Several people have been asking us of late how we intend to charge for the Tin Can API/LRS component of SCORM Cloud. To be candid, we haven’t entirely figured out how we should charge for the standalone LRS capability found in SCORM Cloud. So, our thinking is this: We’re going to wait a little while to figure that out, and during that time, externally-generated Tin Can statements will remain free. For example, statements that originate from our Tin Can bookmarklet will be stored at no cost. At this point, we commit to keep externally generated Tin Can statements free of charge until the formal release of Tin Can from ADL (currently rumored for the end of Q1 2013). One key distinction is that if you use SCORM Cloud to import a Tin Can package and then assign that course to a user via SCORM Cloud or one of its plugins, you will consume a registration, and registrations cost money. For pricing purposes, we treat Tin Can packages just like SCORM packages. Our best guess is that as we move beyond the formal release of Tin Can next year, we will probably base our pricing around the number of users for whom you report statements on. We want you to collect a huge pile of statements this year. We want you to collect a huge pile of statements going into the future. More Tin Can statements will make Tin Can more effective, and it will allow us to better support our users. We will find a reasonable way to relate the utility of those statements to your costs. At this point, though, we still feel it’s too early to specify that pricing. The post Pricing Tin Can in the Cloud appeared first on SCORM - .

Last week I called my favorite bike shop to schedule a tune up. Unfortunately, they are lots of people’s favorite store, so the wait time was a bit longer than I would have liked — like 2 weeks too long. So, then we started talking about what I really needed. It turns out that it was just a couple of minor adjustments, which only take about an hour. They managed to fit me in the same day. WINNING! Recently we had a customer that uses SCORM Cloud Dispatch ask us if there was a way to control how many people were accessing their course from the Client LMS. At the time there wasn’t — but you know what? It’s a great idea. So, we added some functionality that lets you set just how many users can access your course from a Client LMS. (See how it works here). Why did we add this? Because someone asked and it made sense for that customer and many others. We love having these conversations because it helps us understand how people use our products and how we can make them more useful. Lesson learned? It never hurts to ask. We’re listening and welcome the requests and feedback.  Send them our way! The post We’re All Ears appeared first on SCORM - .

You already know that Tin Can is going to change our corner of the world (and maybe a few other parts of the world as well). We’re leading the charge, but we’ve only just begun. We’ve got a pile of opportunity in front of us just waiting to be tapped and we need your help to turn vision into reality. If you’re the right person for any of these positions, come have some fun and change the world with us. Software Developer We’re always looking for amazing software developers and we’ll probably hire as many as we can get our hands on over the next few months. Quality Ombudsman We’re looking for a particularly anal-retentive form of geek to push us to use best practices, ensure we’re testing the right things with every release and squash bugs with vengeance. UX Designer / Ombudsman We’re a bunch of developers who think we can do design, but we don’t do a good job. We need a pro. A tireless advocate for the end user, an advocate for simplicity, an advocate for taste and elegance. Start here for more information about these jobs and why Rustici Software is the best place you will ever work. The post We’re Hiring - Come Build the Future With Us appeared first on SCORM - .

