Weekly API Evangelist Governance (Guidance)
Let’s give a big Monday shout out to our SDK partner APIMATIC. API Evangelist storytelling occurs because of APIMATIC, and I am thankful to have their support for this ride!
The week began as normal is a story about how OpenAPI aligns your API code with your API gateway configuration, as well as embracing rather than overcoming team boundaries, answering two questions from customers. However, nothing else was written this week due to API Days being in town, and the tractor beam of preparing for and recovering from the event—doing things in-person takes work!
API Days opened up with Mark O’Neill from Gartner talking about MCP, and I followed him my fundamentals of API governance. I kept beating the drum about the API governance being about schema, APIs, operations, governance, changes, and evangelism. There is a lot packed into my keynote I break a lot of rules with the density of the bullets on each slide, but I don’t think this moment needs conformity and requires a breaking of the norms.
It was good to see some familiar faces, and get some hugs from people I haven’t seen in a while. It took a lot of energy to get up on stage, as well as to shake all of the hands and talk with folks for two days. I am definitely not used to this level of engagement anymore, but thankful the event provided an opportunity to be present without actually having to travel, allowing me to walk a few blocks to midtown and be immersed in the API space.
MCP and AI dominated the show. I did two executive lunches, and executive dinner, and talk to a number of enterprise API producers. The conversations around MCP and AI can be summed up as enterprise API producers expressing their skepticism about the cost, quality, and usefulness of AI in general, and API service providers being very focused on pushing MCP as part of their offering-—with the event brokering the discussion between the two.
I had about ten separate people apologize to me for their marketing and focus on artificial intelligence and MCP, expressing it was the language they needed to speak to participating the current market, keep their investors happy, and speak to what is being demanded of them from multiple dimensions. It really reveals how much power the current power players and investors have over the narrative, and their ability to demand everyone stay on message.
While there were a handful of compelling products talked about, most conversations steered towards MCP, with other discussions being focused just on catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a while. I am thankful for the event coming around to NYC, as I don’t travel these days. I was thankful for the hugs I had from old friends and the chance to talk face to face with people I knew, and meet a few new people—but overall the event left me in the same state of concern for the world of tech and the API economy as I had going in.
If you need API Evangelist to help out with API governance please let us know how we can help. And thank you again to APIMATIC for their continued support. If you are interested in sponsoring our work and site please review out sponsorship package, and drop me an email today.