I was startled awake this morning. Someone was ringing the doorbell at 5:30am. I opened the door and in bolted my husband. He was angry that the taxi he had booked to drive him to the airport had not arrived and he was going to miss his flight. He had been standing outside the house […]
How to Use Social Tools To Create Learning Experiences
Last week I delivered a webinar for a public service organisation who requested a presentation to their Learning and Development teams on how to use social tools to create learning experiences. I think it went well. (At least, I hope it did! The organiser did say that the attendees were madly scribbling notes and I did get […]
4 Ways To Learn Your Client’s Business: The Value of Networks
For the last month or so, I have been working with a couple of corporate clients providing consulting around social learning and communities of practice. In effect, the clients issues revolve around the opportunity to have their national teams collaborate openly with the ultimate aim to achieve their business objectives. Rather than go into the […]
Part 2 of Social Onboarding…A Case Study
On 4 September I wrote the first part of a project I was the lead developer (okay, the only developer) for a Social Onboarding Program for Retail Store Managers for my previous organisation. The first part of the blog series covered the background, the problem, the needs analysis, stakeholder engagement and recommendations that were part […]
The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same
I am currently working on a project about communities of practice that is making me think back to my years in learning and development and recalling the different ideas I submitted to my management and leadership in the form of strategy papers. Many of these never transpired to anything due to budget, resources or simply not […]
5 More Lessons for a Freelancer
I wrote 5 Lessons for the New Freelancer last month and since then, I have added another 5 new lessons that I have been slowly learning into my foray as a freelancer. 1. Your Time is Precious, Value It That’s not to say that when I had a full-time permanent job that my time wasn’t precious but […]
Part 1 of A Social Onboarding: A Case Study…
(Please note that I will provide this case study over a series of parts over time. The project took me 3 months and it had a lot of “moving parts” and stakeholders. This is the first part which covers the background, the business problem and the analysis). Background A few months before I left my previous […]
Where are all the Third Places?
They’re all over Melbourne. In fact, they’re popping up in cities all around the world! Last year I started an informal networking group for anyone in the field of learning, training, instructional design, coaching across any sector – whether it’s academia, vocational, public, private, not-for-profit or freelancers as a way to connect people in our […]
5 Lessons for the New Freelancer
It’s been nearly two months out of the contracting world and into the world of freelancing. Many people have asked me how I’m finding the transition. All I can say is that “so far so good” and that it is tracking the way I thought it would be. That is, it’s given me time to […]
My Top 10 Learning Tools for 2014
Ever realise that you should have kept records to view trends of your own learning progression and use of various tools? After seeing Andrew Jacobs blog post on his top learning tools, I figured I’d do the same. However, this time, I wanted to see the trend of tools I’ve been using since submitting my […]
Have You Completed Your Online Compliance Training?
This week the Australian Institute of Training Development (AITD) invited me to be one of the panel members to the Equal Opportunity Employment Network (EEON) held at the Landers & Rogers law firm in Melbourne. The discussion was on “Compliance in the Age of Online and Social Learning” centred around lessons learned from a high profile […]
Yammer for Learning & Networking
Many people have asked me what I have been doing now that I’m out of the corporate world and smack bang into the freelance consulting world. It’s now been four weeks out of a 9 to 5 job and the best thing about my new lifestyle is that I don’t have the dreaded commute every morning battling […]
Are You a Twitter Wally?
Here’s a nifty little tool for your next conference or workshop. It’s called TweetWally. I liked the name. Wally – hence I thought it was worth 15 minutes of my time playing around on it. Okay 5. With Australian vernacular, a “wally” is someone who keeps making mistakes but it’s said in a friendly, endearing […]
What’s My Niche…Part 2
For the last few weeks, I have been busy planning. You should see my study walls filled sticky whiteboard paper with my ideas of what I can ‘package up’ and start to sell. It’s been a creative and stimulating time as I let my ideas get ahead of me but at the same time, it’s […]
What Have I Been Up To This Week?
It’s been a ripper of a week. I was introduced to new ideas and discussions that got me excited so I thought I’d cover them off in one blog post although I could easily write a post about each interaction. Skype with @twofacedHR Lady Vanessa Wiltshire It seems awkward to write her Twitter handle (because she […]
What’s Your Niche?
People have been asking me ‘where to from here?’ and it’s an interesting question. There are so many opportunities and ideas to explore every time I meet new people who inspire me. These ideas then float around in my head and it’s hard to snatch at just one to see it through. It’s frustrating because my […]
How Fascinating Are You?
I’m in my third day of freelancing and truth be told, I’m feeling scattered. So many ideas tumble around in my head that I need to make sense of them. In my home office, I’ve stuck “Magic Whiteboard” on the walls and as the ideas come to me, I grab the coloured markers and scribble them […]
Does Learning & Working Out Loud Help Graduates?
Well I guess we’ll find out soon enough…. Last week I had the pleasure of presenting to our graduates on Yammer. I was asked by the Graduate Committee to run a virtual classroom for our graduates to encourage their use of Yammer. The committee wanted graduates to learn how to use the tool so that they had a way […]
How to Wrangle WordPress – Learning Out Loud
I’m always a bit anxious when I get onto my WordPress site to do some maintenance. Why? There’s a morbid fear that when I press, “Update Plugin” that I will lose the content of my blog. Years of writing, reflections and photos gone at the single click of a button. However, there’s a paradox to […]
For Every Vertical There is a Horizontal…
Many may have noticed a change in the types of tweets, blog posts and activities I have been writing and sharing over the last year moving away from a learning and development focus to an organisational focus. There’s no need to fear. It simply means that I have been trying to understand how what I do at […]