Azure for Executives

Developer Relations at Microsoft with Jeff Sandquist

Episode Summary

In this episode, we’re talking about how Microsoft engages with the developer community. Growing and maintaining a strong community of developers has always been important to Microsoft. Our developer relations team, led by Corporate Vice President of Developer Relations at Microsoft Jeff Sandquist, makes the world better for developers and enables them to apply the latest technologies to create software that changes the world.

Episode Notes

In this episode, we’re talking about how Microsoft engages with the developer community. 

Growing and maintaining a strong community of developers has always been important to Microsoft. Our developer relations team, led by Corporate Vice President of Developer Relations at Microsoft Jeff Sandquist, makes the world better for developers and enables them to apply the latest technologies to create software that changes the world.

Episode Links:

Guest:

Jeff Sandquist is the Corporate Vice President of Developer Relations at Microsoft.

Follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Hosts:

Paul Maher is General Manager of the Industry Experiences Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

David Starr is a Principal Software Engineer in the Commercial Marketplace Services team at Microsoft.

Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Episode Transcription

DAVID: Welcome to the Azure for Executives Podcast, the show for technology leaders. This podcast covers trends and technologies in industries and how Microsoft Azure is enabling them. Here you'll hear from thought leaders in various industries and technologies on topics important to you. You'll also learn how to partner with Microsoft to enable your organization and your customers with Microsoft Azure. 

In this episode, we're talking about how Microsoft engages with the developer community, and that means growing and maintaining a strong community of developers, and that's always been important for Microsoft. Our developer relations team really makes the world better for developers, enabling them to apply the latest and greatest technologies that are coming out of our company to create software that truly changes the world. And to help with that initiative or to lead that initiative, I should say, our guest today is Jeff Sandquist, who's the Corporate Vice President of Developer Relations at Microsoft. So, Jeff, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us today.

JEFF: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

DAVID: All right, let's dig into this. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Microsoft?

JEFF: I am Jeff. I've been at Microsoft a number of years. I've worked in other companies as well. And my team and I really we're both helping developers. And we're in Azure engineering. We're an engineering team all up. But if we talk about developers, and that's a real [inaudible 01:36] for us, and that's from everybody from no-code to people that are pro-code. That's IT, ops, admin, developers, architecture, really the technical communities. 

My team and I really simply we're here to help. And we lead the teams that do build our online documentation systems, our learning systems. We build those platforms. And we're also a number of engineers that go out and around the world to go connect with our developer communities and advocate for them. That's my team. And at the end of the day, we get up every morning and say, "How can we make the world a bit better for our developers, make our products better, really help empower our communities?

PAUL: That's cool. And welcome to the podcast, Jeff. I'm so excited you get to do lots of cool stuff. So I get to ask lots of good questions about that cool stuff. So you lead developer relations at Microsoft. What is the mission of developer relations? 

JEFF: Really, our mission, again, is really about how do you help developers? How do you help them build on top and create on the Microsoft Cloud? And for that, it's Azure; it's Teams, it's Graph. It's our open-source communities. And our mission, again, is how do you help that developer? 

It's 2:00 in the morning, innovation strikes. Developers don't go to their procurement manager. They don't go to their marketing team for where to start. They go to their search engine, and it's Google, and sometimes it's Bing. And what they're doing is they're typing industry terms. They are looking to get started. They're looking to go build that next thing or fix a problem. And my team and I want to be their self-guided help, online tutorials where we build that great content. 

But we also want to go create a community for them, a community that'll help them grow their open-source projects, get people to join on that, or help them to solve those problems with humans as well too. And that's really about what we go do as our mission, and we mean it. It is about developers. One of the beautiful things about working at Microsoft is to be able to get to work on developers. It's an absolute privilege to work on a company like ours. And what I loved about Microsoft is, hey, founding moments matter, especially when you're making choices around developers. 

And if you think about our company, we weren't founded in search or retail or digital advertising. Frankly, it was two nerds getting together, Bill and Paul, and they're building tools for the Altair. And what was the next thing that they did after they wrote BASIC for the Altair? They didn't go on a sales call. They went to the Homebrew Computing Club and showed them what they'd built and what they were excited about.

