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What’s In a Name and Advocacy Defined

When I started at Embarcadero, David I. asked me what I wanted my title to be. I went with Developer Evangelist since that was David’s title, and then he added Engineer on because of my years as a Software Engineer. I traveled the world and The cool thing is I’ve gotten to contribute a few pieces of code to the best development tool on the planet since joining too, so I made good on the Engineer title.

Lead World Wide Developer Evangelist and Engineer

As a Developer Evangelist I’ve alway described my job as mostly education related. My job is to help developers be awesome by educating them on our tools and the craft of software development. I figure if I can help our developers be awesome then the rest will take care of itself.

I find I am frequently educating both ways though. Sure, I focus on creating educational content for our developers, but also I’ll be in a planning meeting and I bring feedback from all the developers back to the product management and R&D teams.

So I was thinking, Evangelism is kind of a one-way thing. Sure, it is an important part of what I do, but I want to focus more on conversations and the two-way communication. So to that end I am changing my title.

Chief Developer Advocate and Engineer

In my mind Advocacy is a better description of what I do.  I’ll continue to play the Embarcadero Drum like I always have (even before joining Embarcadero) but I’ll also focus on being an advocate for our developer community within Embarcadero. The more I can do to improve that two way communication the better it is for everyone.

Luckily I’m not alone in my advocacy role though. All of our Software Consultants and Support Engineers spend their days talking to you, our community, more than I do. They are regularly bringing your feedback to meetings and making suggestions. Our Product Management team is also out on the front lines, talking to customers and doing what they can to incorporate the needs of developers into our products.

A few other titles that were suggested:

  • Agent of Awesome Developer Technology
  • Master Chief Advocate
  • Geek Guru
  • Developer Rockstar
  • King of the Geeks
  • Top Nerd
  • Community Coordinator
  • He Who is Always Online
  • Mr. Overflowing Inbox

All of which I love, and are fairly accurate (especially the last two).