Ten Years and 100 Episodes later.
Jason Hand
October 1, 2025
100 episodes and the evolution of an industry from my lens.
We never meant to do this. There was no grand vision, no ten-year plan, no strategic roadmap. Just a problem that needed solving.
So how did this all start?
The Beginning
In 2015, I found myself as a very early employee at VictorOps, a Boulder startup with a mission statement of "Making On-call Suck Less." My desk sat just feet from both the VP of Product and the CEO, the two people I reported to. Close enough to influence decisions, close enough to feel the weight of every choice we made.
As the company's DevOps Evangelist, I spent my days talking to engineers whose entire lives revolved around incident response and keeping systems alive. These conversations weren't abstract for me. I'd lived through the 3 AM pages, the holiday interruptions, the constant anxiety of being on-call. The trauma was real, shared, and deeply understood. We weren't just building a product; we were trying to solve our own pain.
But solving pain requires understanding community, and understanding community requires being genuinely part of one. So I dove in by attending conferences, Meetups, Twitter discussions, DevOpsDays events—anywhere technical practitioners gathered to commiserate and collaborate. I submitted talk proposals, engaged with other speakers, and consumed every piece of content about developer relations I could find.
It wasn't long before I noticed a gap.
The podcast landscape of 2015 was vastly different from today's multimedia ecosystem. Audio-only shows dominated, YouTube was still primarily for cat videos and music, and the idea of chopping content into shorts wasn't even a consideration. Within those constraints, I searched for conversations about the actual work of developer relations—the day-to-day reality of building communities, the challenges of authentic engagement, the art of technical evangelism.
Nothing. The conversations I desperately needed to hear simply didn't exist.
So, like any good developer when they discover something they need doesn't exist, I "rolled my own". If the podcast I needed didn't exist, I'd create it. Not as some grand vision or strategic career move, but as a practical solution to a learning problem. If I wanted to learn from the best in the field, why not invite them to share their knowledge in a format that could benefit others facing the same challenges?
This was 2015, remember—a pivotal moment in tech. Conferences sprouted like mushrooms after rain. Companies scrambled to establish Developer Relations teams as they realized traditional marketing bounced off developers like rubber bullets. The industry had finally acknowledged a fundamental truth: developers and technical practitioners possess finely-tuned authenticity detectors. They can smell marketing-speak from miles away. The only way to earn their trust is to prove you've walked in their shoes, felt their pain, sat in their seat.
The Velocity Conference Moment
O'Reilly's Velocity conference was ground zero for systems operations expertise and the place where the cloud migration conversation was happening in real-time. VictorOps always had a booth at their events, but I wasn't there just to work it. I sat in sessions, furiously taking notes, live-tweeting insights from speakers, creating the kind of authentic engagement that couldn't be bought with sponsorship dollars.
That's where I met Mary Thengvall. And her dog, Ember.
Mary was juggling community efforts at O'Reilly (and later, Chef), a unique position that gave her perspective on community building from multiple angles. We immediately connected on similar challenges in the emerging field, both trying to figure out what authentic community engagement actually looked like in practice.
When I floated the podcast idea, Mary didn't immediately say yes. We both needed time to think it through as this wasn't a casual commitment. But something shifted at the Community Leadership Summit a few months later.
Jono Bacon's CLS was where community builders went to solve real problems together. During one session, a community member suggested the name "Community Pulse." The room went quiet for a beat, then everyone started nodding. Sometimes you just know when something clicks.
Our first episode was just Mary and me, setting expectations, explaining why this podcast needed to exist. But for episode two, we knew exactly who we wanted: Jono Bacon himself. The man whose summit had catalyzed our podcast would be the one to properly launch us into this journey.
Our First Guest
Google Meet. A couple of lower third animations. That was our entire production setup for recording with Jono Bacon.
Looking back at that video now, I appear calm. The reality? My hands were definitely shaky off-camera. Jono had written "The Art of Community", a book I'd practically memorized while trying to figure out this new role. I'd met him several times, absorbed every piece of wisdom he'd share, but sitting across from him (virtually) as a podcast host felt different. This was my community building hero, and I was about to interview him.
The technology limitations of 2015 seem almost charming now. StreamYard didn't exist. YouTube streaming was primitive. Most of my webinars I did at the time were audio and slides only. The idea of always having your camera on wasn't even a consideration yet. We made it work with what we had.
When we published that episode, the response was immediate and overwhelming. We were having authentic conversations about community building. Listeners loved it.
