Major League Hacking

The DevRelCon NYC lineup is a snapshot of where developer relations is heading in 2026: agents, adoption, and the craft of building things developers actually trust. Six of the people mapping that shift will be on stage July 22-23. Nikita Jotwani has spent 10+ years helping developers fall in love with great products at Amazon, Twilio, Bose Corporation, and now HubSpot. As MCP Adoption Program Lead, Nikita is asking what DevRel looks like when the developer using your tool is an AI agent that never files a support ticket. Kurtis Kemple leads developer strategy for the Slack platform and is the author of the forthcoming "Effective DevRel," with a career spanning Apollo GraphQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Major League Soccer. The talk makes the case that agentic experience design is a new discipline, built around the partial autonomy that agents introduce to human-computer interaction. Juan Pablo Flores Cortés brings over five years of program management across technology and education, with a focus on intuitive interactions and community engagement. The talk "Reflections on Taste" separates real editorial judgment from taste performed as gatekeeping, and asks how we keep craft in service of the work. Kara Silverman is the founder of Althea Labs, building a new playbook for how B2B brands stay visible in a world shaped by AI. The talk "Agent Led Growth" digs into how tools like Claude Code decide which dev tool to pick, complete with a live AI visibility program run on a real brand. Matthew Makai is the creator of Plushcap and Full Stack Python, and has built and scaled developer content teams at Twilio, AssemblyAI, LaunchDarkly, and DigitalOcean. The talk breaks down how to spot durable developer trends before everyone else piles in, from harness engineering and MCP to local AI. Kevin Whinnery has led DevRel, SDK, and docs teams at Twilio, OpenAI, Stainless, Deno, and Retool, and now works on developer experience at Anthropic. The talk covers how to make coding agents great at using your API, drawing on the Claude Platform API skill that helps agents write effective integrations. See them all at DevRelCon NYC, July 22-23. https://nyc.devrelcon.dev/

What do a conference badge with a custom PCB, several hundred thousand PR pitches, and a file called SOUL.md have in common? They're all taking the stage at DevRelCon NYC next week.   Five speakers we're excited about:   Shy Ruparel spent nearly a decade empowering developer communities at Docker, Inc, Contentful, and Major League Hacking, and is now a Sr. Developer Advocate at Temporal Technologies and a former managing director of hackNY.org. Shy's talk covers building a badge attendees actually keep, with peer-to-peer infrared contact exchange and firmware written with Claude, and what it takes to coordinate community, product, hardware, and event logistics for 2,000 people.   Kevin Purdy was a technology reporter for more than 15 years at Ars Technica, NYT Wirecutter, Lifehacker, and iFixit before moving into DevRel at Tailscale. Out of the hundreds of thousands of pitches that hit Kevin's inbox, only a handful ever worked. The talk will share the 12 that did, and the techniques behind them.   Ully Carolinne Sampaio leads community and contributor programs at Elastic, backed by 13+ years in marketing and community. The talk tackles a challenge every community team knows: strong initial engagement, limited long-term contribution, and a practical framework for turning passive users into active contributors.   Gauge is asking a question most DevRel teams haven't yet: when Claude Code sets up auth and picks Clerk, Auth0, or Supabase without your input, how does that decision happen? Expect real data, a live AI visibility program on a real developer brand, and a framework for understanding where your own brand stands.   Tim Falls has spent 15+ years building community go-to-market strategies for startups around the world, and advises startup programs here at Major League Hacking. The talk explores the values, standards, and mindset that guide DevRel work, our SOUL.md, complete with a forkable repo to build your own.   See them all at DevRelCon NYC this July 22-23.   Register at https://nyc.devrelcon.dev/

