At Rustici Software, I’m lucky to work with colleagues who enjoy sharing their expertise with others through blog writing. What better way to show my appreciation than nominating the authors for an award? Well, eLearning Learning was looking for nominations for the best of the best in thought leadership to decide the true MVPs. They were seeking posts that provide the highest value to industry professionals—useful and actionable information—that is tactical or strategic in nature and provides long-term or short-term value.

Don’t worry though, I didn’t have our staff endure the excruciating performance of Michael Scott during the annual Dundies award ceremony. Without further ado, we’re thrilled to announce that Brian Miller’s article, “Semantic interoperability: Picking the best verb for a statement,” won 1st place in the 2020 eLearning Learning MVP Awards in the New & Emerging Technology category. This award recognized the Most Valuable Posts as judged by eLearning Learning readers, award committee, machine intelligence and social media.

Brian’s blog was inspired by a recent support ticket from a customer venturing far enough into xAPI that they were deciding between creating their own verb versus using one from the public domain. Brian goes on to examine the semantics (what’s the most precise term) and the interoperability (what’s the most useful for analytics) when it comes to verb selection.

It’s no wonder that Brian is the most pedantic person at the office, and his post goes to prove the importance of being very precise when working with xAPI. If you are a stickler for grammar or have word selection pet peeves, I’m sure you’ll agree with the win. You can watch Brian’s video acceptance speech here (you can find him at 1:43) and be sure to congratulate him via commenting below.

While Brian’s blog takes the trophy, we also want to recognize our runner-up. Sara Topic’s blog, “A developer’s reflection on learning the LTI standard” was selected as a finalist in the eLearning Tools category. She shares her journey into implementing LTI from the ground up.

We hope our blogs help you navigate xAPI and the various eLearning standards. As always, you can ask us anything and maybe your question will inspire our next post.

As Senior Marketing Manager, Tara leads the charge on our marketing strategy by developing targeted campaigns to generate demand for our products. She coordinates our large events, advertising and enjoys digging into the data to analyze the performance of our efforts. She’s also a serious skier – she got engaged in Vail and honeymooned in Banff.