
# DevRel in the Age of AI: Why Developer Relations Has Never Mattered More

![DevRel in the Age of AI](/blogpost/cloud-native-days-bergen.jpg)

There's a word that keeps coming up in conversations I've had at the last dozen conferences, in speaker lounges and post-talk dinners, in DMs from people building developer tools and from people using them.

That word is *trust*.

Not features. Not pricing. Not benchmarks. Trust.

I've been doing Developer Relations in some form since 2015 — moving through different roles in the field, now as Tech Evangelist at Fractal Cloud. I've been on 200+ stages, I've built community from zero, I've watched products succeed because developers believed in them and fail because they didn't. And the pattern is consistent enough to be a thesis: in developer-facing products, trust is the primary variable.

In 2026, with AI reshaping every layer of how software is built, that variable has become more complex, more contested, and more consequential than ever. Which is why it's the right moment to talk seriously about DevRel — what it actually is, what it's not, and why companies that still treat it as a "nice to have" are making an expensive mistake.

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## What DevRel Actually Is (And Why the Confusion Persists)

Developer Relations is not marketing with a GitHub account. It's not a PR function that happens to write code samples. It's not community management with conference speaking thrown in.

DevRel is a family of distinct disciplines, each with its own craft, that collectively address one problem: *how does a company build and maintain genuine trust with the developer community?*

The role names vary by company and context — you'll see titles like Developer Evangelist, Technical Community Manager, DX Engineer, Developer Education Lead — but the underlying functions are consistent. Here's how they look in practice:

**Developer Advocates** are the connective tissue between a product and its users. They write tutorials, speak at events, post real-world code, and — critically — bring community feedback back into the product. The best ones are developers first. They've felt the pain of poor documentation, cryptic SDKs, and APIs that almost work. They advocate *for* developers as much as they advocate *about* a product.

**Developer Experience Engineers** focus on friction. Every unnecessary step in a getting-started guide, every error message that tells you nothing, every SDK that requires three hours of configuration before you can do anything useful — that's DX debt. DX engineers reduce it systematically. Their KPI is something like: how long before a developer gets their first successful result?

**Technical Community Managers** build the spaces where developers talk to each other. Discord servers, GitHub Discussions, meetups, hackathons. They cultivate ecosystems where knowledge circulates, where newcomers get help, where experienced developers feel ownership. When this works, the community starts creating value that no team of advocates could create alone.

**Developer Educators** think pedagogically. Not "what should developers know about our product" but "how do developers actually learn, and what's the most effective path through this complexity?" Courses, interactive sandboxes, certifications — structured learning that respects the developer's time and intelligence.

These roles overlap, and in smaller organizations they collapse into one or two people. But the discipline is coherent: every role is in service of developer success, not company messaging.

## Why Developers Are the Hardest Audience in Tech

Developers are professionally skeptical. It's not a personality trait — it's a skill. They debug systems for a living. They read source code when documentation fails them. They notice when a demo is rigged, when a benchmark was cherry-picked, when a blog post was written by someone who has never actually used the product.

Traditional marketing fails with developers in a way it doesn't with most other audiences. Hype backfires. Buzzwords are red flags. "We're the leading AI-native cloud platform" means nothing. "Here's a working integration with the tool you already use, here's the code, here's what breaks and why" means everything.

What converts developers isn't reach. It's earned credibility — and DevRel is the only function in a company specifically designed to build it.

I've seen this pattern repeat across every product cycle I've been part of. The developer tools that win aren't always the technically superior ones. They're the ones that developers trust. And trust is built through consistency, honesty, genuine community investment, and the willingness to say "this doesn't work well yet."

## The AI Layer Changes Everything

Here's what's different in 2026.

The AI explosion has made the developer ecosystem dramatically more complex and dramatically harder to navigate. There are hundreds of new model providers, embedding services, vector databases, agent frameworks, evaluation tools, inference APIs, fine-tuning platforms. The vocabulary changes every quarter. The "right" architectural pattern for an AI application in 2024 is already being questioned.

