07 CONFERENCES ✣

DevRel-Specific Conferences.

These are the conferences whose audience is DevRel practitioners themselves — not developers generally. They function as the professional gatherings of the field.

ENTRY · 3 MIN · 717 WORDS

These are the conferences whose audience is DevRel practitioners themselves — not developers generally. They function as the professional gatherings of the field.

DevRelCon

The canonical conference for DevRel practitioners.

First held. September 30, 2015, at The Trampery in Shoreditch, London.
Founder. Matthew Revell (also founder of Hoopy, the DevRel agency that produces DevRelCon).
Cadence. Multiple editions per year across cities; format and frequency varied during the pandemic years.
Editions held. London (2015–2019, 2022–), San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Prague, Beijing, Suzhou. Online editions during 2020–2022. DevRelCon New York 2026 was scheduled for July 22–23, 2026. DevRelCon Bengaluru 2024 was a notable Indian edition co-organised by community leaders including Aditya.
Format. Single-track or two-track day; talks are practitioner-to-practitioner, often case studies; well-known speakers include Mary Thengvall, Phil Leggetter, Jono Bacon, Brian Douglas, Floor Drees, PJ Hagerty, Tessa Kriesel, Aaron Bassett, and many others.
Output. Talks are recorded and published at developerrelations.com.

DevRel Summit

Operator. Product Marketing Alliance / Developer Marketing Alliance.
Cadence. Multiple editions per year, typically virtual + in-person.
Format. Practitioner talks, panels, networking; companion to PMA’s developer-marketing courses and certifications.
Scale. Lower headcount than DevRelCon but with strong industry-vendor presence.

DevXcon

Operator. Hoopy (Matthew Revell), as a Developer Experience–specific spinoff of DevRelCon.
Focus. Developer-experience-specific topics distinct from broader DevRel programming; designed for developer-experience leaders, product managers, and engineering teams.
Cadence. Annual or biennial.

EvangelistsConf

An older conference series that ran in the mid-2010s focused on developer evangelism specifically.
Less active in recent years; some references at evangelistsconference.com survive online.

Heavybit DevGuild

Operator. Heavybit, a venture firm focused on developer-tools companies.
Format. Smaller, founder/leader-focused event series, with editions on specific topics: DevRel, Developer Marketing, Open Source, AI tooling.
Cadence. Several events per year.
Audience. CEOs, VPs of DevRel, VPs of Product at developer-first companies; investors.
Scale. Small (200–400 attendees typical), highly curated.
2026. A May 7, 2026 edition was scheduled.

Developer Marketing Summit

Operator. Product Marketing Alliance / Developer Marketing Alliance.
Focus. Developer marketing rather than developer relations specifically.
Cadence. Annual or biannual, often in San Francisco.

API the Docs

Focus. API documentation and developer portals.
Operator. Pronovix and API the Docs (founded by Kristof Van Tomme).
Cadence. Multiple editions per year (city-based — Paris, Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, virtual).
Audience. Technical writers, API product managers, developer educators.

Write the Docs

Focus. Technical writing community (heavily overlaps with developer education).
Founded. 2013 (founders Troy Howard, Eric Redmond, Eric Holscher).
Cadence. Annual editions in Portland (May, primary), Prague (autumn, European), and smaller regional events (Nairobi, Sydney, Berlin, Vilnius, Cincinnati, Melbourne).
Scale. 600+ attendees per year across all events; over 1,500 community members across 15+ cities.

DevRel Foundation events

Following the Developer Relations Foundation’s formation under the Linux Foundation in August 2025, the Foundation began running its own events and Working Group meetings. These are not yet at the scale of DevRelCon but are likely to grow into a parallel professional convening structure.

Adjacent community-management conferences

These are not strictly DevRel-only but heavily overlap:

CMX Summit / CMX Connect (community-management broadly; CMX is now part of Bevy / RingCentral).
Community Industry Group events.
The DevRel Collective Slack-organised meetups.
All Day DevOps (online; some DevRel content).
All Things Open (Raleigh, NC; open-source-focused; substantial DevRel programming track).

What you go to which one for

If you want to…	Go to…
Meet other DevRel practitioners	DevRelCon
Hear practitioner case studies	DevRelCon
Discuss developer experience strategy	DevXcon
Develop developer-marketing skills	DevRel Summit / Developer Marketing Summit
Network as a founder/exec of a developer-first company	Heavybit DevGuild
Improve API docs and developer portals	API the Docs
Improve documentation craft generally	Write the Docs
Shape the field’s institutional future	DevRel Foundation Working Groups
Hear from major-platform DevRel leadership	All Things Open’s DevRel track