[karlhughes]

Lots of good questions here but I'll focus on two that I have the most experience with:

> Is it better to grow it internally?...Or the best way is to recruit a skilled DevRel person or instead of a marketing person and collaborate in creating great content?

I work with ~70 developer tools companies on devrel/marketing and the biggest killer has got to be founders who think they can just throw marketing over a wall to someone else.

Initially, you as the founder need to become that skilled DevRel person.

If not you, get a co-founder level person to help you. The truth is, in the early days, nobody else will care about the project like you do, so you need to be out there:

- Writing about it

- Demo-ing it

- Talking about it (eg: conferences and meetups)

- Talking to users and contributors

Eventually, you'll need to build a playbook that another DevRel or Marketing person can execute, but you can't outsource this when you're still finding product-market fit.

[mooreds]

I would add that you shouldn't just write about the project. That's kinda boring, to be honest. No one cares about your new feature, sorry :) . (I think this is implied in Karl's comment, but worth spelling out explicitly.)

Write/talk/communicate about:

   * problems the project solves
   * the broader space the project is in
   * technical challenges you've encountered and overcome or sidestepped (for a tech audience)
   * how your customers are using the product to make their lives better

[andreacavagna]

This is the right target to hit, I think I've met the first two point but, there is still many things to do.

Now I only have to upgrade my copywriting skills to pass better the message.

What I noticed is, since the project is an open-source App, that is way easier to show the App in person instead of writing about it.

I'm looking to events to be a speaker more than anything

[mooreds]

There are a number of services out there that can help you find CFPs (calls for presentations).

   * https://cfpland.com
   * https://techdailycfp.com
   * https://confs.tech/cfp

I'll warn you it can quickly get overwhelming (at least it is for me) so a few tips:

   * have criteria for conferences (audience, size, location)
   * you can submit a talk without having written it. In fact, it's better if you haven't in some ways because you can tweak it. Just give yourself plenty of time if you do this.
   * you'll be rejected from lots of conferences
   * meetups are usually happy to have you. I wrote about this here: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3418 and this can be a great way to polish talks.
   * think about adjacent talks, so you can re-use components. I have talked a lot about various aspects of OAuth/JWTs and shamelessly reuse portions of them
   * spend some time thinking about how to sell the talk to busy conference attendees. Again, consider the larger context. No one wants to hear about 'how to implement OAuth with <my product>' but 'how to use OAuth to protect your APIs' is more exciting. 'How OAuth saved my bacon and made me a hero' is even better.

[andreacavagna]

> Eventually, you'll need to build a playbook that another DevRel or Marketing person can execute, but you can't outsource this when you're still finding product-market fit.

I think this is the main point, I have many and many pages to create a playbook, but, since the project still finding product-market fit, this is a skill that have to come from the founders.

Maybe outsourcing Marketing things such as analytics and so on, but doing DevRel and evangelism on your own.

Thanks for your point of view!