One of the things that has made the API space so rich over the last fifteen years has been the discussion, collaboration, and even disagreement that has occurred between people. There used to be more meetups and conferences dedicated to APIs, and most of these were in person. Things shifted since Covid, but this engagement amongst veterans and new entrants into the world of APIs has slowly diminished over the years, but I am hopeful it is making a comeback. API Days and other conferences are keeping up in-person, but shifts in social media and the hype around AI has thrown a wet blanket on the online portion of what is needed.
Talking about and telling stories of APIs is why all of this matters. APIs don’t matter. API portals, documentation, mocking, testing, security—none of these things matter. They are purely by-products of the human aspects of doing business. The only reason APIs are a thing is because they are an interface over HTTP—which means, the point in which two people have to connect and interface. Sure, if you focus on just technology it is a system to system interface, but if you at all are aware of how the world works, you realize it is an interface between two departments, two companies, or two other entities that are made up of humans doing human things and caring about whatever those humans deem a priority. None of this was a problem when you kept technology in the basement and fed pizza to Doug and Bill who maintained it, but now that we are having to interface with other people—-it has become more of a problem in this century.
The collaboration, discussion, and yes, even disagreement in the API space over the last fifteen years has significantly contributed to any forward motion that has been made. Sadly, the majority of discussion is venture-backed startup funded and comes and goes with each cycle. We need more of that, but we also need a lot more open-source funded, and community-driven conversations to help us all make sense of what is happening and where things are going. This is one of the things we are losing with everyone moving to the AI prompt. You don’t get the people talking, socializing, and working things out together in the open within the enterprise, and on the web. This is the work API Evangelist is focused on stimulating. API Evangelist is not interested in selling you on the right way of doing APIs, it is just about getting you to discuss what the right way for this moment, this project, and for this group of people, whoever they might be.
While blogs, social media, chat, videos, and other technologies can help facilitate these discussions we still need people with expertise and opinions willing to step up and do the work. I am looking at the Bruno Pedros, Matthew Reinbolds, Erik Wildes, Mike Amundsens, Matt Maclartys, Bill Doerrfeld, Phil Sturgeons, Lorna Mitchells, Chris Woods, Fran Mendezes, Lukasz Gornickis, Sue Smiths, Dave Biesacks, and many, many more people who have and still tell stories about APIs. You are needed. We need more of you. We’ve lost Lorinda Brandon, and other women from the space over the years, when we need more of them. We need all you blogging and sharing your stories on social media, and demonstrating how we do all of this via GitHub, Postman, and other solutions that are baked into our industry. We need more collaboration and discussion like we saw at API Days and saw last week at Tyk’s LEAP 2.0 conference. We need your thoughts and opinons even if I don’t agree with them, and we need you responding and showcasing my ideas even if you don’t agree with them.
You see all of this in action when you see Bill Doerrfeld quote me in their storytelling, and me referencing their coverage of UK banking standards and other stories in my stories, newsletter, and via social media. You see this in action when Bruno disagrees with something I said and makes a better argument via his newsletter. You can tune into a discussion with Ambassador and me this week about what can be lost when we generate SDKs using AI on API Evangelist conversations. You can see this in action when I actively share links to Matthew Reinbold and James Higgenbotham newsletters to help people learn about the space. I rarely agree with Matthew’s views and often are at the other end of the spectrum from James, but I am thankful both of them are present telling stories in space. I consider their views of APIs to be too lofty and top down, ignoring a lot of the reality on the ground, but their work helps define my work. And this is important to how all of these things work, and reflects how API operations and governance should work inside and outside the enterprise. It isn’t APIs, it is about all of us talking about APIs.
