I’ve been setting aside time to browse through and explore tagged projects on Github each week, learning about what is new and trending out there on the Githubz. It is a great way to explore what is being built, and what is getting traction with users. You have to wade through a lot of useless stuff, but when I come across the gems it is always worth it. I’ve been providing guidance to all my customers that they should be publishing their projects to Github, as well as tagging them coherently, so that they come up as part of tagged searches via the Github website, and the API (I do a lot of discovery via the API).
When I am browsing API projects on Github I usually have a couple of orgs and users I tend to peek in on, and my friend Mike Ralphson (@PermittedSoc) is always one. Except, I usually don’t have to remember to peek in on Mike’s work, because he is really good at tagging his work, and building interesting projects, so his stuff is usually coming up as I’m browsing tags. He is the first repository I’ve come across that is organizing OpenAPI 3.0 tooling, and on his project he has some great advice for project owners: “Why not make your project discoverable by using the topic openapi3 on GitHub and using the hashtag #openapi3 on social media?” « Great advice Mike!!
As I said, I regularly monitor Github tags, and I also monitor a variety of hashtags on Twitter for API chatter. If you aren’t tagging your projects, and Tweeting them out with appropriate hashtags, the likelihood they are going to be found decreases pretty significantly. This is how Mike will find your OpenAPI 3.0 tooling for inclusion in his catalog, and it is how I will find your project for inclusion in stories via API Evangelist. It’s a pretty basic thing, but it is one that I know many of you are overlooking because you are down in the weeds working on your project, and even when you come up for air, you probably aren’t always thinking about self-promotion (you’re not a narcissist like me, or are you?)
Twitter #hashtags has long been a discovery mechanism on social media, but the tagging on Github is quickly picking up steam when it comes to coding project discovery. Also, with the myriad of ways in which Github repos are being used beyond code, Github tagging makes it a discovery tool in general. When you consider how API providers are publishing their API portals, documentation, SDKs, definitions, schema, guides, and much more, it makes Github one of the most important API discovery tools out there, moving well beyond what ProgrammableWeb or Google brings to the table. I’ll continue to turn up the volume on what is possible with Github, as it is no secret that I’m a fan. Everything I do runs on Github, from my website, to my APIs, and supporting tooling–making it a pretty critical part of what I do in the API sector.
