I watched this interview with D’aria talking about how she learned French and it struck me that we both started the same way. Many people on YouTube and other articles online advise NEVER to start with grammar. However this is wrong. I started like her. I bought the Practice Makes Perfect books and methodically over […]
My New YouTube Channel Causes Me To Radically Rethink Everything About What I Put Out There
I’ve customised my YouTube channel to remove ‘activate learning’ and to just be Life Lessons Through Books. Some time ago, I asked the question Should I Get Off YouTube? The reason is that after getting off social media, I’m reflecting on every single aspect of my working life and my output that I have shared […]
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 […]
Fiction Writing
One of the things I’ve been doing in my spare time is writing fiction for the local council My Brother Jack awards. As an annual award to encourage writers in the local community, this competition has been running for many years and it’s always been at the back of my mind to submit an entry […]
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 […]
Yammer & Viva Engage: Same? Same?
Yes. Okay you can stop reading now. Seriously, it didn’t take long for the new announcement by Microsoft for people to start pinging me at work and on the phone (thankfully, I’m off social media or else my notifications would have been out of control). “Helen, you’re a Yammer fan, what do you make of […]
I Wasn’t On the Org Chart
Last week we had our monthly Team Sync. That’s an opportunity for our CEO of our Australian team to share news and updates of our company. I look forward to this meeting because it’s a snapshot of what’s happening in the company and also learning about what other teams are up to as most of […]
Need to Run Training But Be Elsewhere At Same Time?
I’ve been running some Yammer 101 training sessions for our company at different times of the day and night to cater for our overseas colleagues. These are ‘open’ sessions for anyone to join so it’s always a surprise to see who joins me to have a bit of a chat and also get to know […]
The Tower of Babel
It’s hard to believe that I’ve spent a majority of my working life trying to help organisations and people see the value of peer learning and community building and at times, I feel I’m constantly banging on the same old drum without having achieved anything. To be fair, that’s only the way I think. If […]
My Notion of Microsoft Loop
Things at the beginning of the work year are always a little bit quiet until people get back from holidays and commence projects for the upcoming months. As such, it’s always the “calm before the storm”. So what I have been doing is catching up with all the Microsoft changes and using this quiet time […]
Smarter Note Taking
First book I read in 2022 on my new Kindle (a nice gift from Santa, thank you very much) was How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens who also has a great website Take Smart Notes. Why Did I Choose This Book? Some time back in early 2021, I started on the journey of […]
Microsoft Teams Rooms: A Mini Masterclass
Yesterday I put the final touches to a mini-masterclass on Microsoft Teams Rooms. I had started this over a month ago when there was talk at work about how organisations now are preparing their people to return to the office. In particular, how to help organisations with their actual physical space requirements for hybrid work. […]
We Need the Social at Work
Last night, my colleagues at Rapid Circle and I took part in a fun online Trivia Night. It’s now been four weeks since our Adopt & Embrace team were acquired by this new company and given that many of us were in lockdown in Melbourne, we were unable to meet each other in person. However, […]
Learning a Language Through Coursera
About a few weeks ago, I found the Etudier en France course on Coursera that is at a B1-B2 level. I hadn’t completed a Coursera course for many years and when I saw this, I thought it was time to get back into it again. If you do a search on MOOCs (massive open online […]
Updating my YouTube Channel
For the last week or so, I’ve been trying to put some semblance of order on my YouTube channel and in frustration, I’ve realised it’s a MASSIVE job. There are over 400 videos on the site and as it’s a channel that is used as a record of work and learning, a portfolio if you […]
Levelling Up Your Skills Through Mini Challenges
One of the things I do to level up my skills when I feel that I’m getting: Comfortable Complacent Stagnant Is to create little mini challenges for myself. They don’t have to be HUGE enough to have me give up half way through them but not too easy that they’re not exciting or enticing enough […]
What Did You Miss in April?
Here are my collected posts and YouTube videos for April 2020. Blog Posts What did you miss in March 2021? (Collected blog posts and videos from March) Completing the 30 Day Speak Your Target Language (French) Challenge Enjoying the Moment [on self-reflection] Enjoying My Birthday Future Fit [on importance of having a digital profile] Creating […]
Working and Learning Out Loud
I have written a lot of transparent work and learning practices on this blog over the years so I thought I’d revisit the theme again. The reason for this was a recent Twitter conversation started by a question asked by Jayne Davids (@Jaynedavids) who is my ‘go to’ expert in my Personal Learning Network on […]
Learning OBS
I have finally gotten around to downloading OBS (the free streaming software) on both my Mac and PC. On the Mac, you need to do some extra things because you need to download additional software but it works like a dream on the PC. Some time ago, Darrell (@DarrellaaS) told me about OBS but I […]
What Did Ya Miss in December?
Here’s my December posts you may have missed out on Nostalgia (a blog post on thinking about the past) Spaced Repetition in Learning (on the importance of repetition in order to learn something new) What I Learned About Myself – and About Learning – While Learning French Reflections of 2020 (2020 was a year where […]