In the 2019 edition of IBM Developer Days here in India, IBM revealed that they are globally doubling down on developer advocacy efforts and have a global team putting efforts into this. There is also a renewed focus on students and universities to reign in fresh talent and engaging them.
IBM has been very active in engaging developers for a while now. They have had an ongoing process over the decades that has seen them engage both the developer community and the open source community with their many offerings. With the recent acquisition of Red Hat and renewed focus on hybrid cloud solutions, this becomes even more vital for the company.
They’re here to help you successfully develop for the cloud and cognitive era. That’s it.
Let’s say that you need to better understand the feasibility of blockchain technology for your company’s transactions. Or you want to build a chat bot to interact with your customers. Or anything in between. The IBM advocates are ready to help you with cutting edge, open technologies and to accelerate your next great project. They’re also here to listen. Your contribution as a developer is very vital to allow IBM to continually provide the best version of technology that enterprise clients and others alike can them amalgamate in their solutions.
By becoming a member of the advocacy program, you can easily
- Become a member of IBM’s research, developer, and technical community.
- Converse with a developer advocate, either in person or digitally, about cloud & cognitive technologies and how it applies to your job.
- Receive advance technical updates about IBM technology roadmaps.
- Review sample code, test it, deploy an app or two.
- Let the IBM Team know what you think.
While the above has been the long term playbook for IBM in the advocacy area, the addition of Red Hat to the mix brings in a lot of solid legwork that RH has been doing over the years as an Open Source solution provider. This immensely increases the impact and depth of the existing program at IBM.
In the real world, with the advent of cognitive computing and AI as dominant forces in the industry today. You can clearly see that there are three different kinds of developers.
- Developers who are great coders
- Developers trying to upgrade their skills
- Non-coders who want to develop an app without much of coding.
The IBM Developer program has the right tooling and process in place to address the needs of all three of the above. There are content trails, documents and other resources that are tuned accordingly. It is also easy to write code, test it, deploy it and then iterate with changes very easily. The program makes the learning curve easy and short.
Given all the above, 2019 looks like a year when IBM Developer program will break new ground and take their engagement model to a new level. We will be watching this very closely and with a lot of interest going forward. There is even a coding challenge that you can take right now and see what you can come up with.
