Guest at Don’t Forget The Pizza | The DevRel & Events Podcast
Imma Valls Bernaus has reviewed hundreds of KubeCon submissions, run developer communities across Europe, and organized events for over a decade.
In this episode she pulls back the curtain on what Developer Relations actually is — and it’s not just traveling and speaking at conferences.
🍕 In this episode:
• Why community building is a “long-run game” (her Stardew Valley analogy)
• What a KubeCon Track Chair actually does — picking 50 talks from 250 submissions
• The truth about conference talk rejection (spoiler: it’s a numbers game)
• Her step-by-step advice for first-time speakers
• How she manages DevRel chaos with Todoist — her simple to-do list system to tame the chaos
• Cultural lessons from organizing events in Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Japan
🎙️ Don’t Forget the Pizza is the podcast for Developer Advocates, DevRel Managers, Technical Evangelists, and Community professionals who run events as the unwritten part of their job.
🔗 Resources mentioned: Todoist — https://todoist.com
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 — Intro — Welcome Imma Valls Bernaus
00:45 — The Stardew Valley analogy for reviving communities
02:56 — What people underestimate about Developer Advocacy
08:16 — Inside KubeCon as Observability Track Chair: 50 talks from 250 submissions
12:22 — Advice for first-time speakers: start small & play the numbers game
15:50 — How to survive DevRel chaos with Todoist + co-hosting the Grafana Community Call
23:39 — What works in Barcelona won’t work in Japan: cultural lessons from events
29:34 — Lightning Round: languages, stickers & pineapple on pizza?
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