# Tooling your way to a great DevRel Team {% embed url="" %} Christiano Betta (Braintree - PayPal) - DevRelCon London 2015 {% endembed %} ## Summary * Understanding different programs at Paypal * There were developed gradually over time and not at once * Internal tools help the Developer Advocates ***be in sync with the latest technology*** by getting them to build projects * Building tools is especially beneficial for startups - do more with fewer people * ***Collecting metrics*** is a great way to increase the efficiency * Someone from the team should be in charge of what data needs to be collected and what tools need to be built around it. ## Scribbles ### **Programs at Paypal** * [**BattleHack**](https://battlehack.org) - Themed Hackathon (Winners go to San Jose!) * [**Commerce Factory**](https://commercefactory.org) - Meetup Series of tech-focused talks on commerce * [**Startup Blueprint**](https://blueprint.paypal.com) - Startups get free processing for the first 18 months * [**Start Tank**](https://london.starttank.com) - Free office space to 6 startups for 6 months * [**Braintree\_Talks**](https://braintree-talks.com) - Talks series * Did not start at once, **created all these overtime** *"We should create internal tools and services, and external-facing properties, in order to help the team deliver more, faster, and better than before."* ### Why create internal tools? * To stay sharp your skills need training * Going and meeting tons of developers every day, you **need to keep up** with the technology. * You can't **stay up to date** if you don't have some projects to work on. * Get to play with a lot of new tech * As the team grows, you need to do more with the same people every year - increasing efficiency. * **Eliminate the repetitive tasks** and simplify the process * It is important especially for startups to build side projects - tools that simplify the process to do more * **Slack** - It was a side project build to help people at Flikr communicate effectively ### **Tools created for different PayPal Programs** #### **BattleHack** * Made a whole ticketing system with metrics that helped effectively to get the engagement rates of the audience. * This was extremely useful for the operations team that ran hackathons * Knew metrics for each city to target catering necessary stuff to avoid overselling or underselling the event * Check-in system was very useful to know how many actually attended the event * Eg.: For the first year had customized badges for everyone but 50% badges were never picked up * These were expensive * So came up with a solution of printing with transparent labels * Saved a lot of cost for the event! * Started collecting information about each Hack being developed at the hackathon. * Analysed which product was being used in which hack. * Got to know how many people were interested in the technology. * Shared the information with the partners as well and it was extremely useful. * Clock, twitter wall etc were developed to encourage participants getting engaged with social media #### **Startup Blueprint** * Developed a customised CRM tool to keep track of everything * Initially used a spreadsheet which became messy to converted it into a simple tool for everyone to use #### **Commerce Factory** * Made a ton of sample code repositories to standardize the experience of the tech talks #### **Other tools** * URL Shorteners * Sharktank apps * Metrics for iOS and Android * Hubot * Code of Conduct for the hackathon ### **Why does this matter?** * If you're a startup, increasing the workforce is not the best way to increase efficiency * *With the same number of people in the team, they noticed* * *195% increase in tickets* * *223% increase in attendance* * *\~115% of confirmed attendance* * *\~65% of attendance presented* * *934 hacks being presented* * *487 of them were unique* * *Got to know the most popular languages and tools being used at the hackathons* * *Doubled the number of events each year, with not so significant increase in hires* * This is because they were able to do more with the same people each year. * Someone from the team should be in charge of strategising how to collect this data and how to build tools to help collect this data effectively. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://scribbles.devrel.page/misc/tooling-your-way-to-a-great-devrel-team.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.