In this environment, DevRel has shifted from important to essential — and for reasons that go beyond the usual arguments.

**AI products resist traditional evaluation.** A payment API either processes a payment or it doesn't. An LLM's behavior is probabilistic, context-dependent, and use-case-specific. Developers can't evaluate these products in isolation. They need guidance from practitioners who have used them in real scenarios, who can say "for your specific use case, here's what to watch out for." That's developer advocacy at its core — and it's the only credible way to help developers make decisions in a market full of capability claims and insufficient benchmarks.

**The learning curve has never been steeper.** Prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, model context protocols, agentic workflows, evaluation frameworks — the knowledge required to build production-quality AI applications is compounding faster than most developers can absorb it. Developer education has become a genuine differentiator. The companies that invest in helping developers *understand* these concepts — not just use the product — earn loyalty that's very hard to displace.

**AI mediates discovery.** This is the one that most companies haven't internalized yet. Developers increasingly ask AI assistants for tool recommendations. "What's the best vector database for this use case?" "How do I build a RAG pipeline with minimal latency?" The quality of those answers reflects the quality of the documentation, tutorials, community content, and technical writing that exists in the training data and in real-time retrieval. DevRel work today — the blog posts, the working examples, the community discussions, the clear documentation — becomes the infrastructure for AI-mediated discovery tomorrow. Companies with thin developer content are becoming invisible in ways they don't yet understand.

**Community has become a moat.** In markets where model capabilities are converging and switching costs are low, the developer community around a product is often the most durable competitive advantage. Communities with strong identity, genuine mutual aid, and shared purpose don't migrate easily. They weren't built quickly either.

## What Good DevRel Looks Like From the Inside

I want to be specific here, because DevRel gets a lot of surface-level treatment.

Good DevRel starts with genuine empathy for developers — which means it starts with people who *are* developers or have been deeply embedded in developer workflows. You cannot fake the intuition for what makes an integration painful, what makes documentation confusing, or what makes a talk actually useful versus forgettable.

Good DevRel is connected to product. DevRel that operates purely as an external communication function — writing content about a product but not influencing it — is doing half the job. The best DevRel teams have a real feedback loop into roadmap, API design, and documentation standards. They carry community voice into product decisions. When that feedback loop breaks, you get well-presented products that still frustrate users.

Good DevRel is measured thoughtfully. Not everything maps to a conversion funnel, and that's okay. Time-to-first-successful-API-call, documentation quality scores, community health metrics, developer Net Promoter Score — these matter. The field is developing better measurement frameworks, and that's a good sign. But the underlying logic is clear: if developers succeed faster and trust the product more, the business outcomes follow.

Good DevRel is patient. This is the hardest part to sell internally. Trust is not a campaign. It's not built in a quarter. The companies that have treated DevRel as a short-term growth lever have consistently gotten short-term results followed by community resentment. The ones that play the long game — consistent presence, honest communication, real investment in community — tend to win the market as a side effect.

## A Profession at an Inflection Point

DevRel has always had an identity problem. Is it engineering? Marketing? Product? Sales? The honest answer — all of these and none of them cleanly — has made it difficult to budget, difficult to measure, and easy to cut in downturns.

That's starting to change.

The most successful developer-facing companies of the last few years — across AI infrastructure, cloud-native tooling, open source platforms — have shared a pattern: they've invested in developer experience and community from day one, and they've treated DevRel as a strategic discipline, not a support function.

The field is maturing. There are dedicated spaces for practitioner exchange, shared frameworks for measurement emerging across the industry, and a generation of people who have built real expertise across multiple companies and product cycles. The signal is consistent, across events and communities I'm part of: DevRel is professionalizing, and the timing is right.

In 2026, with AI making developer trust harder to earn and more valuable than ever, that professionalization isn't optional.

