On June 15, Layer 7 will be holding a special User Conference & API Workshop event at Cisco’s training facilities in San Jose, CA. This is a free event, open to Layer 7 Technologies customers and non-customers alike. The sessions will include a Q&A with Forrester Analyst Eve Maler plus speakers from Adobe, Savvis and Cisco.

It’s an all-day catered event, divided into two sessions (9am-12pm and 1-4:45pm, with lunch served in between). The morning session will focus on best practices for using Layer 7’s API Management, Mobile Access, SOA Governance and Cloud Integration products. The afternoon session will feature a workshop focusing on the topic of API Management.

For more information you can view the full agenda. Space is limited, so if you’re interested in attending, please don’t hesitate to register for the User Conference & Workshop.

These are eventful times for Layer 7, with staff-members appearing at trade shows across North America and Europe. Notably, our CTO Scott Morrison has been undertaking what he’s termed his APIs, Cloud & Identity Tour. Somehow, Scott is also finding time to take part in a couple of the company’s upcoming Web seminars.

On May 29, he’ll be presenting our latest Tech Talk Tuesday meet-up, titled Swagger, WADL & API ‘Scriptions. This interactive session will take a look at the relative merits of different standards for creating formalized, machine-interpretable API descriptions. For full details on how to view and join in with this event, visit the Tech talk Tuesday page.

The following day, Scott will be reprising the recent webinar Identity, Access & Privacy for the New Hybrid Enterprise, featuring Eve Maler of Forrester Research, Inc. This is a special live presentation for the Asia/Pacific region (at 11am Sydney time/9am Singapore time). For more information, take a look at the webinar registration page.

Scott gets a break when Product Manager Dana Crane takes over webinar duty on June 5 for Getting Your API Discovered: The Secret to API Promotion, featuring ProgrammableWeb Founder John Musser. This session will explore a range of best practices for building a community of API developers. Registration is open now and you can click here to sign up.

A few months back, Layer 7 launched Tech Talk Tuesday, a series of interactive developer meet-ups focusing on all things API, broadcast through the company’s Facebook and Livestream pages. We know it’s not always easy to catch a live event like Tech Talk Tuesday, so we’ve also been making recordings of the sessions available in the Videos section of our Resource Library.

We have some pretty exciting things planned for upcoming Tech Talks. The next regular Tech Talk will be a discussion of “Swagger, WADL & API ‘Scriptions” on May 29. You can click here to add it to your calendar. We’re also planning to stream a very special Tech Talk from the upcoming Glue Conference. Watch this space for more details.

For all the latest Tech Talk news – as well as quick-and-easy access to archived broadcasts – you can visit the Tech Talk Tuesday page on our Web site.

It’s almost time for another Layer 7 Technologies Tech Talk. This coming Tuesday, Layer 7’s own Matt McLarty will be joined by guest David Chiu from leading ecommerce vendor Elastic Path Software to discuss API monetization. We’re excited to have our friends from Elastic Path involved and this seems set to be a great Tech Talk – so get your questions ready!

API monetization comes in the form of two very distinct opportunities. First, companies like Elastic Path are creating new revenue opportunities for themselves by opening up their information assets via APIs. Second, some companies are charging third-parties for the use of particularly valuable APIs, creating even more revenue opportunities.

To learn more and throw some questions at our API monetization experts, just visit the Layer 7 Facebook page at noon EDT on May 15 and click the Livestream icon. If you don’t have Facebook, simply click here to watch directly through Livestream. You can submit questions on Facebook or through Twitter, using the hashtag #layer7live.

The recently-published Layer 7 white paper Secure Mobile Access for Enterprise Employees points out that, from a business perspective, the real value of mobile devices is not in the devices themselves – it is in the apps that run on these devices. Similarly, from a technical perspective, while APIs hold a great deal of potential value for enterprises, developers hold the key that unlocks this potential.

Value comes not from devices or APIs as such – it comes from developers and the applications they build for these devices, against these APIs. To get true value from its APIs, an organization must take a developer-centric approach: reaching out to get developers on board; providing support to help developers use APIs effectively; tracking API usage to identify the most valuable developers; managing APIs to ensure developers can create applications that work consistently.

Our upcoming webinar Developers, Developers, Developers – The Secret to Running a Successful API Management Program will explore tools and techniques for developer-centric API management. Presented by Layer 7 CTO Scott Morrison and RedMonk analyst James Governor, this webinar will take place at 9am PDT on April 19. Space is limited, so don’t hesitate – sign up today!