September Community Update And AsyncAPI Conference London 2024

Thulisile Sibanda

Thulisile Sibanda

·6 min read

In September, we had our second in-person AsyncAPI conference after Helsinki; read all about it in the AsyncAPI Helsinki Conference update.

This time, I had the privilege of being present in person. First and foremost, I would like to thank Gravitee.io and to Georgie Burrows for sponsoring the AsyncAPI Conference. Their sponsorship enabled me to cover the visa expenses and travel costs. I also want to express my gratitude to Lukasz Gornicki for his support and assistance throughout the process. It wasn't easy, but in the end, it was an incredible achievement for all of us, especially for me.

AsyncAPI Conference London Edition 2024

This year's London Edition was made possible by the amazing folks at APIdays, and we were part of the 2-day APIdays London Conference. The AsyncAPI track took place on the first day, and we had an incredible lineup of speakers and talks that attracted an entire room of attendees.

Full room of attendees.

Full room of attendees.

Lorna started things off with a session on Better AsyncAPI Governance and how to devise sensible standards that support usability, security, and reliability.

Lorna presenting Better AsyncAPI Governance.

Lorna presenting Better AsyncAPI Governance.

Artur followed with a demonstration on harmonizing NATS, CloudEvents, and AsyncAPI to build scalable, robust, and maintainable systems.

Artur presenting Harmonizing Asynchronous Systems: NATS, CloudEvents and AsyncAPI.

Artur presenting Harmonizing Asynchronous Systems: NATS, CloudEvents and AsyncAPI.

Eduardo then shared a success story on how using AsyncAPI helps build API management platforms that enable event-driven architectures across domains by decoupling producers and consumers without compromising data contracts between parties.

Eduardo presenting Event-Driven Architectures Through API Management and AsyncAPI.

Eduardo presenting Event-Driven Architectures Through API Management and AsyncAPI.

Later, Swen spoke on lessons we can learn from synchronous API design and architecture.

Swen presenting Lessons from Sync API Design: What Makes A Good AsyncAPI?.

Swen presenting Lessons from Sync API Design: What Makes A Good AsyncAPI?.

During the break, the API Specs and Standards Booth was busy with people interested in what the AsyncAPI Initiative is all about and the work we do.

Specs booth during the break.

Specs booth during the break.

Dale gave a session on how much information you need to know to design a solution around Kafka topics and illustrated the critical additional information a provider of an asynchronous API needs to provide.

Dale presenting Topic Characteristics: What Do You Need To Know In Advance.

Dale presenting Topic Characteristics: What Do You Need To Know In Advance.

Laurent shared how to use Microcks ready to work with Testcontainers to provide solutions for mocking and testing APIs without extensive coding.

Laurent presenting Using Test Containers for AsyncAPI Unit Testing and Mocking.

Laurent presenting Using Test Containers for AsyncAPI Unit Testing and Mocking.

Will then demonstrated how Architecture as Code and AsyncAPI work together to create deployable environments for production and the deployment of WebSocket-based APIs in a financial organization.

Will presenting Deploying WebSockets with AsyncAPI and Architecture as Code.

Will presenting Deploying WebSockets with AsyncAPI and Architecture as Code.

Sho ended the day by taking us on a journey on how to build a cross-exchange trading bot and how AsyncAPI has the proper tooling to tackle pain points such as document inconsistency and missing language support.

Sho presenting Building Cross-Exchange Trading Library With AsyncAPI.

Sho presenting Building Cross-Exchange Trading Library With AsyncAPI.

All the talks were incredible, and even the questions asked during the sessions were very insightful. Some of the slide presentations and recordings will soon be available under the Resources Hub at the AsyncAPI Conference website.

API Specs And Standards Booth

We teamed up with the OpenAPI Initiative team at the booth and had many insightful conversations. The first day was bustling with activity, and it was interesting to see how many people were not familiar with AsyncAPI and the community. They were very intrigued by how a bunch of folks with diverse expertise and skills from different continents and companies came together to represent AsyncAPI despite having never met. Our maintainers and ambassadors did a fantastic job educating and answering questions about the community, specification, and tooling.

AsyncAPI Maintainers and Ambassadors Answering Some Questions.

AsyncAPI Maintainers and Ambassadors Answering Some Questions.

Day 2 at the conference was calmer and less busy than the first day, but we had the opportunity to visit other booths and get some contacts for the future.

Day 2 at the booth with AsyncAPI experts. From left: Artur, Ian, Thulie, Khuda

Day 2 at the booth with AsyncAPI experts. From left: Artur, Ian, Thulie, Khuda

I would like to thank the experts for taking their time at the conference and volunteering at the API Specs and Standards Booth.

AsyncAPI Conf in Paris

As you can tell, London was a success, and now there's an opportunity to be part of another fantastic AsyncAPI conference in Paris. The Call for Proposals for Paris will soon close on the 12th of October, and we encourage anyone to apply.

AsyncAPI Bounty Program

This month, we celebrate a significant milestone: the first anniversary of the official launch of the AsyncAPI Bounty Program. Our goal has been and continues to recognize and reward the efforts of our maintainers and contributors and to challenge the notion that contributing to Open Source is always free. You can learn about the history of the AsyncAPI Program from the redistribution of Open Collective funds discussion.

As a community, we have greatly benefited from the program. For example, we have used the AsyncAPI Cheat Sheet at conferences, saved costs on Digital Ocean, and implemented an automated TSC voting process. For more details, please read the AsyncAPI Bounty Program Summary.

Kudos to Viacheslav Turovskyi (Ash) for his outstanding work in leading and managing the initiative smoothly.

AsyncAPI Mantainership Program

The Maintainership Program is progressing well; we have received some excellent project ideas. Once the project ranking is complete, we will announce the call for applications soon.

Keep an eye on the #09_mentorships Slack channel for the exact dates. For details on the submitted projects, please take a look at the Mentor/Maintainership discussion.

AsyncAPI Ambassador

We are excited to welcome Lorna Mitchell, VP of Developer Experience at Redocly, to the AsyncAPI Ambassador Program.

Coming in October