How is this different from sponsoring a video?
A sponsorship buys airtime. Here you pay for my time and judgement on your product: the review, the ranked list and the advice. The live session is part of that work, labelled as a partner session, and it teaches a real use case. If the product isn't ready to teach yet, I tell you and the time goes on fixing that first.
We could come on Rawkode Live for free. What does the review add?
A maintainer session is public, about an hour, and you are there steering, so I see the path you show me. In the review I work alone as your target user, with nobody to rescue me. I note every place I get stuck against the recording, rank what to fix, explain or teach, set numbers to watch and, if you continue, re-run it at day 90 to check what changed.
Aren't you too experienced to get stuck where our users do?
Before starting we agree who I'm acting as, such as an application developer who has never run a cluster, and I work to what that person would know. The walkthrough call then checks the ranked list against your own funnel numbers, so findings that don't show up in your data get marked down.
What exactly does the review cover?
Before starting we agree the product areas, who I'm acting as, and where the review ends: a first working result, or something closer to production, such as a highly available setup, a backup and restore, or an upgrade, as long as it fits in the 10 business days. For products with more than one kind of user, such as a platform team and the application developers they serve, the review covers up to two. An open-source project and its paid or hosted product count as two, so one review can follow a developer from the open-source setup to the move to the paid product.
How much of our engineers' time does it take?
About half a day across the 90 days: an hour to review the runnable example, an hour to prepare the session and the live hour itself. I write the example. Your product lead joins the monthly sessions.
What numbers do we agree, and when?
Two or three numbers you already track, agreed at kick-off. Targets for day 90 are set on the review call, once the findings exist. For example: time from sign-up or setup to a first successful deploy, quick-start completion rate, or the share of trials that are still active after a week. We report against them in the read-out using your data.
Who on our side should own it?
Whoever owns developer adoption. Often that is the head of DevRel or developer experience, with product owning the fixes. The ranked list says which items are for product, which for docs and which for DevRel.
Why are places limited?
I do every review and partnership myself, alongside running Rawkode Academy. Six partners at a time is what I can do properly, and two new reviews a month is what I can start without the existing ones slipping. The limits are the same whether or not places are free. A place is booked when the statement of work is signed and a start date is set; if the statement of work isn't signed within seven days, the place is released.
Can we sponsor content as well?
Sponsorship is a separate conversation from the partnership. Neither changes what I tell you in the review.
Do open-source maintainers have to pay to come on Rawkode Live?
No. Maintainer sessions on Rawkode Live are still free and unpaid, and they aren't labelled as partner sessions. The partnership is for teams who want the review, the advice and the work around the session.
