil um you might work in a company where there is nobody and responsible for PR because the company doesn't have that type of size um exactly but it would be interesting as a to find out who in your company feels connected to PR and building relationships with audiences Beyond developer audiences um uh could be investors um investor relation is part of uh PR exactly interesting that's also an audience right um and how do you talk to them and it so it would be interesting for the for the def rails watching this and for the pr people watching this is is to find out find the closest PR or def ra person in your surrounding and see what you can learn from each other and how you can maybe work together what I can learn for sure clearly is how to take off the hat of a producing Tech person because that's just my scope is always that even if I try to break out of it I start there right it's just because I am one of those people and even in these dialogue things when we talk about hey what should we discuss I'm always in this working with my hands producer Tech mode even though sometimes we have to break out of that and I think a a PR person can really push me out and that's really interesting to see where I currently work at HRA ahu we have a new um Chief product officer M he's incredible and he didn't really come from the CMS I work at the CMS space but more from the the data side things yes and he is completely outside of the box of how we think and work H and that gives him so much opportunity to actually think about what would our customers actually really need because us as developers I'm I'm thinking about how certain forms behave in the CMS or whatever and then he is like yeah most people wrri in Google Docs right why don't you why don't we just build an importer from Google Docs into the CMS that's probably going to be one of our best features soon right right and we never thought about that because it's horrible as a developer to work in Google dogs you don't do that you don't want to do that no but PR person would have understood that and a death R would abolutely H one of the tactics that I've learned in PR very early on in my career and I'm still applying it and I think everyone can use it and I'll I'll I'll so well I have I have spent a few days once trying to sell a story or kind of pitch a story that I thought well I didn't think but my client thought was super interesting um and I couldn't find a way to get a a a daily newspaper interested in the story so at one point I was at the at the end of my wit with that and I just pull one of my friendly journalists and I had a conversation rather than a pitch and I asked I asked I explained the story I said this is what's in it these are the ingredients I don't know how to make this interesting for you what do you think is in here and because I just laid it out on the table and you know stepped away from trying to make him act I just wanted to learn that's how I pitched that story and that's how I've done it for the last 20 years oh I love that that's such a death R away right you ask like this is this is it how can how can we make this work for you I even did that yesterday we had a live stream with a partner that built an accelerator for composable Commerce they called dayrick they did a great job on it I went in I know them I know how good they are I kind of understand what parts but I didn't know how how it worked at all right and so rather than pitching them without kind of not knowing it I just asked them to show it yeah and that's the best marketing because in my opinion because it shows realness you learn together absolutely to you know and that is I think really how we can conclude this um PR uh married to defel I think we have found some massive common ground it is about working together with your audiences you know understanding what they need um you know creating value together and building trust for the product or for the company um in their respective cases and I think there is a lot to be worked on together um so um companies who see that I think uh will win well I think you will get I don't know even if there's economic problems you still need this stuff yeah and it will build your brand for the future right absolutely absolutely and that makes it super interesting I do I actually have one question for you we so last one yes last one how did you come up with our poster to be married with children with our faces on okay how you know how that happened is we were I was just thinking with the team on what is this what's in what's in this story um and well it's a very PR way to do things to think about how to make it interesting um but also we thought about there is this clear connection and from the outside it might look like a horrible marriage and you know Peggy and Al you know was a bit of a crazy marriage um but I think deep down there was this clear connection that that is actually very um very profound well there's a reason the show is successful right so it has to be something real there yeah outside of the horrible things that they do in that show that could never be on television now there is a a core in there that I love absolutely and for everyone who doesn't know the show look it up Married with Children and you shared a really great example the one with the shoe in a restaurant so if you Google shoe in restaurant Married with Children you'll find it and on that note we'll um wish everyone a very happy Thursday thank you so much for interviewing me hi