I am a Google Developer Expert! 🚀

Yes, this is correct! As of today, I am officially a Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies, and to be more specific, in the area of Web Performance.

This is something that I was working for some time already as the process of becoming a GDE is not simple.

Below, I will explain to you how the process looks like in a written form but if you prefer a video format, there is a great video from Fireship that you can check below:

Preparation for becoming a GDE

The first thing you need to do in order to become a GDE is to create meaningful content. Sounds simple but it is not in reality. It's not about publishing an article once a month. You have to actually create content across various platforms (articles, videos, projects) but also be visible on conferences. Let me sum it up from my experience in a list of activities that I was doing for the past year.

Writing Articles

First of all, I am posting weekly new articles on this dev.to blog. Writing a technology article once a week systematically takes time and requires you to be able to share knowledge that community may found useful. In my case, this is mainly a Nuxt.js/Vue.js related articles but it can be any other area of software development. Make sure to write articles that are related to the specialty are of the GDE that you wish to be. In my case it was about Web Performance so I have written below articles that have proven to be very popular (50k views totally):

• https://dev.to/jacobandrewsky/performance-checklist-for-vue-and-nuxt-cog
• https://dev.to/jacobandrewsky/leveraging-cache-in-vuejs-and-nuxtjs-4b26
• https://dev.to/jacobandrewsky/improving-performance-of-nuxt-apps-with-partytown-80p
• https://dev.to/jacobandrewsky/improving-performance-of-nuxt-with-fontaine-5dim

It's not a book, but it is a honest work that many devs have used :)

Recording videos

I have to admit that this is quite a new topic for me. My YT channel is growing very slowly as I don't have that experience in producing very good quality videos. I don't know much about video editing (If you take a look at my videos they are barely edited for a reason). But this does not stop me from producing content such as the following videos:

Now, I know that this video took a lot of time to create and I have learned a lot by recording it (for example how bad was my audio quality back then, thankfully, fixed already).

But there is also content that have taken me ~1h to record and process like this one:

In it, I went fully YOLO and I just thought about simple app where I will be using several concepts in a some sort of live coding session.

So, these videos are not strictly related to Web Performance, but this is a content that I created, that is useful to the community. Keep that in mind to not close yourself for one topic only :)

Helping Communities

There is no better feeling for me than reading a comment where a community member is thankful for help with an issue he has been experiencing for some time. I am trying to be active on Nuxt/Storyblok/Vue Storefront discord channels to help community members develop new functionalities and fix bugs.

This is very rewarding, I can assure you

Talking at conferences

This is actually the most difficult thing. If you wish to be a speaker at bigger conferences you have to become recognizable across different platforms and communities. First, you should start by speaking at smaller more local meetups to learn and practise so that later you can attend bigger conferences. I started big, because actually my first conference was Vue.js London in 2021, and I can tell you that I was not ready for that ;) -> https://vuejslive.com/

But it went quite good. Actually, I got invited to give a talk once again next year

Later on, I started speaking at similar and bigger conferences like most recent Vue.js DE -> https://conf.vuejs.de/

But remember that you do not have to focus on the on site conferences only. There are many great conferences that you can give a talk at that are fully remote. I have recently given a talk at Nuxt Nation conference and there is also a great Geekle conferences like Vue.js Global, or JS Global:

• https://nuxtnation.com/
• https://geekle.us/

At Geekle, I also had an opportunity to be a Moderator during one of the conferences which is an experience that I recommend you to try out.

GDE Process

Ok, that was a lot of text while I still do not know what is the process of becoming a GDE. And I did that intentionally to show you something. The process of becoming a GDE (the official one) is relatively simple and straight forward.
Generally it have taken me about a month from submitting a GDE form to becoming a GDE. It is much easier to validate your GDE eligibility if you have a proven record of content and conferences.

Let's assume that you have all necessary points. In order to be able to submit a GDE form, you have to be referred by another GDE. In simple words, other active GDY must recommend you in internal GDE channels and only then you will be able to proceed.

Next, you will be sumbitting a long (believe me, really long) form where you will be describing all your past, current and possible future activities related to your content creation, conferences, and area of expertise. You will document there how many people attended your talk at the conference, or viewed your article for example. Multiply that by the number of created content and you will get the time needed to fill the form ;)

Furthermore, you will have to schedule a meeting with community representative from Google. In this call, you will be describing your community activities and the interviewer will verify whether the content you are creating is useful for the community. In some cases, he/she may also ask about certain topics that are related to the area of expertise, in my case, we talked about web performance too.

Finally, you will have a call with Google representative where you will be talking about certain Google product related to your area of expertise, in my case it was about Google Lighthouse and Page Speed Insights. But not only that as we have been talking about improving web performance in general.

I was a bit stressed but managed to go through the meeting and become GDE :)

Summary

The process of becoming a GDE is not very difficult as long as you have spent some time to prepare before. So, start today, and we will see each other in the next Google Developer Expert meetup ;)