It’s not technically my official job, but I do some “developer-esque” relations for the ABC’s Digital Network division. I started doing it because I like it, and it’s been very educational.

To clarify, the phrase  “developer relations” could be interpreted in a couple of ways:

1. Your company has products or services it sells, and you’re trying to help people in the community to make better use of them, to encourage new users, and to get an idea about future features that people are seeking. The end goal is to get more people using your product, and be happier while they’re doing so.
2. Your company is trying to be more open about the way it builds things, and to build some community. You’re sharing knowledge about your internal processes and decisions, mistakes you’ve made, and what’s coming up in the future. The end goal is to let people find out more about your environment, get people interested in the products you build, exchange ideas, and perhaps even entice some future employees to join you.

My “developer-esque” relations work at the ABC falls firmly in the second camp, and it includes work over the last year such as GovHack 2015, our hackathons, and a new tech talk series we’re starting up. You can sign up here! The first talk is on our internal transcoding system, Metro.

I’m also pretty excited about the latest endeavour, the launch of the ABC developer blog developers.digital.abc.net.au 🙂

The ABC has some really interesting products that millions of people use daily. However, when it comes to who, how, or why we build those products, there is zero external visibility. If you were trying to find information about the ABC’s development team, there really wasn’t anything to see. In an age where almost every company has engineering blogs, talks at conferences or events, and has a community presence, we were falling desperately behind.

The lack of information correlates to a difficulty in attracting good candidates. When you have choices, why would you choose the place that you know the least about?

So the theory is that by sharing more, we hope to get more people in the door. I’m pretty excited to be part of that. If you are too, then please join us.