What is DevRel performed by only one business division?
１つの事業部だけで行う DevRel とは
Summary:
要点:
The speaker works in Rakuten's Rakuma department, which is unique in having its own dedicated developer relations team separate from the rest of Rakuten.
Their devrel activities focus on technical branding, trying to change the perception that Rakuten is technologically outdated. This has helped attract higher quality engineering applicants.
Being a small dedicated team allows them to operate nimbly, without much red tape or coordination needed with other departments.
Challenges include having a smaller budget than other devrel teams, and team members having other primary roles.
They aim to reinvigorate offline events post-COVID to onboard new hires who lack experience with in-person developer events.
(00:01) [music] [applause] [applause] I know it's a bit sleepy, but I'd like to thank you for your time, I've posted some material on Twitter, so if you were sleepy, please go to bed and have a look later. I've been working in application engineering [music] variations for the Rakuten Group's track division.
(01:07) I've been to a lot of conferences online, but this is my first real one and I'm really nervous about it because I think people are really good speakers, but I'm going to do it. I've got about 90 slides today, so I'm going to get right down to it. I think the role of each company is different, and I thought this would be a good place to start thinking about that.
(02:15) I think you can use the people who are related to both the company and the Asian products [music] We, Rakuten's Lankuma division, have a slightly different side, so I'd like to talk about that today as well. (03:22) the whole of Rakuten has a department for shaking, and separately from that, we have a special division called Rakuna, which has a special form, and the level of the whole is what is called the "level of Rakuten".
(03:22) There's a department in charge of technology, which is responsible for the overall development of the company, and also for recruitment and other global matters because we're a global company, but I don't know the details. The first time I saw it, I thought it was a bit of a joke, but it was a very good one, and I was very impressed with the way it was developed and the way it was implemented. (04:27) It's really a bug, but to put it simply, there was Rakuten, and then there was another app company that ran Rakuten, and then there was another app company that ran Rakuten, and then there was another company that ran Rakuten.
(04:27) They were merged, but each had its own organisation, and they were integrated, but fortunately the Deflation organisation remained, and there happened to be two of them, which is a very interesting story. (05:35) This is something called Rakuten Sans Rakuten Sans, but this was probably converted without my permission, so I'm probably going to get in trouble with the big guys later [music], but this is something that Rakuten as a whole is doing, and we're not trying to do any real research from Rakuma, so we're doing various things at this place.
(05:35) We talked about this yesterday, but we're also talking about building social relations advertising for engineers within the company. I've listed some positive elements, but I often get positive feedback about the wide range of services we provide. On the other hand, I often get negative comments about how difficult it is to develop on a large scale, or that the technology is legacy.
(06:38) So, the image of Rakuten is the image of each service, which is quite an issue for us. We don't have our own music media, but we use them. We don't have our own music media, but we use them. One of the reasons is that we acquired the Bintal company, as I mentioned earlier, and we took over the media they used, and also because SEO is much stronger than creating them, so we can make more money.
(07:40) In fact, this is actually a feeling of optimism, and you know what it's called R-hack, right? I'm not saying you can't make it, but if you don't think about how you're going to operate it, then it's probably a body of work for the existing future. I've been doing this for about two and a half years now.
(08:44) I'm talking about the scope of this, the recruitment side of it, the number of quality applicants has increased a lot, for example, [music] [music] [music] I'm the one who actually interviews, so I'm very happy to hear directly from them, and this is a side-effect. But there was also an influence within the company, and I was given the opportunity to be a leveler from various departments. As I mentioned earlier, Rakuten has a unique baby position, so when other departments wanted to do something similar, there was no one to refer to, so I received a lot of support. We have a lot of enquiries from people who want to do something like that, for example, we want to do a media project, or we want to do something like that.
(09:48) And then, they'll contact us and say, 'Hey, we'd like to do this,' or 'We'd like to do this,' or 'We'd like to do this,' or 'We'd like to do this,' or 'We'd like to do this,' or 'We'd like to do this,' or 'We'd like to do this,' or 'We'd like to do this. The result is that they are running it on the media called Note, Note, and we are very happy about that. The other side will probably do it from the other side.