First impressions are important, there’s no denying that. Most people that I see in my day-to-day life only see what I wear, and that usually includes what Jena and I refer to as "a good ol’ pair of jeans." A good pair of jeans is a wonderful thing. If you’ve ever found the perfect pair for you, then you know exactly what I mean. Finding good jeans used to be a real struggle for me. I knew what I wanted, but I just couldn’t make it happen. I finally found my process, and it was well worth the wait. My wife, Ashlee, knows how to pick out the best jeans. Sounds un-manly, but I’m not one to deny a good process once I find it. About once a year, I sit in the fitting room and she throws 3-4 pairs to me. Two of them are perfect. I buy them, and I wear them out. Now, the perfect pair, right off the shelf might still need some work. I’m okay with spending a pretty penny on the perfect pair, then getting them tailored to the perfect length. I’ll wear these jeans a lot. It’s worth taking the time to make sure that they’re exactly how I want them. Why is this important? Because every day I come in contact with loads of people that I don’t talk to, but they’re people that still sum me up only on the basis of how I appear to them. This analogy, for Rustici Software, is like having over 2,000 unique people walk past us on the sidewalk every day and make snap judgements about us based on what they see. …except in our case, it’s unique visitors to our websites. It’s worth it to take the time to tailor our sites to be perfect for our company — our sites are how we’re judged by those 2,000 people that pass us every day on the sidewalk. Just like the perfect pair of jeans isn’t measured only by the perfect inseam, the perfect color or the perfect placement of the pockets, a website is much more than just design. Are you telling a story with your site? Are you keeping things interesting for those that visit your site? Are you creating flashy things that just get in the way of who you are? Our goal is to create sites that are transparent and helpful. Sites that don’t waste the time of our visitors. Sites that say "just by looking at our blue jeans, you can tell that we’ve done the work to make sure that you’re getting helpful, accurate information — we’re here to help, and we’re not here to waste your time." No matter how much time and effort it takes, we don’t need bedazzled fanciness, we just need what’s right for us and for our customers. To see our latest fitting, check out TinCanAPI.com. Tin Can is the next generation of SCORM, and we’ve spent a lot of time trying to make it easy for you to understand. The post A good pair of jeans… appeared first on SCORM - .

It’s that time of year again when the Nashville Business Journal tells us where the best places in town to work are. Rustici Software made the list for the fourth year in a row! It’s been an especially fun year with a great group of people. I’m honored to work with one of the smartest and most entertaining groups of people I’ve ever come across. I honestly look forward to coming to work every morning. We’re hiring more six people right now, come join us. Speaking of a great year. Exciting things are happening with the Tin Can API. This blog on scorm.com has been pretty quiet of late, but we haven’t gone away. Most of our efforts are going into the blog over on tincanapi.com. Go check it out and sign up for our Tin Can newsletter that we send out every month. The post Four for Four appeared first on SCORM - .

There are some deployment scenarios that SCORM makes difficult. One of them in particular is when you have content on one domain, and an LMS on a different domain. There are several solutions for this with varying merits, and all of them require effort of some sort. Further, cross domain solutions aren’t necessary in most cases. For these reasons, addressing "cross domain" scenarios is specifically excluded in some of our SCORM Engine licenses. Why the cross-domain limitation, and how can you get around it? Basically, SCORM requires that content be served from the same domain as the LMS API. Browsers intentionally prevent the javascript in the content from communicating with the SCORM API if they originate from different domains. This is intentional on the part of the browser makers because it’s a security risk. If you control both domains (content and LMS), then this security risk shouldn’t be a particular concern to you, but that’s not easy to convey to everyone’s browsers. There are several ways to deal with cross-domain situations, all of which have downsides. Alter the settings in every browser that will play content. (This is a bad idea.) Manipulate document.domain in each piece of content. (Also not a good idea, because the content vendors have to be involved. Any solution that requires cooperation on the part of the content and LMS vendors basically defeats the purpose of a standard like SCORM.) Use Tin Can, because it works via web services. (Good idea long term, but it doesn’t solve your current problem of playing SCORM content.) Manipulate this via networking magic. Make each additional machine appear to come from the same domain. You can run multiple SCORM Engine installations in a single domain, essentially behind a load balancer. You could even go so far as to have something like http://scorm.domain.com/customerA and http://scorm.domain.com/customerB if you wanted different content stores for each of them, with each communicating back to http://scorm.domain.com. These would be virtual directories that are housed on different machines (with content in each) but appear to come from the same domain. This requires some skill in proxies. (Note: This wouldn’t work if you asked for http://customerA.domain.com, http://customerB.comain.com communicating with http://engine.domain.com. That would require central/remote, listed below.) You can also do a lot of funny business down in apache with redirect forwards, virtual hosts, etc and make those domains look however you want to the outside browser. Use what we call a central/remote architecture. This is a great solution to the problem, and something we’ve built out well in SCORM Engine. It does, however, carry an extra cost because it requires reintegration and is explicitly excluded in our SCORM Engine contracts. Basically, this allows you to have a single core Engine installation. You then replicate the remote component at each content store, wherever that might be. You would be responsible for replicating the content files to those locations. We would collectively write logic that determines which of the remote locations should play the content for each user. So, there are options. They generally require extra work and extra costs. If you’d like to discuss these options, just get in touch with us. Ask us anything, really. The post Solving the SCORM Cross Domain Issue appeared first on SCORM - .

