Technology evangelists are nothing new, but are something I think is continuing to expand as the Internet continues to crack open more of the core areas of the tech sector. I specifically chose the term API Evangelist to define what I did evangelizing for all APIs, but all I was really doing is following the lead of evangelism pioneers like Amazon, Google, and even Microsoft.
There has long been discussion around evangelism vs advocates, and I've seen companies also choose to adopt an ambassador format. I have also been interested to see the evolution of Docker's Captain's program--who are "Docker experts and leaders in their communities who demonstrate a commitment to sharing their Docker knowledge with others".
I also stumbled across a post out of the MongoDB as a service provider Compose showcasing what they call the database advocate, whose "job is not to guard the database from the world but to advocate the best ways to use it and offering the tools to optimize that usage". In their view, the outdated DBA is going away, with the database advocate emerging as a much more friendly, outward facing, pragmatic gatekeeper for databases within the enterprise.
It makes me happy to see the open ethos brought to the table by web APIs spreading to all the layers of the tech stack, making the world of virtualization and containers more accessible. As an old database guy, it makes me really, really happy to see it also spread to the world of databases--I am hoping that it is something that continues to spread to all layers.
