How to Grow and Measure Your API Program

Tips and tricks to build a successful developer community. This talk was given at the Dev-To-Dev conference in San Francisco on Feb 24, 2016.

Transcript

1. #Dev2Dev, SF, CA FEB 24, 2016 How to Grow and Measure Your API Program Andrew Mager, Partner Engineer @MAGER
2. • 1997 - lespaul.com
 • 2005 - Planet Blacksburg • 2006 - ESPN • 2007 - CNET
 • 2010 - SimpleGeo
 • 2011 - Spotify • 2014 - SmartThings
 • 2015 - Postmates Who am I? Windsor Castle, 2014
3. How do you start an API program? London Music Hack Day, 2012
4. • How is your API unique? • What is the purpose of your API? • Commercial • Partner/Private • Experimental/Research/ Government • Who do you want to use your API? • What can be built on your API? • Tell the world with a great developer website. Birth of an API Music Education Hack Day, New York 2013
5. • Concise - https://stripe.com/docs/ 
 • Information Architecture - https://developers.google.com/ 
 • Visual - https://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/python/twiml 
 • Humanize - https://developers.facebook.com/ • Interactivity - https://www.firebase.com/docs/ 
 • Pure Beauty - https://www.mapbox.com/developers/ • Demonstration - http://www.clarifai.com/#demo SEVEN GREAT DEVELOPER WEBSITES
6. Getting Started Guides & Tutorials Reference Docs
7. How do you grow your API program from nothing to something?
8. • Product owner of the API
 • Developer experience • Tools, libs, changelog
 • Education • Docs, tuts, workshops • Partnerships/BD
 • Marketing & community • Internal advocate What does a developer advocate do? Music Hack Day Edinburgh, 2012
9. How do you find a developer advocate?
10. • Socially fluent • Fosters community • Clear, coherent speaking • Willingness to learn • Patience • Eagerness to teach • Technical • Empathetic • Lack of ego • Readily available • Inspirational • Time management • Product management • Fun Skills of a great developer advocate Tim Falls, keen.io
11. Own your Stack Overflow tags.
12. The best developer advocate might already work at your company.
13. • Logical, inventive, pragmatic. • Always looking for the next big problem to solve. • Learning new technologies constantly. • Testing the limits. • Independent, sometimes stubborn. • Day jobs feed their weekend hack ideas. • Short attention-span. • More than a developer, many personalities. Understanding the hacker ethos Music Hack Day NYC, 2012
14. • Add them on Github, DevPost, Lanyrd, Twitter, Dribbble, and even LinkedIn. • Engage again and again. • Encourage them to contribute to open source projects. • Send them monthly newsletters. • Vote up and answer on Stack Overflow. • Invite them to all types of events. • Community libraries. • Offer office hours. • Continue their hacks. How to flirt with a developer online The (not too distant) Future
15. Hackathons are the shit. LA Hacks, Spring 2015 PennApps, Spring 2016
16. • Hacks yield product feedback
 • Hacks uncover bugs
 • Hacks teach you about Dev UX
 • Keep expectations low
 • Ambassadors, interns, FTEs
 • Helps showcase what is possible Hackathons will always be valuable Music Hack Day Tokyo, 2014
17. • Parse - https://www.parse.com/customers • Twilio - https://www.twilio.com/showcase/ • Uber - https://developer.uber.com/showcase/ • Stripe - https://stripe.com/gallery • Google Maps - https://developers.google.com/maps/showcase/ • Keen.io - https://keen.io/#stories • Apple Watch - http://www.apple.com/watch/apps/ • YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/yt/dev/showcase.html • Facebook - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/showcase • Pebble - http://developer.getpebble.com/examples/ • Spotify - https://developer.spotify.com/showcase/ • Github - https://github.com/showcases • Android Developer Stories - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r36OJaeMo4 • Postmates - https://postmates.com/developer/mytable Showcase projects built using your API
18. How do you measure the success of your API?
19. • Monthly active API users • Daily API calls • Apps/projects published • Pull requests/forks/stars • Website analytics • Social media • Email signups • Partners • Meetup attendees • Hacks created • Swag given out • Feedback reported • Beers consumed Success by the numbers Way Out West Hack 2013, Göteborg, Sweden
20. What about the metrics you can’t track???
21. • Developer happiness • Event interaction • Word of mouth • Good will in the community • Time spent hacking offline • How third parties experience your API Measuring the unmeasurable HackMIT, 2015
22. THANK YOU! Questions? @PostmatesDev http://postmates.com/developer @mager (Twitter, Github, Instagram) http://mager.co mager@postmates.com Postmates promo code: MAGERVIP