Attending DevRelCon London 2023

The first DevRelCon I attended was in 2022 in Prague, where I had the opportunity to speak about how to use your non-IT skills to build your personal brand (perhaps some day the recording will be published 😅).

I had a superb time there, it really felt I was among my people ❤️. So when I noticed that the 2023 edition would be in London, I immediately bought a ticket.

Creating the logo

Not long after the 2022 conference, Matthew Revell, the conference organizer, approached me and asked if I would like to create the logo for the London conference. Of course, I immediately said yes to this! Many hours of drawing followed, and I'm very happy with the result.

Here's the time-lapse of the creation of the logo:

The conference

After a smooth Eurostar travel from Rotterdam to London, I went to the pre-conference drinks, where I met some of my lovely former colleagues and many new folks. There was a surprising large Dutch devrel delegation, some I've never met before 😲 (Thanks Julien for bringing the stroopwafels!).

The main reason I went to this conference is to (re)connect with the wonderful people in Developer Relations. Don't get me wrong, the talks are good. I've learned quite a bit about:

• Developer education (Sue Smith)
• Cracking complext community problems (Richard Millington)
• Communication design (Melinda Seckington)
• Quantifying devrel impact (Kevin Lewis and John Booth).

There were many more talks, and a devrel unconference at the same time. It was too much to follow everything 🤯. As our industry is relatively young and not well-defined, I'm very appreciative of everyone who is sharing their knowledge and experience. You are helping us all to grow up (this is a hot topic lately).

I got a lot of good energy from attending this conference and meeting everyone in person 🤗. I hope a new edition of DevRelCon will happen in 2024. I will be there for sure!

(Also...let me know if you need a pixel-art style logo for your conference 😉)

Matthew and Kevin opening the conference

Wesley Faulkner giving the keynote

Sue Smith: An open framework for developer learning

Kevin Lewis & John Booth: Learning From Marketing to Quantify Developer Relations Impact

Melinda Seckington: The Art of Communication Design