Shannon Bradshaw, SVP, Viam: Scaling Robotics Adoption Through Developer Education.

Robotics adoption is increasing, and the talent pool building robotics applications is changing: the ever-curious and experimental software engineer is joining the mix! Recognizing this shift, Viam has launched Viam Education, an initiative led by Shannon Bradshaw, SVP of Product and Education, to lower the barriers to robotics development and equip software engineers with the skills to build real-world robotics applications, even without prior robotics experience. Shannon brings extensive experience in developer education, having built education programs at MongoDB and Cockroach Labs that delivered training and certification to millions of engineers. He also served as an Education Partner at Unusual Ventures. Now, at Viam, he is applying that experience to robotics. In this episode of Humans Who Build, we learn: • Education as a product growth lever: Lessons from MongoDB, Cockroach Labs, and Viam on integrating education into product strategy, from start to scale. • Viam 101 and the evolving robotics talent pool: Making robotics accessible to software developers without prior robotics experience. • From prototype to scale: Managing larger robot fleets and building the right infrastructure early. • Productization and systems integrators: Reducing customization and lessons from Viam's partnership with Tech Mahindra. For those of you not familiar with Viam's work: Viam, founded by MongoDB co-founder Eliot Horowitz, is a robotics software platform that enables developers and companies to build, deploy, and manage robotic applications without developing the underlying infrastructure from scratch. At Protean, we're interested in understanding how technology companies move beyond successful prototypes to achieve repeatable adoption and growth. Shannon's experience offers an interesting perspective on how education can help expand the ecosystem of developers and companies building on a technology platform.