The floodgates are open. It’s time to celebrate. The Tin Can API, version 1.0, is here today. It was almost three years ago when ADL asked the e-learning community to help them with research to create a new, simpler, more powerful e-learning standard. E-learning standards are what we do, so of course we jumped at the opportunity. The result was Project Tin Can, which resulted in the Tin Can API. We wrote the first version of the API, version 0.8, then handed it over to ADL and a vibrant open community. Today it looks like a few guys in Nashville, TN (and a few stragglers up North) managed to transform our slice of the world. Learning isn’t going to be tracked the same way that it has been. You want to know more about learners than just "someone completed a course" or "someone scored 98% on an test". You want to be able to track activities that take place outside of an LMS, like serious games, mobile apps, group projects, conferences, simulations and so much more. You want to be able to correlate real-world performance with training data. And, you want all of this learning and performance data to live in one system. The Tin Can API makes all of this a reality. Already about 60 products/companies have adopted beta versions of the spec. Now is the time when the rest of the industry joins in. The post The World Just Changed appeared first on SCORM - .

Three years ago, we started on a journey with ADL to help them come up with the next version of SCORM. We’ve come a long way since then (we just hit Tin Can API 1.0!) and Rustici Software has grown quite a bit. Today we’re excited to welcome our two latest additions to the Rustici Software family: Ervin and Nathan (or Ervin and Skirvin, as we call them). If you haven’t noticed, we like to hire in pairs, and rhyming pairs are even better. Ervin Puškar is joining up with our developers and we are really excited about the things he will be working on. Right now he is focused on making it easier for our sales team to interact with prospects, which has a few people around here smiling (I’m looking at you, Chris & Tammy). Wanna learn a bit more about Ervin? This should help. Nathan, on the other hand, is jumping onto Team Delight to help with supporting our customers. Team Delight’s main goal is to dazzle our customers with great support, and we think Nathan is a wonderful addition to the team. There’s a lot more to Nathan than his way with customers, so head over here to learn more. We are so excited to welcome Nathan and Ervin to our team, and we’re always on the lookout for more awesome folks just like them to join us. Check out this blog post to get an idea of who we are looking for. Who knows, we could be welcoming you next The post A big welcome! appeared first on SCORM - .

Quell [kwel] verb (used with object) 1. to suppress; put an end to; extinguish. We base our work year around quarters, like a lot of companies do. At the end of each quarter, we have a "quell" week. It’s the end of the quarter, and it’s time for us to spend some time and think about what we did and what we’re going to do next. Quell weeks are a mix of meetings, good food, and change. We change a lot around here, but that’s how we get better. Quell weeks make some people nervous, and some excited. As our last quarter ended, some of our developers suggested that we do a "hackathon", and see what we could achieve. We decided to do it. But in the true Rustici Software spirit, we couldn’t call it a "hackathon" — we called it a Quack — half quell, half hack. Mike and Tim (the owners) stayed out of it. They let us come up with our own ideas and organize into groups as we saw fit. …and there were awards. $500 to the team that Mike and Tim saw as the winner, and $500 to the team that the company, as a whole, voted to win. We quacked last week. We built things. We created things to help the company and our customers. I’m not going to list them all here; they’ll be explained in a subsequent blog post. While Mike and Tim retreated to Mike’s office to discuss their "winner", we all voted. It’s important to note that we had to put our names on our ballots, so if you self-voted, everybody would know it. It could be an endless opportunity for your peers to shame you (not that we’d do that). There were too many good quacks for Mike and Tim to decide on one winner, so their award was split between two teams. Winner #1 was "Team John and Andy", with their easy-to-use Tin Can API statement generator that can be deployed to customers that want to let their users capture their experiences. Winner #2 was given Ervin, Nathan, and Brian M. for their work in making our software development process more efficient. The "Mike and Tim" $500 award was split between those two teams. It came from an envelope full of $20 bills, so I’m not sure which team got the extra $20. The company-voted prize was awarded to the team of David, TJ, and me, for giving the SCORM Cloud LRS a real home inside SCORM Cloud. So, my team had to figure out how to split up our $500 between three people. You can’t split up twenty-five $20 evenly, so somebody had to get an extra $20. We left that job up to TJ. TJ’s personal quack vote went to Joe Donnelly. Joe didn’t finish his quack because he got wrapped up in helping our customers with their support issues, but TJ realized the value of Joe taking the time to take a deep dive into our code, the Tin Can API spec, and learn more about code in general. When our customers have issues, Joe is the first person that has contact with them, and by Joe having a better working knowledge of the code, over time, the added value to our customers and our company is priceless. TJ divided the cash award and handed me a folded stack of $20 bills. I didn’t count it. I didn’t know where the extra $20 bill went. Mike made a joke about how it would be funny if TJ gave the extra $20 bill to Joe. TJ: "What else would I have done with it?" I was speechless. Awesome. That mindset is what makes Rustici Software the best place to work. The post At Rustici Software, We Like to Quack appeared first on SCORM - .

