100 Conversation Topics

Today, I saw a post by someone suggesting ways to come up with ideas for blog post topics and they gave some examples. The examples were not all that relevant to most of the readers of this blog, but it definitely sparked a thought for me.

Almost every time I have a conversation, I learn something new. Most of the time I learn something, I write a blog post. But I don’t have nearly enough time to have conversations, learn and write blog posts. So now that some people called me influential, I’m hoping that I can leverage my influence to inspire people to have a conversation with me and help me with my lack of time.

So, here are my suggested 100 conversation topics that I wish I had time to speak to you (yes YOU) about. And since I’m sure I’d learn something, I’d likely write up a post about it. But since I don’t have time for either ...

I’m hoping you will just pretend we had the conversation and write a summary of the conversation we had.

If you are a blogger, then posting the conversation is great. Point me to it by putting a link to: 100 Conversations and the exact text "100 Conversations" in your post and I'll find it via blog search. Also please include terms and a link that will help it get put into appropriate categories in the eLearning Learning Community. I've included some examples below, but I got tired after a while and I'm hoping that you will help include terms / links in your post that will help them get categorized using some of the examples I've included. You can also point me via a comment.

I’ll also try to make sure that readers of this blog see it via blog posts. My goal is to make sure that I use this as an opportunity to have a more meaningful conversation with you.

If you are not a blogger then start a blog so we can have this conversation. It's a great start to your blog. And likely I can get you some initial traffic.

If you aren’t willing to start a blog, then send it to me via email, let me know if it can be public, and if so, I can see if it would work for me to post it somewhere.

This is a bit of an experiment, so please bear with me if I’m slow or don’t quite have it all figured out. And please follow the specific instructions above (about links and categories) to make sure that this works out. Oh, and if this is a really bad idea, or there's a better way to do it, or whatever, then maybe that would be good to have a conversation about.

Important - please keep in mind that the audience here is learning professionals involved in the use of technology for learning. So, please write the conversation for me and for them. Here are my 100 conversation topics …

1. Here’s the eLearning Authoring Tool we chose to use and approach we used to evaluate and decide. And the major decision criteria that really differentiated for us was…
2. Here are the surprises we found after we chose our eLearning Authoring Tool ….
3. Here’s my eLearning Authoring Method or Trick …
4. Topics 1, 2, 3 for LMS, LCMS, Audio, Virtual Classroom Tool, Screencast, Wiki, eLearning Game Tool, etc.
5. An eLearning Activity I created or Interactivity I added to an online course that I thought was a good idea.
6. Here’s how I use Facebook for personal learning
7. How I use Twitter for personal learning
8. How I use Blogging for personal learning
9. Where I believe social media can be adopted by learners in my organization.
10. A plan for adopting social media as a learning tool in our organization.
11. Where we have adopted social media as a learning tool in our organization. What our experience has been so far? What we’ve learned so far?
12. My thoughts on the ROI of eLearning 2.0.
13. The problems with eLearning 2.0 in my organization.
14. How I found an answer to a work problem using a learning community.
15. A search method I use that I don’t think a lot of other people use.
16. Five presentations related to eLearning that learning professionals should see.
17. Example of successful precedent searches. In other words, where and how do you find examples that you can use as a starting point?
18. Where I’ve found good source training content for common training needs.
19. Examples of how I conduct high consequence searches. In other words, what do I do when I need to make sure that I’ve found the right stuff. Found everything. So I won’t get a question from left-field that throws me off in my presentation.
20. Which desktop search tool I use and why.
21. My aha moment during a personal learning or formal learning experience?
22. How I make my conference experiences more effective.
23. Something that I’ve not seen written about recently that I think is really good to keep in mind.
24. A long, lost blog post that needs to be revisited.
25. Ways that my children are learning that is significantly different from how I learn.
26. New places (online or not) that I’m finding interesting conversations.
27. What I’ve given up in order to have more time for X.
28. How do I decide what to scan and what to give up?
29. How do I balance skimming and reading? How has this changed for me?
30. Five videos of interest to learning professionals.
31. Things I've done as follow-up to improve effectiveness of learning.
32. Five podcasts for learning professionals.
33. How do I envision my audience.
34. After LinkedIn, Delicious, Twitter and Facebook, the next three are...
35. The learning project I really think should be done by my organization.
36. The best and worst use of money by learning professionals.
37. How learning professionals as a group should be better using social media to help each other.
38. My recommendations of books for learning professionals.
39. A tool I haven’t seen that I’d like to have.
40. My ideal conference would be?
41. Branding and messaging strategies I’ve used for my learning initiatives.
42. My favorite learning story.
43. People I’d like to meet in person to have a conversation.
44. How I would/did explain informal learning and social media to my CEO or the head of a business unit.
45. eLearning in five years in my organization.
46. How my job will have changed in five years.
47. Examples of recent, interesting online conversation.
48. Examples of dumb things that people say about learning in my organization.
49. If I had a magic wand, I’d …
50. Common objections I run into in my work … and what I do.
51. What I’m doing to have a personal brand inside and outside my organization.
52. Where I add the biggest value to my organization or client organizations. What do I get paid for? Where are the disconnects between my value add and my pay?
53. What my next professional will be and things I’m doing towards that today.
54. Email tricks I use.
55. Something I’ve done to act as a catalyst to other people.
56. Something I’ve done where if I had asked for permission I may not have got it.
57. Something or someone that deserves praise (another blog post, blogger, worker, etc.)
58. A recent tough decision that I had to make.
59. A tough decision I made and that looking back, I wish I had known something else, done something different, etc.
60. While I hate networking, here’s how I do it.
61. How I network inside my organization.
62. What I do to stay in touch with people I meet.
63. My hardest ongoing task.
64. How staying in touch has changed for me over the past five years.
65. Tools that I get free and tools that I pay for and why I’m willing to pay.
66. A great example of the use of a tool that really impressed me.
67. My favorite learning quotes.
68. How I do my work and where my work skills have changed in the last ten years.
69. What I’ve learned in the past year that I don’t think most of my co-workers know.
70. Important questions that every learning professional should be asking.
71. A great source of information that I’m not sure people know about or maybe have forgotten.
72. My ways for keeping things organized, finding things again, and keeping lists.
73. Tricks to working with internal IT that seem to work well.
74. How I take electronic notes as compared to taking notes on paper that I learned to do in school.
75. Notes I take when I’m searching.
76. How I structure my concept work tasks. Things I do at the start. Things I do during.
77. How I find good lists.
78. How and examples of exploring a new space. My company is thinking of entering a new market and I want to get up to speed on it. I want to understand about eLearning for sales people.
79. What do I do if I’ve searched for something and I’m not sure if it exists. I’m considering writing about a tool that I think is needed, but I want to make sure that it doesn’t exist before I write about it.
80. A search tool other than Google that I use, when and why.
81. A barrier I face at work.
82. Something my organization is doing to help employees that I’ve not heard much about from other organizations.
83. Something I do that I suspect there’s a better way, but I’m just not sure what.
84. A recent concept work task that seemed a lot harder than it should have been.
85. A trend I’m seeing in my organization.
86. Hip learning trend during the past that was way over hyped.
87. Cool Word, Excel, etc. feature that I use when creating learning objects.
88. Free media sources that I use – stock photography, clip art, animations, sounds, music.
89. Something I’ve heard about learning or eLearning that I’m not sure if it’s true.
90. A general principle or rule that I don’t follow and why.
91. My top goals.
92. If we hired someone to replace me that had a similar background, here are five things I don’t think they’d know.
93. Metrics we actually track that are meaningful and useful that may be applicable to other learning professionals.
94. A tool we use professionally that I thought worked well even though I wasn’t sure at the start.
95. Examples of working with different generations in the workforce differently.
96. Something we should borrow from other professionals (librarians, anthropologists, etc.) to help us.
97. If I could get the following people (names or types) together for a conversation, here’s what I’d want to discuss.
98. My top challenges in my work
99. How I find blog topics
100. The 5 conversation topics that are not listed in Tony’s that I’d like to have with other people that Tony and his readers would likely find interesting.
101. (Just added) Why 100 Conversations is a really good or bad idea?
     

