Thursday 14.10-15.00

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With an "open API" or "public API," a company can make their data and functionality available to outside developers. This makes it possible for these developers to build mobile applications, analyse the data, mix it up with content from other sources, and quickly integrate with other systems. Many companies use their APIs as marketing tools while others use them as new sources of revenue. By 2014, 75% of all Fortune 1000 companies will offer open APIs, predict many analysts. There are great rewards to reap by publishing an open API, but there are also risks involved. In this session, we will talk about both sides of the coin, so that attendees can ensure they gain the benefits while managing the dangers.

To begin, Andreas Krohn will give a brief introduction to open APIs, the technologies involved, and an overview of the advantages APIs provide. As an example, Hampus Brynolf, will explain how the popular Twitter API has enabled new, innovative insights into social networking usage within the Nordics using twittercensus.se as a demonstration. This will provide a great example of the potential rewards of an open API. We will also discuss how the census was performed, and explain the results of the Twitter data analysis.

Open APIs are an important tool for developers to use, but there are also great advantages in publishing your own APIs. There are however also some risks and we'll discuss those as well. Travis Spencer will present the “neo-security stack” of technologies that allow organisations to secure their APIs using open standards. In so doing, API publishers will be able to mitigate the risks and achieve interoperability.

Finally we will give you some hands on advice on how to begin publishing and consuming APIs and open data.

This session is made in partnership with Nordic APIs