Post Syndicated from Albert Zhao original https://blog.cloudflare.com/developer-expert-program/

Today we’re launching the Cloudflare Developer Expert Program: an initiative to support and recognize our VIP users who build with Workers, Pages, and the entire Cloudflare developer ecosystem.

A Cloudflare Developer Expert is an early adopter of new releases, a frequent participant in feedback sessions, and an evangelist for Cloudflare products made for the larger developer community.

But first, what are the benefits of becoming a Cloudflare Developer Expert?

• Early access to features (e.g., private betas)
• Admission to a private community of power users
• Routine calls with product managers, engineers, and developer advocates
• Sponsorships for OSS work
• Our best swag, of course

We have already sent invites to our first batch of power users, but if you’d like to join or want to nominate a developer, please fill out this form.

Why We Made This Program

We ship very quickly at Cloudflare.

This is because we want feedback early in development, allowing users to challenge our assumptions and validate what we’re building. In the Workers team, this strategy has been very successful.

For example, we began beta testing custom builds for Wrangler (our CLI tool) that allow you to run any JavaScript bundler you want. This was a huge release because it introduced the ES Modules syntax for the first time in Workers, significantly increasing the number of usable JavaScript packages and libraries. To get feedback before public release, we opened a private Discord channel and invited around 50 users for testing.

We were blown away by the feedback.

Our users quickly discovered edge cases that weren’t working, such as needing support for Workers Unbound. This made it easy for us to prioritize what to fix before GA. We also discovered actionable steps to improve documentation.

“The Workers team wanted our input early on for such a big release, and it really shows how seriously they’re taking developer experience,” said James Ross, CTO of Nodecraft.

After seeing the success of this small group of users, we figured it was time to make this a regular part of development.

We threw together a list of users, sent NDAs, and opened a private Discord channel for one of our biggest releases of the year: running functions directly on Cloudflare Pages.

“We’re able to ship this feature more quickly and confidently because of feedback in our Discord,” said Nevi Shah, product manager for Cloudflare Pages. “Users let us know quickly what can be better and what features they need first.”

Developers, Developers, Developers

Back in April, we launched our first Developer Week with a central focus: how to get developers to build more on Cloudflare. This included exciting releases like Cloudflare Pages and the Durable Objects open beta.

Since then, after receiving so much feedback in our Discord and other channels, we learned developers either expect their code to automatically run on Cloudflare’s infrastructure (Cloudflare Pages), or, if it’s a new technology (such as Durable Objects) they want as much direct guidance as possible to reliably get up and running. We realized involving users earlier in development allowed us to support more happy paths.

And since developers like doing things their own way, we aim to support as many happy paths as possible on our platform.

“I started developing with Cloudflare Workers shortly after it was announced. Over that time, Cloudflare has only increased its emphasis on developer experience,” said David Barratt, staff software engineer at Drizly. “The Cloudflare Developer Expert Program has been a fantastic way to have a quick feedback loop between the developers who have a lot of experience using the platform and the developers building that platform.”

Apply now!

If you are a developer who deploys with Workers, Pages, and our other tools, we want you to apply! We’re hoping to review applicants with experience deploying to production with our developer tools.

And again, Cloudflare Developer Experts get special, special care from our team.

To apply for the Cloudflare Developer Expert Program, fill out this form.