If you missed our post about Quack, you should check that out before digesting this post. This post is to tell you about one of the creations that came out of Quack. SCORM Cloud has been the easiest way for you to get your own LRS, but its main use has been for launching Tin Can content packages and for testing Tin Can activities that live outside of the LMS. This is how it used to be.   This is because we hadn’t built a way to provide authentication for an activity provider, which means you had to use your SCORM Cloud root-account credentials in order to send statements from an activity outside of an LMS to your Cloud LRS. Well, using your own SCORM Cloud credentials in a publicly-facing way like that just isn’t practical. It’s fine for testing, but it can’t be used in the "real world." This is what our Quack did.   We fixed it. We gave the LRS a home in SCORM Cloud. Now you can add activity providers to your Cloud LRS, which gives the activity provider a username and a password to use with your LRS. Choose either basic auth or OAuth. This means that now you can use your Cloud LRS to accept statements from anywhere, in a secure and "real-world usable" way. All of the things that couldn’t be done before due to security/authentication issues can be done now. It’s a big step towards having a useful Tin Can LRS implementation in SCORM Cloud. The post The Next Leap for Your Cloud LRS appeared first on SCORM - .

We’re happy to announce we have a new addition here at Rustici Software! When I first heard that we hired someone from Mississippi, I was overjoyed! You see, I get teased a lot around here for my super southern accent. I was thrilled that I would have someone to spread the teasing around with. I mean… he’s from Mississippi, surely he’s got a southern accent, right?! Boy was I WRONG! While Tim Edwards doesn’t have a southern drawl, he has a bunch of other great qualities that made him a perfect fit for our DevOps position. Tim (or Tedwards, as we call him) will be joining Ben, our chief worrier, in the never-ending task of keeping our services available and scalable. If you’d like to learn some more about him, check out his profile! Welcome aboard, Tim! We’re glad to have you, even without a southern accent The post It’s a Boy! appeared first on SCORM - .

mLearnCon 2013 is happening right now, and we thought this would be a good time to write about some related topics: Mobile learning. M-learning. Native apps. Tablets. Smart phones. Offline e-learning. HTML 5. These are all terms that we’ve been hearing a lot about in the e-learning community, but where do we really stand with all of these different things, especially when talking about trackable and standards-conformant learning? Many of our customers have a large catalog of SCORM content, and some of them have particular needs like being able to do offline learning or delivering their content via a native mobile app. In the past, this had only been done by a few people and in limited contexts, but about six months ago we figured out a really good way to make it work. This is a huge development in the world of SCORM. You can learn more about how it works here, or just just email or give us a call. We’d love to chat up some mobile/offline SCORM with you. Another option, and a more forward-thinking, future-proof alternative, is to use the Tin Can API. With Tin Can, you just enable your learning content/activities to send Tin Can statements to any LRS (or multiple LRSs). Configure your app to store the statements locally, and then send them when a network connection is present. Almost 40% of exhibitors at mLearnCon 2013 have adopted the Tin Can API, which has only been formally released as 1.0 since late April of this year. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? You can even use Tin Can to track things like games and location-based activities, both of which are commonplace on mobile devices. If you happen to be at mLearnCon 2013, right now, this is the perfect opportunity for you to come by and talk about mobile SCORM and the Tin Can API with us. Just go find Andy and/or Tammy in booth 108, and they should be able to answer any questions that you have. If you’re not at the conference, send an email to info@scorm.com or give us a ring. You might be tired of seeing this line, but we love saying it (and we mean it) — we love talking to people about this stuff!   The post Mobile learning…what’s the deal? appeared first on SCORM - .

