xAPI's 3rd Gear

Continuing on from my previous post, as xAPI shifts into 3rd gear, with an early majority comes a need for a consortium that will steward xAPI into perpetuity — a table for other industries to sit and work out the ways xAPI will meet their particular needs. I’m talking about HR systems, medical devices, folks who make beacons and sensors, manufacturing, energy companies, engineers, school administrators. There are other groups who we aren’t talking with already and they’ll make their needs known. We’ll have certification tests. This will make it easy for folks buying software or hardware to see a stamp of approval — a neutral third party guarantees a product is 100% Grade A xAPI. With it, the industry that makes xAPI software and hardware will have to grow up. With it, new job titles, new practices, new competencies and new goals will be born out of those titles, practices, competencies and goals we already have, from wherever we are are.

Megan and I had a great, long, long-overdue and well-earned vacation road-tripping through mountains before and after xAPI Camp – Amazon. Reflecting now it couldn’t be a more apt way for us to vacation and get ready for what’s coming. xAPI is gaining highway speed. It’s gonna be surprising and exciting. We’re going to work harder than ever to keep apace with adoption, solidifying what we have and making it flexible for even more adoption. With every climb, we’re going to see something way more epic than before.

So I say, “Welcome,” to the coming early majority. Welcome to xAPI.

Thank you to everyone who makes xAPI Camp happen. Our hosts. Our supporters and sponsors and partners. Our speakers! Brian Dusablon, who’s one of the best Experience Ninja around, working invisibly behind the scenes to make each event amazing for our participants. And to our participants: you are creating an active and vivrant community that is going to transform multiple industries. Through your activity and participation, you’re building something huge that’s purely driven by a shared goal: to improve ourselves, the places we work and the world we live in.

Let’s go, team. We all got work to do. We now have more horsepower and we’re gaining speed. Let’s keep our eyes on the road ahead and not just the mile marker we hit.

Put the pedal to the metal — and hang on.