API Discovery In The Real World Is Complicated

Keynote: Friday, September 28th

How do you find APIs? How do APIs find you? How do your APIs find consumers? How do your APIs find other APIs? API discovery in the real world is complicated. There are plenty of easy solutions that work in our heads, on paper, and in academia, but there are few that work at scale across the ever expanding API landscape.

I would like to share my API discovery journey over the eight years as the API Evangelist with you, and talk a little bit about where I feel things might be headed, sharing some ideas about what we can do to make our APIs more discoverable, integratable, and ready for use. There are no easy answers when it comes to API discovery, but with a little awareness about the technical, business, and political motivations that exist across the landscape, we can keep from drowning in the very messy world of APIs we've already set into motion.

Kin Lane is the API Evangelist. Not in the sense that he is evangelizing any single API platform—it is about evangelizing all APIs to a wider business audience, moving the conversation outside the technology echo chamber. Paying attention to not just the technical, but also the business and politics of the web API movement, sharing everything he learns on his blog at apievangelist.com.