Weekly API Governance (Guidance)
My name is Kin Lane—I am that API Evangelist guy who has been paying attention to the technology, business, policies, and people of APIs since 2010.
The frame rate of the holidays is the best frame rate. Everything moves at a different rate of being. I am heads down coding with all of my storytelling and conversations focused on the big picture of what I have done for the last fifteen years, and what I think is important for me to be doing for the next fifteen years. I find the frame rate of the holidays makes for meaningful contemplation of the past, present, and the future.
How Did I Get Here?
All of my experiences performing as the API Evangelist colors where I am today and inform why I do what I do, and how I see the world closing in around us. I feel it is extremely important for us to think deeply about our past right now because there are so many forces working against our expertise, our experience, and being able to have any sort of constructive conversations about our shared history. I needed to distill down how I got here in 10+ bullet points to help orient me as I worked on my road map.
Where Am I Going?
What enterprise are needing when it comes to APIs in this moment is intertwined with where I am headed as part of my API Evangelist journey. I want my storytelling, products, and services to speak to the API sprawl that is the reality within any enterprise today, and provide relevant stories, videos, and usable artifacts that can help people find their way in the chaos. I am looking to provide assistance to both business and engineering stakeholders, while avoiding as much of the politics and ideology as I possibly can.
Adjusting My Vision
With some deep thought on how I got here and where I am going out of the way, I stamped my 2025 vision for API Evangelist on the blog. It is a vision that is aligned with how I will advise and help enterprise govern their API operations. This vision for API governance is the framework of an API Evangelist product I will make available in Q1 2025. When I left Bloomberg, my first response was I should write a book on API governance based upon what I just stood up, but now I feel like a downloadable executable product is the solution.
Enterprise Reality with Claire
Informing my strategy and storytelling this week was a conversation with Claire Barrett about the business realities of enterprise API operations. Claire has her finger on the pulse of something we’ll see continue to play out new and interesting ways in 2025 as the bill for doing APIs, but more painfully, AI comes due. I am learning a lot from talking to Claire about how enterprise folks see (or don’t) see APIs, and how speaking in pure business terms when it comes to APIs is going to play a big role in moving anyting forward in coming years.
OpenAPI Overlays with Lorna
Continuing my education, but also informing and shaping my vision was a conversation I had with Lorna Mitchell this week about OpenAPI extensions and it’s intersection with API experience. Lorna has deep knowledge of the OpenAPI specification, the overlays specification, and extensions of the specification, but more importantly the intersection of all of this with real world API experiences—which is really where all of this begins to really matter.
Human Experiences
An important theme in my vision for API governance is focused on the humans, and making sure we are informing, engaging, and guiding the humans involved in producing and consuming APIs. The lion share of my storytelling in 2025 will be focused on the experience of people throughout business operations while producing and consuming APIs. I will still be continuing to work on, evolve, connect the dots between this business storytelling and the technical details, but the business and human details are where things are most deficient in my work.
Easing Into The New Year
It is likely that I will go silent on the blog and this newsletter until 2025. I will still be writing stories, but there really is no reason to be publishing them right now. It isn’t where my head is at, and likely isn’t where your head is at. Go spend time with your family and friends, and read those books you’ve bought earlier in the year. Work on that side project—-if that is what makes you happy. I’ll be back in 2025, and we’ll tackle the work on the table in the New Year.
Happy Holidays and New Year!
