Ossama Alami from Firebase has a community of 125,000 software developers

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I got on Skype for a chat with Ossama Alami, who heads up developer advocacy at Firebase.  Firebase is a realtime backend service which is very popular at hackathons.  Over 125,000 developers worldwide use Firebase, which is now an independent team within after an October 2014 acquisition.  


Shownotes:

  • Brief overview of Ossama’s background

    • Ossama’s first company was acquired by Accenture - he took his tech + consulting background to developer relations at Google (Ads, Geo, Commerce, and Glass)

    • Transitioned over to Firebase from Google, becoming the VP of Developer Happiness

    • Ossama met the Firebase team via introduction by mutual acquaintances, clicked with James and Andrew the two founders and the rest of the team

  • Brief overview of Firebase

    • Firebase’s API lets you store and synch data in realtime

    • Firebase allows you to build powerful and collaborative tools only using front-end code.

    • Firebase shines with real-time applications - , building a realtime infra (for chat or  is hard, but Firebase lets you create it quickly

    • Firebase makes it easier to add collaboration or chat

    • Store and synch data in realtime (with just front-end code)

    • Notable implementations of Firebase -

    • Firebase, like other developer tools, allows smaller teams to tackle bigger problems

  • What was the genesis of Firebase?

    • Firebase is a YC company

    • Founders of Firebase started working on Firebase in 2011 and launched first version in early 2012

  • What are the unique challenges of developer relations?

    • Developer Tools are hard to build because it’s hard to convince people to build on top of your tech if you are a startup

    • Adding to difficulty of creating a developer tool - software developers are very savvy and have highly varied requirements in their use of a tool

    • Developer Relations is a two-way street because you need to balance education and taking feedback from the outside to your engineer team

    • Google prefers the term Developer Advocate, to acknowledge their role in representing the developer community’s needs to the teams who are shipping product

    • The power of involvement in the community and events is to close the feedback loop, making your product better

  • Before Ossama joined Firebase in April 2014, what was their developer advocate program like?

    • Most of the outreach was Jame’s responsibility

    • Ossama came on to push the gas pedal and scale up a developer relations team

    • As of November 2014, Firebase has 125,000 developers using their technology.

  • More about evangelism

    • Advocacy humanizes the product which helps with growth

    • If a company does evangelism, it’s clear that they are investing in the future of the product, it’s safe to build on top of their technology

    • It’s hard to define what your typical day looks like - the work is varied

      • events - speaking, and hackathons

      • engineering - documentation and developer samples engineering tasks

      • support - on stackoverflow and inbound via email

      • product management - developer and API feedback

  • What is an API or product (not your own) that you love?

  • How can you use GitHub or StackOverflow data to get insights into how to improve Firebase?

    • Aggregate data can tell you what technologies are popular or trending up, which can help you make educated decisions for which features or open source initiatives to prioritize

    • Recurring StackOverflow questions about your software point towards where your documentation is weak

  • Is it valuable to partner with other developer tools companies?

    • Yes under the right circumstances

    • Electric Imp partnership was great because of the synergy between two tools to solve complicated problems

    • EI was especially interesting because many Internet of Things (IoT) apps need realtime signalling.

    • Firebase also has a partnership with Zapier and Pebble

  • Electric Imp partnership -

    • great way to solve a specific problem and expose yourself to a bigger set

    • it was a natural tech fit … a lot of IoT products NEED realtime signalling

    • partnership also with Firebase + other services like Zapier, Pebble,

  • What is your favorite hackathon format?  

    • Competitive - pitch for big prizes (Salesforce, Disrupt, AT&T)

    • Collaborative - science fair expos, finalists demo (MLH)

    • Themed - (Space Apps)

    • All have their place - biggest fan of themed hackathons.  

    • Also likes Competitive but prefers collaborative.  Giant prizes are trying to bend hackathons into something they don’t want to be

    • Themed hackathons - another benefit is having critical mass of the right stakeholders in one place

  • Why do people try to run hackathons for selfish reasons (free labor?)

    • It doesn’t really make sense - developers aren’t stupid

    • A developer’s time is so valuable that prizes seem exploitive.

    • Avoid hackathons that are all about the company which is throwing it

    • well-run hackathons are not cheap from a real cost and in terms of human capital (people hours) - net net it’s not productive to run a hackathon just to get one idea built

  • Throw a hackathon vs sponsor one - Which choice is better for a company who wants to get involved?

    • It’s preferable to participate in the hackathon scene before doing your own

    • Holding a hackathon is a big investment

    • If you have new tech it’ll be hard to draw attendees based on your brand - especially because no one has experience using your stuff

    • Now if you are a more well known brand, it may be attractive to give developers early access to your tech specifically at your event to get ready for a big launch

  • Anything (product, API, idea) you want to plug?

  • Is there anything I forgot to ask that I should have?

    • Firebase is hiring!  

    • Ossama wants you to apply to be part of the Developer Advocacy team

    • Firebase has joined Google, but remains an independent team within Google Cloud.  

Apply to work with Ossama at firebase.com/jobs