Web videos, ibooks and production values

In the learning and development space we tend to be very excited about how new technologies allow things to happen faster without the need to go through middle men.  (Remember ‘disintermediation’? That was such a 2001 word.

There are often two levels of response to this. One is an obsession with the technology and its various features. (Great example: web seminars that gratuitously include polls, because …. well because they can.)

Another response is often to drive straight to the content, forgetting that those middle men we cut out often added value in terms of the quality of production. Want an example? Just see most self published books. There’s usually something that isn’t quite right. It could be the typography, page layout, running heads or something else, but unless you’re a publisher you couldn’t put your finger on it. You just know as a reader that it feels as if something’s missing.

So it’s a pleasure to read/watch a self-published book which actually looks good. As it happens, it also contains useful information, too, on web videos, and does a good job of including video into the fabric of the book.

The ibook I’m talking about is So You Think You Need Web Video, Huh? For my money the ‘Huh?’ is a down-with-kidz step too far, but the content is good. I certainly learnt plenty from it, even if I had to upgrade my iPad 1 to IOS 5 to read it.

‘Book’ is a rather a grand term for this offering. It’s 17 pages long, and is full of video and links and it’s free. That is the way the books of the future are going – short, useful and often with an additional function. In this case the book is part of a series that will do a good job promoting the author, former BBC presenter Angela Lamont, founder of web-video company Newsbyte.

As well as being useful, though, there was something else I liked about this book: the production values. It doesn’t feel like anything’s missing.

(Disclosure: I have no financial interest in this book, Newsbyte, or any associated activities.)

5 Years on Twitter

Today I celebrate 5 years on Twitter. Well, it’s not honestly much of a celebration, more a note in the diary. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of it until an automated tweet arrived in my activity stream.

And that’s the way it should be.

Twitter, after all, is not the be-all and end-all of anything, it is another part of one’s daily online life. That isn’t, however, to downplay its significance, because it really enables some extraordinary things.

What books to read in learning and development?

Recently, on a whim I asked the following question on Twitter:
What book has had the greatest impact on your career in learning?

Despite it being Friday afternoon, in a few minutes the responses below came through – I have also given the Twitter handle of the recommender.

Do you agree? What else would you like to see on this list? If you would like to make a recommendation, please could you include your reason for nominating the book:

• Analyzing Performance Problems, Robert Mager -Jay Cross (@jaycross)
• As If, Saler – Janet Laane Effron ‏(@janet_frg)
• Back of The Napkin, Dan Roam – Sam Taylor ‏(@samt_el)
• Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte – Nigel Paine‏ (@ebase)
• Beyond ELearning, Marc Rosenberg, Kate Graham (‏@kategraham23)
• Complications, Atul Gawande -Jane Bozarth ‏(@JaneBozarth)
• Conditions of Learning, Robert Gagne – Nigel Paine‏ (@ebase)
• Designing Successful e-Learning: Forget What You Know About
• Istructional Design and Do Something Interesting, Michael W. Allen Michael – Louise Baynes ‏(@Louise1979)
• Disrupting Class ,Christensen, Horn and Johnson- micheldiaz (@micheldiaz)
• Electronic Performance Support (1991), Gloria Gery – Charles Jennings (@charlesjennings)
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, Steven Johnson – Jay Cross (@jaycross)
• Facilitating Live Online Learning, Colin Steed – Amanda Randall-Gavin (‏@MandyRG)
• How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, Bransford et al – Britt Watwood‏ (@bwatwood)
• Human Competence, Tom Gilbert – Dave Ferguson (@Dave_Ferguson)
• Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space in the Organization, Geary Rummler and Alan Brache  – Dave Ferguson (@Dave_Ferguson)
• Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance, Jay Cross – Harold Jarche (@hjarche)
• Make To Stick, Chip & Dan Heath – Sam Taylor ‏(@samt_el)
• Management, Peter Drucker -Jay Cross (@jaycross)
  Maverick, Ricardo Semler – Henry Stewart (‏@happyhenry)
• Narrative as Virtual Reality, ML Ryan – Janet Laane Effron (‏@janet_frg)
• Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds – Colin Steed (‏@ColinSteed)
• Rapport Sur Vital De L’instruction Publique Dans Quelques Pays De L’allemagne Et Particulièrement En Prusse, Victor Cousin – Charles Jennings (@charlesjennings)
• A New Learning Culture, Doug Thomas – Charles Jennings (@charlesjennings)
• Teaching Hard, Teaching Soft, Colin Corder – Andy Parker‏ (@aparker60)
• Teaching Training Learning Practical-Guide, Reece and Walker – Tony Burnett
• Tell Me a Story,Roger Schank -Jay Cross (@jaycross)
• The Adult Learner, Malcolm Knowles -Jay Cross (@jaycross)
  The Blended Learning Cookbook, Clive Shepherd – Craig Taylor (‏@CraigTaylor74)
• The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, Richard Mayer – Rachel Kubel (@rachelmiriam)
• The Cluetrain Manifesto, Doc Searles, David Weinberger, et alia – Jay Cross (@jaycross)
• The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding, Kieran Egan – Harold Jarche (@hjarche)
• The Knowledge Making Company ,Nonaka & Takeuchi – Awooler ‏(@awooler)
• The New Learning Architect ,Clive Shepherd – Damian Farrell‏ (@Dames20), Andrew Taylor‏ (ajtlearn)
• The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom,Yochai Benkler – Harold Jarche (@hjarche)
• What Every Manager Should Know about Training, Robert Mager – Dave Ferguson (@Dave_Ferguson)
• Working Smarter Field Book , @jaycross & friends – mark britz (‏@britz), Sam Taylor ‏(@samt_el)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Jack Mezirow, R Clark and S Brookfield – Candice Kramer (‏@CandiceCPLP)

Nice guys don’t always finish last

Last week was the 16th Learning and Performance Institute Learning Awards. This dinner at the Dorchester in London is always a great event, and – as chair of the Institute – it’s my privilege at the end of the evening to present the Colin Corder Award for services to Nigel Paine. (Here’s Nigel, me and our host for the evening, top British Olympian swimmer Sharron Davies MBE.)

