I was just talking with my friend Oliver Seiler (@0seiler) in New Zealand via email. Oliver is great at keeping me in tune with API related stories out of New Zealand. I was making sure he knew how much I appreciate people like him sending me regular updates, and that it is what makes API Evangelist go around—to which he replied, reminding of how important the work we are doing here in the US API space.
Oliver told me what I hear a lot, "We still need to sell our story every single day and you wouldn't believe how much anything that comes from particularly you and 18F, but also ProgrammableWeb and GDS in the UK matters to our work." This isn't an isolated case, I hear this a lot from people I talk to in government, enterprises, and other institutions around then globe--the stories we tell are used to make change in how they think and potentially operate. Our stories from the trenches, become the stories they use to sell APis to their bosses.
These reminders are what keeps me going after almost five years of evangelizing. The stories we are sharing about API best practices, and the challenges we face across API design, deployment, management, monetization, evangelism, discovery, and integration, are important to not just the health of the overall API space, but to each public and private sectors that APIs are touching in 2015.
The message for me here, is that we all need to keep pushing forward, but also making sure we tell the stories publicly, sharing our knowledge in real-time, because people are watching, and depending on us to help influence how things work in their businesses, institutions, and government agencies around the world. #NoPressure
