How It All Started
After three years of hosting online conferences (2020-2022), the AsyncAPI community felt it was time for something different— an in-person event. We wanted to meet people face-to-face, to confirm that behind the virtual interactions were real humans, the ones you could have meaningful conversations with, not bots!
In 2023, we organized multiple events under the brand AsyncAPI Conf on Tour. One of them took place at APIDays Paris, made possible by the amazing folks behind APIDays, who share our belief in the future of strong API specifications and standards.
It was a fantastic opportunity, but we had one major concern—how do we find our community members in an event with thousands of attendees? How do we have meaningful conversations? And how do we engage with people who don’t know about AsyncAPI yet? As you probably know, conference talks end, and people scatter. It’s easy to lose them in the crowd.
One of the best places to meet people at conferences is at the sponsor booths. But as an open-source, community-driven project, we don’t have the budget for that kind of setup.
Once again, APIDays came to the rescue and offered us a booth.
We decided to take it one step further—not just a booth for AsyncAPI, but a shared space for other open-source communities. At Paris 2023, we organized the first API Specs & Standards booth, bringing together AsyncAPI, OpenAPI, and JSON Schema experts. We created a vendor-neutral, safe space for knowledge exchange, where experts from different companies shared their expertise without pushing for their products.
AsyncAPI Conf on Tour at APIDays Helsinki 2024
Our next stop was APIDays Helsinki 2024.
Hugo kicked things off with a great introduction to the AsyncAPI spec and later wrapped up the track with an excellent session on testing event-driven architectures.
Hugo presenting AsyncAPI basics.
Jonas followed with a detailed overview of the AsyncAPI tooling ecosystem, showcasing the various tools built around the specification to support developers working with AsyncAPI documents.
Jonas presenting the AsyncAPI tooling ecosystem.
I then presented an overview of AsyncAPI use cases, demonstrating how different companies use AsyncAPI in production, all based on real data we’ve gathered over the years. You can explore all of this in our AsyncAPI case studies.
Lukasz presenting how AsyncAPI is used in production.
The talks were engaging, and the questions that followed were great. Slides from the talks are available for download. But the best, most technical, and insightful conversations happened at the API Specs and Standards booth. We teamed up with friends from the OpenAPI Initiative and had deep, meaningful discussions.
OpenAPI and AsyncAPI experts side by side. From left: Lukasz, Erik, Frank, Hugo, and Jonas.
September 18-19 in London
I won’t be attending the London event this year, but plenty of other folks will, especially at the API Specs and Standards booth. I hope you all have as much fun there as we did in Helsinki!
OpenAPI and AsyncAPI experts getting to know each other during a Helsinki city run.
If you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, AsyncAPI community members can get free passes. Just check out the agenda and reserve your spot.
December in Paris and the future of the Booth
Looking ahead to December, we’ll have some free passes for the Paris event too. But honestly, the best experience is joining as a speaker. Not only do you get a free pass, but you also get to attend the speaker’s party the night before the event. Most importantly, it’s a unique opportunity to share your story with the wider AsyncAPI community. CfP is still open.
Of course, we’ll have a booth again. This time, it won’t just be AsyncAPI and OpenAPI folks—our friends from JSON Schema will join too.
Since it’s the fourth time we’ll be hosting this booth, I have a feeling it’s time to take things up a notch. We need to be more organized, include more community members, and maybe even secure some dedicated funding. A rebranding could be in order, too—perhaps renaming the booth to Open API Standards. We could also broaden the scope to include experts from the open-source tooling ecosystem that builds on top of these standards and operates under open governance.
Enjoy!