Welcome to our Discover Roundup, where we highlight communities doing creative and inspiring things with Discourse.
This month, we’re focusing on a particular kind of community: knowledge bases built on ongoing conversation. These communities prove that when you give people the right structure and tools, shared knowledge compounds.
This is a topic that’s particularly close to my heart. I’m a long-time community manager specializing in technical support forums for Autodesk CAD software, with nearly 30 years of experience serving the French-speaking community. Over the years, I’ve created and managed multiple forums, using platforms ranging from the oldest to the most modern—my latest site runs on Discourse. I won’t go into the details of this site, which combines a forum and a blog in a fairly classic way. Instead, I want to focus on a very specific point: the role of artificial intelligence in assisting software users, particularly in the Autodesk CAD field (as an example, but can be applied to any software).
I’m not referring to AI as it’s commonly used internally—like on platforms such as Meta—to streamline forum management or enhance user experience. My focus is on a practical application I developed using Google AI Studio and Gemini: a troubleshooting assistant for AutoCAD users, accessible via a simple web page.
This leads me to a pressing question that keeps me up at night: Could tools like this—and others tailored for specific needs—spell the end for traditional forums like Discourse? The initial trials of my assistant have been (very) successful, and I’m not just talking about the public AI tools that have gained popularity over the past few years. I’m referring to custom-built solutions like the one I’ve created. Might users of technical support forums, who have long relied on platforms like Discourse, increasingly turn to these specialized AI assistants instead?
The question remains unanswered for now, but it raises a critical issue: Could AI eventually make the community-driven support spaces I’ve helped build for decades obsolete?
I don’t think it will be one or the other. There are benefits to both and I’m optimistic that companies will continue to see the benefits of community-driven support forums even as they bring on AI agents to support their users.