At the risk of showing my age, I invite you to travel back with me to the early 2000s… the Mashup Era of web development. Mashups combined APIs from different vendors to create new services.

This was such an exciting time for developers, as the possibilities seemed endless. APIs like Google Maps, Twitter, and Flickr gave developers access to data they could use to create interactive user experiences that were simply delightful. However, the excitement eventually fizzled as developers realized they had to maintain these applications which were often side projects created for fun.

Now, 20 years later, that spark of excitement and curiosity has returned with the introduction of AI Agents. With the MCP (Model Context Protocol) open standard, developers can integrate data and functionality from multiple services without the burden of maintaining full systems. By connecting AI agents to various APIs, resources, and data sources, we get quick modern-day mashups that can accomplish countless tasks.

In this talk, we’ll explore how AI Agents are bringing fun and creativity back to software development and giving new life to the “programmable web”.

Angie Jones is the Global Vice President of Developer Relations at Block, Inc. An award-winning educator and international keynote speaker, Angie shares her expertise with audiences at software