Work

business & working

CSTD Learning Innovations Symposium

by

For the first time, the Canadian Society for Training & Development (CSTD) will be holding its Symposium outside of Ontario. The 2005 Learning Innovations Symposium will be held in Fredericton on 16 & 17 May. We expect an intimate gathering of about 200 attendees and another 200 or so for the live webcasts. The event will be digitally archived. The host agency is LearnNB, of which I’m a member and I will be presenting, with my colleague Albert Lejeune, two sessions, one French & one English, on a case study of a healthcare project that we did with my partner company, Mancomm Performance.

Apprentissage et communautique en services de santé
En 2003-2004, l’équipe Mancomm Performance a collaboré avec le Centre hospitalier Pierre-Le Gardeur (Lachenaie, QC), à  la mise en place d’un cours en ligne pour les infirmières portant sur l’approche McGill, ainsi qu’à  la création de communautés de praticiens. Depuis l’analyse de la performance au travail jusqu’à  la livraison sur des plateformes MOODLE et MAMBO (logiciels libres), l’équipe a travaillé étroitement avec le personnel hospitalier au moyen d’ontologies de domaine. Dans cette séance, vous allez :

  • Apprendre comment faire une analyse de performance avant de recommander l’apprentissage en ligne
  • Comprendre l’importance des ontologies dans la création des bases de connaissances.
  • Comprendre les bénéfices des logiciels libres pour le support à  la performance.
  • Comprendre la méthodologie, DECLICK, utilisée par l’équipe.


eLearning and Communities of Practice in Healthcare

During 2003 to 2004, Mancomm Performance Inc worked with the Pierre LeGardeur Hospital in the Montreal area to implement online learning for nurses as they adopted the new McGill nursing care methodology, as well as the creation of virtual communities of practice for social workers. From the initial performance analyses conducted on the hospital wards, to the implementation of the open source Moodle and Mambo technology systems, the consultants worked closely with the hospital staff in the development of their knowledge base, using domain ontologies.

  • Learn about the need to conduct a performance analysis prior to recommending any e-learning intervention
  • Learn how ontologies can help with the creation of shared professional knowledge bases
  • Learn about the benefits of using open source software for workplace performance support
  • Learn about the DECLICK methodology developed by the Mancomm team

Other guests include Clark Aldrich, Jay Cross and Stephen Downes. The price is very reasonable [as low as $(CA) 299 or $(US)247] and you can get a discount on CSTD membership as well. Hope to see you there.

From the CBO to the Suits

by

Chris Locke, co-author of The Cluetrain Mainfesto and Chief Blogging Officer gives this latest advice on corporate blogging:

Moreover, nota bene, I’d like to not-so-humbly hint to all the suits out there in CorporateLand who are wondering how they’re going to "leverage" blogging in "their operations" that they should be paying close attention to what’s going on just beneath the radar here on CBO. Those aren’t Chinese subs, you fools! They’re potential customers. But if you create blogs that don’t tell stories, aren’t the least bit funny or irreverent, but only read like thinly disguised advertising copy, then those potential customers are going to treat you like Chinese subs — and send Tomahawk missiles straight up your RSS.

Ya gotta read the whole post though (note to self – get funnier).

The Long Tail

by

The long tail has been getting a lot of press lately. The basic premise seems to be that there is a larger market of those willing to buy unpopular items (or services) than all of those people who buy the “hot” items. It puts aside the traditional wisdom to only focus on items that can be sold many times because you may be missing an even larger opportunity. Instead, the long tail theory is to sell a few things to a few people at a time, but many times over. According to Joe Kraus, the same is true for software:

These three facts
  • every business has multiple processes
  • processes that are similar in name between businesses are actually often highly customized
  • there exist a large number of processes unique to millions of small clusters of industries.
means that there is a combinatorial explosion of process problems to solve and, it turns out, little software to actually support them.
Said another way, there is a long tail of very custom process problems that software is supposed to help businesses solve.

It’s like being a specialty bookstore, but with the right software development processes you could create niche software products and be able to sell just one at a profit. Look at his slide presentation for more details on this.

Seth Godin also talks about the long tail and how to approach it as a budding entrepreneur:

So, what I would say to the struggling entrepreneur or pundit or expert or consultant or musician or person spreading that important idea is this:
  1. it’s okay if it doesn’t happen fast
  2. don’t worry so much about getting the approval of those who came before and are farther along the curve
  3. keep costs as low as possible so you can do this without panicking when it doesn’t work so fast
  4. surround yourself with friends and colleagues who “get it” and root for you, even when it’s not going so fast
    (variant: fire the friends and mothers-in-law who aren’t supporting you so much!)
  5. realize that it’s not about you or the way you look or what you wear. It’s about the tail.

