Their job titles may be different – DevRel, Developer Advocate, Community Advocate, Community Engineer, Director of Community, and Developer Evangelist, but they all have one very important thing in common…
We’re already a few weeks deep into 2022 and what we all hope will be a year of personal and professional growth. One way to ensure your 2022 gets off to a good start is to find some developer communities worth joining. How do you spot a great community? We suggest you start by sizing up the leaders at their helm.
To make that task a bit simpler for you, we’ve put together a list of community leaders doing amazing things. While many of the folks on our list have different job titles like DevRel, Developer Advocate, Community Advocate, Community Engineer, Director of Community, or Developer Evangelist, they all have one very important thing in common – they love to see their community members learn, achieve, and succeed.
With that in mind, here are 8 Developer Advocates to watch in 2022.
1. Nicolas Frankel
Nicolas is a Developer Advocate @Hazelcast and has more than 15 years of experience consulting with clients in a variety of industries including telecom, banking, retail, and the public sector.
Nicolas is a self-proclaimed ‘Java Geek’ who adds high-quality posts to his blog weekly. Some recent titles include: Beautify third-party API with Kotlin, Native-image with Quarkus, and Multiple Spring Boot applications in the same project.
Spending most of his time on Java/Java EE and Spring technologies, Nicolas enjoys Rich Internet Applications, Testing, CI/CD, and DevOps. Nicolas does tons of in-person and online speaking engagements and has written 3 books.
2. Pauline P. Narvas
If you’re looking for a proud, kick-ass, trail-blazing DevRel to follow then Pauline P. Narvas, AKA ‘Pawlean’ is your go-to-gal. Pawlean wears the moniker of Community Engineer at Gitpod but she’s so much more than just a DevRel… she’s also a writer, podcast host, powerlifter, and all-around awesome human being.
Paw got her first taste of tech at age 8 when she started building websites and eventually went on to study Biomedical Science and digital engineering. Since finishing school, Paw has worked as a Site Reliability Engineer and DevOps Engineer.
As developers, we deal with a lot of drudgery. Paw’s can-do attitude is exactly the dose of optimistic awesomeness I prescribe to anyone looking for a bit of a boost. Paw says that she’s a firm believer in the concept that “anyone can learn anything with time and determination” – Give me more of that!
- linkedin.com/in/pnarvas
- paulinenarvas.com
- twitter.com/paulienuh
- instagram.com/paw.lean
- github.com/pawlean
- paulinenarvas.com
3. Marc Backes
‘Fork in the road’ moments have always been fascinating to me. Those fateful decisions we all face… Should I take this path or that? Marc Backes’ first big moment came as a student at age 15 while attending the Lycée des Arts et Métiers school in his hometown of Luxembourg. Marc had to choose a focus for his studies, Electronics or Computer Science?
Marc says that the limitless potential to single-handedly create something from nothing is what eventually tipped the scales in favor of Computer Science. and we’re all grateful for that.
After finishing his Master’s degree in embedded systems, Marc held several key positions at universities and businesses around the globe and even spent some time in silicon valley working on his own startup. Marc is currently the Developer Advocate @VueStorefront, a fast-growing frontend-platform for headless commerce, built on Vue.js
- marc.dev
- twitter.com/themarcba
- github.com/themarcba
- dev.to/themarcba
- youtube.com/MarcBackesCodes
- instagram.com/in/themarcba
4. Angie Jones
We’ll start with a massive congratulations to Angie for landing an awesome new gig as VP of Global Developer Relations for Block (formerly Square). Angie’s resume is enviable, peppered with past employers like Twitter, IBM, Teradata, Applitools, and LexisNexis
Angie is an award-winning teacher and international keynote speaker who shares her wealth of knowledge at software companies and conferences all over the world.
As a Master Inventor, Angie is known for her innovative and out-of-the-box thinking style which has resulted in more than 25 patented inventions in the areas of metaverses, collaboration software, social networking, smarter planet, and software development processes.
- angiejones.tech
- twitter.com/techgirl1908
- github.com/angiejones
- youtube.com/user/angieluvboo
- linkedin.com/in/angiejones
5. Francesco Ciulla
Hanging out in his hometown of Rome, Italy, Francesco describes himself as a “Computer Scientist in the world of software engineering… a problem Solver and Devops fanatic.”
Recently titled a Docker Captain, Francesco is a K8s enthusiast who masterfully wields his weapons of choice – HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Angular, React, Node, Postgres, in some of his favorite sandboxes like Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Digital Ocean.
If you’re looking for a steady stream of quality video content, and a mesmerizing Italian accent, be sure to check out Francesco’s YouTube channel, where he’s always got something fresh dropping for devs.
- youtube.com/c/FrancescoCiulla
- twitter.com/FrancescoCiull4
- discord.com/invite/TcmA2kbJeA
- linkedin.com/in/francesco-ciulla-roma
- twitch.tv/francesco_ciulla
- instagram.com/francescociullaroma
6. Pratham Kumar
Pratham joined the RapidAPI team at the end of July 2021 as a Developer Advocate after an incredibly active year online, building his Twitter followers from nearly nothing to over 150K.
It’s no wonder, his feed is loaded with tons of sharable tips, tricks, and cheat sheets for aspiring devs and API aficionados.
- prathkum.com
- codesandbox.io/u/PrathamKumar14
- github.com/PrathamKumar14
- twitter.com/prathkum
- facebook.com/PrathamKumar14
- linkedin.com/in/pratham-abb051175
7. Blake Ethridge
Blake is the Director of Community at Netdata and the host of CMX Connect, an outstanding educational resource for dev advocates, dev community builders, and professionals.
Before joining the team at Netdata, Blake spent two and a half years as DZone’s Community Manager where he championed community-generated content and sat at the helm of loads of live streaming shows.
With more than a decade behind him as a pioneer in the community management and building space, along with a trophy case full of awards for his valuable work, Blake is definitely a DevRel to watch in 2022.
- linkedin.com/in/blakeethridge
- events.cmxhub.com/u/mpp4ez
- facebook.com/blake.ethridge
- twitter.com/NeedSampleCode
8. Jeremy Morgan
Jeremy is a Senior Developer Evangelist for Pluralsight, and an avid tech blogger and speaker. He has two decades of experience as an engineer building software for everything from tiny startups to Fortune 100 companies.
He stays immersed in the .NET/Azure world while always keeping one foot in the Linux ecosystem building Python and Go applications.
Jeremy loves sharing his passion for backend API development and cloud infrastructure in his popular tech blog, where you can find loads of valuable lessons. Jeremy also contributes to open source as a .NET Foundation Member and DevOps Institute Ambassador. In his spare time, Jeremy is a volunteer firefighter, hardcore gearhead, and AV tech enthusiast.
