As I work to rebuild my social presence via Mastodon, I am reminded of how I built API Evangelist using Twitter and my blogs between 2010 and 2020. I am very invested in API platforms these days, and API blah blah blah that will attract the attention of enterprise organizations. So I tend to tell stories about things like API collaboration, automation, and governance, and things that API producers care about. As I do the work each week to slowly build my Mastodon community for my API Evangelist presence, I am reminded that most people do not care about the producer side of things, and what really matters to business and technical readers is always about consuming APIs. Telling stories about using APIs is how I built API Evangelist in the early days, and it is how I’ll rebuild my social presence in the Fediverse.
I spend about an hour each evening casually expanding my Mastodon presence for API Evangelist. I do this by posting the name, a short description, and a URL for a wide variety of interesting APIs. I have a robust database of words, and I am perpetually exploring the edges of my dictionary when it comes to API dscovery. I have shared FEMA disaster APIs, Getty Images APIs, and the API for Spot the Boston Dynamic Robots that has been scaring the shit out of us for a while now. People like these. I like these. I find the 30-60 minutes of searching to be relaxing and compelling after a long day’s work. I like doing the work to build my social network in as many meaningful ways as I can, so finding interesting people from across every possible business vertical is rewarding for me. Interesting APIs attract interesting people, and interesting people attract interesting topics, which I can then use to search for interesting APIs. A virtuous cycle!!
Writing stories and tweeting about interesting APIs is how I built API Evangelist. It is how I will rebuild my social network on Mastodon and continue expanding on LinkedIn. I am trying to stay focused on these channels, working to be as consistent as I can in how I post stories and catalog the world of APIs I discover each evening. While there are more people everyday who discover the “joys” of being an API producer, most people will never make this journey. However, everyone will be using APIs. We are all API consumers. This is where I will find the most success when it comes to evangelizing APIs, helping shine a light on the wide spectrum of APIs that exist out there. And honestly, it is this type of research into all the different types of APIs that provides the nourishment I need to keep moving forward in my career in this API universe.
