It’s been nearly eight months since I left work and I don’t miss it at all as I’ve kept myself occupied with more meaningful endeavours. Lots of sleep, golf, knitting, reading and learning French mainly. Exploring writing, catching up with friends and family, playing with the cat. Everything but work. In some way, I feel […]
Microsoft Viva Engage: It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Facebook
I had to squint my eyes and shake my head to scrutinise the user interface of Microsoft’s rebranded Yammer which they’re calling Viva Engage (through the Microsoft Teams app). Whoa! 
Look how similar it is to Facebook or Meta or whatever you want to call it. 
I really do hope (!) that this […]
Microsoft Asked Me To Present on How To Use Storylines (and Stories) for Business
This morning I presented to Microsoft’s Yammer Customer Community on How to Use Storylines (and Stories) for Business. Viva Engage is the new employee engagement platform (well, it’s the newly branded Yammer which is sitting in Microsoft Teams as the Viva Engage app). Currently Storylines (aka ‘blog’) is live in Yammer and the Stories feature […]
How to Use Stories in Viva Engage for Business
Recently Microsoft announced the rebranding of Yammer (Microsoft’s Enterprise Social Network) to Viva Engage and I wrote my thoughts about this in my blog post Yammer & Viva Engage: Same? Same? The Stand Out New Features are Storyline and Stories Although early days yet, two of the stand out features in this platform are Storyline […]
Notification Literacy
In the post, “Some Thoughts on ‘Home’ Pages for Individuals Within Communities and Social Networks” by Doug Belshaw, explains he’s “thinking out loud” in his post on a solution that allows him not to feel overwhelmed when returning to community or social network sites and having to face an onslaught of notifications that cause him […]
Adopt & Embrace Microsoft Teams – A Live Read
I don’t know if you caught the live reading on the Adopt & Embrace YouTube channel on Friday where founder, (and my boss) Paul Woods (@paulwoods) read from the first chapter of our book Microsoft Teams: A Manager’s Guide to Communication, Collaboration and Co-ordination with Microsoft Teams. We wrote the book as a team, using […]
We Wrote a Book on Microsoft Teams But Who’s It For?
This morning I put down some thoughts into Twitter about who may benefit from buying our book that we wrote at Adopt & Embrace on Microsoft Teams. I wanted to collect my tweets here before they got lost into the Twittersphere Never Miss a Blog – Subscribe to Receive a Monthly Email Email Address First […]
Creating a Community Managers Program
For the last two weeks, I’ve been head down tapping away on my keyboard creating a Community Managers Program for a client’s Learning and Development team. Although I cannot share the details of how I created this or what elements I used to do so in the blog due to confidentiality, it’s been an opportunity […]
Learning is Personal
Recently I worked on a small project with a corporate to provide feedback on their design specification of a social learning program that was going to be delivered through their Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) platform. There were many moving parts to this project simply because it was the first time the Learning and Development team […]
The AITD Excellence Awards
I’m excited to find out that Coca Cola Amatil’s Systems Certification Program is a finalist in the upcoming Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) Excellence Awards. The program was aligned to their business strategy and aimed to improve their business continuity and performance through use of their key operational systems. I was honoured to work on […]
How to Knit a Compelling Story in an Age of Change
One of the biggest questions I (as well as many others in my personal learning network – PLN) have been asking is, “how come we ‘GET’ social and others don’t?” I’ve been asking this same question over and over in my head and I wish I had a magic wand that I could wave over […]
How Working, Connecting and Learning Is Like Driving a Car
Last week I had an opportunity to work with Michelle Ockers who had travelled down from Sydney for work. We caught up at the co-working space at the NAB Village to go through some final editing to four of the modules of the Work, Connect and Learn Program. The Work, Connect and Learn Program is a social learning guided […]
A Way To Work, Connect and Learn in Your Job
Many who have been following my blog, know my love of MOOCs – the connectivist kind. Having completed many of them in the past few years, they have been instrumental in my broadening my own personal learning networks (PLN) but also giving me the confidence to use, explore, play and apply different social tools in my work. (If […]
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 […]
How Do You Explain Yammer and Other Stories
[View the story “How Do You Explain Yammer And Other Stories” on Storify]
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 […]
How to Use Yammer to Capture Reflections of Programs or Events
With all this talk of ‘Show My Work’, I decided to go on another tangent (as I normally do) and show another’s work! Shock, horror! Rest assured, with full attribution and with a profusion of thanks and gratitude to my good friend and colleague Paul Batfay (@freefacilitator) who has kindly agreed for me to show HIS […]
Championing Change with Yammer
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]