In honour of Blog Day 2005, here are some new blog recommendations, not necessarily to do with learning, work & technology:
At the intersection …
by Jillaine Smith, it’s "An inquiry into the intersection of strategic planning, Internet communications, leadership development and organizational effectiveness…" – I also like the name ;-)
Le Blog de Cyber-Langues
Le colloque Cyber-Langues 2005 se tient cette année à Artigues-près-Bordeaux du mardi 23 au jeudi 25 août 2005, coordonné par Domingo Bayon-Lopez. Cette rencontre estivale informelle a pour thème principal “Pratiques concrètes et usages transférables : enseigner et apprendre les langues avec les TIC” de manière à privilégier le rapprochement entre collègues utilisateurs et collègues désireux d’en savoir davantage sur les apports des TIC pour les élèves.
The Soap Blog
Eie Flud’ is our small company that makes and sells luxury handmade toiletries and natural botanical perfumes, based in Melton Mowbray – we have a workshop and shop at Staunton Harold Hall, Ashby de la Zouch and shop in Uppingham, Rutland.
Stone Creek Coffee Roasters
"At Stone Creek Coffee Roasters, we work hard to create amazing coffee." And what can be wrong with that?
The Mobile Eye Guy
By Ben Ramsey; "Here is where you can read articles and ask questions about the Eyewear Industry that you were afraid to ask or did ask but didn’t get answered at a chain store."
Oregon Targets Open Source Business
I have suggested this strategy to economic development folks in Atlantic Canada for several years now, especially for learning-related OS. Open source can be a real accelerator for smaller players, as the barriers to market entry are much lower. It fell on deaf ears though.
Anyway, here’s what the Oregonian has to say:
Gov. Ted Kulongoski pledged Tuesday to do his part to make Oregon an attractive place for open-source software development, promising to raise the state’s profile within the open-source movement and to raise the movement’s profile inside Oregon.
"This is a growing segment of Oregon’s economy, and it’s the future. And it’s little-known outside the industry," Kulongoski told a roundtable discussion of 20 leaders from the state’s open-source community.
The governor said Oregon would contribute $40,000 in state economic development funds to help hire a "coordinator" to promote the state’s disparate open-source activities and reach out to businesses and software developers thinking about doing business in Oregon.
"This is a growing segment of Oregon’s economy, and it’s the future. And it’s little-known outside the industry," Kulongoski told a roundtable discussion of 20 leaders from the state’s open-source community.
The governor said Oregon would contribute $40,000 in state economic development funds to help hire a "coordinator" to promote the state’s disparate open-source activities and reach out to businesses and software developers thinking about doing business in Oregon.
Gloria Gery on Performance
I read Gloria Gery’s Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) in 1994. At the time, I was responsible for training development on a helicopter that the Canadian military had just purchased. EPSS became a key reference book for my approach to training design and the later creation of a specification for computer-based and web-based training. The focus of our team became much more one of performance versus training, and luckily I found that air crew were very open to the idea of performance support.
Jay Cross and Tony O’Driscoll have just written an excellent review on Gloria’s contribution to the work, learning, performance field. According to Jay:
The first time I heard Gloria speak, seven years ago, she provided the mantra of my efforts, “Training will either be strategic or it will be marginalized.”
In my experience as both an internal and an external consultant, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. Gloria Gery was ahead of her time, as there is still a shortage of good references on how to develop performance-centred workplace interventions. EPSS Revisited is a more recently published book on the subject but as I have noted there are few how-to resources on EPSS and fewer on workflow learning.
In the words of Gloria Gery:
Performance Support focuses on work itself while training focuses on the learning required to do the work. Integrating resources in the workplace is inevitable, and the need is urgent. Filtering resources so people get the tools and resources they need while actively working is the goal. Work process and roles are the primary filters. The mechanisms vary: portals, performance-centered workflow interfaces, enterprise applications, integration projects, etc, but what’s important is that performer be able to name that tune in one note, to perform in exemplary fashion.
Natural Capitalism Without Venture Capital
Business Opportunities Weblog found this article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the fact that few companies actually receive their funding from venture capitalists:
In fact, a recent report from Babson College and the London School of Business concluded that fewer than one in 10,000 companies in the United States receive their initial funding from venture capital firms. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report also found that entrepreneurs provide 65 percent of their startup capital, with the rest of the funding typically coming from friends, family or co-workers.
"If self-funding by entrepreneurs and informal investments dried up, entrepreneurship would wither and die," the authors wrote.
"If self-funding by entrepreneurs and informal investments dried up, entrepreneurship would wither and die," the authors wrote.
This data supports the model of the Natural Enterprise developed by Dave Pollard, one that I have used and counselled its use for some start-ups. Dave advocates organic financing:
Natural Enterprise differs from traditional business (even traditional entrepreneurial business) in two critical ways:
- Where the traditional business develops its product, mass produces it, and then advertises to create demand for the product, Natural Enterprises start by identifying unmet customer needs, developing customized solutions, then delivering to the pre-qualified customers, and marketing virally.
- Where the traditional business has a hierarchical organization structure and common shares, with control of the business often wielded by corporations or people other than those who run it, Natural Enterprises are flat and unincorporated, controlled equally by their members.
Is this the real form of capitalism, especially for Internet-based and small businesses?
