Growing up in the country, a purebred Miniature Schnauzer was a strange choice for a dog. The classic fur pattern includes a bushy beard and fluffy leg hair.

(That’s not my dog, but ​Kenji Joy on Instagram​ is worth a follow for other Schnauzer lovers)

Going for walks, my pup would run through the brambles and bushes. Then she’d bring back dozens of burrs from the weeds, each embedded in her American Kennel Club haircut. One time, it got so bad that we had to shave off the trademark beard. She looked like a completely different dog.

Decades before my Schnauzer picked up barbed tourists in the fields, a Swiss dog owner noticed the same phenomenon. He’d go on to invent Velcro from his discovery.

Accidental invention stories are everywhere, from Post-Its and Super Glue to Corn Flakes and Popsicles.

These are what Bob Ross might have called “​happy accidents​.”

My career has been a bit like this. I’m a developer who likes to share what I learned with others. From writing tutorials, I transitioned to journalism, reporting on the technology acronym of the early 2010s, APIs.

I’d track trends, make sense of new tools, and help developers understand why they mattered. At some point, I realized ​dev tool marketing should be more like tech journalism​.

And that’s when I became an accidental marketer.

For the past seven years, I’ve led a group of technical communicators who track the trends, make sense of new tools, and help developers understand why our clients’ products matter. (Sound familiar?)

We’ve recently ​looked at LLM discovery​ and continue to explore what that means for the companies we work with and the developers they want to reach.

Don’t go running off alone in the brambles and bushes. We may have ended up here by accident, but we’ve seen some of the thorniest spots along the way, and ​we can help you navigate them​.