Very well said, Andrew. Taylor, a Developer Evangelist is supposed to be someone who is paid by Twitter to represent the developers, speak on their behalf in meetings and conversations, represent their interests even when those interests are directly opposed to Twitter's, fight on behalf of the developers, and proactively take actions that will further and protect developer interests.
A Developer Advocate is in a way synonymous with a union shop steward. I don't know if this is what you did at LinkedIn as their Developer Advocate. If not, then they (not you) too missed the mark by assigning to you the wrong task list. If this is not what Twitter wants to pay you to do, then fine. Then they must just not pretend to have a Developer Advocate by slapping that title on somebody. Titles matter, but they mean nothing if you're not doing what the title implies. With so many thousands of developers out there, as a true Developer Advocate, you shouldn't have time to do coding, documentation, and whatever else they have you doing. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with Andrew's full employment history and business background. But, I've been in the IT industry since 1980, and I've been at Vice President level of a large IT consulting company. Hence, with some things there is a slight possibility that I may know a little about what I'm talking. On Apr 6, 8:14 pm, Andrew Badera <[email protected]> wrote: > Taylor, > > Your job title very much does matter. Any respectable public/"open" > API publisher needs to be concerned with the needs, wants and feelings > of their developer community. If you are part of Twitter's effort to > address this concern, then you need to be doing certain things. If you > are not, then you probably should not be labelled as doing these > things in order not to produce misleading expectations among > aforementioned developer community. > > From the sounds of things, you're somewhere between evangelist and > client services, but nowhere close to being in the ballpark of > developer advocate. I'm not saying you're not doing a good job, I'm > just saying you're not doing THAT job. > > Unfortunately this just contributes to the idea that Twitter doesn't > care about the people who enabled its success, that it's grown too > big, too fast, to remember the little people, that it's all about the > big money and not at all about the community. I'm sure that's driven > in large part by Evil Investors, but somewhere at Twitter, someone > needs to take a stand and strike a balance. Apparently that's not you. > > ∞ Andy Badera > ∞ +1 518-641-1280 Google Voice > ∞ This email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private > ∞ Google me:http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew%20badera > > On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 7:07 PM, Taylor Singletary > > > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey everyone, > > My job title doesn't matter much. I do what I can and what needs to be done, > > whether that's being a contributing programmer on upcoming platform > > features, thoroughly testing an API before launch, analyzing implementations > > for spec compliance, communicating to and with the developer community, > > working closely with partners, writing documentation, or otherwise. My focus > > is on making the developer experience a positive one regardless of what > > bucket you fit into (hobbyist, corporate contributor, research scientist, or > > entrepreneur, or another lovely bucket). I might do that through building > > internal tools that make it more efficient and scalable for us to support > > you, I might do that by helping people out here who have questions, and I > > certainly might do that by channeling feedback generated in this particular > > segment of the developer community back to internal teams. > > When answering questions or engaging in discussions on this forum, I try to > > answer specific questions that are representative of the whole. I might not > > answer your specific question, but it's likely I'll answer a similar > > question with a response that would also apply to your own. Sometimes I will > > be intentionally obtuse. Often I will be overly verbose. If I don't perceive > > that I have something meaningful or valuable to add to a conversation or > > argument, I won't likely respond. > > We're listening. You're always a factor in the decision making process. > > Sometimes the community can help change a decision mid-flight (like us > > deciding to find another way to keep public_timeline alive, despite our > > desire to deprecate). There will be other times that we'll make a decision > > that's not in alignment with the perceived popular opinion. All of these > > things are true. I'll do my best to be transparent on our thought process > > when it's appropriate to do so; there are times when we won't make our > > intentions perfectly clear. > > The Twitter API will change. You & I will change with it. This is abstract. > > This is concrete. This is not a surprise. This is not a pipe. > > I'm still learning. > > Taylor Singletary > > Developer Advocate, Twitter > >http://twitter.com/episod > > > On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 12:40 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > >> On 04/06/2010 09:31 AM, Raffi Krikorian wrote: > >> > all in all - i hope a lot of you are coming to chirp, as i would > >> > absolutely > >> > happy to have this conversation in person over some beers :P > > >> Black coffee for me, decaf if we're doing this at the "hack session / > >> unconference" ;-) > > >> -- > >> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky > >> borasky-research.net/m-edward-ed-borasky > > >> "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." ~ Paul > >> Erdős- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - -- To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
