Platform growth, community strategy, and commercialisation for Victoria's $37M Digital Twin program.

The situation
Victoria's Digital Twin program — a $37M government spatial data platform — had strong technical foundations but limited adoption. When I joined, the platform had around 7,000 monthly active users, no structured community, and no clear path to commercial sustainability. There was no onboarding program, no engagement rhythm, and no mechanism for users to connect with each other or feed insight back into the product.

My role
I was brought in as Senior Advisor (Marketing and Communications) as a Product Manager for Growth and Engagement, responsible for platform adoption, stakeholder community, commercialisation strategy, and multi-agency engagement across Victorian government and industry. I had no line authority over any of the contributing departments or agencies. Everything I delivered, I delivered through influence, relationships, and a clear plan.

What I did
I built a multi-channel engagement and onboarding program from the ground up. I founded the Smartscape community — a cross-government and industry reference group — and established a quarterly forum and showcase program to create a regular rhythm of connection and knowledge sharing. This quickly grew the MAU to 14,000. I developed self-service resources, video tutorials, and train-the-trainer materials to reduce support dependency and help users get value from the platform faster.

I led CRM strategy, pricing reviews, and the development of a cost-recovery business case. I coordinated across 42 government agencies and all 79 Victorian local government areas — as well as interstate, federal, and private sector stakeholders — through structured stakeholder management without formal authority over any of them.

I used low-cost research methods throughout — stakeholder workshops, surveys, platform analytics, support request analysis, and YouTube engagement data — to inform product direction and give the team confident, evidence-based decisions to work from.

What it delivered
Over an 18-month period, the platform grew from 7,000 to 80,000+ monthly active users—representing over 1,000% total growth and a 28% increase in monthly sessions. During this hyper-growth phase, optimized self-service UX reduced onboarding and support demand by 40%, while priority programme adoption increased by 300%. Smartscape reached 2,500+ registrants — all 79 Victorian LGAs, 42+ agencies, and 600+ private enterprise members across APAC. Nominated for the Workforce Development and Inclusion Award, Geospatial Council of Australia, 2023.