All work and no play, well, that’s just not how we do things.   The first thing people usually learn about our company is that we work with e-learning standards like SCORM and the Tin Can API. The second thing that people tend to learn about us is that we have fun. Part of the fun we have at the office revolves around ping pong — singles matches, doubles matches, inventing new variations of pong (we have one called "grand canyon pong"), and keeping track of our office rankings on the "Pong Ladder". We even have our own language around the pong table…almost every score combination has its own codename. Here are a few:   10-8: we call it "Ten-eight-cious"…or "Tenacious" 7-7: we call it "un-cola"…get it? 7up? 10-4: "over and out" 0-0: we call it "7-2", because John is terrible at keeping score and has been know to call the score "7-2" when it’s really "0-0". Side note: I’m as bad, if not worse, at keeping score. 5-8: vivacious 9-9: nein! 4-2: fortitude 10-0: ten-o-cious (a very prized score) …and there are a lot more, not to mention our doubles teams’ names (The Wooves, The Kings, 7 Wonders, Engine Room, etc.) So, you see the importance of pong at Rustici Software — it’s serious business here.   We used to keep track of our rankings (the Pong Ladder) on a white board. There were some specific rules, but it wasn’t too high tech. Well, when we hired TJ, he realized that the pong ladder could be better. We have a big screen in our main meeting room/pong room that displays important company stats, and TJ had a vision for a system that we could put on that screen that would include a new pong ladder. It would keep track of all of our singles & doubles matches, our rankings, and it would use the Elo ranking system. He found an open-sourced Elo ranking system on Github, but it was written in Ruby, a language that he hadn’t used before. TJ did exactly what any of our developers would have done. He took a little time to learn Ruby so he could implement the Ruby Elo ranking system for our company. Voila! We had a new pong ladder on the big dashboard in our main meeting/pong room. It looks like this:     It’s fancy, it stores all of our game results, and it even sends Tin Can statements to our public LRS when a pong match is done. What does all of this have to do with hiring the right people?   Whenever we tell people that we’re looking for good software developers (which is all the time,) the first question we get is "what language?" We give the same answer every time. "If he/she is good enough to work here, then their familiarity with certain programming languages doesn’t matter." The story of TJ and the pong ladder is a perfect example of this, but it’s not just TJ. This is how all of our developers are. So, now it’s time for me to be a marketer: if you know somebody that fits our definition of a good developer, let us know. We want to have a conversation with him/her. The post How do you know you’ve hired the right person? appeared first on SCORM - .

