Phew, what a show! It’s safe to say that the Tyk APIM Holiday Extravaganza ROCKED! Seriously, it rocked. If you missed it, we feel bad for you. But, thankfully, you can relive the experience and watch the full recording on demand here. In the sections below, we include chopped-up videos with each of our incredible guests and their topics so you can go straight to your favourite discussion points.
The last couple of years have been challenging, but it has also given us time to gather lessons and takeaways to pinpoint the areas to focus on going forward. Through our guests and contributors, we’ve collected excellent, expert advice on how to crush your APIM strategy in 2023 and thoughts on what the future holds for APIM.
Here’s a round-up of what went down. Feel free to pull up a warm tipple of choice and pull on your ugly holiday sweater as you read along! Are you ready?
The new normal for APIs
We started the event with the brilliant Nathaniel Okenwa, Developer Evangelist at Twilio. Who needs a time machine when you have Nathaniel? He spends his days educating and chatting to developers about the APIs they’re using, so he’s always got one eye on the big trends and what is coming up next.
Nathaniel took us straight back to 2020, where API growth was supercharged in the health and finance industries, traditionally slower to adopt digital transformation trends. And while it looked as though this positive growth across all sectors might continue to 2023, we’re instead facing a macro-economic environment of cost-savings, efficiency and ROI.
This places API awareness on how they affect every aspect of the business and how all teams can use them, front and centre.
With that in mind, here are Nathaniel’s top five trends for 2023:
- API-first development
- Developer experience
- API skills
- AI in APIs
- The new age of API management
What a treat to listen to his insights on the future of APIs. Check out Nathaniel’s whole segment here.
APIs for good
Next up, Tyk’s Head of Product Marketing, Zoe Laycock, got stuck into a chat with RubyX founders Sitao Zhang and Denis Moniotte to share their inspirational stories about how they use API-driven technology. They have revolutionised how entrepreneurs and small businesses can unlock capital to drive economic development in developing economies across the African continent.
The biggest threat is unlocking the credit required to drive their business forward, and with an estimated credit gap in Africa of $330 billion, this is no easy feat.
With their scalable platform, RubyX can collect the data (without needing to support the cost of sending people on the ground) and automate unlocking and accessing the markets required for the loans.
We enjoyed looking through the lens of APIs to examine how API technologies can meet today’s pressing socio and economic challenges and the threats affecting our global community.
Hot Tyks live
If you are yet to see any of our Hot Tyks, you’re in for a treat. What is a Hot Tyk, you ask? Fiery and sometimes controversial take on key topics from peers within the APIM community. Led by our Director of Content, Max Klatt, this segment includes a quick-fire session debating and voting on the spiciest topics for the new year in APIM.
Give it a watch if you think you’re spicy enough.
Diversity, equality and inclusion in the tech industry
A topic very close to our hearts at Tyk; here, Claire Barrett, Director of APIsfirst and Co-founder of Women in APIs, chats to Zoe Laycock about why DEI is good for business and what it looks and feels like when it’s going well.
Studies show that teams with a more equitable gender balance are generally more creative, resilient to change, financially successful, and have a higher overall engagement.
The women in APIs community helps people to be seen and heard in the public domain and provides the skills and confidence to speak in public. With more than 380 members in over 40 countries, this initiative will continue to grow in success and numbers.
From an engineering and product point of view, ensuring diversity in teams provides diversity in thinking and collaboration practices that go beyond the boundaries of traditional enterprises. It’s the very best way of solving problems and creating things differently.
In the full video, you can hear Claire chat more about her work in the DEI area, the Women in APIs community and Zoe’s inspiring story.
Finding success in 2023
Our final segment involves a fireside chat with two of our favourite people in the API world: Tyk CEO Martin Buhr and API Consultant James Higginbotham, all about the top takeaways from 2022 and how to find success in 2023.
Key areas of focus from this event are the stand-out trends or moments from this year. Martin points out how fast AI is progressing and how we have entered a new phase of accessibility for a technology previously reserved for techie developers. We can already see its impact on content generation; next year, we will likely have AI tooling capabilities built on top of that. Interesting? Yes. Creepy? Also yes. Watch this space!
Martin and James cover several Hot Tyks, giving their spicy thoughts on many topical areas. Here’s what they discuss:
- Microservices – is it a force for good or evil?
- GraphQL – is it going through an existential crisis?
- The muddy waters of Service mesh v/s API gateways
- You can’t trust technologists to build APIs alone
This section is jam-packed with nuggets of information on what we have to look forward to next year. So, what are you waiting for? Give it a watch!
Fresh off the success of this year’s event, we are already drafting plans for an even bigger and better event in 2023! Stay tuned for all the details. For now, sit back and enjoy the show. And have a happy holiday!
