[secondrow]

I've hired, worked with, and managed Dev Advocates at different open source software companies (working with Apache CouchDB, Apache Flink, and projects). They are really valuable and are an important part of awareness raising, user adoption, user retention, and technical recruiting.

A few thoughts: 1 - I think it's good to focus some of them on developer (user) acquisition and some on developer retention. The former are more evangelical - social, talks, demos, content that attracts new users. The latter focus on the user experience (UX feedback, docs, issue resolution, community support, how-to vids, etc.) to make sure new users become and remain active with the software. Both are critical to adoption and growing word of mouth.

2 - Dev Advocates can own the open source contributor experience! Recruiting, welcoming, recognizing new contributors is a great thing to see happen. It's an easy thing to overlook with companies placing so much emphasis on user acquisition. It's important for community goodwill building and expanding the network of external advocates.

3 - Make sure the executive team understands the breadth of Dev Advocate responsibilities. It can get tense if they only expect talks and blog posts.

That's my 2 cents...it's a big question!