Kin Lane, who is also known as the API Evangelist augments your API platform with Git-based API governance services that employ common open-source API specifications that help map and standardize the sprawling landscape of APIs that exist across your average enterprise. The API Evangelist approach to API governance has evolved over the last fifteen years of working with startups, enterprises, and government agencies to inventory the HTTP API assets being made available internally, and externally to 3rd party developers.
Kin’s career spans 30+ years, with the last 15 dedicated to managing the API lifecycle and governance as the API Evangelist, with the following notable work during his time as the API Evangelist:
- Started API Evangelist to study the technology, business, and politics of APIs in 2010
- Presidential Innovation Fellow inventorying APIs with the Obama Administration in 2013
- Worked with HHS, CMS, DIC, Census, Ed, VA, GSA, and other federal agencies 2014 to 2020
- Worked with the European Commission on government API standards and policies in 2017
- Leading API standards, lifecycle, and governance for Postman API platform 2019 to 2023
- Stood up API lifecycle and governance for the Bloomberg API platform team 2023 to 2024
The API Evangelist approach to API governance focuses on bringing more visibility to the APIs that exist behind our enterprise applications and integrations, defining the landscape of APIs using open-source specifications that can be put to work in a variety of commercial and open-source services and tools–helping make the delivery of a more effective and frictionless developer experience with the following services.
- API Inventory - Inventorying existing APIs using open-source API specifications.
- Source of Truth - Publishing API inventory to Git repositories for automation.
- Governance Rules - Produce rules to automate governance across all APIs.
- Governance Policies - Produce policies to align governance with product teams.
- API Reviews - Review existing and new APIs using defined policies and rules.
- Developer Experience - Provide the API artifacts that generate docs, mocks, and SDKs.
API governance is about defining and standardizing the HTTP APIs that power the enterprise landscape. According to Akamai, 83% of web traffic are API calls—reflecting how the average enterprise conducts business today. This is where you need to be investing in API governance—defining and standardizing existing HTTP APIs, but also defining the rules and policies that help “govern” the velocity of the modern enterprise via new APIs introduced tomorrow. API standardization makes it easier to deliver documentation, mock servers and sandboxes, software development kits in a variety of programming languages, as well as quality, performance, and security tests that will govern the overall velocity of any enterprise organization today.
API Evangelist focuses on API governance that aligns product and engineering using open-source API specifications OpenAPI, JSON Schema, APIs.json, and Spectral maintained via existing Git infrastructure and then used to generate documentation, mock servers, SDKs, tests, and other downstream elements using source control and CI/CD pipelines. This approach to API governance emphasizes open-source specifications and a Git-Ops approach to ensure interoperability with existing infrastructure and processes, while also leveraging a mix of commercial and open-source services and tooling that all use these open-source API specifications as an input and output—ensuring you are building out your own enterprise API platform and plugging (and unplugging) just the right mix services and tooling you need to get the job you need done at enterprise scale and grade.