I like to take care of people. It’s in my blood. I like to think that being "southern" has a lot to do with it, but most likely it comes from watching my mom take care of everyone I knew growing up. It just comes naturally to me, I guess. A few months ago, Mike and Tim (the owners of Rustici Software) asked me to head up a new project that would change the ways in which we cared for our employees. They wanted to launch a new program that would amp up our existing employee benefits package, allowing us to be able to recruit more amazing talent and give them (and existing Rusticians) an even more awesome place to work. Thus, "Jenafits" was born. You might have even seen our new #Jenafits shirts here and here… pretty cool, huh?! Jenafits is our new employee benefits program that goes way beyond the normal health, vision, and dental insurance. We want our employees to do awesome work while they are here, and lead exciting lives — free from some of the everyday stresses of life — when they aren’t. We believe in the power of a happy, less-distracted workplace and I’m here to make sure our employees stay that way. With Jenafits, our employees have access to twice-monthly house cleaning (yes, the employee’s house or apartment), a pretty cool wellness program, lawn care, and a bunch of other pretty sweet services. Rustici Software pays for these things, for our employees. They also get Jenafits on-demand, which covers everything from picking up cat food for Little Guy, to dropping a package at the post office, to planning a birthday party for our employee’s children, and everything in between. There are some companies, not many, but a few, that offer things that are similar to Jenafits (although without that awesome of a name — am I right?) Most of them have a catch — you’re expected to put in more hours at the office, since the company is taking care of so many "personal life hassles." Not here. We still work 40 hours a week; the only difference is we’re all a lot happier now. Oh, and your friend that’s the best software developer that you know…you should tell him/her about Jenafits, and send them our way. The post It’s official…Jenafits are here. appeared first on SCORM - .

The Jenafits that you pick at Rustici Software can be pretty telling. My Jenafits profile is "Wellness + Internet." It’s no secret that I like to run, bike and swim — A LOT. So, when I heard that there was a Wellness Jenafit that can help offset the costs for my gym membership, coaching fees, race entries etc., I was super-psyched. Triathlon training can get expensive! My other Jenafit, the high speed Internet + Amazon Prime membership, feeds my guilty pleasures. I call this one the "instant gratification package". Some might love this for the streaming videos etc, but not me. Now I can surf and shop at lightning speed, without leaving the living room. Many folks at Rustici will tell you that I’m a bit of a Groupon hoarder (I’m a sucker for those deals). So, a faster way to buy the latest massage deal is right up my alley. But, my online shopping habits aren’t just limited to Groupons. If I can buy it online rather than go to the store, I’m all for it. That’s where Amazon Prime comes in — free 2-day shipping? Dog food delivered to your door? All for it. So there you have it — the Jenafits that I chose. Want to learn more about any of us here at Rustici? Just ask us which Jenafits we picked. The post Our Jenafits say a lot about us appeared first on SCORM - .

If you’ve been keeping up with us over the years, you know we don’t take ourselves too seriously. For example, we have a running contest I’ll call "who can spit this (insert fruit pit/seed) the farthest". Yep, we do a lot of silly things around here. But, there are many things that we take very seriously, and one of those things is our customer support. If you’ve ever worked with our support team, you know how insanely awesome they are. If you haven’t experienced our customer support team, get ready to have your face melted off by their awesomeness. Joe, TJ, Freddie, Brian Miller, Brian Rogers, Tammy, Tim Edwards and Nathan all handle support, and together they form the mythical "Team Delight". In my humble opinion, these are some of the best support people in the world. And you know what? Our customers agree. See, we have this thing called the "Delight-O-Meter." Whenever a customer support ticket is closed out, our customers get automatically asked to let us know if they had a delightful support experience, or if they didn’t. The Delight-O-Meter keeps track of our customers’ reactions to the 100 most recently closed support tickets. Recently, there were two months in a row where the Delight-O-Meter held steady at 100%. That means that for 60 days, we delighted every…single…customer! This is a HUGE deal to us! These are the kinds of things we’re hearing from our customers — the kinds of things that make the work that we do a delight: "I was very impressed with the support I received. In fact, I was blown away as he offered to speak with me BY PHONE!" "Anyone I work with always goes above and beyond. Thank you!" "Efficient, no blabla, and quick. That’s how I like it. Thanks guys!" If you haven’t already, check out our Delight-O-Meter. We’re really proud of the work that Team Delight does — it’s amazing to see how hard they work to keep our customers happy. Doesn’t a page filled with tiny Jena smiley faces illustrate that just perfectly?! The post My love letter to our support team… appeared first on SCORM - .

