thanks for the clarification, Harold. As I suspected, we're closer in thought than it seemed in our words.
I will still restate my feeling that we're doing ourselves a disservice if we believe that courses, conferences, and reading were the only ways to learn things in the past. Informal learning techniques that are being championed like apprenticeships, learning from experts, and communities of practice aren't new. Granted, our ability to proliferate these techniques has been greatly enhanced with the Internet and Web 2.0. My concern is that we spend time and energy "inventing" techniques that have been honed for literally centuries.

Thanks for the dialogue. Amazing how right Socrates was that much can be learned through an honest conversation.