And at the end of the day, where I feel so lucky is our founding moment, our founding moment as a company that we owe so much to. We get to do every day...we get out, and we get to connect with developers everywhere online, in person, and listen and understand where do our products not work? And how does it not work for a particular community? Hey, how do we make Azure better to deploy for Node developers? What do they need for content? 

When we get out there and connect with those communities, it's a wonderful thing that we can go help them build great things. And so I get to be really part of that moment of going out, connecting, and communicating, and helping but also sharing, my team and I, about what we think is great about technology, what we think is Microsoft, and that opportunity for developers. You know, that's not a well-crafted mission. At the end of the day, we're here to help.

PAUL: That's awesome, and I love the mission. You're engaging with developers; you're helping developers. And I love the fact we're going outside of our internal echo chamber, if you will. I love the fact that you're going where developers are; you're engaging in their communities, which is fantastic. And you're helping them with being successful in what they're trying to achieve. 

So let's double click a little bit. So now we've got our listeners warmed up and get a sense of what Jeff does and how you think about developer relations. Could you double-click a little bit on some of the initiatives that you're driving? We talked about advocacy. But I know you do a plethora of things across documentation to our learning platforms. I think these are really interesting things for our audience to hear about from you.

JEFF: Thanks. We love the work that we go do. But we also know that there are lots of things that we need to go improve, both in our learning platform but in the products we build. At the end of the day, whatever my team and I would do around our initiatives, everything starts with great technical content. That's really at our core. 

Everything starts with amazing technical content. That's docs.microsoft.com. We build that platform. We write technical content. It's open source. That is Microsoft's place for technical documentation. One hundred million people every month come to visit that community of ours and contribute to that. Everything starts with great technical content, and we go where the community is. We have developer advocates all around the globe really working online but connecting deeply with the community. 

A number of years ago, we did quite a reset on our approach to evangelism as a company, developer relations. And we established an entirely net new role for Microsoft, which was the cloud advocate, the developer advocate, and it's across the industry and so forth that we really put our own unique take on it. And we rally around a few things, which is one, it all starts with great technical content. 

It's 2:00 in the morning, idea comes up, how do you show up? The right samples, the right content, right API code, makes sense. We steward that. We create those experiences for the company. But then, when we go out to our communities, we go out, and we go where the customers are. We go where the communities are and connect with them there. And that's really a big part of what we have to go do is connect with those communities. Paul, go ahead.

PAUL: Yeah, Jeff, I was going to say Jeff and I have had the opportunity, and I've had the privilege to work closely with Jeff. And one of the things I was going to ask is because I came from a background, as many of us have in this profession, that we used to call evangelism, and now, of course, we talk about developer relations. And so could you share? I remember we had this conversation where you were kindly giving me really the difference between the notion of developer relations and evangelism. Could you share with your audience how you think about it, the differences of the two?

JEFF: We have a long history as a company with evangelism. And I think it was Guy Kawasaki at Apple that coined the term technical evangelist. I think, actually, Satya was a technical evangelist at Microsoft for Windows at one of his original roles. And so, whether you're Apple or Microsoft, there's this long history of evangelism. And it's something that I'm really proud of that I was part of too. 

When you think about the time when we were doing evangelism and even really years ago, let's go way back to the early days of Windows. You can sway an industry by hopping in an airplane and visiting two or three people way back when. And if you're doing a version of Windows, you probably need Peter Norton's company, [chuckles] those who remember Norton Computing, and things like that.

And we literally in the earliest days of evangelism, it was about wins. It was about getting evidence. It was about landing those big ones and connecting with those developers who are also very forward-looking because software we would ship in three-year cycles, four-year cycles for operating systems, and so forth. And you were, as an evangelist, you were professing the good news and professing the future. There are a lot of things that were great about that. 

But the things I saw when we got into cloud was really that that evangelism wasn't advocating for the community. It wasn't always necessarily ensuring that our product feedback was...we're making our products better and as a bit of an echo chamber. And what I mean by that and it's just kind of the last thing of why we had to make this change wireless. 

