Weekly API Evangelist Governance (Guidance)
Let’s give a big Monday shout out to our documentation partner Theneo and our SDK partner APIMATIC. API Evangelist storytelling occurs because of Theneo and APIMATIC, and I am thankful to have their support for this ride!
This last week was about a continued shift towards the API consumer perspective and considering why a normal person would want to understand the traffic behind their applications. I am producing a series of tutorials for using mitmproxy to profile the APIs behind the applications we use and I want to be thinking about how your average user sees things, if they see things at all.
The use cases for artificial intelligence in API Evangelist projects are proving to not outweigh the negative impacts for me, pushing me to just say no to AI whenever possible. I continue to find myself polarized by the rhetoric that you aren’t taken seriously if you are not doing AI and believe we need more API Ops Cycles, Arazzo, and Overlays, but we have gotten MCP and A2A—aka more technosolutionism.
As I work through the politics of API governance I find that referring to API governance as common rather than centralized sets the right tone. I am working through ways to continue helping clients see that API governance rules are just a representation of what matters, and that you will need to come to terms with the reality that the divide between business and IT is an accountability sink before you can craft the API governance rules you actually need.
This week I will continue to look at APIs purely from the end-user perspective. I want to understand how APIs are powering food and grocery delivery, transportation, and other real world ways APIs shape people’s worlds on the ground. I am less interested in producing APIs these days and making sure the APIs we have in place are doing what they should be, and those who are impacted by them are more aware that APIs exist and have more control over how they applied.
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 and Theneo 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.