061 — Kurt Kemple: A masterclass in enablement and community driven product at Slack!

How does someone with a non-traditional background end up leading Developer Relations for a tech giant like Slack? In this episode, host Jack McCurdy dives deep into the incredible story of Kurt Kemple.

Kurt pulls back the curtain on his journey and shares the hard-won lessons that shaped his philosophy on community, collaboration, and creating meaningful tech. He reveals the critical importance of developer enablement and challenges a "build it and they will come" mentality.

Get ready for a powerful conversation about the human side of DevOps. You'll hear Kurt's take on the future of community, the one framework that clarifies every project, and why building relationships is the ultimate key to shared success.

About DevOps Diaries: 
Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.

Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset: https://grst.co/4iCnas2

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About Gearset: 
Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial: https://grst.co/4iKysKW

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Kurt Kemple and Slack
02:56 Kurt's Journey into Tech and Developer Relations
05:34 The Importance of Tech Enablement
08:42 Building a Career in Tech
11:35 The Role of Community in Tech
14:16 Job to Be Done Framework and Its Impact
17:25 The Future of Community and Connection
19:57 Reflections on Personal Communities and Growth
24:53 The Power of Community in Professional Growth
26:40 Aligning Business with User Needs
28:23 Building Internal Communities
30:08 Overcoming Resistance in Internal Teams
31:41 The Importance of User Feedback
33:51 Empathy in Community Building
35:40 The Flywheel Effect in Developer Relations
37:36 Collaborative Language and Shared Ownership
39:44 The Role of Developer Relations
41:54 Education and Enablement through Community
43:13 Leveraging Slack for Effective Collaboration
47:02 The Future of Slack and Developer Experience