People looked at us as the .NET Windows cloud when they thought Azure no matter what it ran. And what we had to go and go work in the days of Azure, and that really started about five years ago, is how do we become the Node, the .NET, the Python, the Kubernetes cloud, and we needed feedback. And a big part of our advocacy work was let's go out and not organize the team by our products; let's organize them by the technical communities. And let's go out there and learn and participate together. 

And a big part of the evangelism versus our advocacy work is now that it's practitioner-based, practical; if we're going to get on stage and talk about something, we're going to make sure that people can do it more practical. And really, the last bit is breadth and scale. Azure is Software as a Service, and we need to operate at that galactic scale for our developer outreach.

DAVID: You know Jeff, I happen to have been in education for a large part of my career. And one of the things that we struggle with in those sorts of initiatives is tying the effort that we as content creators...you mentioned making great content to outcomes and getting people to maybe try Azure, getting them to reach out to somebody at Microsoft and form partnerships that sort of thing. And I'm just wondering how you measure success within developer relations. That's a very difficult thing, I think to pull off, so I'm wondering how you do it.

JEFF: You know, when I talked about those other days of the industry, way back when, I think we measured by hoping and praying that it worked. It took a real act of faith. How did you correlate and connect? We measure our developer advocacy work around growth, adoption. And because we have a very much, you know, motion, an engagement model that is about breadth and reaching out and connecting online, we can connect it often back to Azure. Hey, somebody comes up on stage. They give a great talk. "Thank you for viewing my talk today. Here are the docs on this particular topic here online. Here's a learning path." 

And really, when we connect it up in the most senior level, we talk about that investment in developer advocacy. It's been incredibly impactful, and we can tie it right back to Azure growth, Azure, you know, the overall growth for our platform and our business. Developers are an amazing thing. They want to care about quality communications. They want to have the context for what they're building, and they make the choices in the company. We have to take great care of them. And we have to reach them authentically. 

We have to reach them and communicate with them with their words and at the very basic level. You better not color code C# code like Python code. Or when you're writing an SDK at Microsoft to say give access to Azure for Python, developers might feel that SDK was maybe written by somebody who's .NET. Making sure that it is native to their programming is really important. 

And so when you see all of that, when you remove friction through the process, when you have great content, when you have great samples, you see that. And there's a direct correlation to the growth of the business. At the end of the day, developers, again, it's 2:00 in the morning, and if they can't find their solution and the documentation and get from five minutes to WOW, 0% chance they're going to stay and go build on that platform. They hit friction. They hit any of those things that make it too difficult; forget it; we're not going to go build on that platform. 

Ambiguity is the axiom of all developer advocacy. Ambiguity stalls growth. We have the right technical content for our customers and developers. And so, we can measure that through our online outreach and work. We can measure that and understand that compared to the growth of the business and trials. We'd look at engagement. We also run other properties like Microsoft Learn, microsoft.com/learn. That is the place to learn how to use the technical products of Microsoft. And that product there we look at growth and certifications and scale, and we look at jobs. 

But we can connect all of that back through largely a digital ocean. And it's not an act of faith of what it was before. And so when we talk about the impact of that work, we understand it from hey, product feedback and the products get better. Are we actually bringing changes from these communities into that? And it's also a big part of our growth and adoption as well. And you can measure that growth as well.

DAVID: That's fantastic. 

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DAVID: Jeff, you've mentioned a couple of times that there are certain products if you will, or platforms that developer relations works on and creates, and there are programs that you guys run. So I wonder if you could talk to just some of those initiatives?

JEFF: Overall, our approach is we're grounded in Microsoft Cloud, and to us, that is Azure plus Teams, Azure plus our Graph. That's working across how do the companies who are going to build the next great thing how do we make sure that they can? And so, when we look at that, we need to be boundless. It would be horrible for someone to be saying, "Hey, I'm programming up against Active Directory," maybe getting access to some APIs for Teams. 