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*If this resonates, I'd love to continue the conversation — find me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michel-murabito/) where I write regularly about Developer Relations, Developer Experience, and the intersection of community and cloud-native. The conversation is just getting started.*



The last quarter of the year is always a busy and exciting time, full of events and opportunities to meet. For me, it means the chance to travel, share knowledge, and connect with incredible people who are part of our vibrant Cloud Native community.

As a Developer Advocate at Mia-Platform and CNCF Ambassador, I have the privilege of participating in events where I can not only share my ideas and discuss innovation but also meet professionals with diverse backgrounds and expertise. This continuous exchange of ideas is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job: each event is an opportunity to learn, network, and build lasting relationships. Reconnecting with old friends and meeting new talents in the community is what makes these gatherings special.

## The Growing Cloud Native Community

What I appreciate the most is the energy and enthusiasm that fills these events. The Cloud Native community is continuously growing, becoming more vibrant and stimulating. Actively participating allows me not only to contribute my expertise but also to receive valuable feedback, learn from others, and discover new perspectives. This spirit of sharing drives technological progress and strengthens the bond between those working in this field.

## My Event Schedule Until October

I’m excited to share that the next few months are packed with events where I’ll be speaking, and I truly hope to meet you there. If you’ll be attending any of these, don’t hesitate to stop by and chat with me about Platform Engineering, Cloud Native, sustainability, or any other tech-related topic. Here’s my schedule until October:

- **KCD Porto** - September 27-28, 2024
_Talk: "Sustainability in Cloud Native: strategies and tools for a green future"_
I will discuss sustainability in the Cloud Native context, focusing on the strategies and tools we can adopt to reduce the environmental impact of technology.
[Link](https://community.cncf.io/events/details/cncf-kcd-porto-presents-kcd-porto-2024/)

- **Cloud Native London** - October 2, 2024
_Talk: "How to build a Conversational DevX interface using RAG"_
In this talk, I will explore how we can improve Developer Experience through artificial intelligence by building conversational interfaces using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
[Link](https://www.meetup.com/cloud-native-london/events/300767226)

- **Container Day Bologna** - October 10, 2024
_Talk with Sara Trappetti: "Navigating the CNCF Landscape: One Piece at a Time"_
Together with Sara Trappetti, we will guide the audience through the complex CNCF landscape, helping participants navigate and discover the most relevant technologies.
[Link](https://2024.containerday.it/)

- **BetterSoftware Bologna** - October 11, 2024
_Talk: "Sustainability and Cloud Native: strategies and tools for a green future"_
Another talk focused on sustainability, with a specific emphasis on how Cloud Native can contribute to building a greener technological future.
[Link](https://2024.bettersoftware.it/)

- **Cloud Native Bergen (Norway)** - October 30, 2024
_Talk: "Enhanced Developer Experience in a Cloud Native world"_
I will focus on how to enhance Developer Experience in an increasingly Cloud Native world, exploring technologies and practices that can make developers’ lives easier and more efficient.
[Link](https://2024.cloudnativebergen.dev/)

## An Invitation to Conversation

Attending these events isn’t just an opportunity to speak, but also to listen. I truly enjoy exchanging ideas, discussing new trends, and exploring how we can continue to innovate. I look forward to meeting new members of the community, hearing their stories, and discovering what drives their passion for technology.

If you see me at one of these events, don’t hesitate to stop by! I’d love to chat about any topic that interests you: Platform Engineering, Cloud Native, tech innovation, or simply how we can build a better and more sustainable future together.

See you soon!



I am thrilled to share my experience as [one of the organizers](https://community.cncf.io/kcd-italy/) of the Kubernetes Community Day Italy (KCD Italy). This event, supported by the CNCF (Cloud-Native Computing Foundation) and organized by the Italian Kubernetes community, was a remarkable moment of connection, learning, and inspiration.

The true heart of KCD Italy is the community. Organizing such an event, by the community for the community, has been an incredibly rewarding experience. We saw around 300 participants come together to share knowledge, stories, and innovations in the Open Source and Cloud-Native technologies. The sense of belonging and the desire to contribute to collective growth were palpable in every corner of the Savoia Regency Hotel in Bologna on June 20, 2024.

