Is it possible to help developers to learn about your tool in a fun and relaxed way?

Well, there is a way. Let's take Datadog. They created "an observability service for cloud-scale applications, providing monitoring of servers, databases, tools, and services, through a SaaS-based data analytics platform. "

What do they do to help developers get some fun? Well, Datadog has created a small competition, where 1 in 10 might win quite a valuable price (up to an iPhone), simply by creating a Datadog dashboard.

If you think about it, even if 1 in 100 devs realizes that Datadog's solution is good for the business of the developer's company, Datadog will (highly likely, or at least I hope so) still be positive in terms of profit, as it only spent 10 iPhones to get this specific developer aware of the product.

How did Datadog defend against timewasters, who could enter the competition from different addresses? Well, as I understand, this specific competition was for LeadDev London 2022 visitors only. A LeadDev visitor is unlikely to start exploiting Datadog's kindness.

Also, people coming to the conference are often quite proactive, so they are exactly a group new products shall talk to.

Well done, Datadog. Although I would have made the lottery a bit more challenging, still - it was quite good.

My dashboard is below, looks fun :)

By the way, Datadog does a ton of #OpenSource too. Many kudos for that ;)

667 repositories, that is crazy.
https://github.com/DataDog