Andreas Krohn - API Evangelist

by Kin Lane on 03/14/2012

Andreas Krohn (@andreaskrohn) first saw the potential of APIs when he in 2005 started working with enterprise web scraping solutions at Kapow Technologies (now Kapow Software). Conceptualizing the web as one big database and creating APIs to get to that data is not that different from the REST APIs used today. When leaving Kapow to start his own company it was a given that the focus would be on APIs and open data.

Andreas API work is focused in Sweden where he regularly speaks at conferences. Mostly he focuses on the non-technical side of APIs since APIs are doomed to fail without a good business strategy and long term marketing plan. The ones that really need to understand the potential of APIs are the business people and then focusing on the money instead of technology is the way forward. He is also providing consulting services customers regarding API strategies and technologiesone such project he has been active in is Trafiklab which is a portal for Swedish public transport APIs. The goal of the project is to collect Swedish travel related APIs in one place with consistent documentation, API-key handling and support to make them as attractive to developers as possible.

He writes about APIs on Swedens leading API blog Mashup.se and has done so for several years. The focus of Mashup.se is international API news as well as highlighting local Swedish APIs. To increase the use of Swedish APIs he has recently launched the Swedish API directory listing over 200 Swedish APIs. Not much compared to the 5000+ APIs listed on ProgrammableWeb, but a lot for a small country where the wave of APIs are just getting started. The development of APIs in Sweden is currently lead by government agencies and agencies due to European Union directives but Andreas hopes that showing the available private APIs will lead to a wider use of APIs and more private companies developing APIs.