We had the privilege of listening to established experts, emerging figures, and enthusiasts from the Cloud-Native world. The talks ranged from ephemeral clusters as a service, to the challenges of building a cloud for AI, to adventures in security. Each presentation offered valuable insights and sparked vibrant discussions among the participants.

One of the most beautiful aspects of KCD Italy was the networking. The sponsor areas and coffee breaks were ideal moments to forge new friendships, discuss projects, and exchange innovative ideas. The Kubernetes community is truly special: open, inclusive, and always ready to support each other.

I would like to thank everyone who participated and made this event possible. The speakers, with their inspiring presentations, the sponsors who supported the event, and of course all the participants who, with their energy and passion, created a unique atmosphere. It was truly exciting to see so many people united by the same passion for Kubernetes and Cloud-Native technologies.

Organizing an event of this magnitude requires commitment and dedication, but seeing the enthusiasm and interest of the participants was the greatest reward. We look forward to seeing how the community will grow and evolve in the coming year, and we are already excited for the 2025 edition.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for making KCD Italy 2024 an unforgettable success. Keep sharing, learning, and growing together. See you next time!

A special thanks to [Mia-Platform](https://www.mia-platform.eu) for giving me the opportunity to actively contribute to the realization of this event.

For more details about the organizers and the event, visit [this page](https://kcd.pizza/).
If you want to stay updated on all the latest news, you can also follow us on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/kcditaly/) and [X (formerly Twitter)](https://x.com/kcditaly)




Hello everyone! I'm **Michel Murabito**, but everyone calls me **Mich** (pronounced *Mitch*), a fervent Developer Advocate at **Mia-Platform**, with my roots deeply embedded in the beautiful land of Sicily and my heart beating in the fast-paced rhythm of Milan.

## Who I Am

Born in Turin in 1986 and raised under the sun of Sicily, I started writing code at the age of 12, driven by curiosity and a passion for technology that still fuels every day of my life. My professional career kicked off at 18 as a software developer, and since then, I've never stopped exploring new horizons in the vast world of IT.

## What I Do

Today, I find myself in the role of Developer Advocate at **Mia-Platform**, where I have the opportunity to merge my passion for technology with that for communication, working closely with the developer community. My goal is to make developers' lives simpler and more productive, through sharing knowledge, experiences, and best practices.

## My Passions

Beyond my professional commitment, I am deeply involved in promoting sustainability in IT, a theme I consider crucial for the future of our planet and our industry. I am also an active contributor to the open source community, a staunch supporter of continuous learning, and a passionate speaker at national and international tech events.

### A Deeper Dive into My Interests

My enthusiasm doesn't stop there; I am particularly passionate about **Cloud Native technologies, Platform Engineering, and enhancing the Developer Experience**. These fields represent the cutting edge of creating scalable, resilient, and efficient software solutions. They are also about building communities and ecosystems where developers can thrive, innovate, and deliver outstanding value rapidly and reliably.

## Why a Blog?

I've decided to start this blog to share my reflections, discoveries, and experiences on this journey through the world of technology. Here you'll find articles on platform engineering, sustainability, advocacy, and much more.

I invite every reader to interact, share opinions, and experiences: I firmly believe in the value of community and constructive dialogue.

Thank you for taking the time to read these lines. I'm excited about embarking on this path with you.

Until next time!
Mich


Welcome to the personal website of Michel Murabito, a Developer Advocate, CNCF Ambassador and KCD Italy organizer. Explore blog, projects, and speaking engagements on platform engineering, cloud native, sustainability and developer community engagement

I’m Mich a Developer Advocate passionate about technology and knowledge sharing

DevRel in the Age of AI - Why Developer Relations Has Never Mattered More

Reflections and connections on the road to October 2024

KCD Italy 2024: an event from the community to the community

Hello World (again) Its me, Mich!

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