What is Technical Branding? - My Talk at #PRLT

So, I gave another talk at #PRLT .

Here are the slides. For this last LT of the Heisei era, I paid homage to some classic songs from the early Heisei period to say exactly what I wanted to say.

It was #25 , where the title and my jokes fell flat, which was painful, but the 334 reference got a laugh, so I guess that's okay (bitter laugh).

This entry is a note to supplement the parts I couldn't cover in the LT.

The "Overthinking Technical Branding" Problem

For this LT, I wanted to talk about a higher-level concept than the one I did at the previous PRLT, "Let's Stop Writing Corporate Tech Blogs That No One Reads and Have No Impact"... so I started by:

・Exploring the meaning of technical branding
・Researching on social media like Twitter
・Casually consulting with offline contacts (mostly engineer friends)

I attacked the question from the very beginning: "What even is technical branding?"

By the way, I actually considered a "fake AI" approach where I would ego-search the term "technical branding" on Twitter, tokenize the words, and find co-occurrences, but after some preliminary research, I found there weren't many significant words and it wasn't very interesting, so I closed that idea before it even started ()

Putting that aside, as a result of researching and thinking from the perspectives above,

・"Technical branding" is ultimately a term that refers to the technical superiority (technical prowess, uniqueness, etc.) of a "product" or "offering"・
As you can see if you Google it, it doesn't seem to be a term used for "apps or web services" themselves. This is because the means for apps and web services are already determined.・However,
engineering teams and individuals do have technical prowess and uniqueness... whether it's web or app, it's different when made by a capable team or person. -> The answer has arrived!

With that in mind, it settled into the direction of "Let's have engineers speak in their own words!!"

It is healthy for engineers themselves to be able to talk about themselves, their future, and things like "Let's do this together!" And when (and I hate to use this expression, but I will) "non-engineers" say things like "Our engineering team is...", it just feels off, like "Huh!?" I think I was able to articulate that well (the latter point is exactly what tech blogs are about).

In short, I think "Instead of people around them overthinking it, just let the engineers do what they like first (and help them if they are struggling or if things aren't going well)" is just about right!

Creating an environment where they can freely "demonstrate their technical prowess"

and promoting that effectively was the punchline of "the ultimate technical branding as conceived by me."

As I wrote in the note about my impressions from participating in the previous one (#17),

whether it's a large corporation or a startup with fewer than 10 engineers, an engineer's job is to "create value through engineering," so from the perspective of a fellow engineer, I hope the basic principle remains
never force recruitment tasks on them (only work with those who want to do it)
.

I included this slide to reiterate that an engineer's primary job and where they should provide value is engineering (designing, gathering requirements, writing code, and operations), and that 'cooperation with recruiting and PR' is strictly secondary!

For those in roles like CTO, VPE, or Tech Lead, whose job is to 'create an environment where engineers can comfortably provide value,' I believe recruiting and PR are essential tasks (this is meant in the sense of being a leader, but also in the sense of protecting other members).

Activities like blogging, writing, and speaking are things some people love and excel at, while others may struggle with them or provide value in completely different areas.

With that in mind,

・Basically, provide value through engineering
・Those who provide value in technical branding should communicate and articulate things as 'spokespersons' for other members and the team

I think we should go with this approach!

I believe there are as many approaches to 'providing value energetically' as there are teams and individuals, so I am still in a state of trial and error myself. However, engineers (including myself) are creatures who engage in engineering and daily self-improvement to make our services and products better (and for our future careers), so I think this set of values is important.

To all engineers

Let's try to articulate things about technology and yourself, starting with 'what you can do'!

Let's try to put things into words, even if it's just a little bit, whether through a blog or a presentation.

I've mentioned this here as well, so please take a look.

Even if you aren't in technical PR, I think various interesting things will happen, so I think it's good to start with what you can do, little by little!

#PRLT , if another theme comes up that seems to get the tech crowd fired up, I'd love to come back and join in. Thank you very much!

[Reference] Ideas and know-how (books) useful for creating an environment

The LT itself is based on my own real-life experiences, but in articulating it, I mobilized everything from books I've read recently to things I learned a long time ago.

Specifically, I used 'The Manager's Path' and 'Management Zero' which I read recently.

I added 'Fearless Change' as a secret ingredient from the perspective of a 'change agent' who transforms or changes an organization,

And since it all comes down to 'the productivity of individual engineers and teams,' I referred to 'Intellectual Production Techniques for Engineers'.

I hope this is helpful to someone & I'll come back to #PRLT again! (Maybe as a participant next time, haha)