An API that nobody uses is almost as sad as a pie that nobody eats. Yet, both of these occur every day. Regardless of whether your API is for partners, internal, or external usage, it needs an advocate to help it be adopted. There are good reasons why an API gets no usage, and there’s a lot we can learn from how pies are made, sold, and consumed.

1. Pie for Sale
Timeless Lessons in API Advocacy
Adam DuVander -- @adamd
Developer Marketing Manager

2. Pie for Sale
Timesless Lessons in API Advocacy

3. Darren Foreman

4. Rebecca Siegel

5. Brenna (brenbot)

6. mazaletel

8. PIE
Internal
Partners
External

9. Pie Rules
You Must Be Tasty
Know Your Competition
Show Your Face
Help Them Dig In
Share the Complete Vision
Be Available for Questions
Eric Steuer

10. You Must Be Tasty

11. Sounds
Delicious!
Flour
Water
Butter
Sugar
Salt

14. Dreaded Announcement Post
Share Features
“SumCo is proud to
announce a major update to
its Arithmetic API that
allows divisors with values
less than one… blah blah
blah”
Share Knowledge
“How to divide by zero”
Mingo Hagen

16. Know Your Competition
John Smith (lexicon10055805)

17. Your API C1 C2 C3
C0
Claire Thompson

20. PIE: Internal Competition?
Direct database
access
Multiple versions of
the same business
logic
Scraping!?
Lack of knowledge

21. Show Your Face
Seth Lemmons

22. Whose Face?
Philip Dean

23. Where?
On the dev portal
Emails when you sign up
Twitter
StackOverflow
GitHub
Conferences
At team standups (internal only)

24. Help Them Dig In
Alan Kotok

25. MoneyBlogNewz

30. SDKs
Libraries Wrappers

31. EveryDeveloper
DX Index
• Libraries available in popular
languages
• Prominent, in-depth getting
started guides
• A self serve solution (no “demo”
or “call us” required)
• Clear pricing available so
developers know what it will
cost
Nine other criteria:
everydeveloper.com/nordicapis

34. PIE: Internal Developer
Experience?!
Alan Myers

35. Share the Complete Vision
Liz West

36. I <3 TTFHW

37. Beyond TTFHW
Integration into frameworks
Example real world use cases
Complete sample applications
Tutorial walkthroughs of applications
GitHub repositories with ready-to-deploy code
Instructions for low friction code deploy

41. Be Available for Questions
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

42. Where?
On the dev portal forum
Via Email
Twitter mentions
StackOverflow questions
GitHub issues
Conference hallway tracks
At team standups (internal only)

43. You Must Be Tasty
Know Your Competition
Show Your Face
Help Them Dig In
Share the Complete Vision
Be Available for Questions
Thank you!
Adam DuVander -- @adamd
Developer Marketing Manager