Anatomy of a Mattermonster: How I Created an Open Source Developer Demo
06-21, 09:00–09:45 (Europe/Amsterdam), Studio

Abstract

Creating an engaging demo to teach developers is a unique challenge in the engineering world that benefits from tapping into a creative process. Often bridging the gap between engineering and community, developer demos offer perspectives into your projects, demonstrate what matters to your organization, and pave the road for future collaboration. From the perspective of a classroom teacher, this presentation will dig into the elements of one such project: Mattermonsters! We’ll cover what makes for a good developer demo (spoiler: make it fun!) and how to engage both new and seasoned developers within the same context. Working in a remote cloud environment, we will quickly create our own monster using the demo and then spend most of the time exploring how it teaches technical lessons to the user. We’ll also dive into the open source technologies that make the demo possible and identify the smartest ways to use those tools in future projects. By the end of the presentation, you’ll have a sense of best practices and starting points for unleashing your next developer demo into the wild.

Andrew is a professional developer advocate at Mattermost where he creates resources to empower the open source community. After graduating from The University of Texas at Austin, he taught English abroad in Japan, learned to code between teaching classes, and later became the lead web developer for an e-learning company back home in the United States. A lifelong advocate of career and technical education, Andrew's passion is helping others unlock their true potential.