On day one of John Deere’s API Integrator Conference the idea of treating developers like customers and API’s like products was brought to the table.

Robert Witcher, Manager in API Enablement & Developer Relations for John Deere, has over 18 years of technology experience, has focused mostly on leading IT for software engineering, including IT strategy for software products and web APIs. Chuck spoke with him later and he gave more insight into the not new, but advanced integrator partnerships.

“What’s happened is a few years back we started a very small user group and it’s grown quite a bit over the years. The reason why we think we are offering more API’s and that there is more excitement about them is because each year we have taken feedback from partners. We have tried to incorporate that into new API’s and we have learned a lot ourselves from when we first started doing API’s. We have better quality, more features for our partners. So we feel like we’ve got the right mix to roll these API’s out like products and really treat the partners and developers like customers so we can give them good support and listen to what they need.”

“When we were first into the API space we just rolled out an API because some folks wanted it and we learned because we were new with it and so did our partners. And now over the last few years in the API industry, in the API economy, in the technology industry, in the precision agriculture industry people are learning best practices about API’s and how do you treat them like products.”

You can listen to Chuck’s complete interview with Robert here: [wpaudio url=”http://zimmcomm.biz/john-deere/jd-integrators-13-witcher.mp3″ text=”Interview with Robert Witcher”]

Check out photos from the event here: John Deere API Integrators Conference Photo Album