Another week with APItalist — communities and platform development
A few months back I wrote about the work of an APItalist. A colleague of mine Sakari wrote about his life as an APItalist too just last week. The term has started to get traction more widely. Still I get questions like “What does an APItalist do?” This is understandable since it’s a new term and and a new job title in the API economy. Thus I thought I would occasionally write a short post about my life as an APItalist. May this inspire you to follow my path and become an APItalist too. As a Chief APItalist I’m also responsible for coordinating other APItalists and do internal processes and practices related development. Those parts are left out and only some of the outbound cases are included.
Monday — Smart cities
This day was about negotiations with other companies to participate in joint effort to ramp up Smart City platform and needed processes for a few cities in Finland. During the summer we were asked by a few cities in Finland to help them onboard to Smart Cities development.
Part of APItalist work is to build networks — business and technology oriented for the benefit of customers.
As part of the plan, I was engaged in negotiating with a few companies about their contribution to the bigger plan. In other words, I’m orchestrating construction of one offer for the cities, but the content is coming from multiple companies. Why? Alone we can’t build the whole package — together we can. Part of the APItalist work is building networks — business and technology oriented for the benefit of the customers.
Tuesday — APInf Platform and Smart Cities evangelism
On Tuesday I participated in the APIOPs meetup. The theme of this meetup was API Management and Gateways. Facilities were provided by a local startup hatching center called Crazy Town Tampere. In the meetup there was also Kong from Mashape. Some might see APInf Platform and Kong as rivals. I don’t.
APInf platform is able to use various proxies and gateways under the hood. That is one of our hero features. Kong has not yet been integrated but discussions have been started.
Some might see APInf Platform and Kong as rivals. I don’t.
In the APInf Platform clients can switch from one gateway/proxy to another with a single click without interruptions in API offering. Another hero feature is built-in multi-organisation support. Third hero feature is support for plethora of protocols: SOAP, REST, MQTT, Websocket, CoAP, Stomp, TCP. This is possible because we have integrated EMQ broker to APInf Platform. We are IoT ready!
APInf platform supports plethora of protocols: SOAP, REST, MQTT, Websocket, CoAP, Stomp, TCP.
Due to family reasons, I had two of my kids with me (2 year-old and 5 years old.). The younger one was eager to participate in the presentation too as you can see from the pic below. After all, we are building Smart Cities for the future generations as well.
My presentation was about Smart Cities and API management. FIWARE platform was briefly discussed as a strong candidate for any Smart City. APInf API management platform is part of the FIWARE stack. APInf Oy has taken the role to manage FIWARE node which handles Nordics and Baltics.
Wednesday and Thursday — host international seminar in Estonia
I was asked to host an annual X-Road Network Seminar in Estonia. I was delighted about the request and gladly said yes. On Wednesday I traveled to Tallinn event location and spent the evening with other Finns and a few Estonians in a nice resort about 70 km away from Tallinn. The evening included mandatory sauna sessions (4 rounds), a few drinks and eating. This kind of informal chatting is vital for freely exchanging ideas and thoughts.
What is X-Road?
X-Road is the backbone of e-Estonia. Invisible yet crucial, it allows the nation’s various public and private sector e-Service databases to link up and function in harmony.
Estonia’s e-solution environment includes a full range of services for the general public, and since each service has its own databases they all use X-Road. To ensure secure transfers, all outgoing data from X-Road is digitally signed and encrypted, and all incoming data is authenticated and logged.
The same platform has been taken into production use in Finland as well in Nov 2015. Thus it makes sense for the two countries to do joint development and find joint interests.
The event had around 60 people from Estonia and Finland. Both private and public sector were present. Why I was asked to host the event? In the past I was involved in X-Road ramp up in Finland and did close cooperation with Estonians for example in creating REST Gateway solution for X-Road. X-Road is built around SOAP messages and already a few years back the need to support other “protocols” was requested by the business layer. SOAP is suitable for governmental use and ensures interoperability. Yet the consumer side requires REST and technologies even beyond that such as GraphQL.
X-Road Platform Developer eXperience
I also hosted developer experience focused that in the X-Road Network Seminar. Initial thought was that it might be related to API developer eXperience, but it turned out to be “bigger experience“ — X-Road platform developer experience. Having the opportunity broadened my viewpoint to what developer experience can include. In the work group, we gained mutual understanding of things to take further (pain points) quite fast (see below). The work continues in an online meeting next month.
Friday — APIOps tech oriented community growth discussions
I was tempted to write “community growth hacking” but I’m not comfortable with the term, thus just growth. Just days ago we received an inspiring message from US regarding APIOps network we are now coordinating. It said that “I have been looking at the content from the other APIOps meetups and it is awesome stuff.” Whooaa! In the same message there was a request to use APIOps name and start local group in Atlanta, GA. Our APIOps community manager Nazia Hasan started to handle the issue right away and my role was more supportive.
“I have been looking at the content from the other APIOps meetups and it is awesome stuff.” API enthusiast from Atlanta, Georgia.
After that I wrapped up my week and headed home to spend time with wife and 5 kids. As normal, I did continue with various ideas during the weekend. I just can’t let go — my heart lives for APIs and communities around them.
