Meet Miro Engineering: Rapid prototyping with Sean Winters
The Miro Developer Platform complements Miro — the visual workspace for innovation — by empowering developers and partners to build their own apps and integrations on Miro. In this blog series, we spotlight the people of Miro Engineering, so you can get to know the faces behind the platform. Our distributed team spans the globe across 12 regional hubs and 8 time zones, including offices in Amsterdam, Austin, Tokyo, and Berlin.
In this post, we’re featuring platform architect Sean Winters, based in Amsterdam, who supports our partners with technical work streams and solutions.
Tell me more about your role and your team at Miro.
I work as a Platform Architect. This means I help customers, partners, and generally anybody who wants to extend the functionality of Miro to architect and build apps on the Miro platform. When I get time, I also help internal teams prototype future features of Miro!
What drew you to engineering as a career?
I was always a tinkerer growing up and back in the days of dial up I was fascinated by computers and the internet. Probably games were the first thing I “hacked,” but this was mostly editing text files to make buildings cheaper in city builder games, or confusing my dad on how I got top score in Minesweeper when I didn’t even know how to play. In school, I was the one who got called out of class to fix computers and AV equipment, so when it came to college I picked electrical and electronic engineering as my degree, as it seemed to be in line with what I had a knack for.
I had tried programming in my teen years but I didn’t quite get it. It was only from my work experience in my undergrad that it clicked. The interesting reason it clicked was I started using a visual programming language (called Labview) where you dropped your functions in as blocks and drew your for/while/etc loops on a visual canvas. This helped traditional coding also click and from them on I got into software development. Come to think of it, this might be why I was so attracted to Miro as I understand better when things are on a visual canvas!
In your own words, what is the Miro Developer Platform?
On many calls I have introduced myself as a specialist in Miro’s SDKs, REST APIs, and embed capabilities, and that pretty sums up the Miro Developer Platform on a technical level. However, for me, the platform really is a way to get stuff done faster.
For example, when I work with customers, usually they are trying to automate something they do manually in Miro every day. With the Developer Platform, we can take a process that involves several manual steps and with some SDK or REST API magic, transform it into a one-click process, saving customers hours each week.
When I work with partners, we’re usually trying to integrate their product into Miro, giving our mutual customers a way to use two tools they already use from one convenient place, helping them get things done faster.
When I work with internal teams, usually we’re trying to prototype some future functionality for Miro. In this case, when we develop a prototype, it allows the testing of a potential feature without having to do a huge engineering lift. It also allows the teams involved to get even earlier insights into their hypothesis and can even serve as a way of generating requirements for that future feature.
Why should developers use the Developer Platform?
I’m going to cheat a little bit and refer developers to a previous article from a developer, Vedran, who has built a few apps on top of Miro.
Vedran answered the question, “Why Miro?” and the bit that resonates with me is this:
“Imagine building an iPhone app during the launch of the App Store. That’s the opportunity you have today with Miro.”
I completely agree with this. Every big thing is a small thing at first, and building something for Miro could be a stepping stone to a full blown company in the future.
One thing I would add is that if you’re a developer thinking of starting your own side business, instead of building your own product from scratch, you could test the waters first by building on a SaaS platform. I think this comes with a few advantages:
- Time to value is shorter and the cost is lower for platform apps.
- There is built-in scalability and security.
- You get access to millions of users.
What kind of partners do you work with who have built apps on top of Miro?
There are few types of partners. We call some technology partners. These would be partners who want to integrate Miro into their products and vice versa. Then there are solution partners who are external developer agencies tasked with creating integrations on behalf of Miro for more strategic integrations. Technology partners generally do the building themselves with my enablement, whereas solution partners would work more closely with us and we’d have more influence over the design and development of their apps.
How do you help these partners succeed?
In general. I will jump on a call with the PM and developers from the partner, I listen to their use case and what they are trying to achieve. Then, using my previous experience with the platform, I can combine my expertise of the Miro side with their expertise of their product and generally we can hash out a high-level architecture within a 60 minute call. From there we usually correspond over email, and the partner raises any issues they are running into while building the integration. If we need to go real-time again, then I’m always happy to jump back on a call with the partner and am always excited to see a demo of the progress made.
Can you describe an example of an app you’ve helped build (without compromising on privacy, of course)?
One project that I can share is something we did in conjunction with AWS. AWS has a “Well Architected Review” tool built into AWS where you can go through a questionnaire and determine whether your SaaS tool conforms to best practices. When you finish the review you are given actions that are high and medium priority, and generally it’s a cross-functional effort to correct these.
I sat down with the AWS team (Egor, Anton, and Dmitry) for three days and we created a prototype for an app that would take the actions that came out of a well-architected review and put them in a Miro board, where cross-functional teams could collaborate together and mitigate the actions that come out of the review. The AWS team took this prototype and used it as the basis for this nicely engineered app sample.
What’s another fun project you’ve worked on in your role?
I really enjoy working on cutting edge technology. Last year I was asked to create a prototype of what could be possible with Open AI and Miro. I created a couple of proof of concepts for text generation and image generation on a Miro board and shared them internally. Probably about a week later the hype with ChatGPT started kicking off, and right away we had some demos to reference. I then got to contribute to the initial team creating Miro AI.
How can partners get started building a private app, too?
Create a free Miro account and then create a development team.
The great thing about the Miro Developer Platform is that you can get started for free and use our documentation and app samples to get started. If you’re familiar with frontend programming, you could get a very quick prototype up and running within an afternoon. If you run into trouble, you can reach out to our Developer Relations team on Discord.
We’ll continue to feature Miro Engineering employees on our blog, so you can get a glimpse into their roles and the impact they have on the Developer Platform. Be sure to follow us to get reminders in your inbox when we post about engineering culture, technology issues, and product developments.
