Joey de Villa’s DevRel Portfolio

Here’s a brief overview of my work in developer relations that showcases my expertise in technology, creating engaging content, building communities, and fostering collaboration between developers and organizations.

Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Writer’s developer portal
  3. Kodeco’s Python for AI course
  4. Packfiles’ documentation
  5. Developer relations for Unified.to
  6. Auth0 Developer Blog
  7. My books
  8. Presentations and videos
  9. My own tech blog, Global Nerdy
  10. Building tech communities
  11. Miscellaneous oddities

Summary

  • 15+ years of experience in developer relations, technical writing, and community building.
  • 10+ million pageviews on my personal blog, Global Nerdy.
  • 20K+ monthly reader growth on the Auth0 developer blog.
  • 5K+ members in the meetup groups I manage.
  • Proven track record of creating engaging content, building communities, and fostering collaboration between developers and organizations.
  • Expertise in a wide range of technologies, including Python, Swift, Kotlin, JavaScript, and more.
  • Strong communication skills with a knack for explaining complex topics in an accessible way.
  • Experience in both technical writing and developer advocacy, with a focus on creating content that resonates with developers.

Writer’s developer portal

I recently worked as a developer relations consultant with the San Francisco-based AI company Writer, where I wrote many sections of their developer portal, including:

I also reviewed and suggested improvements for the writer-python developer toolkit, and edited articles on the Writer Engineering blog.

Kodeco’s Python for AI course

My most recent work with the developer education site Kodeco (formerly RayWenderlich.com) was creating Python for AI, a comprehensive course that teaches developers how to use Python for AI and machine learning applications.

You can access the course for free here.

Packfiles’ documentation

My most recent client was Packfiles, a Tampa-based startup. Their product, called Warp, is a service for migrating Azure Devops, BitBucket, and GitLab repositories to GitHub.

I wrote the majority of their documentation, which you can find here.

Developer relations for Unified.to

Shortly after being laid off from Auth0/Okta, I took on work for Unified.to, a service that provides a unified API that allows its users to connect to almost 300 services and data sources.

I wrote their API documentation and their white paper, 2024 State of SaaS APIs: API Specifications and Documentation, which you can download from this page. I also created their most-viewed video (shown above), which shows developers how to determine with end user is using a given API connection.

Auth0’s developer blog

Here’s my author page from my time at Auth0 (now a part of/product of Okta), where I wrote an article for every month of my tenure. I also heavily edited and ghost-wrote a dozen mobile articles from other authors who had great programming chops, but poor writing skills.

When I joined Auth0, the mobile developer content had been stagnating for three years. I grew the mobile dev readership from near-zero to 20,000 a month.

Depending on how Google’s algorithm “feels” that day, my articles on Date and Time programming in Swift rank higher than Apple’s; sometimes they rank one spot below. Try it now and see what happens!

My article on reading EXIF data (the metadata that smartphones embed in photos) using Python is usually one of the top five Google results; once again, I invite you to see if that’s the case.

My books

Co-author: iOS Apprentice, 8th edition (2020 and 2021)

iOS Apprentice, 8th edition

I co-wrote two versions of the 8th edition of iOS Apprentice, which was then the “flagship” publication of the tutorial site RayWenderlich.com (now Kodeco.com). This book was a from-the-ground-up introduction to native iOS programming using the Swift language. The first version, published in 2019, covered iOS 12; the second version, published in 2020 covered iOS 13.

My part of the book — page 1 through 485 — covered the SwiftUI UI framework, which had just been introduced that year. That meant I not only had to learn a whole new way to create user interfaces in iOS and write about it, but learn it from Apple’s very spotty documentation. The remainder of the book, written by my co-author Eli Ganim, covered doing things “the old way.”

I’ve made a PDF copy of the second version — the entire book — available here.

Technical editor: ARKit by Tutorials (2018) and Shopify Application Development (2014)

ARKit by Tutorials and Shopify Application Development

I was technical editor for two books:

Presentations and videos

Here’s a selection of my recent and upcoming presentations, as well as some videos that I’ve made...

Upcoming presentations

I’ll be giving a talk at the 2025 Kansas City Developer Conference titled The Best, Most Fun Python Platform You’ve Never Heard Of. It will be a programmer’s introduction to the powerful, fun, and all-too-often-ignored Ren’Py visual novel engine.

