
Ask HN: I want to become an evangelist, how do I go about it? - hamoudi
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&#x27;m 22 and I feel if I don&#x27;t hit it big within the next 2 years I probably won&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;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.
======
fsloth
"I'm 22 and I feel if I don't hit it big within the next 2 years I probably
won't. "

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.

~~~
yen223
Name me one person older than 24 who's achieved great things. You can't, can
you?

/s

EDIT: Someone replied with an interesting link but deleted the comment:
[http://fundersandfounders.com/too-late-to-start-life-
crisis/](http://fundersandfounders.com/too-late-to-start-life-crisis/)

~~~
jnardiello
What a junk comment. Get yourself a culture. This is the kind of BS people say
when they mistake marketing with reality. Scratching the surface of western
propaganda will teach you that beyond the "Mark Zuckerberg" effect there is an
army of bright professionals who have revolutionized their field or industry
with hard work, uncommon skills and (most of all) a consistent attitude OVER
THE YEARS. At 24, in most cases, you are barely mature enough to actually
START having the kind of consistency required to make great things.

~~~
59nadir
The "/s" means he's being sarcastic...

~~~
yen223
I tried to use sarcasm to point out how absurd the original statement was. I
thought putting the "/s" was making it too obvious. Sometimes it backfires
though. Oh well, c'est la vie.

~~~
59nadir
Text is a very dangerous format.

------
edent
I've been a tech evangelist. It's an interesting and stressful job. If you can
cope with lots of (international) travel, repeating the same speech over and
over and over, subsisting on pizza and cheap beer, and listening to over-
confident neophytes explaining why their plan to beat Facebook is rock solid -
it may be the job for you!

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.

~~~
tylerpachal
Could you order those (talks, Stackoverflow, blog posts, etc) in order of
importance? I'm in a similar spot as OP; looking to become an evangelist. I've
actually taken my first job internationally, and wouldn't mind the travel at
all.

~~~
edent
It depends. I'd put talks as 1st - especially if you can get people tweeting
"OMG! Brilliant insight from @tylerpachal - I totally get COBOL now!"

Building up a reputation takes time - and it will depend on the company. A big
organisation probably won't care about SO for example.

------
onion2k
_Given 90% of the time the clients were tech-handicap, but still._

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.

~~~
mobinni
Even the nicest people can be brutally honest it doesn't mean he was mean to
the people. You yourself are assuming he is not based on 1 brutally honest
opinion. No one is perfect and even the nicest people can generalize it's
nothing to be ashamed of and definitely does not rule him out

~~~
onion2k
The generalisation isn't the problem. It's entirely possible that 90% of the
people he dealt with were complete beginners. The problem is referring to
those people as "tech-handicap". That isn't 'brutally honest'; it's being
mean.

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.

~~~
mobinni
You make a valid point that the term he used is harsh and mean. But don't
assume he is a bad person, you can't say he isn't evangelist material based on
1 wrong term he used.

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.

~~~
onion2k
He used it in a post on a major tech forum, specifically asking for advice
about becoming an evangelist. It's not like Obama merely saying the N-word,
it's like Obama saying the N-word in a speech about the proliferation of hate
speech against the black community in America.

~~~
mobinni
Well if we can't make mistakes...

------
gjvc
> I'm 22 and I feel if I don't hit it big within the next 2 years I probably
> won't.

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.

~~~
hamoudi
I guess you are right, but the thing is. It's not about becoming an expert.
You have these geniuses doing things that blow my mind. And horrible coders
that hit it big with things like snapchat, which grow to the point you hire
other people to rewrite and maintain it.

~~~
zamalek
Don't worry if you aren't as good as the guys who started at 15. I started at
8 and there are guys who are doing stuff that is blowing my mind. There is
_always_ someone smarter than you (unless you're Knuth).

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.

~~~
hamoudi
Thanks for your insight. I will definitely work on my communication and social
networking skills.

------
FatalLogic
Firstly, good communication is very important to being an evangelist. So you
should edit your post into separate paragraphs to make it easier to read.

