Ask HN: I want to become an evangelist, how do I go about it?
So to give you a little insight into myself. I am a recent graduate BS Application Development student. Even before I graduated, I was signed away to a great company. I applied to become an Android Developer, because while studying it was a field I showed intrest in. During my internship I fell in love with web technology. My company was just starting a web-unit, since it was primarily focused on app-development in the past (mainly iOS). I was grateful to be in a position where I could make the shift to something I felt more passionate about. When I graduated I started taking on way too many commitments simultaneously. Trying to stick my hand in as many cookie-jars as possible trying to make money as fast as possible. I want to accomplish and so little time. I'm 22 and I feel if I don't hit it big within the next 2 years I probably won't. Eventually I dropped everything. After which I asked myself one important question: Where do I want to be in 5 years? I am a good developer, I am valued at my work as a developer. However I know I'll never be a great developer, not to be harsh on myself. But I do the google code-jams and what-not and 15 year olds can beat me straight. I have no great mind. I'm smart and tech-savvy and I learn quick, but I am no genius. Before becoming a developer I was a field-marketeer for 2 years selling electronics in stores as a way to make money while studying. My last year I got hired by Microsoft to exclusively sell their products and be a one-stop knowledge base in stores. I loved it, people came to me and I knew how to help them. Seeing that light go on in someones eyes when they understood something was beautiful. Given 90% of the time the clients were tech-handicap, but still. I want to pursue something on the developer-scale that combines both. I know it takes years of experience to become an evangelist. My question is: How do you start? What do you do?
Maybe there are evangelists out there that can give me some tips.
52 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadIMHO it should've been an elevator pitch, describing which parts of being an evangelist sound interesting to him. Communication is a key part of being an evangelist.
Two years is not long enough to become regarded as an expert at anything. You are potentially shutting yourself off from much with this attitude. I think many people have this fear of "never going to be as good as the others", but here's the thing -- many people think it, very few admit it, which makes it seem disproportionately scarier.
Stick with it. Learn from the 15 year olds until you beat them straight.
Focus on what you want to do - not what others are doing. Be the best at what you are good at not what others are good at. Becoming an evangelist means that you will need to focus on your communication skills - getting the job might come down to quite a bit of social networking.
Keynote - Jacob Kaplan-Moss - Pycon 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE
It was posted a few weeks ago, and gives some insight in how we judge the greatness of a programmer and that we draw the line at fantastic or shitty.
It doesn't follow up your reply as well as it should, but regardless it's good to know you can still become a 'genius'.
There's this guy who won the Abel prize in 2012 called Endre Szemeredi. He said that throughout his career he always felt himself slow compared to the other guys around him. He started to do maths at 22 as his parents wanted him to go to medical school - that he left and went do do manual labour in some factory. His professor though he'll never be able to become a proper mathematician.
- Read, a lot. Also form an opinion about what you read.
- Blog. Write about the stuff you think about. Voice your opinion and make sure you write some original stuff, don't write the same stuff all tech blogs are writing.
- Network, both on- and offline. Get to know people who are doing what you want to do and figure out how they got where you want to be. Stay in touch afterwards.
- Take a philosophy course. It'll help you to start thinking outside of the box.
As with any role, the best way to demonstrate your worth is to develop a portfolio. Give talks at every meetup you can. Make sure they're video'd - watch them back and learn from your mistakes.
Get a name for yourself on StackOverflow (or whatever) as someone who can clearly and concisely explain a solution.
Write dozens of blog posts - and get them syndicated - showing how you can write tutorials, answer questions, and explain moderately difficult concepts to a lay audience.
Learn how to organise events. Start your own meetups / hackdays / whatever. Organising venues, catering, invites, sponsors, speakers, schwag etc is absolutely invaluable experience. Join the organising committee of your local events.
Finally, find a company (preferably with some funding) who you can see needs to get their message out there. Write up your plan on how you would help them succeed. Which meetups are they best to sponsor? Which merchandise has the best response among developers? What parts of their proposition need the most explaining. Pitch your experience.
A word of warning. I quit the evangelist game because I couldn't cope with frequent international travel. It's fun at first - but can play havoc with your personal relationships.
Building up a reputation takes time - and it will depend on the company. A big organisation probably won't care about SO for example.
Here's some things to think about:
Here's my suggested strategy:Start a blog or youtube channel where you review products around an eco-system. Boom, you now run your own evangelist company, congratulations! Keep at this consistently for a few years. Focus your reviews on a specific type of company or series of product lines. You will get on people's radar. This will bring in job offers as you have proved yourself as an evangelist. A few things that I can think of off the top of my head re: the journey.
The trick is to keep yourself motivated. If you look at many information products today (podcasts, youtube channels, magazines), most of them follow a model like this, just copy it. Just the reward of helping others alone makes this worth it, so you really cannot go wrong! In that, even if you do not become a full-time evangelist, you have educated yourself, educated others, built a public profile, and that will pay off big time when looking for work in the future.I'm not sure what you want to achieve but in general the real world is not that strict. You are stuffing your ambitions into a tiny box and for no good reason. I would advice you figure out where you want to be in the next 20 years. This will give you a far larger scope for your thoughts.
Old people are not junk, if they keep their mental and physical faculties.
/s
EDIT: Someone replied with an interesting link but deleted the comment: http://fundersandfounders.com/too-late-to-start-life-crisis/
http://trishagee.github.io/post/becoming_an_evangelist/
Referring to people who aren't knowledgeable about a subject as 'tech-handicap' rules you out as a potential evangelist in my opinion. You need to be an expert, you need to be passionate about a product, but most of all you need to be a nice person who doesn't look down on people who know less than you.
A good product evangelist is someone who can talk about the people they've met in the same way regardless of whether or not those people are still in the room. That is the skill that makes you good at evangelising something - if people like you they'll listen to you. If people see you being nasty they won't, because they'll wonder if you're going to be nasty about them once they leave.
If we're gonna hold words against people, well obama isn't president material, because you remember that one time he said the N-word. No president should use racial slurs. You see what I'm getting at.
But I do agree about the 'tech-handicap'. If / when you do become an evangelist, these people are likely to be your customers.
If you can't relate to them (why are the handicapped?) you have bigger problems.
Who are the great evangelist you admire? What are they doing well?
Have a look below at WestCoastJustin[1] suggestions. He is bang on!
Have a look at his profile. He is super approachable.
That is a key difference - Evangelist go out of their way to be helpful. They often give you multiple ways of connecting with them. Compare that to your profile - what could you change / improve?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=WestCoastJustin
You shouldn't give yourself such a short timeline for achieving your career goals - The odds are severely against you. Capitalism isn't optimised for fairness; it's optimised for making as many people work for as long and as hard as possible (and this effect is only going to get worse with time).
Financial success is actually an oddity - A flaw in the system. It goes against what it's optimised to do.
Think of capitalism like the carrot dangling in front of the horse to keep the horse moving.
If you've learned to enjoy watching the carrot dangling and wiggling around aimlessly at the end of that stick, then you're getting the most value out of the system.