Early on, we made a deliberate choice to record everything as video but publish primarily as audio. YouTube would get the occasional upload, but we knew our limits. Publishing even one episode properly took significant effort. We'd rather do one thing well than burn out trying to be everywhere at once.
From Twelve to Two Hundred
In 2018, I made a leap that redefined my entire perspective on developer relations. From employee #12 at VictorOps to one of over 200 people on Microsoft's global Cloud Advocacy team. From sitting next to the CEO to being part of an organizational chart so complex it required specialized software to navigate.
The scale was staggering. I'd deliver highly technical 90-minute sessions on stage—sometimes three or four per day, for two to three days straight, in cities around the world. We had advocates representing nearly every country and language. What worked for a scrappy startup in Boulder had to be completely reimagined for a global enterprise.
This wasn't just a job change; it was like seeing community building from an entirely different dimension. Suddenly, I could speak authoritatively about both worlds. I had lived both the startup hustle and the enterprise machine, and understood what it meant to build community with twelve people and what it meant with twelve thousand.
The Great Unraveling
March 2020. I stared at my calendar—six months of international travel, meticulously planned. Sessions prepared, flights booked, presentations polished.
With a few clicks, I deleted it all.
That's when I knew: the world we'd built our careers in no longer existed.
The pandemic forced us all into our homes, in front of cameras, trying to recreate human connection through screens. But it was just the beginning of a larger unraveling. Twitter, the platform that had been our communal heartbeat, where authentic technical conversations thrived, began its transformation into something else entirely.
We'd built Community Pulse's audience through Twitter. We'd found guests there, shared insights there, created genuine connections there. It was the platform for developer relations. Then it became X, and with that change came an exodus. The community scattered, searching for safer spaces that might never quite replicate what we'd lost.
The social media landscape transformed into an engagement battlefield. Algorithms rewarded outrage. Shit-posting and trolling became viable growth strategies. "Fights" generated views. Everything we stood for—authentic connection, genuine helpfulness, real community—became harder to find in the noise.
Developer relations had to reimagine itself completely. No more handshakes or hugs after talks. No more hallway conversations that led to breakthrough collaborations. Just cameras, screens, and the challenge of maintaining human connection in an increasingly disconnected world.
Building a Team That Lasts
Sustainability in podcasting isn't about grinding harder. It's about building a team that understands when someone needs to step back. Over the years, we expanded our hosting team strategically, adding PJ Hagerty, Wesley Faulkner, and SJ Morris. Each started as a guest who brought something special to their episode. Their insights resonated and their energy elevated the conversation, and provided perspectives we hadn't considered.
The chemistry was undeniable. These weren't strategic decisions. They were natural evolutions of great conversations and a desire to keep them going.
SJ contributed her unique perspective for several years before deciding it was time to step back. No drama, no hard feelings—just the natural rhythm of life and priorities shifting. She returns as a guest now, and those episodes always feel like reunions.
Here's what we learned: longevity comes from radical empathy. Each of us has experienced burnout. When it hits, the podcast is usually the first thing that has to give. We all have day jobs, families, other commitments that sometimes demand everything we have. The difference is we built a structure that expects this, plans for it, supports each other through it.
When one of us needs to disappear for a while, the others step up. Not out of obligation, but out of understanding. We've all been there. We'll all be there again. That mutual support has been the secret to reaching 100 episodes without losing our minds or our friendship.
The Measurement Problem
Measuring success in community building has always been a challenge. But in episode 73 "DevRel Beyond Developers" with Jennifer Ritzinger and Matty Stratton, we were sorta forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: the definition of "developer" was exploding, and our traditional approaches were failing to keep up.
Jennifer was leading Microsoft's massive Developer Relations organization. She led my entire org, a global team trying to serve an increasingly diverse audience. The conversation exposed a fundamental challenge: as tools democratize and more non-traditional developers enter the space, how do we measure success in a way that actually matters?
At Microsoft's scale, measurement becomes both critical and problematic. You need processes and tooling just to function. When the pandemic hit, my role transformed entirely. Instead of creating content and meeting developers at conferences, I became the architect behind the scenes—building and maintaining the Azure DevOps instance tracking our entire organization's work, creating automation for data synchronization, producing other teammates video content, and managing the Microsoft Developer YouTube channel.
I was building the infrastructure that enabled everyone else's success while still being measured against content creation metrics. I felt like a lonely hamster on the wheel behind the curtain, making everyone else's content shine, their videos perform better, and their processes run smoother. But none of that registered in the standardized success metrics designed for DevRel at scale.
