Weekly API Evangelist Governance (Guidance)

API Evangelist launched our weekly API Governance Knowledge Builder Sessions this past week, signaling our commitment to the fundamentals of HTTP APIs while focusing on stories supported by hands-on artifacts that help enterprise organizations get their house in order. We are betting that enterprise organizations will come out of their AI hangover with a renewed interest in investing in what will help them optimize their existing business operations using the technology they already have in place.

Our second conversation with quobix from Princess Heavy Beef Industries left us thinking more about how we all evolve beyond the state we are in with OpenAPI and the other specifications. Quobix has made some important decisions to open source their libopenapi library for working with OpenAPI in ways that historically companies have kept proprietary. This something that brings much needed OpenAPI capabilities in which the API space will benefit from, rather than being locked into a single proprietary platform, holding us all back, and extracting value. Thank for all the great work Quobix!

As we were profiling public APIs this week we couldn’t help but notice that billion dollar media companies like NASCAR are still just publishing a Swagger UI—either ignoring or missing all together the memo from API vendors that you must have an API portal. Profiling enterprise organizations reveals a whole mix of attitudes for what APIs are and a widespread willingness to just poke random doorways into the enterprise making APIs available for mobile and now artificial intelligence applications.

It is tough to get people’s attention these days and we are working to make things like domain-driven design and governance a more real-time affair and a default aspect of our operations, not a destination or ephemeral road-side attraction. We wanted to highlight important improvements to the OpenAPI specifications that help us better organize our digital resource using tagging, while also expanding who has access to Spectral governance rules. In the end, remember it isn’t the OpenAPI that matters, but the work and coordination that goes into it.

Many readers of API Evangelist still assume we are like other mainstream API related tech blogs and are profiling and showcasing APIs because we are tying to support and drive traffic to these APIs. When in reality we are always learning, studying, and signaling what we are seeing so we can help develop more awareness, strengthen our own approach and learn what matters and doesn’t matter. We rarely are supporting the platform we point to, but are actively studying them to learn their strengths and weaknesses.

While we are always working to understand where the API space is headed and understanding the patterns and anti-patterns in play, we are also very committed to helping people stay focused on what matters—something you can join in on every single week on Tuesday or Thursday.

If you are feeling overwhelmed like we do in this age of AI, we recommend doubling down on the basics of your API operations and doing the work to get a handle on what keeps your business operating today rather than always worrying about what is happening tomorrow—as HTTP APIs will still be driving your business tomorrow.

If you need API Evangelist to help out with API governance please let us know how we can help. And, if you are interested in sponsoring our work and site please review out sponsorship package, and drop us an email today.