Sitting Back Before Talking About the PyCon Incident / What IS a Developer Evangelist, Anyway?

A popular implement for a common type of quarterbacking.

In the wake of the PyCon 2013 “Dongle” incident and the ensuing fallout, the emails — but notably, no tweets, Facebook comments or any sort of messages delivered in the open  — have been trickling in, asking what my thoughts on the matter were, given that:

• I’ve been a developer evangelist for about a decade, and
• My reputation for having a ribald sense of humour.

My answer: wait.

With the intersection of a lot of “hot button” issues: privacy, privilege, sexism, racism, back-and-forth accusations of misogyny and misandry and conflicting visions of justice, there’s been far too much bile being passed back and forth for listening and civil discourse to take place.

(If you really must read something on the topic, Amanda Blum’s take on it in her blog most closely aligns with my own point of view.)

I’d like my contribution to the discussion to be one that benefits rather than harms, and you can’t do that by “shooting from the hip”. That will take time and thought, care and consideration.

In the meantime, since the incident has caused more than a few people to ask “What is a developer evangelist, anyway?” Here are some links you may find useful:

• Company Man (or: The New Job) (October 2008)
• Evangelist, Immigrant and Shaman (May 2009)
• Developer Evangelist. Toronto Area. Now Hiring. Maybe You? (October 2010)
• The New Job: Technical Evangelist at Shopify (April 2011)
• A Day in the Life of a Developer Evangelist (June 2012)

…and here’s an article about how well I evangelized evangelism.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.