The frustration built slowly. I didn't mind the work itself. Creating tooling and solving systematic problems had its own satisfaction, and something I had unfortunately moved away from during my time at VictorOps. But being held to the same measurements as pure content creators while simultaneously enabling their success felt like being invisible in plain sight.
This disconnect between what was measured and what actually mattered planted a seed. When the layoff came, I wasn't completely heartbroken. Part of me had already been wondering if there might be somewhere my particular combination of skills (technical, creative, systematic) might be better understood and utilized?
The Uncomfortable Truths Era
Somewhere around year seven, our conversations shifted. The early episodes had been about figuring things out together and how to measure success, how to build communities, how to navigate this emerging field. But as the industry matured, so did our willingness to address its failures.
"DevRel Hiring is Broken." "The Decline of Technical Influencers." "What is Maturity?" "The Importance of Humility and Sincerity in DevRel."
These weren't comfortable topics. They were the conversations happening in private Slack channels, in DMs, in hushed tones at conference bars. We decided to bring them into the light.
Ten years in, we've developed what feels like a finely-tuned bullshit detector. We're wiser, definitely more cynical, and absolutely out of fucks to give about protecting egos or maintaining false positivity. Our brand became radical honesty and often includes language not suitable for children, always with respect for individuals even when challenging ideas.
Our philosophy remains consistent: there are no bad actors in this space, just people doing their best with what they have. But when someone shares misinformation or misleads our audience, we don't stay quiet. We can't. The community deserves better.
We've learned that authenticity isn't just about being real, it's about being brave enough to have the difficult conversations that move an entire industry forward.
Rock Bottom and Rising
The absolute lowest point came with surgical precision: I tore my Achilles tendon on a Monday. Laid off from Microsoft that Friday.
One week. Two life-altering events.
Lying there, leg elevated, career in question, we recorded "Suddenly Unemployed" shortly after my surgery. I spoke honestly about the fear, the uncertainty, the strange relief mixed with terror. Others shared their stories too.
That episode remains one of our most downloaded. Turns out, authenticity in moments of vulnerability resonates deeper than any polished content ever could.
The podcast became my lifeline during recovery. While learning to walk again, I learned new tools. ChatGPT had just launched, and I experimented with using it for episode summaries and insight extraction. I wrote Python scripts for creating YouTube Shorts. Anything to stay productive, to feel useful, to avoid confronting the full weight of starting over.
My co-hosts were incredible. Job leads, recommendations, check-in messages. When I needed to step back from recording, they carried the show. When I was ready to return, they welcomed me back without question.
We don't chase growth anymore. We don't optimize for YouTube. We just maintain what we've built, because sometimes that's enough. The podcast stands as proof (to potential employers, to the community, to myself) that expertise compounds over time, that consistency matters, that showing up even when everything falls apart is its own form of leadership.
I turned that experience into something useful because I knew others would face similar moments. In tech, layoffs and injuries and life disruptions are inevitable. Maybe hearing how someone else navigated that darkness would help someone, somewhere, someday find their own way through.
The Magic After the Recording Stops
The best conversations always happened after we thought we were done.
"That was a GREAT episode!" someone would say, and then we'd spend another twenty minutes unpacking what we'd just heard, adding context our guest might not have known, connecting dots between episodes, getting real about what resonated and what didn't.
One day, we decided to just start recording during one of these post-show discussions. Listening back, we realized we'd captured something special. An unfiltered processing of ideas, the "yes, and" building on each other's thoughts, the comfortable disagreement between people who deeply respect each other.
After Pulse was born from that accident.
These twenty-minute companion episodes often match the download numbers of our full episodes. Turns out, audiences enjoy that behind-the-scenes authenticity, the meta-commentary, the moments where we can say things that might be too spicy for the main show.
Ten years of recording together has created an almost telepathic communication style. We know each other's triggers, strengths, and perspectives. We've developed a conversational jazz—knowing when to solo, when to support, when to challenge. Even our disagreements have rhythm, always building toward insight rather than conflict.
The secret sauce? We've mastered the "two things can be true at once" philosophy. Your perspective is valid AND here's another angle. Your experience matters AND consider this context. It's never about being right; it's about getting closer to truth together.
Finding Signal in the Noise
Without Twitter, listening to the community pulse became harder and more intentional.
The DevRel Collective Slack became our primary listening post—hundreds of practitioners sharing real challenges in real-time. Every Friday, we gather virtually, comparing notes from different corners of the internet, triangulating trends, identifying the questions people are afraid to ask publicly. But most of all, we vent about our own day-to-day struggles in the DevRel and community building industry.
