By Aileen Ryan, RAIN Alliance President & CEO

“Silent gratitude isn’t much to anyone.” — Gertrude Stein

The first week that I joined this organization I met with the fearless leaders of the RAIN Alliance working groups – Technical, Developers, Sustainability, Healthcare, Tyres, Application Identity, and Smart Mobility. Their passion, energy, and determination to “make their mark” by helping drive this industry forward was palpable, and over the course of that first week on the job, I met many similar people who are active contributors to working groups.

I immediately felt that we needed a way of recognizing these individuals for their contributions. And so, in the lead-up to our Summer RAIN Alliance event in Seattle, I instituted a series of awards for Outstanding Contributions, Distinguished Leadership, and Significant Service. The Workgroup leaders and Board assisted with nominating and approving recipients, and I was honored to work with Jonathan Aitken (Chairperson of the Alliance Board) to make award presentations to the following:

Outstanding Contributions:

  • Michael Fein of Zebra, for his incredible contribution to the Tag Encoding Best practices, setting the original vision for scope and tone, and significant authorship of content.
  • Dustin Roller of AmerisourceBergen, for his vision and development of the web resolver prototype, including significant authorship of code.

Distinguished Leadership:

  • Megan Brewster of Impinj, for her leadership of the Application Identity working group as they concluded their work items.

Significant Service:

  • Jim Springer, recently retired from EM Microelectronics, for many years of dedication to the RAIN Alliance, bringing his trademark technical excellence to everything he touched but always in a way that was easy for others to understand and consume.
  • Philippe Lallement, recently retired from Michelin, for his visionary leadership of the Tyre Working Group and his role in educating the market on the whole-life benefits of deploying RAIN RFID in Tyres.

I, and the Board, are truly inspired by these individuals and others within our Workgroup community. We look forward to making additional awards during our member meeting at our upcoming event, Unlocking IoT with RAIN RFID, in Wiesbaden the week of 16th October.  Be sure to join us!