Developer communities aren't a channel. They're a room full of people who trust you. I've spent ten years in those rooms: 180 college halls with a projector and a train ticket, four years turning Postman's student program from an empty doc into 200,000 developers, and now GenAI workshops at Pieces across four continents. Half a million developers have sat through something I made.
Before devrel was a job title I could put on a form, it was a train ticket and a laptop bag. 180 colleges. 38 cities across India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the US. Somewhere in there, engineers at Rakuten, Infosys, Deloitte, Intel and Booking.com learned Google Cloud from a freelancer who'd slept sitting up the night before.
Founding member of Student Programs, which is a polite way of saying there was nothing there yet. We built it to 200,000 registered developers. I delivered 318 API sessions to enterprises and universities, then wrote the API 101 Kit so community leaders could run their own — 500+ events in two years, none of which needed me in the room. My courses on academy.postman.com passed a million views.
80+ GenAI workshops so far, virtual and in person, on four continents. I wrote GenAI 101 and have taught it to more than 10,000 developers — the version where everyone opens an editor, not the version where I demo something impressive and nobody can reproduce it. I also run the Pieces AI Summit and the Pieces of Memory series.
Built in the days after Bell's palsy paralysed the right side of my face. It tracks 400+ facial landmarks in real time, scores symmetry while I do my exercises, and turns daily sessions into a time-lapse my physiotherapist can actually read. Eight outlets covered it. My mother saved all eight.
Stage practice for anyone who has to get up there and sound like they meant it. Built after hearing my own “um” count on a conference recording.
Travel, visas and documents in one place, instead of six screenshots and a panic at the check-in desk. A tool built by someone who lives on planes.
Products are the easy part. These are the rooms, curricula and programs I convened because they didn't exist yet — and most are still running without me.
The first TFUG in India. 50+ events in seven years, with speakers like Laurence Moroney, Paige Bailey and Anirudh Koul.
30+ meetups plus the flagships — Google Cloud Community Days and DevFest, the ones where the venue runs out of chairs.
ML data campaigns across 22 countries. 500K images in two months fed Open Images Extended, presented at NeurIPS — and became my TEDx talk.
Built from an empty doc to 200,000 registered developers. The Student Expert Program has since certified 200,000+ on its own.
A teach-it-yourself kit for community leaders. 500+ events run from it in two years — none of which needed me in the room.
10,000+ developers through GenAI 101, plus the AI Summit and the Pieces of Memory webinar series.
Mumbai (home), plus 38 cities and 180+ colleges.
San Francisco (second home), San Jose, Seattle, New York, Detroit, Houston, LA, Las Vegas.
Singapore, Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo.
Dubai, Istanbul, Barcelona, Morocco, Nigeria.
“A founding member of the Postman Student Programs team and a driving force behind the community taking root at scale. He knows how to hustle smartly to achieve seemingly impossible goals.”
“An amazing community builder. His passion for inclusion in Machine Learning reflected in his talks about Google Crowdsource, from college auditoriums to the TEDx stage.”
“Ali and his team believed in the brand and took up projects as their own babies. I appreciated their hard work building the community from ground zero.”
Workshops, keynotes, developer programs — or an argument about whether agents are overhyped. I answer everything.
90 minutes to a full day, virtual or in person. I bring the curriculum, the sandbox and the bad jokes; you bring a room with power outlets. 400+ delivered, most recently GenAI 101 to 10,000 developers.
Opening keynotes, closing keynotes, and the graveyard slot after lunch that nobody wants. TEDx stage tested. Topics: GenAI in practice, developer communities that survive, building in public.
I built two from an empty doc — Postman Student Programs to 200,000 developers, and India’s first TFUG. Happy to review yours: structure, incentives, leader pipeline, the parts that quietly rot in year two.
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TIMES OF INDIA
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