Sometimes the best episodes come from our own struggles. When one of us is wrestling with something, chances are our audience is too. "Suddenly Unemployed" emerged from my own personal crisis but resonated because layoffs had become everyone's reality. The most powerful content often comes from admitting "I'm dealing with this right now and don't have all the answers."
We've learned to trust our collective instincts. If something keeps coming up in multiple channels, if we're all noticing the same pattern, if a topic makes us uncomfortable—that's usually our next episode.
The AI Inflection Point
We're standing at the edge of a fundamental shift. AI isn't just changing tools; it's changing what it means to be a developer.
The irony is perfect: as our systems become more non-deterministic, as AI makes coding more accessible, as the barriers between "technical" and "non-technical" blur, the value of genuine human expertise skyrockets.
People are scared. They're confused. They're trying to figure out if their skills still matter, if their jobs will exist, if everything they've learned is about to become obsolete. In this chaos, they're not looking for more AI-generated content or hot takes from thought leaders who've never written production code.
They're looking for real humans they trust.
That's our responsibility now—to be the genuine voices helping navigate this transformation. Developer relations isn't dying; it's becoming more critical than ever. But it has to evolve. We need to understand AI deeply enough to guide others through it while maintaining the human connection that no algorithm can replicate.
The next few years will test everything we think we know about community building. The communities that survive will be the ones built on trust, authenticity, and real human relationships. Everything else is just noise.
Episode 100: The Circle Closes
Jono Bacon returned for episode 100. So did SJ Morris. The symmetry felt right—our first guest and a beloved former host, bookending a decade of conversations.
Forty minutes to reflect on ten years felt impossibly short. We could have talked for hours about how the industry had transformed, how we'd all changed, how the problems we thought we'd solve by now had only gotten more complex.
Seeing Jono again after so long triggered a flood of memories—that first nervous recording, the Community Leadership Summit where it all began, the anxiety of interviewing a hero that had transformed into comfortable conversation between peers.
He's still leading the field, still pushing boundaries, still asking the questions that matter. But now I wasn't just absorbing his wisdom; I was contributing to the conversation as an equal. The validation felt earned—not given, but built episode by episode over a decade.
SJ's presence reminded us that Community Pulse has always been bigger than whoever was hosting at any given moment. People come and go as life demands, but the conversation continues. The pulse keeps beating.
Ten Years Without a Plan
I never planned for this. Not the hundred episodes, not the decade of conversations, not the accidental documentation of an entire industry's evolution. If you'd told me in 2015 that I'd still be doing this in 2025, I would have laughed. I don't plan that far ahead. I just follow what feels right.
If I could reach back through time to that version of me—the one nervously approaching Mary at Velocity, stomach full of conference coffee and ambition—I'd tell him this: trust your instincts. When you need to rest, rest. When you need to speak truth, speak it. When imposter syndrome hits (and it will, constantly), remember that you know what you know. Keep building on what works. Learn from what doesn't.
Mostly, I'd just say: "You're doing great. Keep going."
What We Built Without Meaning To
Community Pulse started as a selfish project—I wanted to learn from smart people, so I created a reason for them to talk to me. What it became was something none of us expected: a living archive of an industry being born.
Every guest left a mark. Mary, PJ, Wesley, SJ—they didn't just co-host a podcast. They shaped how I understand community, authenticity, and the profound act of showing up consistently for a decade.
The technology landscape we started in no longer exists. Twitter is gone. Conferences transformed. The definition of "developer" exploded. AI arrived like a tidal wave. Through it all, we kept recording, kept asking questions, kept capturing the conversations that mattered.
What hasn't changed—what will never change—is the human need for connection, for trusted voices in uncertainty, for authentic relationships in an increasingly synthetic world.
Community Pulse began as one person trying to figure out developer relations. It evolved into something bigger: proof that genuine connection transcends platforms, that real conversations matter more than metrics, that showing up consistently for ten years creates something nobody can replicate with AI or algorithms.
The pulse continues. We're still here, still recording, still asking the questions that matter. After 100 episodes, we've learned that the conversation is never really over. It just keeps evolving, just like the communities we serve.
To our listeners who've stayed with us through platform changes and pandemics, to every guest who shared their wisdom and vulnerabilities, to Mary, PJ, Wesley, and SJ for making this journey possible—thank you. The next 100 episodes await, and honestly? I have no idea what they'll bring. That's exactly how I like it.