And if the documentation or the approach changed and you could actually, you know, as you're going from Teams all the way over to say Azure docs, to a developer, it's one platform. And so a big part of this, of our coverage, is really that going across that cloud. And we do it everything from Power Apps to Sentinel to no-code to pro-code. But it is grounded in really the future of our company around which is our cloud. 

Our programs is something that we have a number of different things that we will go around scaling. Scaling is a huge part of the work that we go do and a huge responsibility. How do we train the next generation workforce? How do we make sure that there are skilled Azure developers around there? How do your employees grow? 

Well, microsoft.com/learn is free. It doesn't require a credit card. You can deploy VMs. You can learn Azure, and frankly, you can do all the steps for you and your employees to get certified on Azure without spending a dime. You don't have to use your own subscription to go learn. Use mine. You can deploy VMs. We have a sandbox. We're growing that across all of Microsoft products. That's one area of our program. 

We have our Reactors. Those are worldwide spaces across all the areas that Microsoft does business. They're also virtual and, in person, a great place to come and hang out. Imagine Cup; we do a lot of work with our educators and students. We have these Microsoft Learn ambassadors worldwide. And then the last step is the community, community, community, community. In the current times, it's a pretty lonely place. I think communities mattered more than anything. So across our team, we go out and connect with those communities we discussed. 

But we also have our MVP program. That is our greatest fans across Microsoft. We steward that program. Our Regional Directors is another one. We have Microsoft Learn ambassadors across all the major universities and students that are out there that have an affinity towards Microsoft and our connection to local students. Those are a few of the programs we have. 

And the spirit is how do we go connect developers where they are, bring them back, bring them inside Microsoft, help them understand why we do the things we are, be accountable for when there are problems to go help after bringing them inside? We want to bring them to docs and learn so that they will build the next great thing.

PAUL: That's awesome, and I love that philosophy, Jeff. And you work with, and you're responsible for so many things, which is fabulous. One that I do have a particular affinity and love is the Microsoft Reactors, and you mentioned that. Could you explain a little bit more to the listeners what the Microsoft Reactors are? And of course, as we hopefully look to move into some in-person initiatives, we talked a lot about online. Could you share your thoughts and maybe what's ahead for us as we think about the Microsoft Reactors?

JEFF: Love our Reactors. Like I said, they're across all areas that Microsoft does business. And so the London Reactor, full disclosure, is one of my favorite places; it's in Shoreditch. And truly, they're around the world. And they really are like, hey, you and your company when...we're in COVID right now, and we've been keeping the places ready for you. We can't wait for people to come back. 

And as areas return to safety for people to do that, it's an amazing place to drop in. There's always something happening. In the evenings, there are events. During the day, there are events. We often sometimes even connect with local technical talent and help. And that's really a big part of this of really the Reactors. It is that hub of local activity. And they are a truly special space. David.

DAVID: Yeah, I was just going to mention that I've been working with the Reactors in the UK as well. They've been great. And recently, we've done a couple of workshops and such through them. And I've actually got a talk coming up on February 15th for building SaaS applications for the Azure Marketplace and doing that through the UK Reactor. So they've been absolutely wonderful to work with, and I just wanted to throw that out there. Come to my talk. You'll love it. [laughs]

JEFF: If I'm going to go to a talk, I'm going to go to your talk. When you think about the Reactors, what we've tried to do is, the one is Shoreditch, is be where that local tech community is. And so it might be a space on its own, and it might be a building on its own, but often, it's where that local community is. For example, in Toronto, it's where MaRS is. It's their local tech hub. In San Francisco, we've got one there. We try to be that place within that local tech hub and just a hub of activity, literally of drop-in. There's a community event going on. We have teams there. ¬

Now, what's been interesting is during COVID, we've moved to virtual like anybody. And so what's been fun is we have had regionally, locally-focused online virtual events through our Reactors and people coming into it. When the Reactors come back, you're going to see us opening those up and bringing the community in. But we're going to keep that online approach as well, too, and really deliver hybrid events where you may be online, or it will be an in-person audience. Hey, the speaker might be in person, or the speaker might be somebody that we bring in from afar. 