~~~
hamoudi
I did lol, HN doesn't allow texts above 2000 characters I had 3500 and skimmed
it down and had to remove paragraphs.

~~~
donkeyd
What you wrote hardly says anything about evangelism and why you'd want to do
it. It's mostly about previous experiences, which are hardly related. "I'm a
developer with experience in sales and customer support. I like both the
technical side and the human contact and would like to combine them," would've
sufficed.

~~~
mobinni
He probably felt like sharing, paints a good picture as to why he wants to do
it tho

~~~
donkeyd
To be honest, after reading that, I don't have a clue why he wants to be an
evangelist, or whether he has any clue what it actually means. That
description could perfectly describe the reason to become a product manager,
or a support lead.

IMHO 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.

------
ditdatdave
Trisha Gee (Evangelist at JetBrains) wrote a recent piece about her
experiences:

[http://trishagee.github.io/post/becoming_an_evangelist/](http://trishagee.github.io/post/becoming_an_evangelist/)

------
donkeyd
There's a couple of things that could help you towards evangelism:

\- 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.

------
sz4kerto
> But I do the google code-jams and what-not and 15 year olds can beat me
> straight.

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.

------
jondubois
Anyone who made it big before 25 just got extremely lucky. That doesn't mean
that they're not smart though.

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.

------
WestCoastJustin
Here's what worked for me. You could say I was an evangelist of sorts. I did
not set out to be an evangelist, more to educate myself about devops, and
[https://sysadmincasts.com](https://sysadmincasts.com) was the result. Ended
up getting hired by one of the companies I created a video on (but not in an
evangelist role).

Here's some things to think about:

    
    
      - you do not need to be an expert
      - you can teach yourself to be an evangelist (probably the best way)
      - 22 is *young* (I have 10 years on you)
      - almost better if you know nothing as you learn from the ground up
      - you will learn everything you need to know along the way
      - possible to brute force your way into it via consistent hard work
    

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.

    
    
      - pick an emerging tech eco-system (I chose devops)
      - something shiny and new (devops)
      - educate yourself about said eco-system
      - educate others about what you learned (brain dumps)
      - chunk these into small 1-2k word postings (blog or video)
      - was doing a weekly text/video release (hope to get back on a schedule)
      - it will be extremely painful in the beginning as you will suck (I did)
      - you will quickly become better and improve your craft
      - have a release cycle to keep you motivated with an end in sight
      - set clear goals for what each posting will be about
      - show examples (code, workflow, diagrams, etc)
      - weekly cycle will force you to keep things small and workable
      - just takes time and effort to research
      - it's easy to write simple brain dumps about what you learned
      - this could take years (it did in my case)
      - don't write crap postings or spam content
      - we are sick of corporate marketing/hype/vapor crap
      - an unpolished human-to-human conversation works very well!
      - show example use-cases (who, how, what, why, when, etc)
      - think unboxing video for tech products (what does the gui look like)
      - people will recognize you provide value
      - this will open doors beyond your wildest expectations
      - you will gradually become an expert
      - very rewarding to help people from around the world
      - can take over your life if you let it
      - force yourself to keep quality up over all else (don't be lazy)
      - you can do this alongside your day job
      - builds proof that you can be an evangelist
      - you will become much better at distilling concepts
      - this provides extreme value for time crunched people
      - you taught yourself how to learn & keep current!
    

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.

------
avodonosov
What is "evangelist"? I see this term often, but don't really understand it.

~~~
tylerpachal
I think it is better known as "Developer Evangelist" or "Developer Relations".

~~~
avodonosov
Yes. But what exactly does it mean? I thought maybe it is "very qualified
developer" but I read comments here, and doubts grow, maybe I understood it
wrong.

~~~
59nadir
It's just someone who sells a concept or technology to companies, really.
Knowing how it works is a plus, but it's not like there haven't been very
prominent tech evangelists who knew next to nothing about tech. If you can
explain what people gain from using the tech in a good enough way you're
pretty much done.

~~~
avodonosov
Yes. This reminds me of the Alan Perlis: "Above all, I hope we don't become
missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many
of those already."

------
drydot
you can idol another well-known evangelist of your choice, for example Richard
Stallman. ; >

------
dummy7953
Can you grin like an idiot and sound super-excited about high tech dog shit?