Here’s my abstract for the talk:

Python’s occupied the number one spot on the TIOBE Programming Community Index for the past couple of years, and it’s the preferred programming language in for AI and data science. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about learning it, but the thought of having to do another set of “Hello World” style exercises is filling you with dread. Is there a more fun way to get up to speed with Python?

Yes, there is, and it’s called Ren’Py. It’s billed as a visual novel engine and often used for writing dating simulation games, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a platform that lets you code in Python (and more) and deploy to desktop, web, and even mobile platforms, and with a fraction of the effort required by React, Vue, or Angular. It’s a fun framework that’s been used to produce games you can find on Steam, but it’s got applications well beyond amusement.

In this session, we’ll look not just at the basics of Ren’Py development, but the building of a dating game based on KFC’s official game, “I Love You Colonel Sanders,” a simple turn-based combat game starring Florida Man, and building mobile apps in a way that’s less frustrating than usual.

AI presentations

Security / authentication presentations

ARKit presentations

I was the only presenter (and the highest-rated one!) at RWDevCon 2018 (a tutorial conference for iOS and Android developers) to have two sessions, both on developing augmented reality apps for iOS devices using Apple’s then-new ARKit.

Here’s my four-hour workshop on the day before the main conference, where I led attendees through the building of four AR apps:

And here’s my main conference session, a shortened version of the pre-conference workshop, where led attendees through building two AR apps:

Technology career presentations

General technology presentations

My own tech blog, Global Nerdy

Global Nerdy Stats

My tech blog, Global Nerdy, has had over 10 million pageviews since I started it in 2006. It’s a blog about technology, programming, and the occasional bit of nerd culture. I’ve posted almost 5,000 articles there.

Since 2017, I’ve been publishing a weekly list of Tampa Bay tech events on Global Nerdy. I originally built the list manually, when it the list was small and it was a job search tactic. When that job search ended, I’d planned to wind down the list, only to be asked “Hey, where’s the list?”

It turned out that the list was useful to the local tech community, and I was happy to keep it going. However, as the list grew, it became more and more of a chore to maintain. I’d have to check Meetup.com for new events, copy and paste them into the list, and then publish it.

To solve that problem, I automated the process of gathering and publishing the list using a Python script that scrapes Meetup.com for local tech, entrepreneur, and “nerd” events.I’ve published the source code for that script on my GitHub account.

Building tech communities

In addition to my work on Global Nerdy, I’m also involved in building tech communities in the Tampa Bay area. This includes organizing meetups, hackathons, and other events that bring together local developers, entrepreneurs, and tech enthusiasts.

I organize the following Tampa Bay meetups:

Meetup Members
Tampa Bay Artificial Intelligence Meetup 2,000+
Tampa Bay Python 2,100+ — Tampa Bay’s fastest-growing meetup!
Suncoast Software Skills Meetup 700+
Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer 800+

 

Prior to moving to Tampa in 2014, I was heavily involved in Toronto’s tech scene. I was one of the four stewards of DemoCamp, a series of community-driven “show and tell” events that showcased local talent and fostered collaboration that ran from the mid-2000s to the mid 2010s. Here’s an episode of the old Toronto-based YouTube show Byte Club that covered DemoCamp:

Miscellaneous oddities

Tampa Bay news’ go-to person for tech explanations

My work in developer relations and in the developer community has made me a trusted source for tech explanations in the Tampa Bay area. Local news outlets often call on me to provide insights and commentary, and to provide “explainers” of complex topics for a broader audience.

Here’s a selection of my recent appearances in local news:

Also:

I represent developers — even when I’m not trying!

This video by New Relic features some of the software world’s brightest lights: Matz, Guido, Linus, DHH, Bill Joy, James Gosling, Sir Tim, Marc, Woz, Rasmus, Scott Guthrie, Sergey , Dries, and finally Zuck.

When it came time to pick an image to represent the everyday developer, they simply did an image search and found a picture they liked. Guess who they picked!

My short-lived Sesame Street-style children’s show, complete with puppet co-host

Developer Junior was a joint production of Microsoft Canada and Butterscotch.com, Tucows’ tutorial video channel. It was a tech tutorial series aimed at kids between the ages of 8 to 14, where we showed them how to make the most of technology.

It was a fun show that captured a lot of viewers, but unfortunately, Microsoft had very little marketing budget for the 8 to 14 demographic, and after two episodes and a “making of” segment, it was canceled.

Here’s episode 1, Making Games with Kodu...

...and here are the other two videos we produced: