Tell Your Stories: The Benefits of Strategic Engineering Communications

Summary

Shopify created engineering communications in early 2016 as rapid growth and expansion from four to five offices made informal knowledge sharing insufficient. The program serves internal and external audiences through weekly technical talks, an internal newsletter, engineering-blog posts, conference presentations, and an editorial calendar, with Shopifolk developers treated as a primary audience. Communications staff hunt for stories by building relationships with project leads, then coach speakers and work alongside developers while preserving their voices; coaching covers narrative, breath control, body language, and calls to action. The reported effects include less risk of duplicated work or mistakes, cross-pollination of ideas, more confident speakers, increased interest in Shopify from some attendees, and a recurring pipeline in which storytelling generates further stories.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Shopify treated internal and external engineering communication as connected rather than separate, with developers inside the company as a primary audience.

2. 2

   Communications staff build a story pipeline by regularly meeting project leads, understanding their work, and developing internal talks and newsletters into external posts and conference presentations.

3. 3

   Speaker coaching covers narrative clarity, breath control, body language, and calls to action; the team reports greater speaker confidence and higher audience engagement.

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