And we're going to be really using those Reactors to innovate into how we think about getting together again. One thing about this pandemic I used to travel a lot. Maybe I don't miss that so much. But, boy, I miss connecting with people. I am friends with, like all of you on this call, Dave and Paul. And it’s like, I have friends all around the world that I only saw when I'd be traveling for work. And so I can't wait for us to start bringing people back together and doing that. And with Reactors, you're going to see us really open up that space. 

Last up is when we do bring them up, one thing that's been very challenging for a lot of event groups, right? Where is a great, safe place to host an event? Where is a great place that's got great food? And we really hope that we can leverage our Reactors to go help the community. When we opened the London Reactor a number of years ago...it's a gorgeous place. I just love the London Reactor. 

I was really proud of what the team did, which was when we opened it up for the first time; we brought every community organizer from the Node meetup to the serverless meetup, you name it. We brought them in and said, "Hi, this is your space." And we put on an event for them, you know, helping putting on great events and things like that. And then we just said, "Hey, it's for you. Come and set up and use this place to go connect with your communities." And so that's been that spirit. I just can't wait till we can actually start seeing people again and get to connect in person.

PAUL: Yeah, thank you for that, Jeff. And I'm going to plus-one your comments. I think we're all excited about the opportunity to come together again and meet friends, and those in-person events and the Reactors sound really exciting. So as with all things, time flies when you have fun. So we are nearing the end of the show. 

But what we like to do, Jeff, with our listeners other than having an engaging conversation which we have here today, is how do we continue the conversation? So what would be some of the call to actions for our listeners so they can continue the journey, learning more about the good work that your team is doing? What would be your recommendations for people after they've listened to the podcast today, kind of go-to actions?

JEFF: microsoft.com/learn. Share it with a student, share it with a co-worker, share it with your engineers. Learn how to build the next great thing and let me pay for it. Let my team go build it. It's a great guided experience, and it's micro-based learning. It's a very unique kind of view where you've got to do 5 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon. Always, always, always be learning. If you go look, we're always having different events and all sorts of different things that are happening around our ecosystems. Check out our Reactors. You can go to our Reactors online. There's always something happening with that. 

And I'll just say again, look, we're here to help. As I said, we are here to help. And if there is anything...I look at my job as the ambassador of Microsoft sometimes or chief connector. If you're looking to get connected at Microsoft and looking for a way and you can't figure it out, or hey, you're trying to go build something, jeffsand@microsoft.com. Send me an email. I may not be able to answer your question, but I have an amazing team. And we will go find the right person to get you connected to go and help you build the next great thing. 

We're hungry for your business. We want you to build on our platform. We know it's not perfect, but we want to make it better. We want to listen to you and support you. And that's what it's about is I get more joy about hearing from someone that they learned how to do something that they never thought they could do or something that somebody built that we never thought was possible. We've got one of the best jobs in the world, which is helping developers. I really appreciate you guys having me on today. It's been really fun to talk about this.

DAVID: Absolutely. This has been a great conversation, and thanks so much. I really appreciate you being on the show. And one of the things we always do is post in our show notes all your social stuff. So people will be able to find you on LinkedIn and connect with you there and follow you on Twitter. So we'll have that stuff in the show notes as well as links to a lot of the initiatives and a lot of the programs that you mentioned today on the show. And with that, I would just say again, thanks very much, Jeff, and I look forward to a conversation in the future.

JEFF: I can't wait to come back again. Thanks, David. Thanks, Paul. This was a lot of fun. Hey, docs.microsoft.com, microsoft.com/learn. Come build the next great thing on the Microsoft Cloud. And if you want cooking and all sorts of other stuff like that, @jeffsand on Twitter. Thank you.

PAUL: [laughs] Awesome. Thank you, Jeff.

DAVID: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Azure for Executives Podcast. We love hearing from you. And if you have suggestions for topics, questions about issues discussed on the show, or other feedback, contact the show hosts, David Starr or Paul Maher, through the social media links included in the show notes for each episode. We look forward to hearing from you.