Apidays London 2026
Last week I attended FOST London 2026, mostly I was there for apidays and the OpenAPI Initiative track. As ever, there was a set of excellent talks and I particularly liked Abby Bangser’s opening keynote, Steven Willmott’s talk on how to think about software systems as AI is added to them, and Kristof Van Tomme’s thoughts on where developer portals fit into today’s AI world.
The OpenAPI track was excellent. We started with Frank Kilcommins covering API workflows before Lorna Mitchell talked about upgrading your OpenAPI spec to the latest 3.2. She really put it into perspective on how old version 3.0 is, and the benefits of updating to the latest version. Kin Lane followed with an interesting talk on OpenAPI extensions and how the help expand your specification, particularly when tied together with Overlays. He was followed by Chris Wood explaining the proposals around security that are in-flight at the moment.
There’s a lot going on in the OpenAPI world and I will be paying more attention than I have. In particular, the security proposals look interesting and worth helping out on if I can. I also want to bring the OpenAPI story at one of my clients up to the latest version and see what we can leverage when we’re there.
Another talk I was particularly happy to attend was Afsha H.’s talk on accountability in systems where agents work more autonomously. It’s important that humans are responsible and do not hide behind “the agent did it”, and Afsha’s talk provided the things to think about. It was Afsha’s first in-person technical conference talk and she knocked it out of the park.
In addition to the talks, the hallway track was good and I met new people starting out in the industry and caught up with old friends. The conversations were interesting and thought-provoking and I find it a very good way to learn new things from people who are actually doing and thinking about them.
It was fantastic to catch up with Phil Sturgeon too, which included a visit to the pub! Donate to his charity as he’s doing amazing work.
If you’re into APIs, I recommend attending a conference to find out where the industry is today. As Mehdi Medjaoui said at the start, conferences are where the humans connect (but we won’t mention the SOAP joke!).
