If you don’t know Adam DuVander, you should. He’s one of the unsung champions of the Portland tech scene. He was one of the first Beer and Blog attendees; he started Demolicious; he was on the committee that brought the Ignite format to Portland; and the same group who helped bring BarCamp to Portland. But it’s what he’s done outside of town that’s even more impressive.
In addition to being a published author, Adam has written for WebMonkey and Wired. And for the last four years, he’s served as the executive editor at ProgrammableWeb, arguably the most complete collection of API information on the Web.
Now, he’s taking on his next challenge. With one of the most successful companies to come out of the TechStars program, SendGrid.
Since I’ve reviewed thousands of APIs, I have seen many great examples and even more bad examples. I developed the Three Cs for developer portals (clarity, cost and community), but I realized to truly understand I needed to see the process from the inside. At a number of events, I was impressed by SendGrid’s developer relations team. And I saw an opportunity to scale their efforts with content.
Also, I invented SendGrid. While our founders may debate the semantics of that statement, what I mean is that I understand the problem. Email is the nerve center of my life, as it is for many. Sending email from applications is really hard to do reliably. Back in 2006 or so, I went to several email marketing companies asking to help me send transactional email, such as password resets and welcome messages. They didn’t understand the problem. Developers understand the problem. In 2009, Isaac, Tim and Jose decided to solve it.
I don’t just understand the problem SendGrid solves, I feel it. And while I’ve been a fan of SendGrid’s developer communications, I also see a lot of opportunities for me to improve our approach.
For more information on this new role, see Adam DuVander’s post on the SendGrid blog.
(Image courtesy Robert Nyman. Used under Creative Commons.)
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Adam embodies level headed, sensibleness. Well done, Adam — I hope this new endeavor is wildly successful and deeply rewarding! Look forward to hearing more.
Nice work Adam! Congrats!
Adam is a smart and very good person. The clusterfuq around Adria Richards and the ugly community reactions to her were awful but Adam is the kind of progressive, thoughtful, humble, articulate, considerate person to step into that role and do things well.
What an impressive resume you have! You are a talented guy.
Congrats Adam!