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The Developer Advocate's Guide to Metrics and Reporting

As developer advocates, avoid becoming extensions of other teams by closely learning metrics: the different types you'll encounter and when to use them, which are trusted and untrusted, and how to build them effectively to support your team's goals.

Why I Started Forthright

Forthright provides me with a rare opportunity to help both the developer experience field as a whole and many companies, teams, and individuals along the way. Essentially, it's how I feel I can have the most impact by better defining the developer experience field for the betterment of everyone.

Impostor Syndrome and the Knowledge Bubble Philosophy

Have you ever said to yourself, I wish I was as smart as that person? I know I certainly have! Impostor syndrome is something that I continue to battle even 10 years into my development journey.

Breaking Into Developer Experience: The 8 Most Common DX Roles

It can be hard to understand what roles actually exist in the developer experience field and what responsibilities they may have. That's why I've compiled a list of the eight most common roles you'll find in the developer experience field, along with what responsibilities and skills will help you the most when trying to land your next DX job!

Why You Should Consider Adding Zapier to Your Workflow

Recently I've been making heavy use of Zapier to automate tasks that were stealing a lot of my time and focus. The more I automate, the more time and focus I get back which is incredibly invaluable.

I'm Fucking Depressed - But It's Going To Be Okay

Right this very second, as I type these very words, I'm depressed. I'm normally some varying degree of depressed that ranges from can't fake a smile for the kids or wife, to life isn't so bad so I'll put on a happy face. Yet depression is always with me. A monkey on my back.

The Developer Advocate's Guide to Content Creation

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the idea of having to create that next blog post or YouTube video? Do you find yourself unable to finish things because you're not quite sure when to call it done? Are you adjusting your outlines or talking points on the fly? Learn how to create content more effectively by doing the work before the work.

Throttling GraphQL Subscription Events in React

I recently came across a situation where I needed to throttle incoming subscription events and it ended up being quite an interesting problem to solve!

Creating Community for Online Events

With GraphQL Summit now behind me, I wanted to share my thoughts on what went into building the community around the conference. This won't be a how-to guide (you should talk to Domitrius Clark if you're interested in doing something similar), but more of what the goals were, and how we approached meeting them.

Launching Forthright: The First Two Weeks

Starting my own company has been my goal for as long as I can remember. Deciding to start Forthright was one of the scariest decisions I've made in a long time. If not for some truly incredible people who have been helping me every step of the way, I very well may not have done it.

Fullstack Serverless and Modern App Development

In recent years there have been huge shifts in both back-end and front-end development. As clients become more and more stateful, the services backing them become slimmer and stateless.

Tips for Working Remotely

Coronavirus is here, and it's causing many folks to work from home out of the blue. If you find yourself in this situation, here are some tips I've found useful while working from home over the last few years.

The Developer Advocate's Guide to Getting Buy-In

There are many reasons that decision-makers may not act upon the feedback we deliver. Still, one thing we can always ask ourselves is, did I get enough buy-in before I asked them to commit? In this post, I'll cover what buy-in is, how it applies to developer advocacy, what skills help the most when trying to get buy-in, and the processes I use.

Using a Mobile Phone as a Webcam

You can get really good video quality by using your mobile phone! Mobile phone cameras these days are really impressive and the picture quality is definitely good enough to produce top notch videos.

What I Use for Work and Play

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the hardware, software, tools, etc I use for work and play.

A Plea for Action

By choosing to not take action on behalf of the Black community, you are choosing to say "we don't view your struggles as our own". In situations like this it's important to know where a company stands.

The Developer Advocate's Guide to Addressing Product Friction

Over the last three months, we've been developing a framework at Apollo called DX Audits to help us identify, document, report, and address product friction. Our team and company is growing quickly and it was becoming increasingly difficult to address product friction. We wanted a framework that would help us make that part of developer advocacy more repeatable, teachable, and reportable.

Interview Questions to Ask Your Interviewers

Interviewing is no fun, it's stressful and often times you're so focused on performing well that when your interviewer asks, \"Do you have any questions for me?\", you're left staring at them while your mind goes blank and you ask if they like it there.

Defining Practical Fitness

Most people have a life goal they want to achieve when they start their fitness journey. Whether it's to lose weight, improve athleticism, or be able to move well, the goal is something that is applicable to the real world.

The Addiction Pendulum - Searching for Balance

Life as an addict can be difficult even when you're not using. As an addict I have a tendency to grab onto things and dedicate every waking moment to that particular thing. A long time ago for me this was drugs.

A Retrospective of CrossFit

I've been wanting to write down my thoughts about CrossFit for awhile. I've been practicing this type of training for two years now and while it's helped me better undertand my body and got me moving well, there are a lot of things that I disagree with when it comes to the methodology and community.

The Developer Advocate's Guide to Asking for Things

As Developer Advocates, a significant amount of our work involves asking people for things. Whether we're trying to get buy-in internally or working on collaborations externally, we're generally in the business of asking. Learn how to get better results from your requests by rethinking the nature of relationships and following the three Rs of asking for things: Recognition, Request, and Reward.

Discord: The Missing Manual

Three years into the pandemic and a lot of community activities have moved completely virtual. Because of this, more and more Discord servers are popping up daily. In this guide you’ll find everything you need to configure Discord to work for you, not against you.

Distributing Challenge: On Building Highly Engaged Teams

How many developers do you know who have left their job because either 1) the work is no longer challenging / there is no career growth, or 2) the work is too challenging, and they have no support? Challenge plays an essential role in our happiness.

What I Learned from a Year of Streaming

I have a tendency to get really into my hobbies and streaming is no exception. It turned out to be a deeper rabbit hole than I imagined and I quickly discovered if you want to set up a quality stream there is A LOT that goes into it. I know, big surprise, right?

Streaming Equipment Booster Pack

I needed to curate some equipment for streaming recently and figured it could be useful to a lot of folks, so I decided to share this Notion doc!"

Automating Promotion for Livestreams

Currently, I stream for Apollo GraphQL anywhere from 3-5 times a week. This may not seem like a lot, but when you take into account all the work that needs to happen outside of the actual stream, you can quickly see how it might start to eat up all of your time.

First Impressions of Twitch Studio

I tried out Twitch Studio for my personal streams and here's my review of the platform so far!

I'm an Impostor - Incarceration and Living a Lie

Every day, I had to walk around telling little lies so I could project this false image of myself. I would like to tell you this is a story about how I felt like I didn't know enough, and then I realized that people don't know shit either, but this isn't that story.

Social Media is Failing Us

Social media platforms are sacrificing usability and safety to maximize profits from engagement, also known as engagement profiteering. Engagement profiteering is a type of business model that social media companies use to generate revenue.

Redefining Developer Experience: Why DX is the New DevRel

There's a lot of debate about the proper terminology for what we currently refer to as DevRel. Many folks are happy with this terminology, but I and others don't think DevRel (developer relations) is a broad enough term to represent what our field has become over the last half-decade.

Body Weight Only(ish) Fitness Resources

It's not always possible to have gym equipment available, whether your traveling or you're social distancing due to a pandemic, sometimes you need to fitness without equipment. Here's a list of some of my favorite resources for body weight workouts!