Someone tried to enter my home

Two weeks after buying our first house, we were awakened at 2:00 a.m. as someone tried to bust open our front door.

Frightening? Absolutely. Related to developer content? Surprisingly so.

A day before, we had given a tour to some friends. We all laughed at the presence of a makeshift panic room. Through a trapdoor in the bedroom closet, we could access a ladder to a small concrete basement.

Now we were down there, huddled to one side with some boxes, old cans of paint, and the water heater.

The police were on their way, but we could hear footsteps above us. Surely, the intruders would discover the trap door any moment.

We stayed on with the 911 operator. An officer shined his flashlight through a tiny window and assured us we were safe. Only then did we come up to learn the full story.

After a night on the town, the previous owner required some assistance from friends. Not knowing he had moved houses, they brought him to where they thought he lived.

His friends had the best intentions, but they were missing some information. Sleepy and fearful, we also didn’t have the complete picture.

It took a neutral party to accurately assess the situation.

That’s often the case with developer content, too.

What you intend as educational might still be seen as promotional by a skeptical developer audience.

You might think developers care about one thing only to realize the right developers are looking for something else entirely.

There are a lot of ways you can get that objectivity without involving the police.

You can:

• Read support tickets and forum posts
• Interview developers, with a focus on problems, not products
• ​Review your analytics for signals

If you struggle to see it with fresh eyes, sometimes it can help to call an outside party.

​Get in touch with our team to see how we can help.