I Love APIs 2015 Andrew Mager Postmates Whether your API program is internal, partner or public, measuring its success is critical to its growth. Andrew Mager, who has led developer relations at Postmates, SmartThings, Spotify, CNET, and ESPN discusses how to get the most value from your developer community.

1. I ❤ APIs
OCTOBER 13, 2015
How to Grow and Measure
Your API Program
Andrew Mager, Developer Advocate
@MAGER

2. • 1997 - lespaul.com
• 2005 - Planet Blacksburg
• 2006 - ESPN
• 2007 - CNET
• 2010 - SimpleGeo
• 2011 - Spotify
• 2014 - SmartThings
• 2015 - Postmates
Who am I?
Spotify NYC, 2012

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?
• Tell the world with a great
developer website.
Birth of an API
Music Education Hack Day, New York 2013

5. How do you grow your API
program from nothing to
something?

6. • 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

7. How do you find a developer
advocate?

8. • 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

9. The best developer advocate
might already work at your
company.

10. • 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

11. • Add them on Github, DevPost,
Lanyrd, Github, 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.
• Offer office hours.
• Continue their hacks.
How to flirt
with a
developer
online
The (not too distant) Future

12. • 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
Showcase projects built using your API

13. How do you measure the
success of your API?

14. • 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

15. What about the metrics you
can’t track?

16. • Developer happiness
• Event interaction
• Word of mouth
• Good will in the community
• Time spent hacking offline
Measuring the
unmeasurable
HackMIT, 2015

17. THANK YOU!
Questions?
@PostmatesDev
http://postmates.com/developer
@mager (Twitter, Github, Instagram)
http://mager.co