I got back last night from France, where I spent the week at the #APIDays conference, billed as the first international event on APIs in Europe. The two day event was organized by faberNovel, who helps large organizations think and act like startups, and byWebShell, who enables developers to easily make advanced web and mobile applications based on APIs
After some scheduling shuffling due to speaker cancellations API Days asked me if I’d do three talks on APIs, instead of just my one--resulting in these three presentations:
- Building Blocks (Bricks) For Your Developer Portal
- The Secret to a Successful API is Internal
- Business Models for Your API as a Start-Up
While the building blocks presentation is my usual material (but needs to be told over and over to new audiences), the other two talks represents entirely new work based upon other stories and research I’ve done in the past.
I learned a lot while at API Days. It was about 200 people, discussing APIs over the course of two days. I was really impressed with the passion everyone had for APIs and the genuine interest in understand the essence of the web API movement--discussing ideas, philosophies and approach rather than just the technology of APIs.
I feel an awakening occurring in Europe right now in regards to APIs. My Twitter has lit up in the past three months with new European based followers focusing on APIs, and flood of new requests for discussions and information about APIs.
With a very healthy stance on transparency, privacy and data ownership I think the EU has an excellent opportunity to become a major player in the API economy, and I predict good things to come out of not just France, but other EU countries in 2013.
I look forward to getting back soon, and talking APIs!