The thing is this: you often hear it said that nice guys finish last, that you need to have a ruthless streak to succeed. There was a lot of this around the time of Steve Jobs’ death (for an appraisal of this, see Be a Jerk in The Atlantic).

That’s nonsense.

There is no question that Nigel Paine has been successful. As head of training & development at the BBC in London. He was responsible for all BBC training and development worldwide – that means he had responsibility for 340 staff in 6 locations, and for the learning of 27,000 employees.

He transformed the BBC’s training and development operation and introduced a novel form of governance that ensured strategic alignment.

Since leaving the BBC he has worked a gruelling schedule of international lecturing and presentations, and held down posts including Chief Executive of the Technology Colleges Trust and Executive Chairman of Linking Education and Disability.

And yet despite all this, Nigel has remained open and very generous of this time to others in the industry, at all levels, sharing his knowledge and experience. He is good fun and witty but also courteous.

In short, he – like previous recipients of the award – is proof that nice guys don’t finish last. Quite the reverse. His dedication to learning, and to sharing, make him a great example of what a true learning and development professional should be.

Learning Technologies, the value of feedback and a thank you

 Another year, another Learning Technologies Conference.

Sometimes it might look from the outside as if the Learning Technologies Conference and Exhibition happens of its own accord, and that’s understandable. It has been running since 2000, it keeps growing steadily and it has established itself as a part of the calendar of the European learning profession. Last week’s event included some great speakers, with key notes from Edward de Bono, Ray Kurzweil and Jaron Lanier as well as case studies and in-depth how-to sessions.

But of course the conference doesn’t happen all by itself.

It’s a team effort and it involves a considerable amount of attention to detail. And there is one thing we come back to again and again when considering each year how to improve the conference: delegate feedback.

We’re often told that evaluation forms – or, less kindly, ‘happy sheets’ – are a waste of time. And that is true when it comes to assessing the business impact of a training intervention. Knowing that a learner liked the lunch or trainer is useless as a measure of their performance improvement.

However, if you’re trying to improve the actual running of an event, then knowing what delegates feel is essential. There are countless changes we have made over the years as a direct result of feedback – from the design of badges to the focus of content to the way lunch is served. Of course, frustratingly there are always good observations which we can do nothing about because of the physical constraints of the venue or economic reality. And then there are some suggestions that practical common sense rejects pretty quickly – the idea that we lay on a mini-bus service (with breakfast catering) from Earl’s Court underground station springs to mind.

It is, however, the reactions of delegates to the presentations themselves which are the most revealing and useful. Indeed, I cannot imagine being able to run the conference without them. Each year I read every one of the several hundred responses we receive, and each year I come away with a clutch of great ideas to help produce an even better conference the following January.

So, if you are one of the people who has filled out one of those feedback forms, this year or in the past, I thank you. In doing so you have made an invaluable contribution to designing next year’s conference.

I hope we can build something you’ll be proud of.

If you’re in L&D, just what do you do?

What do you do?

It’s a simple enough question, but for many L&D people, this is a question we dread. The reason? As soon as the person says it, you know how they will react to your answer:

“Oh, so you’re in training.”

To which the only possible response is a rather inadequate “Yes, sort of.” But by then it’s too late. They have already formed a picture, based on their 15 plus years of schooling, of what you do. You teach people. By standing in front of a classroom. Because that’s what training and skills are all about, isn’t it?

There is nothing wrong with training; it just isn’t what most of us do. We design e-learning courses or learning strategies or facilitate social learning. Even when we are doing something close to training – such as delivering workshops – there will be fundamental differences between our roles in reality and in the minds of our interlocutor.

Yet we ourselves are least partly to blame for this situation.

Why?

Because we give the wrong answer.

Bob Mosher, Learning and Performance

I’m delighted that Bob Mosher will be talking at the Learning Technologies Conference in London in January His subject, of course, is Learning and Performance.

I’ve known Bob for well over  decade and it’s great to have him talk on a subject that is very dear to his heart, and on which he has a slew of useful insight to impart.

And as well as delivering this talk, the Friday following the conference (27th Jan), Bob will be delivering a half-day workshop on Performance in the Workplace in west London.

Bob’s point on performance and learning is that there are 5 points when we need to learn things, and classical ‘push’ training (in the classroom or online) only really addresses two of these. His mission – along with his colleague Dr Conrad Gottfredson - is to move workplace learning from inputs to outputs, from the activity of training to the outcome of increased performance.

Bob’s workshop focuses on the performance support part of all this, in particular looking at moving learning into the workflow and accelerating  employee time to proficiency

The listed fee for the half-day workshop is £199 but Bob has kindly agreed an  admin-only fee of £49.99 for visitors to this blog. That includes VAT, refreshments, and lunch.

If you’d like to know more, just follow this link on Bob’s Performance Support Workshop.

Disclosure: I have no financial interest in this workshop of Bob’s, or in promoting his work, or that of Learning Guide. I just know that what Bob has to say is valuable to anyone working in organisational learning at the moment.