Everybody's talking about Learning

A week or so ago I was encouraged to write an extended post about what I tweeted about, which was a surge in conversations related to Learning, Training and Education.

In talking with people from a variety of industries and market segments one thing that has struck me is that there seems to be a focus on education that I don't recall noticing in the past. These conversations are not exclusively from educators or professional trainers, but managers, directors and C level executives that are concerned with the skill level of their employees, the knowledge about product offerings and use with their customers and partners and providing expertise to their prospective clients in the form of webinars, white papers, and connections in a business focused social network.

We have been focusing on learning, both formal and informal, for some time here. You can watch some of the webinars we have sponsored to get a sense of our interest out there in the market. This emphasis on 'social learning' is growing (it seems exponentially) and there are so many great questions from people searching for solutions.

I just heard that Learning 2009 is going to be focusing a conference-within-conference on Social Learning, and a topic of much discussion at this week's Annual Conference of the USDLA was on how social media (of all types) plays into a blended learning agenda for organizations.

Other evidence of the surge in interest in this area is the monthly virtual events that are being produced by Dr. Tony Karrer's Corporate Learning Trends initiative - you can sign up for the June online (free) conference here. The one this month was extremely informative that was hosted by Jay Cross, you can read his take on the experience here.

Why all the interest?

My take is that in these challenging economic times we have to maximise the resources we have available to us, and the most expensive one is our people. Making sure that they have the information to do their jobs is a primary concern, and it is accelerated by the fact that so many companies are working with reduced staffs, so people are having to do things that they have never done before. They are relying on their networks of connections to help them solve problems - but as those networks have collapsed, it becomes important to build new ones. That seems to be why they are calling us.

Education is important, finding a way to make it most effective for the money spent is a critical part of the strategic discussion. There are a lot of resources out there for you, I especially like this site eLearningLearning. It's very helpful.

Three Things You Must Know About How Distance Affects Your Organization

I just got off the phone with Reggie Smith, the President Elect of the United States Distance Learning Association to go over details for Wednesday's (4/22) Webinar. We discussed how this webinar series is geared towards education of the audience, not education in the traditional sense.

For the past several months we have been doing this series of conversations with noted authorities, experts, thought leaders to learn from them in an interesting format. As this series evolves, we are getting better at both delivering a message and finding ways to engage the audience more effectively.

Last month we used TweetChat to have a back channel going on during the webinar, it worked great. This month we will do the same (using #usdla).

So, what should we expect from this month's conversation?

• A brief history of Distance Learning
• A focus on Corporate Learning (as opposed to K12 and Higher Ed)
• Best Practices and Anecdotes
• Alignment of Learning to an Organization's Strategy - and Some Tactical Tricks
• Backstory from the Booz Perspective (Reggie is a Booz Consultant & President of USDLA)
• Statistics from the USDLA Archives
• Thoughts on Integration of and Participation in Distance Learning (Mgmt and Learners)

This ought to be plenty to get us started. If you are interested in any of these ideas, join us for the Wednesday Webinar. You can register by clicking here.

We will post a replay at http://www.intronetworks.com/webinars.aspx later that day.

introNetworks inSight - an experiment in communications

Today, after a lot of discussion we have launched a new video blog called inSight that will be crafted each day, be short, and interesting (well, if not, you will tell me).

This first one is just me getting my feet wet. I tell you, sitting in an empty room staring at a red light is challenging. I think I did this ten times. But, practice makes perfect and I am pretty sure that in a week or so, I will be able to whip these out quickly.

Kymberlee (my partner and President of introNetworks) is also going to be doing inSights as well - she has a completely different point of view (think mars and venus) and I am anxious to hear what she has to say.

I was encouraged by a client today to be much more vocal about our software and how it is (or could) be better used by clients - he suggested that he would watch everyday if he could get a tip or two. In fact, he said he would 'weep for joy' if it helped him run his community.

Well, Michael - start crying.

Here then is the episode #201 of introNetworks inSight. Please use the comments to tell me what you would like to hear about. (I see that when I put the YouTube embed code here, it clips the HD (shot with MinoHD) - you can see the full view here.)