Episode 6
Aisha Blake
April 1st, 2022
38 mins 24 secs
Season 1
Your Hosts
Special Guest
About this Episode
Sponsored by
Document Write · EthicalAds · Sourcegraph
Panelists
Portia Burton | Eric Holscher
Guest
Aisha Blake
Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk Docs, a show where we explore the intersection of technical docs, open source, and community. Today, we have joining us Aisha Blake, Director of Developer Relations at Pluralsight, as well as a theater kid turned tech community leader, speaker, conference organizer, and teacher. Aisha explains how a Developer Relations Engineer is one flavor of a whole range of titles. She shares her story of how she sees a lot of connections to being in theater as a kid and how getting into developer relations played out for her. We also learn how documentation is such a vital part of the developer experience, how spaces such as Discord and Twitch compliment documentation, and Aisha’s blog post, “Getting Paid as a Speaker.” Download this episode now to find out more, and until next time, keep writing and shipping those Docs!
[00:01:24] Aisha fills us in what a Developer Relations Engineer is.
[00:10:06] Eric wonders if Aisha views documentation as owned within this new org that she’s imagining as part of the developer experience and if documentation is part of that in her mind.
[00:12:39] Aisha shares her story from starting as a theatre kid and getting into developer relations.
[00:19:34] We hear about a blog post Aisha wrote called, “Getting Paid as a Speaker, and a model that Marlena Compton did through Wavelength.
[00:26:58] Aisha has a Twitch channel and tells us about wanting to do a show about developer education.
[00:28:48] Find out how spaces such as Discord and Twitch compliment documentation.
[00:32:51] Portia, Eric, and Aisha chat about the DevEdBookClub and the sense of community there and in the Twitter space there was a bunch of celebrities in the chat.
[00:36:11] Portia announces a really cool sticker Aisha is selling in her shop that you should go check out.
Quotes
[00:05:54] “In an ideal world. I’d love to see more companies moving towards breaking developer experience out into its own org.”
[00:09:29] “Part of that conversation of me coming into the role was that I would be able to really shape our metrics and our goals along with marketing leadership.”
[00:11:43] “I believe that documentation is such a vital part of the developer experience that if you’re going to have a developer experience team, then documentation has to be the pillar of it.”
[00:15:42] “I tell people all the time that I remember almost nothing from my degree.”
[00:23:45] “If I’m being asked to speak, I expect to be paid because you’re requesting my services.”
Links
Getting Paid as a Speaker (Aisha’s blog post)
Credits
- Executive Produced by Justin Dorfman
- Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
- Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
- Cover art by Eriol Fox
