There was certainly a lot of color in the responses to this question. It was great to see devrels come up with such a rich set of suggestions and recommendations. Here are a few:

• Focus on developer needs and how you can address them.
• Get internal buy-in from the management and other teams.
• Align devrel programs with company goals.
• Focus on branding and UX. (This is often a forgotten factor).
• Don't fear conflict and don't fear failure.
• Maintain honesty and transparency at all times.

Samudra Weerasinghe, Community Manager at WSO2 Developer marketing is very different from traditional marketing - developers want quality content rather than a typical sales pitch. If they don't have a need for your product you won't be able to convince them to use it. So either go after developers who have a current need, or create a need via your product's strengths.

Sami Kizilbash, Developer Relations at Google Start small pilots in parallel, learn from what worked and what didn't, and grow organically from there. Important to demonstrate value to the user before expecting anything - even feedback - in return.

Michael Lynn, Principal Developer Advocate, MongoDB Don't fear conflict. Foster trust. Don't fear numbers. These are the guide posts. Get closer to engineering. Bring engineers to the devrel table and bring the community closer to the engineer.

Ain Indermitte, Head of Developer Relations at Open Networking Foundation You can start small, but try to eliminate developer pain points as much as possible.