Hey there! Welcome to Platform Weekly. Your weekly splash of platform engineering sunscreen. Every week, we cut through the glare so you can see what actually matters (this week, we also found a very good bar).
Plus... PortCon, the AI Software Factory Summit, lands in San Francisco on November 17 and 18 with two full days on how real enterprises are running AI software factories in production, and Platform Weekly readers get an exclusive 70% off tickets here.
We knew we had to come for you
Our virtual events start at 7 pm Berlin time. For our friends in Sydney, that is 5 am.
So what do you think happens to the show-up rate for virtual attendees? For my beloved Berliners, it’s 44%. At 5 am in Sydney for our Aussie platform teams? It’s 72%. The highest of any demographic in the entire community (with Kiwis a close second;)
I first noticed in our session, of our first run of the Platform Engineering Certification. There we all are in Zoom. With a group of Australians, 4am their time, all cameras on. Ready to roll.
Australia is just 0.3% of the world’s population, but it is 3% of our community and 5% of our PlatformCon viewers. That is ten times its share of the planet.
So this week we stopped asking them to wake up for us. We came down under for them!
What did we get up to?
PlatformCon Live Day Sydney landed for the first time ever on Wednesday, and it was our best PlatformCon ever. Thank you. People flew in from Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne, Auckland and Singapore. It felt like a celebration of platform engineering in a place where a day like this had never happened.
Where do I begin with summarising such a day? Well, with some affirmation! I did a fireside chat with Rodrigo Castillo, Group CTO at Commonwealth Bank, on why CommBank is investing in platform engineering for AI. It was an awesome conversation. And it’s all well and good for me to tell you platforms are key for AI, but when massive, massive companies are proving it every day (and shouting about it!) that is the thing to really absorb.
3 quick highlights/takeaways from me:
I met Liz Fong-Jones in person for the first time to talk about going from 30 to 70 pull requests a day BUT without wrecking her systems. And while reducing cognitive load and risk too.
What is happening locally with platform teams will blow your minds. Fortescue on platform engineering in a live mine. Serko on shaping a platform engineering stream. CBA’s Brendan Hopper on swarm engineering.
ClearRoute CEO James Jarvis boiled it down perfectly. Whether you’re in LDN, SF, Singapore or Sydney. The fundamental question might be expanding from “How do we best serve developers?” to “How do we best serve agents?” but the answer hasn’t. It’s the platform.
And of course… because it was us. We finished the day with House of Kube, fireworks, and a saxophone player over Sydney bay at sunset.
We’ll soon have recordings of all these talks, and I’ll tell you - what is happening on PlatformCon stages goes beyond the borders of the hype wave.
It’s actionable, realistic ways to succeed with AI using platform engineering. I love hearing what Anthropic and Google are doing. But most of us aren’t Google or Anthropic. How is an Australian mining company delivering value with AI? What about a 100 year old bank? Those are the lessons we can all take from, and act on.
What’s next?
Something tells me this was not the last time we point a PlatformCon at Sydney, but for the other 90% of you reading, there is much more happening soon.
If you’re in the Bay Area, you need to dive into PlatformCon SF & AgenticCon - because we’re taking everything we learned this week. Putting it into action - and pushing even further in February.
Sydney, you were awesome! And as always... stay crunchy 🥐
Quick bites
Highlight of the week
The House of Kube dress code in Sydney was sunglasses and a saxophone. Salt Lake City is next week, and the theme is still under wraps. Take your best guess, then register for free to find out and come party with the community.
Upcoming webinars
Before your agents get more access, they need guardrails. Tensure’s Justin Billig and Dan Rye cover the 3 platform requirements for agentic engineering on November 4, 19:00 CET. Save your spot here.
As AI goes open source, more of the stack lands on platform teams. Vultr CMO Kevin Cochrane explains what that means on November 5. Save your spot here.
From the community
Missed a webinar? Catch up on the Platform Engineering YouTube channel.