I’ve been working in the technology space for over 20 years. I remember building my own relational databases, and generating stacks of floppy disks to distribute software to clients. After spending much of my career online, I strongly believe in the openness and distributed nature of the Internet, and that the World Wide Web will be the vehicle to deliver global change, but unfortunately I worry that not all this change will be for the better.

I have lived as a programmer, database administrator, architect, product developer, manager and executive, with experience in business development, sales and marketing--all while living with chronic entrepreneurialism. In this decade I’ve rolled all that experience into a new persona, one that focuses exclusively on APIs--called the API Evangelist.

I spend my days studying the business and politics of the API and telling stories from the space. I thrive on monitoring the API industry in real-time, but also feel looking back at the history, as well as tracking on new trends that are emerging.

I’m a full time evangelist, not for a single API, but for APIs in general. My focus is not just on developers, but helping the rest of the world understand the value and potential of APIs.

I've been playing the role of API Evangelist for the last three years, and while I will still continue to play this role in the future I will be moving to Washington D.C. in August of 2013 and starting a new role as Presidential Innovation Fellow, working on projects at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). I'm excited for the opportunities in front of me, and the potential of evangelizing APIs and open data in Washington.

You can follow my work on the business of APIs via apievangelist.com, the politics of APIs via apivoice.com and my personal thoughts on kinlane.com. I encourage engagement via Disqus on my blogs and via Twitter @KinLane.