OpenQ DRM first closed beta test

There was a time not long ago when “software engineer” evoked images of LED-lined back offices with cubicle-gridded devs typing out their magic, far from the centers of decision-making power in the organizations they worked for.

Those days are long gone.

In recent years, the shift from UI-First to API-First SaaS has endowed developers with far more decision making power in deciding on the tools their organizations adopt.

From Twilio to Stripe to PayPal, SaaS users demand that the tools they use let them “lift the veil” to directly integrate with the data they amass on these platforms.

Instead of the shininess of the UI to a business developer determining success or failure, it’s the quality and documentation of the platform’s API or SDK to a software engineer that often makes or breaks tooling adoption.

This shift of power towards developer ecosystems has created a new hybrid role acting as an ambassador between organizations and developers: Developer Relations, AKA DevRel.

The Rise of the DevRel

Thousands of organizations now find themselves selling to devs rather than non-technical customers. Selling to developers is qualitatively different than selling to other demographics. They are ruthless. They ask questions down to the last semicolon. They demand proof of your product claims.

A morning read through the comment section of Hacker News should be enough to convince anyone doubtful of this.

It takes not just a salesperson, but a veritable cultural translator and hybrid product/engineering/marketing guru to convince a dev that your package, tool, SDK, or API is worth adopting.

This remarkable envoy between your organization and the developer economy is the DevRel to which we now turn.

So, what does a DevRel do?

DevRels…

• Discover, support and retain developers in their tools developer ecosystem
• Create technical documentation
• Create tutorial and educational content around their product
• Organize events, webinars and hackathons to spread their developer tooling gospel

All of these tasks are dispersed across a whole suite of tools - Email, Spreadsheets, Telegram, Github, StackOverflow, YouTube, Twitter - a seemingly endless fanout of places where a DevRel must operate to keep pace with the heartbeat of their developer ecosystem.

As if this weren’t already difficult enough for a DevRel, unlike traditional SaaS, where a user is either subscribed or unsubscribed, freemium or premium, DevRels operating in an open source market have no such cut and dry categories of adoption.

Developers may freely adopt and then abandon your tool. Churn occurs not through explicit subscriptions, but through implicit downloads and continued usage.

There’s a reason dozens of DevRels have on several occasions described themselves to us as “cat herders”: they are orchestrators of a vast, online, decentralized swirl of developers, incentives and competitors.

So, without further adieu, you guessed it, a new product is coming to the rescue….🥁🥁🥁

Presenting, The OpenQ Developer Relationship Management (DRM) Platform!

🏡 Introducing the OpenQ Developer Relationship Management (DRM) Platform

Git preserves the DNA of a developer’s coding interests, skills, and achievements across time like a fly in amber.

OpenQ can provide near real-time commit history tracking on every Github repository and contributor designating your tool as a dependency, regardless of the programming language used.

Just provide the name of your package, SDK, API, or beyond, and OpenQ does the rest.

Achieving this with a traditional CRM or spreadsheets would rapidly become a nightmare to maintain in-house. With OpenQ, it just works.

Everything from tracking changes in engagement levels in response to ecosystem events, to pinpointing the most active contributors in your ecosystem, to detecting when a project has migrated to a competitor - a wealth of information is at your disposal.  

 

The OpenQ DRM enhances every responsibility of a DevRel - from discovery to support to retention.

📫 Log communications

Who said what when? Where is this user in our pipeline? Did I talk to this dev in telegram discord or over email?

DevRels must maintain comprehensive records of all interactions and communicate seamlessly with developers to effectively discover, retain and support their developer ecosystem.

Whether it's sharing the latest updates, providing needed support, or acknowledging their contributions, these interactions are efficiently managed and archived on OpenQ.

This ensures a consistent and effective support mechanism throughout the developer journey, enhancing the overall relationship between the organization and its developers.

The Outcome: Less 🤔. More 📈 - No More Guesswork in Your DevRel

What do all of these tools get you? Mainly, it lets you bid farewell to uncertainty and guesswork when it comes to determining the ROI of your DevRel efforts.

With the OpenQ DRM, your organization can now make informed decisions backed by cold hard data, rather than relying on mere hunches,  when correlating DevRel efforts to positive developer ecosystem response - so you can direct your resources to where you KNOW they will have the most impact.

Wondering if a certain hackathon sponsorship was worth it? OpenQ lets you track the fall off in project contributions after the event.

Unsure if the YouTube tutorial you made translated into a surge in new adopters? OpenQ can correlate your content release schedules with Git analytics and increased package downloads.

Armed with this knowledge, you can confidently make decisions that fuel your organization's growth.

With deep and up to date knowledge on developer engagement, resource allocation, and ROI, you can strategically plan each quarter and foster growth with confidence - all without having to resort to static spreadsheets.

✍️ Join the OpenQ DRM Waitlist!

OpenQ’s mission is to orchestrate the world wide symphony of developers, code, and developer relations. We hack. We connect. We exist to harmonize the digital economy.

If that’s something you can get behind, we’d love for you to try us out and let us know what you think.

Sign up for the OpenQ DRM waitlist here.

If you’re so excited you can’t wait, schedule a demo here and provide feedback.