The fact that OpenAI has quickly adopted Temporal, a rapidly expanding AI ecosystem, and has even entered into a partnership with Crystal Palace FC shows that its business strategy is to pursue community-first innovation.
For years, tech enterprises competed against each other on the grounds of innovative features. However, the competition has changed recently. Now the winners are those who build communities.
In the recent episode of the Tech Transformed podcast, host Christina Stathopoulos, Founder of Dare to Data, is joined by Melissa Herrera, Senior Developer Advocate at Temporal, and Les Jackson, Staff Developer Advocate, to discuss the pivotal role of the community in technology.
They further explore how Temporal's open-source philosophy fosters developer engagement, the impact of community feedback on product development, and the significance of partnerships, such as with OpenAI and Crystal Palace. The conversation emphasises the importance of authentic community relationships and the future direction of Temporal, highlighting the need for continuous integration and collaboration with developers.
How Community Became a Product Strategy?
Temporal is a durable execution platform that powers mission-critical workflows. The enterprise demonstrates how developer feedback impacts long-term business growth in addition to products and services.
The company's strategy is evident in its development of new Software Development Kits (SDKs). For instance, its support for OpenAI's AI infrastructure and its establishment of partnerships beyond the traditional technology circles with Crystal Palace FC reflect a wider shift in enterprise technology.
Herrera tells Stathopoulos, "We have always been developer-focused and have always remained open source. We base our efforts on the feedback given by our developers, and all of that directly influences how we improve the product over time."
When asked about why the community has become an integral part of Temporal, Herrara says that it can be traced back to Temporal’s core philosophy from day one, when co-founders Maxim Fateev, CTO, and Samar Abbas, CEO, created the company.
“Firstly, Temporal came from an open-source software called Cadence. Right off the bat, open source was one of the main drivers and philosophy of how the founders wanted to carry on and create Temporal,” she said.
“We were always going to be developer-focused and remain open source. All software companies say that they listen to their customers, but it is the open-source businesses that go the furthest in incorporating community conversations into their product development.”
She further points out that there's no alternative to enjoying the real community, having face-to-face conversations and engaging in those honest discussions with developers about the problems they're encountering; the technology and the community go hand in hand.
When Workflows Never Crash
Durable execution shifts teams from fragile scripts to stateful workflows, lifting developer output and stabilizing AI agents at scale.
Les Jackson, Temporal's Staff Developer Advocate, adds to the discussion that the community goes beyond events. He talks about Temporal’s "Constellation" programme in which independent developer advocates help to shape new features before they are released. The initiative recognises and supports engineers who've shaped Temporal’s ecosystem through code, talks, articles, and community support.
A detailed piece of feedback given by a member of the community on the unofficial SDK platform, Clojure, was subsequently used as the template for the way future product feedback would be collected.
"It's not merely a show of support," Jackson says, “because the changes have been accepted and incorporated into the product.” The best proof of this comes from customers who are at the top level of AI infrastructure.
From OpenAI to Enterprise AI Scale
Stathopoulos asked about the relevance of OpenAI to how teams actually use Temporal in production and what changed for the Tech Giant once they adopted Temporal.
“We have integrations with OpenAI that allow developers who are already building with them as well as developers in the community who might also be using OpenAI and Temporal,” Herrara says.
From OpenAI’s end, how they built and scaled the organisation can be traced back to when they began deploying Temporal’s integrations. Herrara explains that when they began integrating Temporal’s product into their workflow in early 2025, their usage had increased by 60 times in just under a year.
Temporal is a “self-hosted open-source tool,” handling these enterprise-scale problems. Temporal manges OpenAI scale problems such as developer friction and non-deterministic issues they’ve been experiencing with building agentic workflows or vibe coding.
She adds that Temporal gave the AI giant structure, along with providing durability and reliability they needed to handle their problems at scale.
Inside Durable Execution for AI
Durable execution creates a reliability layer for LLM workflows, keeping long-running agents alive through outages, rate limits and crashes.
“We were able to expand from not only just one use case, but different use cases across the company and growing, hopefully. We were able to kind of translate that into how developers, non-OpenAI developers, non-OpenAI people who are not directly working in the enterprise, to use both our products together and see how that works together.”
Also Watch: Why Are Companies Struggling to Integrate AI Models into Business Workflows?
Why Build Communities Beyond Technology
Community is not confined to developers. Temporal has been its agreement to sponsor Crystal Palace, a Premier League club in England. Although this arrangement will enhance the brand's visibility, Jackson tells Stathopoulos that the true value is to be found somewhere else.
What was really interesting was the fact that it goes beyond that kind of surface-level transactional activity, he says, since it is in fact a partnership between equals.
The partnership involves organising developer meetups at Selhurst Park where the club is based. It also includes educational activities which support young people who are interested in technology through the club's community programmes.
“The interesting thing in some of the workshops with Temporal and Crystal Palace was the fact that one's a tech company based in the US, one is an English football club,” Jackson says. “You'd think there'd be absolutely no synergy between the people in the room. Couldn't be more wrong. The cultures of these two organisations are incredibly similar.”
Both institutions serve their communities in a similar way. While Temporal is passionate about the developer community and Crystal Palace is the heart of South London serving their fans, there are lots of synergies between them,
“It's not transactional but a partnership of equals going forward.”
The principle of community does not change regardless of whether one is dealing with enterprise customers, open-source contributors or football fans who are discovering software engineering.
Herrera says that the first priority is Temporal’s developers; “we listen to them and never treat their input lightly as we keep on improving and building up what's next for Temporal.”
Managing Risk in Autonomous AI
Non-deterministic AI agents strain legacy app patterns; durable execution offers traceability, uptime and governance for mission-critical use.
In today's AI market, which is more and more characterised by speed, Temporal believes technology on its own is no longer enough. Enterprises are advised to invest in their community since that’s the village that will support them, and the enterprise in turn supports its village.
Takeaways
- Community is a central part of Temporal's growth.
- Temporal's philosophy is rooted in open-source software.
- In-person community interactions are invaluable for developers.
- Feedback from the community directly shapes product direction.
- OpenAI's adoption of Temporal led to significant scaling.
- Partnerships should focus on community engagement, not just transactions.
- Temporal's collaboration with Crystal Palace merges tech and sports communities.
- Investing in community fosters trust and collaboration.
- Continuous integration with developer tools is essential for success.
- Authentic community relationships drive technology innovation.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Tech Transformed Podcast
02:45 The Importance of Community in Technology
05:13 Feedback from Developers: Shaping Product Direction
07:51 OpenAI's Adoption of Temporal: A Case Study
10:02 Unique Partnerships: Temporal and Crystal Palace
15:12 Looking Ahead: Future of Temporal and Community Engagement
19:38 Final Thoughts: Investing in Community
For further information on durable execution, open-source software, SDK, and Temporal's partnerships and collaborations, visit temporal.io.
Temporal is changing how modern software is built by guaranteeing the execution of complex, long-running workflows, even in the presence of system failures. This allows developers to focus entirely on writing business logic without dealing with infrastructure complexities. Thousands of leading enterprises such as Snap, Netflix, Hashicorp, Box, Datadog, and many others use Temporal to eliminate the complexity of distributed systems and ensure applications run reliably at scale. Temporal also powers AI initiatives across industries, from foundational projects at major AI labs and chip makers to AI modernization projects at Fortune 500 companies.
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