API Resilience

If you've ever wondered how APIs change organizations, our communities and our society, look no further, this is the podcast you've been searching for. 

How we transform organizations is a complex problem. We need to explain emergence, and create the conditions that makes it much more likely for certain things to happen. Thinking that you can just import somebody else's model is, from a complexity perspective, fraught with difficulties that are hard to anticipate.

Discover together with us how APIs can help organizations to become more deliberate about their inherent complexity. Expect deep conversations with really smart guests, and discussions covering technological, sociological, and philosophical topics in the field of APIs, Platforms, Ecosystems, and complexity in general. 

Hosts are Kristof Van Tomme (CEO & Co-founder, Pronovix), and Marc Burgauer (Principal Consultant and Co-founder at Contextualise).

Intro music: Night Owl by Broke For Free, Creative Common Attribution

Michael Hibay is an API evangelist, architect and CTO at Vesti. He helps organizations to establish, evolve and mature their API strategies.

What’s the difference between an API catalogue and an affordance catalogue? What are affordances and how do they define the usability of a system? Why are affordances similar to languages?

The interview got split into 2 episodes. In this first episode, Michael argued that versionless APIs built through an affordance approach, introduce new capabilities without causing breaking changes. An affordance approach in API design also saves money by avoiding the need for new iterations and API versions.

The host is Kristof Van Tomme.

In this episode:

What specialization has to do with the evolution of organizations and why is it essential to think about companies as part of complex (digital) ecosystems?

Nick Veenhof is the CTO of Dropsolid, a Digital Experience company, offering a single platform driven by various Open Source technologies.

Tune in and learn about:

In this episode: 

What does Coca Cola’s product and marketing philosophy have to do with APIs and how can investing in homegrown API management be a bad idea?

In most organizations internal adoption and knowledge sharing is also crucial for success in addition to creating APIs. In this episode Raymond and Kristof discussed why internal advocacy and knowledge sharing has to be part of a successful digital transformation journey. They also shared why API programs should be built with the developer experience and growth potential in mind from the start.

Host: Kristof Van Tomme

In this episode:

When you are reaching out to developers, traditional marketing solutions like leadgen forms or ppc ads won’t work on their own. What is the right approach then? How to convince developers to use your products or services?

In this episode Adam DuVander (principal consultant at Every Developer) and Kristof Van Tomme (CEO at Pronovix) discussed

Host: Kristof Van Tomme

Resources:

Contents:

1:26 Adam is a returning guest, he is publishing a new book

2:15 storytelling - companies should do it more

2:44 developer marketing: manipulation vs education - is it only for developers?

4:00 developers are more sceptical - developer marketing tactics and approach can work at other audiences too

6:40 developers are typically difficult to reach out to with traditional promotional means

9:05 journalism: you have to find the point, and it is not to promote; developer relations: see personally how the team connects with developers

11:05 content can do a lot of the relation building for you

13:00 balance between marketing and devrel: have something that is not branded and try to connect it - let the halo effect work

14:00 the content can induce the natural next step: CTAs: “Sign up” or “Check the platform”

16:00 2 sales modes: 1. Establish credibility 2. Switch to sales mode when someone shows interest and ready to buy

17:21 make the step natural and don’t chase the developers away by asking too much (don’t ask for phone number, etc.)

19:00 blatant promotion is abusing trust. Attention is too expensive today

21:00 why are developers different? Why are they ahead in the process?  they naturally want to understand how things work

24:54 Product vs Services: you only need to buy this product and you can immediately achieve your goal - it is a fake promise

33:40 How to teach your colleagues -- how to bring new people into doing content

35:30 develop the same taste in your team

36:30 The title of Adam’s book: Developer Marketing Does Not Exist. You can lay this philosophy on your funnel approach! Provide authentic content that helps to convert - it provides the audience with authenticity

41:30 Shift in approach - cooperative, without competition

In this episode Mark and Kristof did a retrospective discussion on the past episodes and Mark said farewell to the listeners as he will no longer co-host the podcast.

API resilience started in 2020 June to explore how companies can become more resilient and create business value by investing in their API programs, even in such unprecedented times as the pandemia. In the past 24 episodes API team leads and experts shared their growth stories and views on how APIs will shape the future -- both in their organizations and on a more theoretical, “API philosophical” level.

Tune in and listen to Mark’s and Kristof’s digest on some of the most exciting takeaways from the one year history of API Resilience podcast.

“People are not looking for APIs but capabilities” - Mehdi Medajoui (API Days, gdpr.dev) in Episode 09 and Episode 10

“Business developers are developers too” - Katrien Van Gijsel (KBC Bank & Verzekering) in Episode 14

“Communities are everywhere, and now can be everywhere, more so than ever” - Lorna Jane Mitchell on the evolving role of developer advocacy in Episode 06

“The affordance exists between the object and the person. The affordance is not intrinsic in the object” - Mike Amundsen in Episode 13

SAS is a leading business analytics software company, and also the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market.

In this episode Jeannie Hawrysz (Lead API Architect and Manager of API and Developer Program Enablement) talked about their team efforts to set new standards for their API program during the time of pandemia.

She explained how they organized internal workshops with their UX/design and product management teams to help outline a design-first based workflow. These efforts eventually led to an internal “cultural revolution” and concluded in an API lifecycle that is driven by API governance principles and a product mindset.

In the podcast Jeannie talked about the challenges of simultaneously catering to diverse personas like data scientists and business decision makers. She also described why and how they started to redesign SAS' developer portal and how low- and no-code solutions might shape their API program in the future.

The hosts are Kristof Van Tomme and Mark Winberry.

TUI (Touristik Union International) is the largest leisure, travel and tourism company in the world.

In episode 2 Robin Meissner (Head of API transformation) talked about TUI’s digital transformation efforts in the past 2 years from the first API they published to the future API and interface ecosystem he envisions for TUI.

Tune in and learn:

Robin Meissner is the Head of API transformation at TUI AG (Touristik Union International), the largest leisure, travel and tourism company in the world.

In the first episode Robin and the hosts, Kristof Van Tomme and Mark Winberry took an “API-philosophic” angle and discussed how APIs could help create more personalized, diverse and unique experiences in the future, going beyond their current role in the corporate world. They also explained why unexpected and surprising integrations are essential for the success of an API program, and what a bathroom recognition application - built at a hackathon - has to do with all this.

Listen to the 2nd episode too, where Robin shared TUI’s digital transformation success story and challenges.

The hosts are Kristof Van Tomme (CEO and Co-founder of Pronovix) and Mark Winberry (Senior Director of US Operations at Pronovix).

Maarten has been an IT architect and now moved into a position of being a product manager and product owner of a retailer API at bol.com. In this episode he will take us on a journey of a remarkable transformation over his 10 years at bol.com.

Bol.com started off as a small e-commerce book company experiencing rapid growth, which also meant a really rapid growth from architectural perspective, moving to microservices with over a thousand IT components.

What have they lost along the way? How could they become agile at scale?

How have they organised their architecture in a way that allows to have a better overview on the services and products? How has the pandemic affected their growth story?

What is the best way to adapt to new circumstances fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to consumers? Join us to hear about this, and much more.