What Do I Do at AWS?
Advocates can look like rock stars, but success takes a lot more heavy lifting
Where in the world have I been? It has been a few weeks since my last post but that is because I have been on the road evangelizing. What’s that? Well, I have been traveling to events to do what I do best, share the good word of AWS to the uninitiated and covert the unconverted to our cloud platform.
As the world has begun to open after a year-and-a-half of a global pandemic, in-person events are starting to happening again. Travel has also resumed albeit with a few more restrictions and processes than before the pandemic shutdown travel and borders. Events have also adjusted, so vaccinations records, COVID tests, and sanitizing supplies are standard practice.
Even with some inconveniences, I have been actively getting myself back out to meet customers. I was honored to be a speaker and panelist for BIN@PORTO 2021 a few weeks back to share on the topic of community and startup ecosystems. Then I spent the week in Lisbon at Web Summit with over 42,000 attendees to speak on equipping startup founders with skills to sell and market in the early stages. I also must give a shout out to the organizers as both events were well-organized and hosted in a manner that was safe for all attendees and staff.
With all the events I attend and travel that I do, a lot of folks have asked me what it is exactly that I do at AWS? For many years, the role was dubbed as “Evangelist”. Jeff Barr was the first such Evangelist when AWS was still in its infancy over 15 years ago. In fact, back in August, we celebrated the 15th anniversary of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) to launch the era of cloud computing.
Over time, it was not enough to have one person doing all the things to share and talk about what AWS is. We expanded the team to add Developer Evangelists, highly accomplished developers that could engage with other developers and show how to build on AWS. Then we added Startup Evangelists, doing the same things, but engaging with startup founders to provide guidance from both a technical and business perspective on how AWS can help their startup grow and scale faster.
During the pandemic, we switched the verbiage to use the less loaded word Advocate. Nothing about the role changed though. The key objective of the Advocates has always been to be among the community of builders and startups to tell the story of how AWS helps them achieve better outcomes by using our cloud infrastructure to remove the undifferentiated heavy lifting that slows down the building of startups and the transformation of enterprises.
The job of advocacy is to influence at scale. Branding and marketing outreach have scale, but rarely has the impact to influence decision making. Sales does involve influence, but is limited by the ability to scale other than through adding salespeople. Advocacy on the other hand is able to build influence by earning trust across various channels using mechanisms to engage audiences more broadly.
When I try to decoupled and structure all the things that advocates do, it can be described as five key roles:
Storyteller
Spokesperson
Collaborator
Scale enabler
Community builder
One of the most visible aspects of the advocate is being in our element sharing stories and showing how things happen. Sometimes this is through demos and live coding, sometimes it is through talks and fireside chats. The most effective advocates however do not just present facts and information. While the content has to be relevant, high quality, and practical, it also requires delivering content with flair, creativity, and passion.
The power of the advocate to influence is in the ability to inspire. The best stores earn trust with listeners, create rapport and empathy, and build credibility. In my work, I often use the examples of startup founders I have worked with or my own stories as a founder and the struggles I faced. I also use platforms like my newsletters and apps like Clubhouse to let founders of the startups we work with to share their stories.
Of course, what drives much of our content and public speaking is the need to deliver key messages about the product and solutions we represent. We are effective communicators that represent our companies, our values and culture, and the unique value our offerings bring to the market. In the same way storytelling needs to be lively, being a spokesperson is not about reciting facts, figures, and press releases. Being a great spokesperson is also about showing personality and character so that others take interest in what you are saying.
When I was at Stack Overflow to build out our presence across Asia, one of the most enriching parts of the job was connecting people. The visibility advocates have from speaking at events leads to many opportunities for bridge building and collaborations with others. My role allowed me to meet and build strong relationships with people across various regions, industries, and companies. This meant I could often reach into my network for help when someone I was speaking with had a need or question.
Doing all of the above however is a lot of work on what are typically smaller teams. Sales and marketing teams are usually a few orders of magnitude larger than advocacy teams. Many startups I work with may often only have one person in the advocacy role. This means that advocates news to think strategically and build mechanisms that enable their work to scale. For example, when rolling out the Audio Spaces program at AWS, I created a playbook for running shows in apps like Clubhouse and created an ambassador program to help spread the word and gather others to participate. It is only through these efforts that we were able to host 150 shows since March and grow the AWS Startups club to over 7500 members.
The most satisfying part of the advocacy role however is the role we get to play in building, fostering, and supporting communities. Community can be thought of as a group of people that are passionate about a domain and share some values around how they gather to talk, share, and collaborate about that domain. As an advocate, communities are a natural place to gather, to network, and to build trust. In turn, communities help extend the work of advocates and are an amplifier for the work of advocates.
The relationship between advocates and community is often reciprocal. At AWS, our Heroes program is dedicated for the biggest supporters of AWS. They are creating content, helping others, speaking about AWS topics, and doing much of the work that resembles the work of advocates. Our advocates often work alongside the Heroes to develop content and at the same time nominate new Heroes to join the program. This level of collaboration further extends the influence and trust that our AWS advocates build through their own efforts.
One of the things I did not mention in all of this is that to be effective at advocacy, it is critical to know what you are advocating. The easiest way to lose trust is to not have a strong grasp on the domain, the functional/technical knowledge you are sharing, and the needs of the audiences you are engaging. Trust is the most important currency in advocacy. All the travel and speaking gigs are exciting, but what matters most for my success is talking to startup founders, building projects on AWS, and participating in startup communities to keep up to date on trends and practices relevant to startups.
Speaking of advocacy, I have two open headcount to join my Startup Advocate team at AWS, one based in the US and the other in EMEA. The role is a unique mix of both technical and business skills, and requires deep experience in startups as a founder or executive. Of course, everything I shared above is absolutely essential for success in the role. You can read more about the role here and let me know if you or someone you know would like to apply.
And if you want to understand more about the culture at AWS, I am co-hosting the AWS Cultureathon, a 25-hour global event on Clubhouse starting tonight at 10 AM SGT Wednesday, November 17 (and 6 PM PST Tuesday, November 16) featuring AWS team members sharing what we do, how we work, and why our culture enables us to accelerate innovation and better serve our customers. Each hour will be new speakers and a new topic, and my portion leading the startups discussion will start 12 hours later at 10 AM EST / 3 PM GMT, click here to join that room!
And a sincere thank you for your patience in my getting the newsletter out. Next week, I will get back to the regular schedule with a new series on the core principles that allow AWS to innovate with startup speed. Take care and see you somewhere in the world soon!
Mark Birch, Editor & Founder of DEVBIZOPS
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