All About the API: The One Developer Event You Need

OK, I am going to start off by taking back the headline of this post… There isn’t one of anything you need. If you have a sports car, you likely also need an SUV so your kids cramped in the backseat don’t end up with deformed legs. If you have an iPhone, you likely also want an Android or Microsoft tablet because there are just some things iOS doesn’t do very well.

So let’s see if we can rephrase, shall we? All About the API is one of the events developers and the community of companies looking to build and leverage ecosystems needs to attend.

The premise of the show is you can’t be at every developer event – from Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Facebook, Apple and so on. You just can’t. Hey, my company covers them for a living and still, we can’t be at all of them.

Moreover, each of these events while fantastic in their own way is lacking in cross-community collaboration.

There isn’t  a neutral developer event where you can network with all the ecosystems.

In fact, there may never be… There are just too many companies. But, that doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t try to have a single confab where you can come and see the key thought leaders and API solution providers under one roof.

We will call it mega-hack-a-thon! What do you think? talking-heads

The great news is we have a number of really important big tech companies who have signed on and are about to sign on. In addition, a few have promised to make big news at the show. We are also diligently working with newer tech companies – in the Nexmo category so we have balance between huge, traditional tech companies and the newer Silicon Valley darlings.

When we first launched the show, people asked me, will you focus on the Microsofts of the world or the new companies making lots of noise in the market. 

Frankly, I don’t see the use of a show which excludes either. Case in point, I just shared on my social sites a a story by (@lisahopeking) about a new app created by a genius named Josh Newlan that lets you tune out of conference calls.

Newlan’s python script starts to run when a meeting begins and his computer’s microphone listens in the background. It uses an open source speech recognition program to recognize phrases based on the silences between people’s sentences. Then it uses IBM Watson’s speech-to-text service to transcribe what’s said.

Whenever his name is mentioned, the program sends him a 30 second transcript of what was said before his name was mentioned (and a little after).

Newlan’s script then waits 15 seconds and plays a pre-recorded audio file of him saying, “Sorry, I didn’t realize my microphone was on mute.”

“That should give me sufficient time to catch up with the context of the meeting and give my input,” he said.

Savvy developers want to use Watson and integrate it with new age APIs that let you tap into text messaging, enterprise collaboration or whatever. When building a house or an application, you need a range of tools from new and more established companies.

Now that I’ve thought about it, if you have to be at one developer event each year to learn about all of the choices and opportunity, you are better off hedging your bets and not getting tied into a single-vendor point of view.

That is why you have All About the API – so you can see everything there is and get ALL the perspectives on the market. We are thrilled to announce today that Juan Carlos Soto from IBM will speak on Integration and the API economy – in addition to Jose de Castro the Cisco CTO and so many other amazing companies.

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There really is no other place where you will learn how to tie in Watson APIs with solutions from Cisco (Spark etc.), Zenly, Nexmo, Vidyo, Jugnoo, GENBAND, Epygi, Flowroute, Akana, Cloud Elements, Agora.io, Smartbear and so on.

So maybe I wasn’t right to second-guess myself. This seems to be the one show you need each year to build your ecosystem or leverage the APIs of others. We obviously can’t fit every company at the conference but we want your feedback. Who else would you like to see there? Shoot us a message and please register today – we can’t wait to see you this July in Las Vegas.

Also… Thanks to the sponsors who have signed on so far. We appreciate your support and look forward to an amazing event.

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