Look what we built together #devday at NADA 2019

(dev) day 2019 is in the books. The record books. Based on the great response, we hope this is an event that will grow in years to come, creating an environment where developers across automotive can collaborate and innovate together. Here’s a little recap of our inaugural adventure:

Value, vision and venture

To kick off the event, Rajiv Amar shared some eye-opening stats on the opportunity available to developers in automotive, to the tune of over $65 Billion in private equity and venture capital invested in 2018.
Shouldn’t we feel enabled to improve both the car buying experience and dealership productivity by improving workflows? Even with all of that investment, we as a community are only beginning to impact day-to-day dealer operations. To the future!

We’ve got capabilities, yes we do

With the fateful duo of Sahas Subramanian and Jared Jones at the helm, we buckled up our seatbelts and went headlong into platform strategy. It was nice to see the architecture laid out in terms of third party APIs and how experts in each automotive domain area can lead by adding a spec to the platform.

Jared Jones shared the new Ossus documentation framework, which was released by the Fortellis team on Github with an MIT license. Testing this one out soon and hoping to find new ways to publish and customize the branding on this new app.

List, shift, and get ready for digital retailing

Doesn’t everything sound better with a British accent? I think our friend Julian Birkett and the audience would agree with that sentiment, especially when it comes to discussing API specs. Even more delightful, Julian demonstrated in a live coding session how a lightweight JavaScript app can be used to test API calls through the Fortellis platform.

Jason Bonifay, the CTO of AutoGravity talked about the Fortellis integration and some architectural and business nuances required to onboard lenders and delight the end shopper. What a pro!

Showcase!

The best part of the whole event, in my view, was when developers from across the industry jumped up and gave us a demo of what they actually built.

Thanks and accolades

A special thank you to Jason Bonifay for the insight into digital retailing. Vinit Mehta and the whole Google crew deserve a round of applause for bringing the fire on API monetization. Lyft’s Tom Leahy, Kamil Rodoper and Amanda McDermott elevated the game on ride sharing and we appreciate all of your efforts.

For the Fortellis events crew, your efforts are not always at the forefront, but all of the little details came through for an amazing inaugural event.

And finally, to all of the developers and visionaries in the audience, we were absolutely blown away by the innovations you’re working on. We can’t wait to invite you to collaborate next time.

Let’s get together again

If you missed the event this year, or if you just want to do it all over again, keep an eye out for an announcement soon about the next dev day event.