When I was growing up, I had a friend who had a HUGE family. She was 1 of 12 brothers and sisters and I was super jealous of her. You see, I was stuck smack dab in the middle of two brothers, and having more siblings just wasn’t ever in the cards for me. Then I came to Rustici Software, where it’s essentially the workplace version of 19 Kids and Counting (I don’t actually watch this show, but it chronicles an ever-growing family). Today, I’m excited to announce that we have TWO new employees joining us! Not that this is surprising, given our previous pattern of behavior. Unfortunately, I can’t find a way to make their names rhyme. Anywho, Stephanie Fletcher and Zach Lowry are the newest additions to our family here at Rustici Software. Stephanie is bringing her business development talents to the Tin Can API team. She has also single handedly increased the percentage of females at Rustici Software to 28%! We’re really excited to have her and see what awesome things she can bring to the Tin Can API team. Zach has also joined our team, but he’ll be focused on developing cool software. Zach drives into work everyday from Manchester, TN (over an HOUR away, now that’s dedication!) and we’re looking forward to seeing him bring that dedication to our software and our culture. Think you’re ready to join our family? Let us know! We’re always on the lookout for great talent The post Take that, TLC! appeared first on SCORM - .

We don’t get a lot of visitors around the office. Our family members come by, and occasionally a customer will fly in to meet us in person, but that’s about it. This is mostly due to the nature of our business. Most of our customers are looking to fix a very specific problem, and they find us on the Internet. A conversation is started, and we help where we can. Because of the "virtual" way that we do business, most people don’t ever see our office. It’s kind of a shame, because we like our office. We spent a lot of time figuring out what it should look like, and what design would suit us and our culture the best. A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my friend Kerry Woo, and he was telling me about how he’d been taking photos of local businesses for Google, and turning them into virtual tours that get posted to Google Maps/Places. It’s like Google Street View, but for the inside of businesses. Perfect! We scheduled a time for Kerry to come over and create a virtual tour of our office. Within a few days, we were all done, and our virtual tour was online. You can learn a lot about a company by seeing their workspace, and now our customers (and potential employees) can see where we spend our days.   The post An office says a lot about a company. appeared first on SCORM - .

My husband recently turned 44. I like to make him feel better about getting older by sharing things with him that are older than he is. You know one thing that’s older than 44? The cassette tape — it was actually born in 1962. Even all of these years later, after CDs and iTunes have surpassed cassettes, there are just times when I want to hear those old mixtapes and Grateful Dead bootleg cassettes. Fortunately, my car has a tape player so I can still listen to them. What does this have to do with SCORM? Well, remember when the Walkman was released? It changed how music was listened to. All of the sudden, you could take your music with you everywhere. We did something pretty exciting and a bit curious recently. We created the "Walkman" of SCORM. SCORM uses active browser sessions as if they were oxygen, so when you take away a network connection, SCORM breaks. Well, we added an extension to SCORM Engine that allows for SCORM content to be played and tracked from a mobile device — even when that device is offline. A bonus is that it lets learners seamlessly continue progress in a course across platforms. Start learning on a computer, finish on an iPod Touch, for example. We realize that folks have a lot of SCORM content on the shelf, and that’s not going away anytime soon. Also, the demand for mobile delivery grows every day. So, while we expect Tin Can to be the preferred method for mobile and offline training going forward, we have another option for you today that works with your existing SCORM libraries — the SCORM Engine mobile/offline extension. Even all of these years later, I still have tapes to play, and my Walkman to play them in (it has to be a collector’s item by now.) And now, we’ve found a way bring this same kind of mobility to SCORM. Want to take your SCORM content for a test drive on our demo mobile app? Just ask — we’ll be glad to take it for a spin. The post Mixtapes and Mobile SCORM appeared first on SCORM - .

I believe that we create such great products because we have an amazing company, not the other way around. We talk a lot about SCORM, the Tin Can API, and the products that we make. We know these things well, and we enjoy talking to the world about them. What we don’t talk about a lot (and this is changing) is who Rustici Software is and what it’s like to work here. We make excellent products that do a great job at solving difficult problems, but behind our products are our people and our culture. We have some of the smartest people on Earth here, and we are one of the best places to work, period. We built a new website to let the world know about what it’s like to work here. This site isn’t about our products, it’s about our company. It’s about how things are done at Rustici Software, and it’s designed to let you know what work should be like. This new site started as some of Jena’s sketches, and it ended as a brand new site. My favorite page of the new site is what I call the "Testimonials" page, where we all have a place to say why we like working here. See photos of the things we do, learn who we are, see why you want to work with us (don’t forget to check out Jenafits), and check out our company blog. I hope that you can glimpse of what life should be like on our new company homepage, RusticiSoftware.com. The post Who we are, not what we make… appeared first on SCORM - .

