What is an Ecosystem Architect?
My name is David Thomson, a lot of people call me "DJ". In this space I've collected a history of the various ecosystem projects where I've served as a lead technical architect, as an "ecosystem architect". Each of these projects has been a catalyzing "halo project", collectively driving revenue and market value creation measured in the multiple billions of dollars.
These projects have driven community and business development activities in many different ways and dimensions, particularly around new product development and business partnerships. The goal of any such project is lighting as many candles with as few flames as possible, and establishing win/win/win dynamics between multiple parties simultaneously.
In addition, as an active member of the Salesforce ecosystem for 15+ years, I've completed highly innovative and challenging projects on the Salesforce platform for just about every size of company in just about every industry, for accounts such as UCSF, Wayfair, Juniper Networks, Restoration Hardware, True Ventures, Disney, and many others, while also to contributing to 10+ AppExchange apps.
One of these apps, dataloader.io, which I created and led development of as an early employee at MuleSoft, became the most popular application on the AppExchange for 6+ years, and is the most used cloud data loading application of all time used by a majority of all Salesforce customers.
Through my work at UCSF and MuleSoft in close collaboration with Salesforce, I contributed very directly as a foundational technical ecosystem architect of both the Salesforce Health Cloud and the Salesforce Integration Cloud (MuleSoft). I led all technical pre-sales efforts related to Salesforce and healthcare at MuleSoft, supporting key strategic accounts such as StateFarm, Intuit, Tesla, Toyota, UCSF, UnitedHealthcare, and many others.
With the API economy fully in effect, generative AI exploding, and web3 accelerating (while still struggling to be born), my approach of leading collaborative lighthouse keystone ecosystem projects can serve as a galvanizing and catalyzing engine of technology innovation, business development, product enhancement, community engagement, and market value creation.
The last two projects described herein, Ragtag and Adopta, are the ecosystem projects I'm currently actively supporting. Please reach out to collaborate! dj@adopta.one
On a personal note, my favorite insects are caterpillars and butterflies (the vehicles of imaginal cells), and my favorite animals are elephants (go Jumbos!) and the beaver, the ultimate ecosystem architects, naturally! I also publish a new music playlist every 3-6 months of music I've had on heavy rotation.
Ecosystem Project Overview
CareWeb – A real-time collaboration tool for clinical care teams developed in partnership with UCSF, Salesforce, MuleSoft, IDEO and others
DataLoader – The most popular cloud-based data loading tool of all time, used by a majority of all Salesforce customers, driving key partnerships and platform roadmaps along the way
CloudMix – A pre-integrated suite of best-of-breed SaaS applications to accelerate adoption and implementation in partnership with Deloitte, Salesforce, MuleSoft and others
Artlery – The first art + blockchain company, before NFTs, focused on connecting rights clearances to all financial transactions alongside residual royalties and equity ownership, establishing the "Art Standard" for asset-backed currency issuance
Open Climate – A distributed, decentralized accounting system for Earth stewardship based on open standards and open source technologies, developed with an ethos of radical collaboration
Ragtag – A decentralized asset protocol, initially targeting the music industry with both synchronization rights and a new category of sampling rights, which include production techniques and software pipelines particularly to secure creators rights with generative AI models
Adopta – An ecosystem acceleration platform, which facilitates partnerships in a bottom-up tokenized fashion, utilizing the latest in DLT technologies, providing multi-stakeholder decentralized cap table management for ecosystem level collaboration