Skype opens up
Last week, Google Talk was all over the news. However, Skype has not been standing still:
Skype, the pioneering Global Internet Communications Company, which offers free high-quality phone calls to anyone with an Internet connection, is preparing to mark its second anniversary next week by opening up its platform to anyone who wants to integrate Skype’s presence and instant messaging services into their website or application. By opening up Skype’s platform to the web, it will now be simple for anyone to connect to Skype’s fast growing member base, which has already passed more than 51 million people in just 2 years.
Googlefight
Sunday evening, and it’s Open Source vs Proprietary, and the winner is …
Thanks Albert ;-)
Un nouveau blog
Voici un nouveau blog en français, de Geoffroi Garron, à Montréal: BIOTOPE:
Un blog sur la communication organisationnelle, la communautique, le travail collaboratif, les communautés de pratique virtuelle, le e-learning, la gestion des connaissances, les technologies de l’information et la cybersanté.
Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
Both Lilia Efimova and Denham Grey talk extensively about personal knowledge management (PKM). They have studied this field much more than I have, and if you’re looking for in-depth analysis then please look at their sites.
This post is more of a how-to for anyone new to blogs, aggregators and social bookmarking. I have mentioned how blogging is useful for me as a free-agent, consultant, knowledge worker. etc. Above is a overview of how this site is constructed to help me in managing my own knowledge flows [this is a screen shot of my previous Drupal installation and doesn’t reflect the current WordPress configuration]. It may also provide an argument on why you should have your own blog for work. First of all, Harold’s blog is the platform by which I try to make implicit knowledge (e.g. not codified or structured) more explicit, through the process of writing out my thoughts and observations of what I have come across in my work or on the web. A lot of these observations come from the web sites that I visit regularly.
These feeds are aggregated in my Bloglines account, which is publicly available, so anyone can see the sites that I read. This feed aggregator is sorted into various folders and feeds are routinely added and deleted depending on my preferences and information needs. If I’m working on a project in a specific field, like healthcare, I may add some feeds for the duration of the work. I also keep a couple of feeds that have little relation to my work for any serendipidous learning. My account usually runs at about 100 feeds, and the ability to preview and save posts makes this simple and easy – much easier than visiting each site.
There are also some web pages, posts or sites that I find interesting but are not worth the effort of writing a blog post (these take some time and effort). For these sites I use Furl because it not only saves the page but allows me to tag the item by category. For example, I have been using Furl to keep a list of items related to Public Education as well as Small Businesses that have blogs. My Furl archive is also public.
Because my website is searchable, I’m able to retrieve thoughts and comments and easily review them. Others can do the same. This is quite practical for presentations and papers.
Finally, I have links to my Associates. These show who I’m working with and can be helpful in redirecting people. For instance, the Atlantic Wildlife Institute’s URL is an amalgamation of the English and French acronyms (AWI + IAF = AWIAF). It’s not that obvious, so I tell people to go to my website and follow the link – much easier. Sometimes I’m in a conversation and someone asks for more details on a subject. In many cases I’m able to point that person to my website with either, “search for this term” or “follow this link on the navigation menu”. I will even access my website from a client’s office and use some article to reinforce or explain a point – quite useful.
More Spam Woes
I thought that I had it all under control. Then the spammer attacked, including all kinds of PHP code to undermine the system. I thought that I could control it, so I adjusted the spam filters for URL and specific phrases. It worked for a while (about 30 minutes). Then my system (or the spammer) erased all of the accumulated comments on this website. I can’t find a single comment that has been made for the past year. For now, I’ve turned off comments altogether and I’m calling it quits for the night :-(
Time for a beer.
Update: Tues AM, comments enabled & spam filter adjusted (thanks Boris). Now waiting to see if all those deleted comments can be retrieved. Looks like that deletion was my fault.
New Role for Instructional Designers?
Elliott Masie in his latest Trends newsletter asks this question:
What is the next role for Instructional Design?
My experiences in instructional design over the past ten years is that it hasn’t changed too much. In the military I learned how to apply the systems approach to training as well as how to create computer-based training, instructor-led training, etc. My conversations with e-learning companies, instructional designers and academics shows that instructional design is still wedded to the course as the basic unit of instruction (I use instruction instead of learning because the former is usually the focus). I believe that there is still a huge gap that instructional design could fill, given the right tools and perspective.
Let me start by saying that my most memorable projects in the learning field have been those that created non-instructional solutions, specifically performance support. These have included online job aids and just-in-time tools to do some specific task. The tools are not that fancy but the analysis required to find the right tool for the context can be quite time-consuming. The cost savings are usually evident and rather significant.
However, you will be hard-pressed to find a program that focuses on ‘how-to’ develop performance support solutions, because developing courses is so much easier. Don Clark has a good graphic on Performance, Learning, Leadership & Knowledge. This is a good place to start to look at the non-instructional side of performance design. My own experience shows that non-instructional interventions (EPSS, KM, CoP) are very intensive at the front end (analysis) but require fewer resources in the middle (design).
In traditional instructional design you may spend up to 20% of your project costs on analysis, but for performance support this amount could go up to 80%. Once the solution is clearly specified, it doesn’t require a factory floor of instructional designers and can be developed by a small team of programmers, graphic artists, etc.
The next role for instructional design should be to get out of the course in a box metaphor. The web as a medium is better suited for non-linear, non-instructional learning programs than for ADDIE-developed courses. Just as the printed book changed academia, so too the web is changing training and education. Get used to it.