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Drink freely and Chat xAPI at LAK

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I’m very excited to be at LAK next week. So excited that I’m arranging (free) drinks Tuesday at 5:30! You can find us at Malone’s Social Lounge and Taphouse. See that? Social is built right into the name, can’t help but chat xAPI with friends there. It’s just a 2 minute walk from the conference (evidence below.)

Details

What

Drink freely with xAPI friends

When

Tuesday March 14th 5:30-6:30

Where

Malone’s
525 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC.
On the corner of Seymour and Pender

Who

You. And anyone you want to bring along.

September Recap: xAPI Quarterly, DevLearn, Consortium

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September was one hell of a month. We…

1. Introduced the xAPI Quarterly

This is a journal we will be publishing four times a year. We will publish the newest information around xAPI. This will be the space for you to find out what’s happening and what’s changing. We will ask many of our xAPI Camp presenters to extend their messages into articles, helping xAPI Camp discussions live outside of the rooms where the event happens. Writers will come from everywhere, please reach out if you have an article in your head that needs to get out 🙂

This inaugural issue includes articles on xAPI security, instructional design forays into xAPI, best practices for major authoring tools (Storyline, Captivate, and Lectora), information on an xAPI Consortium in the works (see #3!) and much more.

Take a look at the table of contents here

2. Ran xAPI Camp – DevLearn

Happy xAPI Campers
Happy xAPI Campers

Whoa. Keanu whoa. This event blew us away. Another sold out house. Another amazing group of speakers. Another engaged and motivated audience. Another group of generous sponsors. We really can’t ask for more than this. The xAPI community never ceases to amaze and this was proof beyond doubt that you are THE BEST PEOPLE anyone could ask to work with.

All of the slides collected from the event are in the xAPI Camp Archives

3. Started a non-profit!

Wah? Yeah, we’re right there with you. This is big and we’re just getting started. There is now a non-profit corporation in the state of Pennsylvania called the Data Interoperability Standards Consortium, this is the way forward for the work we need to do as a community and industry.

This is explained in more detail right here.

And to October we say, ‘bring it on.’

Gearing Up For xAPI Camp – Amazon

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I’m really excited about this xAPI Camp, only partially because I grew up on a farm in the-middle-of-nowhere, WA and there’s a bit of home state pride. The line-up of speakers and discussion leaders at this event is stellar! There will be big ideas and challenges from:

  • Mark Oehlert (Manager, Learning Technology, Networked Learning, Amazon) on the opportunities for xAPI in enterprise
  • Myra Travin (Educational Futurist, METAImpressions) on adding xAPI to the Learning Ecosystem Framework
  • Ben Erlandson (CTO, McKinsey Social Initiative) on connecting training, jobs, and careers to improve people’s opportunities across the world
  • Sean Putman (VP, Learning and Development, Altair Engineering) on his DIY journey building xAPI into engineering software

As well as Russell Duhon (CTO, Saltbox), Bill McDonald (CMI5 Working Group), Duncan Welder (Director of Client Services, RISC)

We will be joined remotely by special guests from wilds of Australia’s Queensland University of Technology, Kirsty Kitto and Aneesha Bakharia. They have been working intensely on learning analytics and xAPI, they have new challenges to share.

Our partners will be leading breakout groups. These are experts in the field who have years of experience with the xAPI, if anyone knows the realities and best practices, it’s them.

Like our first xAPI Camp in Orlando, there will be short presentations and a lot of time to work together in breakout groups. We have a couple people planning big projects at this camp and we’ll carry over their progress to the next camp at DevLearn to see where there was success, failure, and learning.

If you can’t make the Amazon event, we will record and share the sessions online again. Our next camp will be co-located with DevLearn on 9/29.

We’re looking forward to seeing you!! If you can’t make either of these next two camps, hashtag it up on Twitter #xAPIcamp

xAPI Camp: Call for Proposals

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xAPI Camp Banner

Lots of news this week regarding xAPI Camps!

First off, it is now confirmed that our xAPI Camp – Seattle is actually (get ready for this)… xAPI Camp – Amazon. That’s right, kids. We’re going to be at Amazon’s HQ in Seattle on July 21 for a full day of xAPI awesomeness.

We now have four xAPI Camps we’re scheduling for:

21 July – Amazon (Seattle, WA)

29 September – DevLearn (Las Vegas, NV)

17 November – CSTD (Toronto, ON) – tentative date

15 March 2016 – Learning Solutions (Orlando, FL)

Which means we have a call for proposals going on starting TODAY — because the above camps are just what’s scheduled as of today. There are more in the works already through 2016.

