Over the last few weeks I have felt that I have left my ‘real blogging’ by the wayside. By that I mean I didn’t have any observations made from various activity, comments and experiences that made me sit up, think and reflect. That’s because I have been closed up in a small 1-person meeting room […]
What Have I Been Up To?
Well another quiet Sunday morning – my best time to learn, reflect and share what I’ve been doing in the last week. It’s been a while since my last blog post but that’s because my Onboarding & Role Based Learning program that I have been working on for new branch managers is being rolled out and […]
Where are the Cubicles? Our First Co-Working Event at Third Place
Cubicles, be gone! Today our Third Place Meetup group had their first co-working event. Well, it was our first experience of HOW co-working works and we had the privilege to experience it at Inspire9 in Richmond, just outside of Melbourne. Katrina, our Community Space Captain was there to welcome us when the elevator took us to […]
Are You Looking for Experts? They’re in Third Place
Last year was filled with wonderful opportunities where I met my personal learning network face-to-face none more so than my trip to the UK which cemented an idea in my head. That idea transpired into a meetup for Learning and Development professionals to meet informally, share their work and skills in a social setting usually […]
Using LinkedIn to Merge Your Internal and External Networks
At the end of June, my contract at the current organisation ends. After working there on two different contracts for the last couple of years, I have built up a great network of people with different skills across technology, banking, retail and support. However, I didn’t realise this until late but it dawned on me […]
Doesn’t Matter if You’re an Employee or a Penguin – It’s All About Taking Action
Earlier this month, an article on the ABC called out for knitters to knit jumpers for penguins affected by oil spills. Five days later, the Guardian posts another article, “Lay Down Your Needles, Knitters Are Covered For The Time Being” and stops the world in our penguin knitting frenzy. How did the world go so […]
What Does the Future of Work Look Like? It Will Look Weird.
[View the story “Future of Work Conference Melbourne” on Storify]
Learning a New Skill – What Not To Do When Learning To Play the Ukulele from the Internet
Many of you know that I recently been teaching myself how to play the ukulele. For someone who has never learned to play an instrument, learned how to read and write music or even dared sing in public, this is a big deal for me. You can read how I got started with this instrument […]
What Do People Think of What You Do?
After my post on “What? You Don’t Do That? We Thought You Did!” had some discussion, I stumbled upon The Context of Things website that had a blog post on IS YOUR JOB WHAT YOU THINK YOU DO, TELL PEOPLE YOU DO, OR ACTUALLY DO? Pertinent question and excellent timing. I don’t know about you but […]
From Contractor to Consultant
Three weeks into my reduced hour work week (3 days) and all I can exclaim is, “What just happened?!” I now work in the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays on my current contract until it ends in June. Meanwhile Wednesdays and Thursdays are at home reserved for my consulting work with Activate Learning Solutions. […]
Show Your Work: How to Design If You’re No Graphic Designer
One of the projects I’ve been working on for the last few months has been an Onboarding Program for our Retail business. In the near future, when the program has been implemented into the business, I will write it up as a case study as not only was it the result of some pressing business […]
What? You Don’t Do That? We Thought You Did….
Andrew Jacobs (@AndrewJacobsLD) wrote a blog post 50 Big Ideas to Change Learning and Development this week. Amusingly, about the same time as the Serious eLearning Manifesto was promoted. Although I haven’t fully explored the latter as I need to view the YouTube Google Hangout, Andrew’s blog post really hit the spot for me. He […]
How Aligned is Learning and Development to Business – an #OzLearn Tweet Chat Tues 8pm AEST
On Tuesday night I will be moderating a live Tweet chat for @OzLearn and hope anyone in learning can join us on Tuesday 11 March at 8:00pm AEST on Twitter. Simply go to Twitter, search on @Ozlearn at that time and join in on the conversation by adding #ozlearn to all your tweets. This month, we will […]
Serendipitous Connections Lead You To a Better World
It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks since my last post. I think that I should scribble notes into my note pad every time I have an engaging and mentally stimulating encounter with people so I don’t forget what we talked about. Even better, I wish I could bottle their passion, enthusiasm and explosion of […]
From Employee to Contractor to Free Agent to Who Knows What…
I’ve been quiet on the internet this weekend for a deliberate reason. I needed to get back some time to myself. I needed to switch off the noise and sit back and reflect on my life and my next steps. Let me add, I did get a lot of work done in the garden and […]
Make Sure Yammer Doesn’t Turn Into a Ghost Town
Last week I wrote about a post about how I coached a colleague to use Yammer and explain its benefits on how it could increase her productivity and engagement in the workplace. This week the theme continued to be all about Yammer. I had many people asking me to learn more about it in particularly, […]
How Do You Explain Yammer?
Last week I was put through my paces at work. A colleague who I had worked with a couple of years ago to create Role Based Proficiency Pathways for the retail arm of her business came back from maternity leave and she sat next to me at work. We caught up with the “goss” and […]
Learning a New Skill – Ukulele Dreaming…
On Friday night I made an impulse buy at JB Hi Fi. I joke to my husband that every time we walk into this store, Australia’s leading retailer of music, video, home theatre, communication and computer gadgetry, their share price goes up. Every time we leave the store empty-handed, the share price goes down. So […]
Embracing Uncertainty…Awkward!
If I ever had a dollar every time I heard those two words. “We must embrace uncertainty!” “Embrace uncertainty – if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s change!” “We must accept that this is the future – embrace uncertainty to survive!” “Helen, you don’t embrace uncertainty well do you?” *Yawn* I’m slightly behind the […]
The Training Function of 2014
This month it was a pleasure to collaborate with Sunder, a member of my own personal learning network. In the spirit of open discussion and shared learning, we wrote about our experience, knowledge and observations of working in large organisational learning teams to write a joint blog post on what we believe we will see […]