I try to make sense of which companies are doing interesting things in the API space, and the interesting technologies that are done by these companies, that sometimes take on a life of their own. The thing I wrestle with with constantly, is how do you actually do this? The best tools in my toolbox currently are Twitter and Github. These two platforms provide me with a wealth of information about what is going on within a company, or specific project, the surrounding community, and the relationships they have developed (or not), along the way.
Recently I’ve been spending time, diving deeper into the Swagger community, and two key sources of information are the @swaggerapi Twitter account, and the Swagger Github account, with its 25+ repositories. Using each of these platform APIs, I can pull followers, favorites, and general activity for the Swagger community. Then I come up against the SwaggerSocket Google Group. While there is a rich amount of information, and activity at the forum, with a lack of RSS or API, I can’t make sense of the conversation at a macro level, alongside the other signals I’m tracking on—grrrrrr.
At any time I can tune into the activity on Twitter, and Github for the Swagger community, but the Google Group takes much more work, and I have to go to the website to view, and manually engage. Ideally I could see Twitter, Github, and Google Group activity side by side, and make sense of the bigger picture. I can get email updates from the forum, but this applies from now forward, and gives me no context of history of the conversation within the group—without visiting the website.
Just a side rant from the day. This is not a critique of the Swagger community, just an outside view on the usage of Google Groups as an API community management tool. I use the platform for APIs.json and API Commons, but I think I might work on a better way to manage the community, one that allows outside entities to better track on the conversation.
