APIDays, Bangalore 2026

On August 19 and 20, 2026, I got the chance to speak at APIDays Bangalore. It was my first time in the city, and I could not have asked for a better reason to visit.

The conference brought together around 800 people across four ballrooms. My session had roughly 100 to 200 attendees, many of whom had travelled from different states specifically for the event. The room was focused, curious, and ready to learn.

The journey started two to three months earlier with a speaker proposal. I had to explain what I wanted to talk about, what attendees would learn, and why the topic belonged at the conference. I also recorded a short video introducing the idea and outlining the practical takeaways.

Once the proposal was accepted, the real preparation began. I worked on the slides, refined the story, prepared the demos, and arranged the trip to Bangalore. I felt confident about the subject because I had spent enough time using these ideas in practice before trying to teach them.

My talk was titled “Agent Skills and MCP: Better Together.” The central idea was simple: MCP gives an AI agent access to tools and external systems, while skills give it the task-specific instructions needed to use those tools well.

An agent with access to many tools can still get confused about which one to use, in what order, and under which constraints. A well-written skill narrows that uncertainty. It tells the agent how to approach a particular job, what to verify, and what mistakes to avoid. Bringing skills and MCP together makes the agent more reliable and easier to guide.

The tickets for APIDays were expensive, and I was conscious that people had invested real money and time to be there. I wanted everyone in the room to leave with something they could try at work on Monday, not just a collection of interesting slides. That responsibility shaped how I explained the topic and why I kept the demos practical.

Right before my session, my laptop refused to connect to the event setup. It was the kind of technical problem every speaker hopes to avoid. My slot had to be moved until after the next session while the team worked out an alternative.

I was disappointed, but I did not want the glitch to decide how the day ended. I held on to my confidence, returned to the stage later, and delivered the talk using an organizer's laptop. Arjun was especially helpful in getting everything ready so I could continue.

Once I started speaking, the earlier confusion faded into the background. The preparation helped. I knew the material, the demos were ready, and I could focus again on the people in front of me.

Some of the best parts of the two days happened outside the ballroom. I spoke with attendees from different parts of India and met people from Postman, IBM, Kong, Google, Adobe, BrowserStack, and several other companies.

Those conversations gave me a closer look at how senior engineers, engineering leaders, and CXOs think about their teams and technical practices. I also received honest feedback on my own session. That mix of sharing what I knew and listening to how others work made the trip worthwhile.

APIDays Bangalore was a demanding event to prepare for, but it was also a lot of fun. I got to teach a subject I care about, recover from a technical setback, meet people I would not normally cross paths with, and experience Bangalore for the first time.

I am grateful to Naresh, Mehdi, Calista Dolci, Arjun, and the wider APIDays team for supporting me through the proposal, travel, and the last-minute technical issue. I am also thankful to everyone who chose to spend their time in my session and stayed afterward to talk.

Two days went by quickly, but I came home with useful feedback, new engineering perspectives, and a stronger belief that practical knowledge becomes more useful when we take the time to share it clearly.