An #API solution for the Greek Crisis

After the Greek Referendum of the 5th of July, a new day has started in Greece. Banks are closed, transactions with e-banking and credit cards are limited only to national ones and in general, economy has virtually stopped.
I had to admit that I was honoured by Digital Ocean last week, because when the referendum was announced and when banks closed, they chose to send an email that they support Greece and they would not shut down our servers and various services until the situation was resolved.
One the other hand,

had to follow a different approach. They send mail notifications to their developers that they had to be extremely cautious regarding Greek transactions. This is extremely logical and those are huge companies that try to protect their clients, and those clients their own clients. But....


My approach in all this situation is that Greek economy should be relieved by opening the banks, enabling Greek developers again continuing working on their projects.
Our software economy, in general is an API economy. This economy shouts for collaboration. As more people use your API, the more you can build value on it, the more profitable your company is. It was a sad week that we could not use some of our favourite APIs because of the situation, and hopefully those issues will be quickly resolved.







Greece could benefit from this crisis by opening more business opportunities and enabling the creation of a european silicon valley in the way that Barcelona tries to create one.

APIs are actually opportunities for innovation, integration, new business models. New revenue streams could be created in a way that developers could be stated in Greece and work with the rest of the world. In a way, there many companies now within Greece doing exactly this. 


To finalise this short article, I would like to say that Greece is not only a place for holidays. It can be a place for opportunities and developers around the world should seek this lucky chance and visit our country both for business as well some nice vacation time.
If you have any questions, ideas, suggestions, feel free to contact me.
Cheers for Greece,
Michael.

Τόπος: Athens, Greece

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