After much feedback on our first xAPI Camp, we now have four types of sessions that will go into any xAPI Camp. We are encouraging everyone with a case study, a big challenge, a big idea or a lesson learned to sign up. So you know…

  1. A Case Study is a real implementation of xAPI.
  2. A Big Challenge describes a tough problem for your organization that requires a group of smart people to help with.
  3. A Big Idea is a possible use of xAPI that could catch on with help.
  4. A Lesson Learned comes from a place of love, where you would spare others the time it took for you to learn it. It can be super geeky.

We’re ready! Are you?


Stop Choosing the High Chair

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High ChairI’ve spent a lot of time over the last four years learning how to talk about xAPI to senior leaders in organizations. Throughout my career, many Managers and Directors above me in various Learning Departments didn’t know how to talk to their C-Suite leaders. I feel like L&D has been teaching ourselves how to talk to executive leadership. Some of those lessons are things we need to stop teaching.

I recently had the opportunity to join a CLO Magazine breakfast in downtown Chicago. At this breakfast, there was a panel of senior leaders from academia, a rather large organization and a major LMS vendor. From both the leaders and the moderator, the call to action was clear: derive learning objectives from the business objectives and support those business objectives. Right after the panel discussion, each table broke into small group discussions about this topic. At my table the conversation turned, as it does, to the solution “learning needs a seat at the table.”

Seems like making a direct impact on business objectives is the seat at the table; these are the same thing. The disconnect struck me. Learning folks, like myself, are a bit meta and we may be missing what our value proposition is within an organization. Most of the company is looking externally, outside of the organization, trying to find ways to make the most of what the company is producing. The learning team is the only team who is charged with looking inside the company and finding ways to help work get done better, faster, happier. Making the most of what the company is producing from the inside.

We already have a seat at the table. It turns out we can choose any seat at the table we want. The problem is that many of us (and I use “us” because of good manners invokes “the royal ‘we’”) keep choosing the one with the booster seat on it. We wait for the pat on the head that will comfort us and grant us the permission to act on our “if only…” ideas. “If only we could support iPhones.” “If only we could get the evaluation data we needed.” “If only we didn’t have to build courseware.”

If only…

I’m going to propose something radical.

If you are in learning, education and/or training at any level, you have an objective that supports all business objectives: it is Improvement. You own this. If you are in learning & development, Improvement is the contribution you make to the business.

What will you do to make improvement better? What will you do to make it so in demand that you can charge a premium for it? How will you grow your business of improvement?

What I’m daring to tell you, L&D leaders, is that you’re in a market where you can cater to individual demands for Improvement. The assembly line model that stamps out the same thing for everyone isn’t good enough anymore; not when you can offer Improvement that is right-fit for a particular audience. Improvement is core to your whole reason for being in business — certainly the reason why you’re part of a bigger business. Improvement isn’t the powerpoint slides or the way in which you deliver it. Improvement is whatever it takes to make. shit. better.

If you want to argue how something like xAPI isn’t learning (or just fill-in-the-blank isn’t learning), because it’s more about performance… who else in the business cares about that academic debate? Your job is making Improvement… not making content. Yes-and, folks. Jump in and help the business grow.

Start with owning Improvement.

With this mindset, assume you already have the seat you crave at the table, because you do. You can do whatever the hell you want to make things better in the organization. The only thing your other business leaders demand is that the outcomes of your actions need to be accountable to the business. Connect the dots, show the leaders how you helped people improve to meet, and maybe even, exceed their objectives.

Let me make it abundantly clear. If you’ve ever said “we need a seat at the table,” I want you to imagine that you have it. Now ask yourself “What will I do now that I have a seat at the table?” If you know… you don’t need the permission. You need to act in the best interests of the business, and make that act count.

You can have any seat at the table you want. Stop choosing the high chair*.

*Note: This whole line must truly be credited to Salima Nathoo.

What You Missed at TRYxAPI – ATD ICE

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Riptide Software hosted a fantastic event on Saturday for the launch of TRYxAPI.com. The afternoon featured John Delano, Nick Washburn and myself leading a critically needed dialogue around the Experience API about what matters to executive leadership, and to a field that is still largely making sense of major changes happening in the learning & development field.

Our discussions featured Trish Uhl, Russell Duhon, Duncan Welder, Phil and Nick Stephenson, Lizelle van den Berg, Ian Gibson, Damon Regan of ADL with participation by many more.

John kicked off the afternoon talking about lessons learned consulting up to senior leaders in manufacturing and tech. In his presentation, John added richer insight into the executive mindset.

“I know training is important. I just don’t know how valuable. So I’ll spend the minimum on it.”

John said this translates down to L&D as “There’s no budget and there’s no permission to do anything different.” How John proposed we counter this mindset is by looking for “performance opportunities” — looking for common learning models and having a plan for how to discuss and execute on different types of opportunities for L&D to make a business impact — starting with needs for information dissemination and skills development.

After much discussion over different learning models and ways to map performance in terms of outcomes, behaviors, systems, content and competency, we all participated in smaller discussions as we practiced defining the value propositions of each others’ projects. This was in service to leveraging Saltbox’s Learning Model Canvas.

