About Me

Hi! I'm David Neal. I am a family man, geek, musician, illustrator, international speaker, software developer, and author living in North Georgia. I've been in Developer Relations roles for more than a decade. My mission is to help folks in technology be more awesome! I am currently a Senior Developer Advocate for MongoDB. My past DevRel experiences include Plaid, Slack, Asana, and Okta, among others. Before my DevRel journey, I spent many years building high-performance, scalable web applications. I run on a high-octane mixture of caffeine and JavaScript, and I'm entirely made of bacon 🥓 😉.

Along the way, I've learned that leadership includes creating clarity, building trust, and helping people do their best work. I've led teams, mentored developers, guided technical strategy, and partnered across organizations to make good things happen.

• Contact me at david@reverentgeek.com.
• Follow my silly shenanigans on:
  • Bluesky @reverentgeek.com
  • X/Twitter @reverentgeek
  • Mastodon @reverentgeek@techhub.social
  • Threads @reverentgeek
• Check out my developer portfolio of tutorials, talks, keynotes, open-source, and podcasts.
• Cruise my code on GitHub.
• Dig my drawings in my portfolio and on Instagram.
• Watch my videos on YouTube.
• Get down to business on LinkedIn.
• Get my resume.
• Upcoming and past speaking engagements.
• View my slides on SpeakerDeck.
• List of presentation and workshop abstracts.
• Bio and Headshots.

Got Node.js? Try this at your command line: npx reverentgeek

Who Am I? The Longer Answer

I punch bears* and help folks be more awesome.

I teach, motivate, entertain, and lead people to work smarter, build fantastic solutions, and become indispensable members of their teams and communities.

My leadership style is practical and people-first. I believe people want to do their best work. I like creating clarity, removing friction, mentoring folks through hard problems, and empowering people to do work they can be proud of.

I have more than 20 years of developer and IT experience. Most of that experience has been in startups and smaller companies where I've "worn many different hats," from engineer to Chief Geek.

I've been very active in the developer community since 2010, speaking and volunteering my time at numerous meet-ups, conferences, and events.

I love helping developers solve problems, and I love helping teams create better experiences for those developers.

On the developer experience side, I've:

• Built SDKs and reference applications for numerous programming languages
• Published reference documentation, guides, and tutorials
• Produced video tutorials and live streams
• Conducted workshops
• Pushed for improvements on customers' behalf
• Contributed to production APIs and services
• Built custom integrations and automation tools
• Led professional service engagements
• Evangelized platforms internally and externally

On the leadership side, I've:

• Mentored developers, advocates, and cross-functional teammates
• Helped shape technical strategy for developer-facing projects
• Helped teams translate customer pain into product and platform improvements
• Created clarity across engineering, product, marketing, and community efforts
• Built trust with developers, customers, partners, and internal teams

I'm drawn to organizations that care about community impact and want developer advocacy to be more than product promotion.

What People Say

Randall Degges, who led Developer Advocacy at Okta, wrote the following endorsement.

David is one of the kindest, most empathetic, and all-around best people I've ever met or worked with.

He's an incredibly talented developer, teammate, and friend -- and an absolute expert when it comes to building and growing developer communities. David is always calm, cool, and relaxed, and always knows exactly what to do to help solve problems.

I can't tell you how fantastic it has been working with David. We worked together to solve complex problems: both technical and business-related, and David was always an absolute champion at getting things done.

I don't know what else I can say except that I vouch for David 100% in whatever it is he wants to do. The guy is an absolute beast, and no matter what he does I'm sure he'll be incredible at it. It's not every day you run into someone like David, and I'm so thankful to have gotten to know and work with him!

Stephen Franklin, then CIO of LeanKit, wrote the following endorsement.

David is a true gem of the technology industry. I am inspired by his commitment to getting out on the speaking trail and spreading his wisdom and knowledge. And I know that he has inspired many, many others in the industry as well.

David is so talented in so many ways. As a technologist, he cranks the dial to 11. He can do it all: any layer of the stack, any development technology, any platform. And if he currently can't do it, give him a few hours and he'll be fully up to speed. He is a great team member, mentor and developer. It's just amazing what he makes 1s and 0s do.

Not only that, he is an amazing speaker and communicator. His ability to empathize and connect with the audience is astonishing and why he is always one of the most popular speakers wherever he goes.

Did I mention that he is an amazing artist and is changing the way people are building their presentations?

Oh yeah, an incredible musician too. And the list goes on.

But what I'll cherish most of all is getting to know David personally. He is kind, caring, humble, funny, empathetic and wholeheartedly committed to his faith, family, friends and his craft. He is one of those people that makes you a better person just knowing him.

Thank you David for letting me be a small part of your life.

*Metaphorically speaking. I enjoy being courageous, tackling hard problems, being entrepreneurial, and fighting for truth, justice, and the Developer Way.