An insightful discussion with Sejal Jain, an engineer in the making and a DevRel at Keploy
Why did you become involved in DevRel?
I got to know of the profile from social media and got interested in getting to know the work that one does being a DevRel. I started following DevRels on LinkedIn and Twitter, and one day while scrolling through twitter I came across a meetup post of one of the DevRels(who is now by the way a very good friend of mine). The meetup agenda was DevRel 101 and I instantly signed up for it. So that meetup helped clear a lot of doubts and after that I started looking for opportunities in this space. I got a referral and started contributing to Keploy and after the contribution period ended I got an internship as a DevRel at Keploy.
How has being an DevRel Practitioner helped your personal and professional development?
I didn't know being a DevRel would help me be more organised and disciplined in my life. It's helped me improve my management and analysis skills. As a part of the work, I've also written a bunch of technical blogs, which has improved my writing skills and I've become more confident in being able to learn new technologies. Now, I can refer to a few resources and compile my learnings on any topic into a blog to share with the world. Overall, I can see development in my personal and professional life
How do you find balance between your DevRel life, work and other things you have going on?
It's been quite a rollercoaster journey to be able to manage everything and I still find myself in the middle of the process of finding the right balance. I try to log out of work before and after a specific time and try to reduce procrastination by completing my pending tasks as much as possible.
What tools and techniques do you use to manage your respective communities?
We're still at a very nascent stage of building a community around Keploy and API Testing. The few things that have been helpful until now are creating awareness about our niche and helping more people learn and grow together. We've created spaces for them to talk and share anything new they learn about APIs, API Testing or any other tech topic. The support is also available at all times to the community since the team remains active in order to help out with anything that's asked on the channel.
Do you have a separate community base for you as organizers and for your members?
We have one student based community under Keploy API Fellowship, where we regularly host sessions and give challenges to the members. Everyone is encouraged to ask their doubts without any hesistance and help each other out. Other than the students, we also cater to the professional community and take their user interviews in order to improve Keploy to better suit their needs.
What are some of the challenges you are facing at the moment
I had not gotten out of my comfort zone earlier and didn't document my learnings into blogs. Now I feel the friction everytime I start writing a new blog. I wish I had started earlier so this friction phase would've been over by now. But ofcourse we can't go back in the past and also I had recently read somewhere that even writers face this friction, even after years of being a writer. I think it helped me realise that that friction is part of the process and not something wrong with me particularly.
Were you considering recording or live streaming for virtual events?
We have recorded a bunch of sessions revolving around APIs, API Testing, Keploy and much more. The sessions were delivered to closed cohorts, communities and college societies. We plan to upload it on our YouTube channel soon so that everyone can benefit from it.
What achievements are you most proud of as DevRel?
It has been quite a steep learning curve being a DevRel. I have been able to leverage LinkedIn and other networking sites to reach out to colleges and communities for collaborations. I have been able to understand what the company does and explain it to other people. I have shown tremendous consistency in writing technical blogs, since earlier I only wrote like one blog in 5-6 months and now it's 5-6 blogs in one month. So I'd say the tables have really turned. I'm really proud of the way I've embraced being a DevRel and there's a lot more to do, this is just the beginning.
How do you structure your campaigns?
We haven't hosted a lot of campaigns yet but the structure to any event or program basically starts with the ideation phase after which the whole team brainstorms on the final vision of the program and next steps to be taken care of. The next steps could involve a lot of things like content creation, database management, outreach, taking care of communication between the members involved etc. We also have regular meets to make sure the program is going as planned and to clear any hiccups that the team might be facing.
What in the near future are you looking forward to the most?
I know what Keploy does and how to use it. So I'd be comfortable assisting any developer with the problems they might encounter while integrating Keploy in their codebase and using everything at the frontend. But I am not aware of the exact code and how every functionality that Keploy provides comes together through that code. In sometime, we're about to delve deeper into the Keploy codebase next and I can't wait for this to happen. It'd be an amazing insight and would also help me to become a better Keploy advocate, specially in professional communities.
Any message you would like to share with other DevRel Practitioners?
I have very limited experience of being a DevRel, so take whatever I say with a pinch of salt. But here's my two cents, I think it's important any DevRel gets into content creation, it could be any form they're comfortable with, but it's important to be involved in the space. It helps to articulate our thoughts better, communicate with users more effectively, share our learnings, improve documentation, spread awareness about our company's niche and basically comes with a bunch of other advantages.