After a break where we had an opportunity to use our drink tickets (thank you, Nick ;), I re-introduced the Experience API for not-so-technical practitioners and consultants who need to understand what it is, who it benefits and what challenges it addresses.

The real highlight of the day, though, was the new site put together by Nick and his team at Riptide Software: TRYxAPI.com. What Nick and the team have put together is a highly usable and useful means to understand not only what xAPI does for businesses — it identifies the open source tools that are freely available for people to use on their own to literally try xAPI in their own organizations with a blueprint for how to replicate those case studies. This customer-centric approach is evident in the case study examples shared to model how other vendors and other organizations can share their tools and their case studies.

Two of Riptide’s examples really resonated strongly. The discussion around what Riptide did for Gate Retail Onboard was a clear example of how a small prototype project for xAPI proved huge ROI in terms of linking how improving the digital availability of performance support, and evaluating its use, impacted sales numbers and then encouraged full-on adoption as revenues dramatically increased for the company. The second example shared was the work Riptide has done in concert with the US Army, improving its sharpshooting training while also improving its sharpshooting training facility.

These case studies inspired a wealth of conversation not just around the shift for L&D with the opportunity to support major business impacts with explicit goals, but the nature of using xAPI to evaluate the very systems themselves, like what Sean Putman started with Altair Software, where the same information being evaluated to help folks improve their performance is being used to also improve the software they’re learning about.

Nick teased that another TRYxAPI event may happen in time for December’s I/ITSEC conference in Orlando. I’ll be there. I can’t wait.

 

This Week in MakingBetter: Getting Our Learn On

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This week is busy, and we have a new Faith No More album to stream from NPR, so let’s get to it, gang!

The #LEARNxAPI MOOC is starting tomorrow, Tuesday 5/12. There are so many great resources being curated for people who want to get into the business and the tech of xAPI, we could not be more proud to be a part of this. There’s still time to sign up and with over 300 registered already, you won’t be the only one (ahem) getting your learn on.

As part of the MOOC, on Thursday at 2pm Eastern, I’ll be hosting a Twitter chat on xAPI. Even if you’re not enrolled, you’re certainly welcome to join us. Just look for the #LEARNxAPI hashtag… we’ll be around and likely rowdy.

This week is just a prelude for the blitz of xAPI activity around ATD’s International Conference and Expo in Orlando, FL starting this weekend. On Saturday, 5/16, the launch of #TRYxAPI will be happening thanks to Nick Washburn and Riptide Software. John Delano of Saltbox and I will be presenting and facilitating things that help professionals make the business case for learning experiences, as well as design them. Nick will share some case studies where open source xAPI projects are put to work. It’s free, with a full bar (not a typo), so you should join us if you’re around from 12:30-5:00pm. RSVP now!

Next Tuesday, the xAPI party bus descends on Taverna Opa for the xAPI/Tin Can Meetup hosted by Rustici Software and Saltbox. Thankfully, I just get to hang there while they do all the hosting, so I’ll be looking forward to it. Space is limited so you should let them know you’re coming so an appropriate amount of hummus is available (it’s their joke… 😉

If you’re at ATD ICE next week and you want to grab some coffee or a Cuban sandwich, just say the word!

Two Years of xAPI

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Sunday, April 26, marked two years since xAPI was released. It was released with much celebration and promise. I went back and looked through my old blog to see what I said about it back then… and apparently I was mute on the subject. The post written for ADL was pretty matter-of-fact.

Connections ForumLooking back, I was exhausted and believed taking up skateboarding was an appropriate “next challenge.”

That didn’t lead to an enduring success like xAPI. 😉

Two years ago, the community unleashed an opportunity for change. In its first year following xAPI’s release, innovative practitioners and teams began their experiments and proofs-of-concept with xAPI. Their sharing of stories caught steam and by November 2014 we began to see just want was happening in xAPI’s second year.

This week we’ve begun sharing video presentations of the case studies shared at xAPI Camp-Orlando. Starting with John Delano of Saltbox talking about using xAPI as a means to speak the language of business, and with more than a dozen presentations, we’ll be sharing them all over the next month.

Just as a community came together to create the specification, a community is devoting resources now for learning and experimenting with xAPI. It is getting better and easier for non-technical and novice folks to understand how to design and develop with xAPI with a depth and breadth that is stilllacking with SCORM. Here is a list of just a handful of activities coming up in the next month:

Beyond May, what’s to come with and around xAPI is nothing short of extraordinary. We’ve been going non-stop beyond the past few weeks’ efforts with xAPI Camp-Orlando, launching RISC, Inc.’s PDF Annotator at Learning Solutions, Up to All of Us 2015. Even with both TRYxAPI and LEARNxAPI initiatives, there is so. much. more.

Stay tuned 😉