Driving Platform Adoption: Community Is Your Value

If you want developers to actually use your platform, you’ve got to give them more than APIs and automation. You need a community. In the third piece in our platform marketing series, Rita and I look at how the most successful platform teams invest in support forums, internal events, and actual human beings whose job is to make developers feel connected, heard, and empowered.

Support channels should be more than a ticketing system - they should feel like a Slack room full of friendly coworkers. Regular speaker series and internal conferences help developers see what’s possible, swap war stories, and stay excited about using the platform. Mercedes-Benz and others have found that when you treat community management like a core feature, it pays off in adoption and trust.

We also talk about platform advocates - full-time people who listen to developers, answer questions, and carry feedback upstream. These folks are your field reps, therapists, and salespeople rolled into one. Bottom line: community isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s part of the product. Treat it like infrastructure, and it’ll return the favor.

Check the full article for more.

Wastebook

• Diegesis.

• The levels of confidence in having figured out the mysteries of life that the 20 something males in first class have is amazing.

• “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.” Dorothy Parker.

• “Happens to be dead.” @bruces caption.

• “Now, thanks to the internet, you can become a psychologist without even taking the train!” Here.

• “This is a useful way to think: everything is already in motion, we just need to try to steer.” // I suspect you have to couple this with: you actually need to do less than you think to matter. On Ease.

• Dateline: Glasgow - black pudding breakfast roll.

• As a whole, the Manchester airport is buck-wild. Like if you threw DFW into the sky, and used duct-tape and zip-ties to connected where everything feel to earth. But Terminal 2, recently freshened up, is real nice-like.

• You’ve achieved Delta 369 status; divorce fees not included.

• “Were you short on deodorant this morning?” “DAAAD, stop it!” // A minor moment in the confederacy of parents.

Conferences

It's about 30 days until SpringOne. If you work on enterprises apps, there's a good chance you work with Spring. At SpringOne, you can learn and catch-up on the latest in Spring, including Spring AI. Register for it and come get your brain filled up with good stuff.

And, also:

SpringOne, Las Vegas, August 25th to 28th. Explore 2025 US, Las Vegas, August 25th to 28th. Cloud Foundry Day EU, Frankfurt, October 7th, 2025. SREDay London, speaking, September 18th and 19th. Civo Navigate London, speaking, September 30th, London. AI for the Rest of Us, speaking, October 15th to 16th, London. SREDay Amsterdam, November 7th.

Logoff

Suggested outro for the weekend. As one commenter said, “For those about to chill, we salute you.”