How to date a mashup programmer

Photo by ekai

Ask Eric: Tech Advice for Lovelorn Nonprofits

Dear Eric—

It took a long time for me to admit this, but my nonprofit has a thing for programmers, especially mashup programmers.

They take our data, our most secret data and they… Oh the ideas those programmers have! They popularize us! They wrap their strong interface around our data and help other people find us! They make Google love us. We’re so popular now that we’ve found our mashup programmer that it’s…

Well, actually, we haven’t found ours yet. Which is why I’m writing. While a girl can daydream, Practical Nonprofits plan. So, Eric, how can we find our prince?

—Mixed, not Mashed in Springfield

Mashups are so seductive.

Dear Mixed—

We may as well be realistic. It’s a competitive world out there, with lots of passionate nonprofits with vim and super ideas—a few even have money.

This is no time to play hard-to-get.

So what does our strapping programmer want? Mashup programmers want what all men want—they want to get down to business. How many of these can you offer?

• Full APIs. Pouty XML if we must, but for modern nonprofits like us, REST is best.
• Long flowing docs. Help a fellow get to know your delicate API. Tell him how to log in, give him keys. Rich private sector players even show sample code -- on a first date! Now I’m not suggesting you go that far, but the more you can offer of your charms at this point, the better. Oh, and let me share a little secret -- a REST API can reduce your work here.
• Your data in RSS, in JSON, in XML. All of it. I know, everybody’s afraid he’ll take the database and dump you—Why buy the cow when you can get the milk? Well here’s a little secret between us… We’re in the driver’s seat here, honey. We can slap Terms of Use on that data. We can meter usage, we can limit what he gets. That’s what API keys are for, silly.
• URLs that are easy to figure out and that don’t change. Let him know you’ll be there when he calls.

You may think he loves you for your money, but really it’s your APIs and your long flowing docs.

Here’s more about how to find that Special Someone, mashup programmer of your dreams:

• Don't know your mashup from your mashed potatoes, then start right here at Wikipedia: What's a mashup?     
• How to Make Your Web Service More Developer Friendly
• Making Your Webservice More Developer Friendly

Ask Eric: Tech Advice for the Lovelorn Nonprofit is a very irregular feature of our blog. Send your seasonal nonprofit tech questions to ericj [at] casefoundation [dot] org.