Federated platforms: Platform adoption the Star Trek way

Most platform teams accidentally become the Borg: one collective, one stack, total assimilation. It works until they meet Species 8472, one department with its own bespoke cloud-native stack, a telepathic service mesh, and life in organizationally fluidic space. Suddenly, resistance is not just inevitable; it is justified.

In this talk, the speaker explores why the federated platform model beats the Borg approach for scaling adoption in large enterprises. Drawing from real-world experience and a questionable amount of Star Trek lore, the session covers how to set a common charter so different civilizations can work together, build "starbases" that provide self-service landing zones, decide when to invoke the Prime Directive and let mature teams operate autonomously, and define platform building blocks as versioned contracts that enable "platforms on platforms." Attendees leave with tactical patterns for turning platform enemies into allies, with no assimilation required.