His advice is to be patient, persistent and keep your costs low – pretty good advice for any business.

and continuing on this theme …

You can also see the effects of the long tail in academic course blogging, and how the moderator can work with it to support the learning goals in The Learning Blogosphere(2): The Long Tail.

Tagback

Innovation Research in a Nutshell

by

Dave Pollard gives us one more great synthesis for our business tool kits. In his latest post, he has summarized the key points of Michael Porter, Peter Drucker, and Clayton Christensen regarding their approaches to innovation research

I like all three models — Porter’s, Drucker’s, and Christensen’s — and if I were to be assigned to do some innovation research today, I would use a combination of all three approaches, looking at the markets, and potential markets, and the forces that drive them, from all three perspectives. That way you can actually get a ‘3-D’ forecast of the future of your, or your client’s, business or industry, or the entire economy.

This area of practice is of significant interest to me, and I recommend not only Dave’s analysis, with its diagrams, but each referenced book.

Architecture for a better future

by

Dave Pollard produces more thought-provoking articles than almost anyone else on the Web. I have used his Natural Enterprise model to inform my own work in developing better business models for small businesses, and now Dave has started to put many of his ideas together in his latest post, Creating a Post-Civilization Culture. His framework consists of four components – Principles, Learning, Enablers & Infrastructure. The premise is that,

With the right principles that can guide our decisions, the learnings to build the new culture properly, and the enabling building blocks, we can create the infrastructure that embodies the new culture.


This framework, coupled with Robert Paterson‘s narrative on the next Reformation, could sow the seeds for some grassroots action. It may be just what we need at the local level to address our own community’s sustainabilty issues.

Provinent Acquires LearnStream

by

Provinent, headquartered in Toronto, with its development shop in Fredericton has just purchased LearnStream, another Fredericton company. From the press release:

Provinent Corporation, Canada’s leader in e-learning consulting and custom e-learning content development, announced today that it has acquired New Brunswick based LearnStream, a pioneer in e-learning courseware development.

I wonder if we’ll be seeing any more mergers and acquisitions this year?

Well-prepared for old age

by

Milton Glaser on "10 Things I Have Learned (2002)"

IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.

One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?’ An irritated voice said ‘Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?’ I recognised the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to prepare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceeding well prepared for my old age’ he said.

Glad to know that being a freelancer is preparing me for my old age ;-)

Via BoingBoing

Guidelines for Effective Corporate eLearning

by

Anol Bhattacharya, author of SoulSoup, has posted some good guidelines on elearning for the corporate world. I can really relate to guideline #1:

1. The business world is not about learning, it’s about doing business.

So before doing training needs analysis – please, do go through a business needs analysis. It may not be the same as the strategic direction or vision statement of the company; it’s more complex. We are dealing with different goals and perspectives. What needs to be learnt varies from the point of view of the CXO, training manager, product manager/department head and the learner. Catering to all viewpoints is a daunting task, but, believe me, it’s the first and foremost task to do. Any shortcut is a pathway to doom’s loop.

This is similar to the principal of The Problem, The Balloon and the Four Bedroom House; namely that an inadequate analysis may rise up and bite you during a subsequent part of the project.

Anol has a number of other principals that would be worthwhile for anyone developing “learning solutions” for the business world. I got a déja vu chuckle from #5, stating that big LMS rollouts are out:

Then the fun begins. People sit together in meeting rooms, munching donuts and sipping coffee, to interview LMS vendors. The process made them feel important. After that hoola-hoop, when the LMS was finally implemented (e Learning rollout – drum roll please!), there was nothing inside it. So they filled it up with off-the-shelf courseware and uploaded all the junk PowerPoint presentations, PDF and Word documents. Finally when they realized nothing is going according to their expectations (god only knows what those were!) – they jumped to the conclusion – e Learning doesn’t work!

Via James at IncSub.

Yahoo uses Drupal

by

Sebastien Paquet is blogging the Information Architecture Summit [what’s the difference between a summit and a conference?] in Montreal this week (thanks Seb). The presentation on Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study, shows how Drupal meets the needs of the expanding company:

I used to work with an internal group to build an intranet. We didn’t want to go around begging for money, so it needed to be cheap. [php, movable type, drupal, other logos pop up] We wanted it scalable [some logos go away], customizable and extensible, easy to use (unlike coders, designers are a fickle bunch) [some other logos vanish], and conducive to collaboration. A bottom-up feel to it. Categorization. The answer was Drupal. It has broad functionality, blogs, calendar, strong taxonomy system. Active developer community – I want to do as little work as possible. There’s a new version about every four months. It has a very abstracted engine. It’s not the greatest at everything, but the taxonomy part is very strong.

The strength of the Drupal community just keeps growing :-)

Seb has blogged a number of other sesssions, well worth the read if you’re interested in IA.