You might have heard that we like to take care of our employees by offering them things that most employers wouldn’t ever consider providing, and most employees wouldn’t dream of receiving. Well, we did it again. This young man, Beau, washed and detailed all of our cars this week, courtesy of Rustici Software and Jenafits. Why this week? This is a big week for us here at Rustici Software — it’s Quell Week. Quell week happens once per quarter for us. It’s a time where the entire company gets together and decides how the last quarter went, and what will happen in the following quarter. There’s a lot of food (hence the clean plate part of the blog title), and usually, a lot of change (hence, the clean slate part of the title.) Teams might be rearranged, developers might be assigned to new projects, or new teams could coalesce to meet emerging needs. The change that Quell brings is one of the things that keeps our company fresh, on its toes, and progressing. This is definitely not a place where anyone gets stuck doing the same thing, day after day. "I fear change"…you’ve heard it before. We don’t fear it, because it’s how we keep the company on course with our ever-changing industry, and we do this better and faster than most companies (I speak from experience). Another reason not to fear change? Having a spotless and squeaky clean car is nice, for once. The post Clean Cars, Clean Plates, and Clean Slates. appeared first on SCORM - .

Continuing with the fun of Quell Week, we spent yesterday afternoon at Sky High Sports. We bounced around on a massive trampoline, played dodge ball, and got to dive into large pits full of foam (it was just as entertaining to watch people try to get out of the foam pit as it was to watch them dive into it.) You can see photos here. What was really interesting to me was an interaction that I had with our dodge ball referee. He does this stuff for a living, so believe it or not, he’s seen his fair share of "massive trampoline" dodge ball matches. At one point during our match, he turned to me and said "I’ve never seen anything like this before." Was it the intensity of the competition? The amount of fun we were having (at a work function)? The way that we started making up our own rules to increase the difficulty (and in turn, increase the fun) of the game? I don’t know. But I do know that we get that reaction a lot …usually when someone visits our office for the first time, or when we’re out in public at a company event. "I’ve never seen anything like this" is a really good way to sum up what it’s like to see this company in action. The post I’ve never seen anything like this… appeared first on SCORM - .

"Bravo. You are in the select company of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies".     That’s what was written on the front of the big folder that Mike handed to me last week, the folder that Inc Magazine sent to us, letting us know that we made the INC 5,000 list this year. It’s pretty exciting — even The Tennessean thinks so. We’ve won a lot of awards, many of them we’ve won multiple years in a row, but this is our first time making the INC 5,000 list. We don’t need awards to know that we’re doing great work, but it sure feels nice to get them. The post A first for us appeared first on SCORM - .

When Jeff and I sat down to interview our newest employee, Matt Lefavor, I didn’t know what to expect. You see, Matt has officially taken my title of youngest Rustici Software employee. I held that position proudly for exactly 922 days. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t help but feel a tad replaced. But once Matt started telling us about himself, my feelings were drowned out by the chorus of this Foreigner classic. I really have been waiting for a guy like Matt to come to work here at Rustici Software for so many reasons. He rocks a bowtie almost everyday, hence his nickname- Bowtie. He came to us from NASA. He writes music. He lets me call him Bowtie. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s a rapper. That’s right, people. He raps. I could barely contain my excitement. Want to sample the tracks that Matt’s laying down? Check this out. Matt’s joining our SCORM Engine team, working on everything from integrations to creating new releases, with a side of support here and there. Want to learn a bit more about him, check out his bio. I wish I could write a really awesome rap to welcome Matt to the Rustici family, but I’m lyrically and vocally challenged. Instead, I’ll just say "Welcome, Bowtie, we’re happy to have you here!" The post I’ve been waiting for a guy like you appeared first on SCORM - .