How I Became a Developer Advocate

What is a developer advocate and how do you become one? In this episode, we have seasoned developer advocates, Kris Jenkins (Senior Developer Advocate, Confluent) and Danica Fine (Senior Developer Advocate, Confluent) answer the question by diving into how they got into the world of developer relations, what they enjoyed the most about their roles, and how you can become one.Developer advocacy is at the heart of a developer community—helping developers and software engineers to get the most out of a given technology by providing support in form of blog posts, podcasts, conference talks, video tutorials, meetups, and other mediums.   Before stepping into the world of developer relations, both Danica and Kris were hands-on developers. While dedicating professional time, Kris also devoted personal time to supporting fellow developers, such as running local meetups, writing blogs, and organizing hackathons.While Danica found her calling after learning more about Apache Kafka® and successfully implemented a mission-critical application for a financial services company—transforming 2,000 lines of codes into Kafka Streams. She enjoys building and sharing her knowledge with the community to make technology as accessible and as fun as possible.Additionally, the duo previews their developer advocacy trip to Singapore and Australia in mid-June, where they will attend local conferences and host in-person meetups on Kafka and event streaming. EPISODE LINKSIn-person meetup: Singapore | Sydney | MelbourneCoding in Motion: Building a Data Streaming App with JavaScript Practical Data Pipeline: Build a Plant Monitoring System with ksqlDBHow to Build a Strong Developer Community ft. Robin Moffatt and Ale MurrayDesigning Event-Driven SystemsWatch the video version of this podcastDanica Fine’s TwitterKris Jenkins’ TwitterStreaming Audio Playlist Join the Confluent CommunityLearn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent DeveloperUse PODCAST100 to get an additional $100 of free Confluent Cloud usage (details)   SEASON 2 Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed Music by Coastal Kites Artwork by Phil Vo  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.