The Auth0 Ambassador Program was founded to empower the developer community, help make the internet safer, and allow passionate individuals to build their personal brand. The program was officially launched back in July of 2017 and to date has over 75 Ambassadors in 32 countries spanning the globe from the United States to Japan.
Auth0 Ambassadors contribute by writing blog posts, giving talks at meetups and conferences, hosting workshops and webinars, and organizing local developer events in their communities and abroad. Whether speaking at a generalist conference like CodeMash or something more specific like ngAtl, Auth0 Ambassadors share knowledge, tips, and best practices on topics relating to identity, security, and authentication.
Our ambassadors come from very diverse backgrounds and skill sets ranging from CTO’s like Mercedes Wyss, entrepreneurs like Dominik Angerer, to experienced software engineers and speakers like Mehul Patel. Each Auth0 Ambassador possesses a unique skill set that makes them invaluable to the developer community.
2018 was a huge year for the Ambassador Program. I want to share some stats and lessons learned to both celebrate and highlight the hard work and contributions our ambassadors have made. Finally, I hope this post helps others who are interested or running ambassador and evangelism programs within their companies. Collaboration makes us all stronger. Let’s first start with the stats!
By the Numbers — Ambassadors
The Auth0 Ambassador Program went live in July of 2017. By the end of 2017 we had onboarded a total of 47 ambassadors. By the end of 2018 we had increased our head count to 75. This represents a ~60% increase in the total number of ambassadors within our program.
Lessons Learned — Ambassadors
The Auth0 Ambassador program is primary run by two people, Ado Kukic (me) and Diego Poza. Together we coordinate the ambassador program, review applications, host training sessions, help ambassadors book travel to events, and everything else that comes with running the program. This is all in addition to our regular day to day duties of being a Developer Evangelist and Head of Content and Evangelism, respectively.
The key takeaways for 2018 for us has been:
- Nurture — the ambassador program is a two-way street. Ambassadors represent our company so providing them with tools, guidance, training, and mentorship they may need is key to keeping them engaged.
- Recognition — recognizing ambassadors that go out of their way to create contributions creates a positive feedback loop.
- Organization — any growing team will experience growing pains, mitigating them is what will make or break morale. Introduce new tools that simplify communication and collaboration.
By the Numbers — Contributions
In 2017, the Ambassador Program tracked a total of 51 contributions. The majority of these contributions were ambassadors speaking at meetups, which tracked at 24 events, followed by speaking at conferences which we tracked at 23 events. Because the Ambassador Program was launched in the middle of the year, we really only had 6 months of data, but if we were to naively extrapolate that, we could assume that had the program run for the entire year, we’d be sitting at around 100 events total.
In 2018, the Ambassador Program tracked a total of 204 contributions reaching over 25,000 developers in-person. The vast majority of the contributions for 2018 were conference speaking events, which accounted for over 100 contributions. Auth0 Ambassadors spoke at many major conferences this year including AngularUp, DroidCon Berlin, CodeMash, ngAtl, CodeMash, Oracle Code, API Days, FrontEnd Con, and many others.
Our ambassadors didn’t just focus on major conferences. Getting involved with local developer communities also played a pivotal role and our ambassadors participated in giving talks at OrlandoJS, LondonPHP, MadridJS, BA NodeJS, Devs+502, StahlstadtJS, ColomboJS, GDG Sri Lanka, and many other meetups just to name a few.
Auth0 Ambassadors have attended or organized events in over 40 countries in 2018.
Lessons Learned — Contributions
Each one of our ambassadors has a unique voice and preference. Some prefer speaking at large conferences with thousands of attendees, others prefer to focus on their local developer communities, and yet others prefer to write rather than speak. The key takeaways for 2018 when it comes to contributions for us were:
- Empowerment — each ambassador has a unique style and approach. Empower them to make contributions on their own terms and find ways to make their contributions beneficial to the overall goal.
- Simplify — respect the ambassador’s time. Make it easy for ambassadors to contribute as well as to track their contributions.
- Compromise — nothing should ever be set in stone. Be adaptable and willing to compromise to get the best out of people.
Notable Wins
Finally, before I wrap up this post, I do want to highlight some notable wins our ambassadors achieved this year.
Ambassador of the Month Winners
Each month we recognize ambassadors that go above and beyond and make significant contributions or do something that really stands out.
Our winners in 2018 include:
- Anthony Brown
- Anthony Chow
- Alberto Salazar
- Biodun Chris
- Ignacio Anaya
- Md Shahbaz Alam
- Mehul Patel
- Mercedes Wyss — Won Ambassador of the Month six times since the program started.
- Takahiro Tsuchiya
- Vincenzo Chianese
Internally, every Auth0 employee is also eligible to participate in the Ambassador Program, and we also award internal ambassadors as well.
Our internal winners for 2018 include:
Auth0 Ambassador turned Auth0 Developer Evangelist
This year we’ve had one ambassador join our company full-time as a Developer Evangelist. Ben Dechrai went from Auth0 Ambassador to Auth0 Developer Evangelist in the APAC region in Q3 of 2018. Congrats Ben!
Auth0 Ambassador Program in 2019
I am optimistic for the future of the Auth0 Ambassador Program. The contributions our ambassadors have made in 2018 have lived up to our expectations and goals of empowering developer communities and helping make the internet safer.
The mission continues in 2019 and we would love to have you join us along for the ride. With new initiatives such as the Identity and Security Meetups there has never been a better time to join. If interested, why not Join the Mission?
About Auth0
Auth0 by Okta takes a modern approach to customer identity and enables organizations to provide secure access to any application, for any user. Auth0 is a highly customizable platform that is as simple as development teams want, and as flexible as they need. Safeguarding billions of login transactions each month, Auth0 delivers convenience, privacy, and security so customers can focus on innovation. For more information, visit https://auth0.com.