Why This API Handyman Joined Postman

I’ve been using Postman since its inception and have enjoyed watching it turn into an incredible and ever-growing API platform. But why did I recently decide to officially join the company as Postman OpenAPI Technical Lead? Because Postman doesn’t just help people use APIs, it’s committed to helping people understand and create APIs.

The Handyman who fixes APIs

I’m Arnaud Lauret, the Paris-based author of The Design of Web APIs, and some in the API community know me better as the API Handyman. That’s because I think of APIs as my trade; I love working on all aspects of APIs, but I’m especially interested in design and governance and have always been fond of the OpenAPI Specification. For 20 years, I have connected pieces of software together or helped people do so. Over the last seven of those years, I’ve been sharing on my blog, at conferences, or in my book all that I struggle with, learn, and teach while working in the API space.

During all these years of practice, failures, and successes, I’ve learned so much, but I’m still learning—about architecture, heterogeneous distributed systems, decade(s)-old legacy or brand-new systems APIfication, API design, API governance, taking advantage of APIs from a business perspective, creating API products, and, most recently, becoming API-first. Working with businesses and IT, I have been helping dozens of teams better understand and create APIs, promoting the API-first vision. I’ve worked on design guidelines and governance, conducted hundreds of API design reviews, and I’ve trained hundreds of people.

Whatever I do, create, use, learn, or discover along the way, I always think about how to share it with others so that they can gain knowledge from my, or other people’s, experiences. And I like to apply some core API principles when doing that: make things easy to understand, easy to use, easy to reuse, and easy to evolve. My motto as the API Handyman has been “helping people understand and create APIs.” Joining Postman will allow me to take this motto to the next level.

Helping more people use, understand, and create APIs with Postman

Postman was created to help people use APIs, and I can say it helped me a lot. I remember fondly how I started to use the Postman Chrome extension in 2012 to discover and test APIs, then to create and share collections so that others can easily use the APIs I was creating or using. Now Postman, both the company and that tool that has since become a comprehensive platform, is supporting a global community of more than 17 million users in so many ways.

This is possible due to the ever-growing number of enhancements and new features of the Postman platform and also thanks to the company’s API-first vision. I’m excited about joining the Postman Open Technologies team of API thought leaders and being able to study and contribute to the API space by working on design, governance, and OpenAPI. I hope to make knowledge on these subjects easily accessible, all to make API successes easily repeatable.

See you space APIers

I already have plenty of API stories to tell but I look forward to hearing from you: the more questions you ask, and the more you share, the more Postman will be able to help you and our greater community.

If you’re interested in APIs, helping others, and creating an awesome API product, why not become a Postmanaut yourself? Wherever you are on the global map, check out Postman’s Careers page to see what roles might be a fit with your skills.

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