Adam Wathan presents strategies for simplifying Laravel controllers by following the 'Never Write Custom Actions' (NWCA) rule. He demonstrates how to break down large controllers with many custom actions into smaller, more focused controllers that only use standard CRUD/REST actions. Through examples from a podcast management application, he shows how to model seemingly custom operations as standard resource actions by thinking creatively about your domain models and resources.

A detailed presentation about creating APIs with Lumen, Laravel's micro-framework. The speaker explains how Lumen differs from Laravel, demonstrates building a RESTful API, and covers key concepts like routing, controllers, authentication, and testing. The talk uses a Pokemon-themed example API to illustrate core concepts while highlighting Lumen's strengths for API development.