Marshawn to me on if he’s surprised he didn’t get the ball on the 1: “No. Because we play football. It’s a team sport.”
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) February 2, 2015
As a Packer fan, I can relate to the angst of the 12th Man. Still, though, you have to admire the team spirit.
There’s a lot of team spirit about the xAPI community. The third xAPI Design Cohort kicked off, but there’s still time to sign up by February 5. Last week, our friends across the pond hosted a literal “bar” camp for xAPI — over forty people talking xAPI at a pub in London after the Learning Technologies UK conference. If the blog posts, tweets and pictures are any indication, a good time was had by all. Two weeks ago, Rustici Software shared a number of case studies presented during a webinar debuting a first glimpse at the work we’re doing with RISC, Inc. creating custom reporting and data visualization to go with the PDF Annotator Application they developed with Float Mobile.
The Tough Questions Are the Good Ones
Meanwhile, a couple of great questions have emerged over the past week. Our friend, Joe Fournier, wrote about his questions about privacy with xAPI (and other forms of data). This Thursday, we’ll record a chat to go deeper on this issue.
Mark Spivey has been asking a lot of questions on Twitter and LinkedIn about xAPI, its potential utility with linked data, and concerns about xAPI’s ability to work at “webscale.”
When I say “web scale” regarding #xapi I’m wondering whether it could benefit from hypermedia mediatype semtech complimenting API Spec.
— markjspivey (@markjspivey) January 29, 2015
Site Updates
We’ve gotten wonderfully busy with client work. Kicking off new projects this week makes for a very fun start to the year. In the next couple of months, however, we not only will work a lot with our clients, but between Learning Solutions, xAPI Camp in Orlando, Up to All of Us and the forthcoming xAPI Summit in Spring Arbor, Michigan we have a pretty full slate. We took a cue from Duce Enterprises and started working on our events calendar to make it simpler for you to find us — not just at conferences, but in webinars, hangouts, workshops and local meetups. We travel a bit and we love meeting people, geeking out about learning and making new friends. I hope you’ll look us up.
We clarified what it is we do through MakingBetter, and who we help. With the work we’ve been doing for different kinds of clients, be they individuals or organizations, one thing has become clear. Our clients believe learning and organizational development are levers for growth. They rely on us to help them elevate their game with innovative learning technology. Our clients want to make a dent in the universe. We provide coaching and consulting: needs analysis, architecture, design, procurement, development and implementation.
Go ahead and read more about what we’re doing.
What We’re Into
Dave Gray wrote about “How to Create Your Future Self” – key quote there is “By paying attention to your experience, as it happens, in the moment, you can find that there are many other possible ways of being and doing.” This reminds me a lot about advice I’ve taken to heart — “Be deliberate.” Being deliberate is tough, though. It requires making choices. Matt Cross had some good advice recently on “How to Choose.”
Brandy Agerbeck began her Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of her second book on visual thinking. Brandy’s incredible and one of the people we’d really enjoy working with. The Idea Shapers is going to be a great book and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Our friend and one of our extended teammates at MakingBetter, Dustin Updyke, has been building quite a following on LinkedIn. His latest post highlights the difference between maturity and startup is one of mindset.
This TED Talk is so meta that it requires sharing.