Cecelia Martinez

Posted on Sep 5, 2023

In Review: My First Year at Ionic

#devrel #career

On August 29, 2022 I started my first day as a Developer Advocate for Ionic. The very next day I flew out to Salt Lake City to meet my team for ng-Conf, and it's been a whirlwind ever since! 🌪️

Speaking on stage at Chain React! Photo credit: Taz Singh

I have been a fan of Ionic since 2019, when I first discovered the framework after searching for an alternative to React Native. I spoke at the first Ioniconf in 2020, and met members of the team virtually and in-person over the years. Joining the team felt like a long time coming, and getting to help developers be successful with open source tools I already know and love was a dream come true.

To celebrate my first year, I wanted to document everything I accomplished. It was a BUSY year, full of events, learning, and trying new things.

A few highlights:

I spoke at 20 (!) conferences and wrote 16 posts for the Ionic blog
I learned more than I thought possible about mobile deployments
I got involved with the amazing Women Who Code Mobile community
I gave my first talk in Spanish
I got better at being uncomfortable and trying new things

Conference Talks

I spoke at 20 conferences this year, sometimes doing double duty at a sponsor booth as well.

Highlights: Getting to speak at Strange Loop was an honor, especially with the conference ending in 2023. There were several of my favorite events like Refactr.TECH, Connect Tech, and VueConf. I attended my first DevOpsDays event, and gave my first React Native talk at Chain React! ⚛️

Refactr.TECH 2022
Strange Loop 2022
All Things Open 2022
Connect Tech 2022
Mobile DevOps Summit 2022
Nuxt Nation 2022
CodeMash 2023
The DEVOPS Conference 2023
DevNexus 2023
DevOps Days Raleigh 2023
DeveloperWeek Europe 2023
Chain React 2023
JS Nation 2023
Women Who Code Dev Summit - Mobile & Web 2023
VueConf 2023
RenderATL 2023
Ng-Conf 2023
KCDC 2023
THAT Conf Wisconsin 2023
Beer City Code 2023

I also spoke at the Modern Web ATL meetup in March! So excited that local meetups are back.

Check out this YouTube playlist with recordings of some of my conference talks!

Other Conference Activities

I was also involved in other events, either as a sponsor, on the program committee, or as an MC.

React Rally was the first sponsored event where I was the lead on site. We also hosted an Ionic Utah meetup at the conference. It was a lot of work but so much fun to own the entire process and introduce our newer team members to sponsor booth life. 😅

Developer Advocate Logan Brade at the sponsor booth at React Rally!

ng-Conf 2022 (Sponsor)
TestJS Summit 2022 (MC, Program Committee)
DevOps World 2022 (Virtual Sponsor Booth)
Modern Frontends Live 2022 (Sponsor)
GraphQL Galaxy 2022 (MC)
TechLead Conf 2023 (MC)
Deep Dish Swift 2023 (Sponsor)
JS Nation 2023 (Program Committee)
React Summit 2023 (Sponsored Workshop & Lightning Talk)
React Rally 2023 (Sponsor)

Webinars

I was busy with Ionic virtual events as well!

Spoke at Micro Frontends Summit 2023, a four-week series with amazing speakers on all things micro frontends
Hosted three webinars:
Participated in the Q1 and Q3 Ionic Shows
Gave my first talk in Spanish for the launch of the Ionic Madrid meetup 🇪🇸

Blog Posts

I wrote 16 posts for the Ionic blog in my first year! I started out with Appflow product updates, but over time created more technical tutorials and perspective pieces. ✏️

Some required me to build out complex demo projects and learn new concepts, such as automated mobile testing or building mobile deployment pipelines. Others required research into complex topics like SOC-2 certification and app security.

Projects

I am the first Developer Advocate at Ionic focused specifically on Appflow, our mobile CI/CD platform. Appflow added support in late 2022 for other platforms, including React Native and traditional iOS/Android native apps.

Because of this, I was responsible for a lot of "firsts", including deciding how we would reach developers in these new markets, as well as the sponsor booth strategy for events sponsored under the Appflow brand. It was a crash course in developing a new DevRel strategy!

New booth design assets for Appflow-sponsored events!

Fortunately, Ionic has been around for 10 years and has a lot of built-in knowledge for engaging with developer communities and a great team I could work with on these projects.

These are some of the specific projects I worked on:

Auditing and updating our docs
Introducing a more robust free tier for new users
Appflow sponsored events strategy and materials
Working with Product team on new platform support and new user experience, including participating in user interviews and technical validation for new features
Took over Appflow Twitter/X account for promotion of events, updates, and content, and experimenting with short videos

I was also on the team that introduced an Ionic Pride community and Pride month kickoff event! This project was personal to me and it was so special to get to be involved. 🌈

Community

I continued my volunteer work as the Atlanta Chapter Head for Out in Tech, which supports the LGBTQIA+ community in tech. We had more events in 2023 than ever, and increased the size of our leadership team. We are growing slowly but steadily and it's been amazing to see the community flourish.

I have previously volunteered with Women Who Code Front End, but this year I transitioned to the Women Who Code Mobile track given my new role. It has been so great to get to know the amazing women in this community!

I got to meet some of the members at Deep Dish Swift, including Vui Nguyen, who gave a great talk at the conference. She is now the Leadership Fellow for Women Who Code Mobile and I look forward to doing more work with them this year!

Women Who Code Mobile representing at Deep Dish Swift! Photo credit: @sunfishgirl on Twitter

I am also starting to get involved with the AtlantaJS Meetup group, so stay tuned for updates there 👀

What's Next

Overall, I could not be more proud of the effort and achievements I've experienced in my first year at Ionic.

I am so grateful for the support of everyone at Ionic and the wider community. I've had a LOT of questions along the way and have learned so much only because people were generous with their knowledge.

Looking ahead, I'm planning to expand my focus from mobile deployments to the entire app development life cycle. I'm excited to dig more into Capacitor and Portals (the superapp SDK from Ionic), as well as some of the more advanced challenges and use cases facing cross-platform developers.

I'm also excited to spend more time in code, and working on larger-scale technical projects to improve our developer resources.

There's also OutSystems! Ionic was acquired last year by OutSystems, the #1 Low-Code Platform. I have met some folks there and attended an OutSystems User Group meetup in Atlanta, and I'm curious to learn more about their tools and team.

Here's to another year (and hopefully many more!) with Ionic. 🥳

Top comments (4)

Todd Libby • Sep 5 '23

Thanks for sharing, Cecilia! It's been awesome getting to not only hear your talks and see you at conferences on the speaking circuit, but getting to know you and hanging out! Congratulations on year one and hopefully you have many more!