My friend Matthew Reinbold (@libel_vox) wrote a great piece on his blog titled, Storytelling and The Developer’s Need To Communicate, reflecting on an un-conference session I did last July at API-Craft in Detroit. Thanks for the great thoughts on storytelling Matt, something that is super infectious, and has reminded me a related story, which I hope continues to emphasize the importance of storytelling in API space.
Another one of my friends that I thoroughly enjoy swapping stories with at API conferences, and in the dark corners of bars around the world, is Mike Amundsen (@mamund). Now I may have the name wrong, but one time Mike told me a story about how John von Neumann (correct me if I’m wrong Mike), is known for a lot of ideas that he didn’t necessarily come up with on his own. He was just such a prolific thinker, and storyteller, which allowed him to process other people’s ideas, then publish a paper on the subject before anyone else could. Some people would see this as stealing of ideas, but one can also argue that he was just better at storytelling.
While I have developed many of my own ideas over the years, much of what I write about is extracted from what others are up to across the API space. I have made an entire career out of paying attention to what technologists are doing, and telling a (hopefully) compelling story about what I see happening, and how it fits into the bigger API picture. As a result, people often associate certain stories, topics, or concepts to me, when in reality I am just the messenger—something that will also play out in the larger history, told in coming years.
I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to understand how the layers of history lay down, and have spent a lot of time considering how to craft stories that don’t just get read, but they get retold, and have a way better chance of being included in the larger history. As Matthew Reinbold points out, all developers should consider the importance of storytelling in what they do. You don’t have to be a master storyteller, or super successful blogger, but your ideas will be much better formed if storytelling is part of your regular routine, and the chances you will be remembered for what you did, increases with each story that you tell.