Imagine an AI companion that can speak for you when you can't. Check out Hear2Help, a hackathon project by Saloni Shah and Arya Gijare designed to give deaf, non-verbal, and panicked users a fast, voice-free way to call for help. Hear2Help works in just a few taps—triple-tap to trigger SOS mode, and the app uses ElevenLabs' real-time text-to-speech to communicate on your behalf. It doesn't stop there: the tool leverages the Gemini API to answer emergency questions, pulls in geolocation to show the nearest hospital or police station, and even includes a Calm Mode with breathing exercises for panic attacks. Read more about their build here: https://lnkd.in/ewDTGhNy

DevRelCon NYC is one week away 👀 The premier conference for anyone working to grow developer adoption — DevRel, DevEx, Product Marketing, Platform PM, and GTM, all in one room. Sessions cover the stuff we're all figuring out right now: AI developer tooling, developer-first go-to-market, measuring adoption and activation, community-led growth, and documentation as product. Expect talks, hands-on workshops, food, coffee, and the conversations that shape our craft (plus the hallway ones that end up being the best part). Tickets are still available: https://nyc.devrelcon.dev/

We’ll be back out in SF on July 29th! We’re teaming up with Snowflake and Google Cloud to show you how to build AI agents directly on top of your data. We’re kicking things off with a keynote from Paige Bailey, followed by a 90-minute sprint where you’ll build AI agents from scratch using Gemini 3.1 Pro, Snowflake Cortex, and Looker. Dinner and drinks are on us. Spots are limited, so request your invite to come build! https://lnkd.in/e7pdDVYY

Can you tell a human's doodle from an AI's? That's the question at the heart of TuringSketch, an incredible hackathon project by Jun Bin Cheng and Larry Chen that reimagines the classic Turing Test as a competitive drawing game inspired by skribbl.io. Here's how it works: each player gets 30 seconds to sketch a prompt while an AI generates its own version of the same image. When the timer runs out, players are shown both drawings side by side and must guess which was human-made. Jun Bin built the backend database with Azure SQL Server and designed the frontend in Streamlit, while Larry handled the AI image generation and tied the frontend and backend together. They even fine-tuned prompts so the AI would produce "MS Paint style" sketches, making the guessing genuinely challenging. Read more about their build here: https://lnkd.in/eEqAPApC

We’re teaming up with Midnight again from July 17–19, but this won’t be a repeat of the last few events. With Midnight's Mainnet up and running, we’re focusing on real-world utility this time. This doesn't mean you need to be a blockchain expert—it just means we're looking for creative, practical ideas. Even a simple, straightforward app can make a huge difference when it's built to protect everyday user privacy. To keep things fresh, we’re introducing brand-new project tracks to choose from. We’re also completely shaking up the rewards. We can’t announce the prizes just yet, but we’re cooking up a massive surprise for the winners that we think you're going to love. Whether you've hacked with Midnight before or are completely new to the community, we’d love to see what you build. Register today: https://lnkd.in/et_e6zrv

Applications for the LARGEST HACKATHON IN THE MIDWEST are officially LIVE! For years, MHacks has been bringing together thousands of developers, designers, and innovators. This is where late-night breakthroughs happen and future co-founders meet. Whether you’re an experienced builder or building your very first project, your spot is waiting. Apply @ mhacks.org/apply

The DEV Weekend Challenge: Passion Edition is live! You have the whole weekend to build something great! ❤️🔥 Your mandate: build something inspired by passion: a tribute to a great rivalry, a tracker for the projects you love, a World Cup companion app for the truly devoted fan, or anything in between. 🔥 $1,000 in prizes. 5 winners total — one overall winner and 4 bonus prize categories for projects that incorporate a specific tech: Snowflake, Solana, ElevenLabs, or Google AI. Each takes home $200 USD, a DEV++ membership, and an exclusive DEV badge Not sure where to start? The prize categories are a great jumping-off point. Because winners are drawn from a smaller pool of submissions per category, your odds of taking home a prize are meaningfully higher if you incorporate one of the featured tools. Submissions due July 13 at 6:59 AM UTC — winners announced July 30! https://lnkd.in/eT3j6ab8