“We got a lot of request to go on a tour and visit more cities. So, for the first time, we will host a World Tour and visit four cities. The first stop will be in Copenhagen, our doorway from the Nordics to the world. It’s a great city to start our tour because of all the interesting things that people are doing there,” says Travis Spencer, Co-founder of Nordic APIs.

API, Application Programming Interface, is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. During Nordic APIs event, API platforms, business models, strategy, security, marketing and design will be discussed.

“We have gathered a group of rockstars within the API world, and they will instruct attendees on how to anticipate and respond to change throughout an API’s entire lifecycle. I personally believe that API security and business modeling are the two biggest impediments to wider-scale adoption. Each presenter will share their own thoughts and suggestions on this,” says Spencer.

Speakers of the day will be:

• Pam Dingle, Senior Technical Architect at Ping Identity
• Brian Mulloy, IoT Lab at Apigee
• Travis Spencer, CEO at Twobo Technologies
• Phillipp Schöne, Solution Lead at Axway
• Jacob Ideskog, Solution Architect at Twobo Technologies
• Andreas Krohn, API Specialist at Dopter AB
• Ronnie Mitra, Director of API Design at CA Technologies
• Marjukka Niinioja, Senior Consultant & Manager at PlanMill Oy

Interested?

Interested in joining this exciting event? To register for the Nordic API event in Copenhagen, click here. There you will also find more information and the program of the day.

And good news for all Oresund Startups’ readers: you get 25% off to the event! To use the discount, enter the code: oresund

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“Organizations are producing hordes of data as a consequence of doing their business. APIs provide a way to turn that byproduct – that sawdust– into new products and new revenue streams,” – explains Travis Spencer, CEO of Twobo Technologies in the official press release.

“APIs are especially important in light of mobile, cloud computing, and, in some cases, it is even a government requirement to make data freely available,” – adds API specialist, Andreas Krohn of Dopter (Check for Q&A about Nordic APIs with Andreas Krohn here).

The importance of the APIs is recognized within the business community as well in both Southern Sweden and Copenhagen areas. Henrik Laursen, Solution Architect at Saxobank in Denmark, is going to attend Nordic APIs this Semptember. He shares his view on the relevance of APIs technology and the upcoming conference in a short interview.

How is the conference relevant for your business?

“We are currently wrapping our entire business domain in a unified API and have decided to follow the REST path. We have gained a lot of experience since we started but would like to “mingle” with other API developers and architects to hear their stories as well as share our story with them. REST is a set of architectural principles that can easily be misinterpreted and “bent out of shape”. On the other hand, following the principles to the point can be too puristic. So we are also eager to hear from other attendees that are already in production with an enterprise API, where pragmatism over purism is the way to go and vice versa.”

How is Nordic APIs important for Copenhagen business community?

“I believe that some (maybe many) companies are planning or already wrapping their domains in APIs for several reasons. First, they need the unification of end points to lower the cost of developing client applications against their domain. Second, some will try to monetize their APIs and others will be aiming for the cloud. Depending on company and domain size, this is not an easy undertaking. So being able to share knowledge and learn from some gurus on the API stage is beneficial. Being able to go to a conference nearby is very important.”

What are your expectations of the conference?

“Much of it is written above, but in summary: to learn from the gurus about tried and tested standards and principles, learn from other attendees about their experiences and to share our experiences so far.”

Upcoming Nordic APIs conference will be held in Stockholm on September 18th & 19th. Dopter and Twobo will be joined by delegates from Europe and elsewhere to hear from speakers like John Musser and Adam DuVander of ProgrammableWeb, Kin Lane of API Evangelist, Paul Madsen of Ping Identity’s CTO office, Erik Wahlström, co-author of the SCIM API, and other well-known authorities on the topic of mobile app development, cloud services, mashups, security and the business of APIs according to the official press release. Check conference schedule here and register for the event here.

When: September 18-19, 2013
Where: Lustikulla Conference Center in Liljeholmen, Stockholm

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With Andreas being from this region, we had an session of questions and answers with him to get to know him some more and his thought of the future for APIs. Even if not strictly a Startup, the API business is extremly interesting for tech startups and the movement of open data is one that a lot of tech entrepreneurs hold dear.

Conferences – how many and which conferences have you organized the last year?

“In total 7 – two Nordic APIs in Stockholm and one Nordic APIs each in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Trondheim and Sundsvall. I have also organised a mini conference where we were 8 people talking tech on an island in the Stockholm archipelago.”

Tell us shortly of your past – what did you do before becoming the “API guru” of the nordics?

“The ‘API guru’ part is your language, I humbly call myself ‘API Specialist'”, he said, smiling.

“I worked at the danish company Kapow Technologies (now Kapow Software), first as a technical presages and in the end as the product manager. Kapow does enterprise level web scaling, basically treating the internet as one big database. It got me thinking about APIs, since what we did was in a way building APIs from non-traditional data sources (i.e. HTML pages).”

“After I quit Kapow to start my own company I concentrated on APIs, starting blogging about it at mashup.se and talk about it as much and often as I could. Eventually I realised that I know this stuff and, more importantly, that I can explain it to other people. So to make a long story short I just kept going even if nobody were interested in the begining.”

What has made you so interested and committed to API’s?

“At heart I am a programmer, and APIs opens up many doors for programmers. It is now possible for one person to produce something at a very low cost that would require a major effort from a big company 10-20 years ago. How can that not be interesting?”

You have gone from being a “nerd” to organizing conferences – how has that transition been?

“I am and always will be a nerd (or geek if you prefer), even when it goes out of style. Organising conference was the natural next step for us (Dopter, my company, is organising Nordic APIs together with Twobo Technologies) since no such conference existed in the Nordic region. The great amount of interest from participants and sponsors show that we made the right bet.”

“The transition has not been that big actually. More phone calls, more mails, more coordinating things than before – but my job has for a long time been more Keynotes and PDFs than compilers and SQL. That said I have learned a lot of what is important and not when getting an event together, some things just work by themselves and there are minor details that you really have to get right to keep people happy.”

What do you see as the future of API – how will this area have evolved in 3 years?

“More more more of everything. All government organisations will have some kind of API, or have released open data somehow. Any company that is not doing anything with APIs/open data will start to feel the pressure from competitors. At the same time I see a big risk of a backlash against APIs, right now there is a bit of a hype and that always results in some kind of anti-movement. In the long run though, the backlash does not matter, this way of integrating systems and creating eco-systems are here to stay.”

The Nordic API conference – what can we expect from the conference?

“Expect a couple of very intense days full of great content. We have booked some fantastic speakers (like the founder of ProgrammableWeb.com for example) to warm us up, there will be two parallel tracks of presentations covering everything from tools of the trade and business practices to case studies and technology choices.”

“Since we realise that we can not fit everything into our schedule we also have an unconference the second day. That will allow any attendee to discuss any subject with whoever is interested. If you want to talk about how to build an Öresund Startup API for example you just tell people that and the ones that are interested will show up and you can discuss the issue.”

“More important than the content however is the community. You get to meet great people from all over the Nordics that are or will be working with APIs and that have the same interest as you.”

Andreas also announced that, because it is Midsommar, Swedens biggest holiday, there is and 50% discount on the early bird tickets these days. So if you have an interest in API’s, don’t miss the chance and book to the event in september in Stockholm!

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