(10:52) But when you have a question like this, you have to go to various departments and ask for permission, and you have to ask the departments what you want to do and what you want to do with the output. I'm grateful for the fact that the organisation is small, but I'm also grateful that it's easy to set up Rakuten's name.
(11:57) I'm going to give you some examples after this, but it's starting to sound like I'm just bragging, so I'll let it ring out like this, but when we hold study groups, for example, last year we only did online at Corona, but we've had study groups with Rakuten and a lot of other companies. I'm grateful for the many times I've been asked if I'd like to hold study groups with Rakuten, and I've gotten two yeses from a lot of companies. We are very grateful to have been able to use our big name to help us do business, and it's been a great advantage for us to expand our business.
(13:01) I'd like to say something about the fact that it's not always the case, but I feel that the budget is overwhelmingly small. I was talking about this once, but I want to go back to what I said earlier, but we are classified in this service, and Rakuten itself is one of the so-called flowery products, but we belong to the department of e-commerce services, so we have a fairly large budget. I thought I had a big budget, but my wallets are all the same, so the budget allocated to Racuma in the commerce service is almost completely written off, and a certain mobile company that's been making a lot of noise lately, I don't want you to tweet this, but they've been trying to cut their budget. I've been following it.
(14:10) And there's one more thing... our organisation is in trouble... there's me, myself and a few other members... but we all have our main training methods... and we're doing music, so we're not avoiding the budget for that either. For example, when we want to create something creative, like a banner for a study group, or when we want to create a little design, we have a wide variety of designers and deflators in the company, designers and project engineers in the organization, so it's quite difficult to complete everything as a team. As I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of people working concurrently, so it's quite difficult to complete everything as a team.
(15:15) It's difficult to measure the regular work, so it's quite difficult to set the level. For example, I think this function was also discussed today, but we set a rough task-based target, such as how many articles to write per month, or how many events to sponsor. For example, when we should set a goal for Rakuten as a whole, we set a goal for the upper layer, for example, how much of the so-called gmv total distribution fee we should achieve, and we set such a goal.
(16:18) We then move down to the bottom of the organization, and when we break this down into smaller and smaller segments, we can't say how much the deflationary process has contributed to the achievement of our goals. So we have a policy of accumulating what we can do on a task basis based on the digestion system digestion component. I can't tell you the details because it's company expense, but there are quite a few items that we will be dividing into, and we'll be looking at how we're accomplishing these items in relation to the tasks that we've done. The evaluation is based on whether we have achieved these items or not.
(17:22) So, for example, if you say that you have put in place a system to have an engineering article written as a level, it will be evaluated as if you have fulfilled this item but not this one and this one, then you will not be evaluated. We have to make sure that we can fulfil the evaluation system from the very beginning, so that we can meet the objectives of the evaluation system, and we have to make sure that we can meet the objectives of the evaluation system, so that we can make sure that we can meet the objectives of the evaluation system, so that we can make the evaluation system more precise and more accurate. The most important thing is to keep the motivation up, so it's hard not to do something if it doesn't strengthen the organization. But I'm the one who organises these events.
(18:31) We used to hold real events like this, but since Corona went online, as I mentioned earlier, all we've had are online events like this. I'm sure many of you have experienced offline events before, but I'd like to say that it's quite difficult to use the offline tools. I've been working on this for a while now, but I'm not sure how long it will last, but I think it's a good idea to have a little bit of a backlash.
(19:34) We are trying to bring new people back to the company, but there is a problem, and that is that the new graduates who joined the company don't know about study groups, and those who didn't have jobs to attend study groups before don't even know about offline thermodynamics. We're trying to figure out how we can get this back and what we can do in the three years we've lost, so we're trying to create an advantage of participating offline. (20:37) I mean, we're trying to create an advantage of participating offline, and I think we're really saying the same thing as I was saying earlier.
(20:37) In other words, it's not just about shifting offline, but also about deflating the onboarding set. Thank you very much for your kind attention [applause] [music].