I look forward to our conversation.

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Interesting Information via eLearning Learning

We've implemented a few features in the eLearning Learning Community. You can see the first feature by visiting the site and clicking around on terms. What you will now see is that the left hand keywords are sorted based on a matching algorithm that takes into account how related that term is to the currently selected terms. As an example, I can see that eLearning 2.0 relates closely to the concepts Learning 2.0, eLearning Tools, Corporate eLearning, Personal Learning, and Enterprise 2.0; the Tools Odeo, CollectiveX, Bea Pages, Apache Roller, and Dogear; and the Companies NexLearn, Awareness Networks, Element K, and Mzinga.

This is far from perfect, but it generally gives you a pretty good sense of what relates to what. I'll be curious what people find that are interesting associations of terms.

This approach also helps to show what terms particular bloggers talk about more often than other bloggers. Below are some of the bloggers who are participating in the community and when you click on the link, it will show you the community page with them selected. On the left side you will see the keywords sorted in order based on how often they blog about these terms as compared to the terms used by everyone (with a couple of other factors thrown in that give a better result). I've listed a few of the terms that I saw.

As you drill down it takes into account both the source and the additional terms that are selected.

Again, I'll be curious to see if people find patterns in this information.

Lars Hyland - Lars is Learning

Good to see Learning Technologies, Mobile Learning come up for Lars. Gives me an idea of who to talk to. Also interesting topics: Cognitive, Effectiveness, LCMS, Social Network, iPhone, Director.

Ken Allan - Blogger in Middle-earth

Ken talks about everything including some that come up for me Writing a Blog, Analytics, Communities of Practice, Photoshop, Pipes, Firefox, RSS.

Mel Aclaro - Business Casual

Mel has a lot of interesting topics, but clearly a lot around social topics (Social Media, Social Networks, LinkedIn, Twitter, RSS, Social Network, Facebook), but keep him in mind for Streaming, Privacy, and Internationalization.

David Fair - Learning Journeys

Talk to him about graphics (PNG, JPG) and staying organized (Tagging, Information Overload).

Joe Deegan - Blender - Training Solutions

Freeware, ILT, SWF, ROI, Wondershare, PowerCONVERTER, Adobe Captivate, Photoshop, SharePoint (SharePoint Examples - Joe, can you help me?)

Other Sources - you can click and see what they write about on the left.

• Adventures in Corporate Education
• Breakthrough eLearning
• Clive on Learning
• Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development
• Courseware Development
• Discovery Through eLearning
• e-Clippings (blogoehlert)
• eContent
• eLearning Acupuncture
• eLearning Community 2.0
• eLearning Development News
• eLearning Technology
• eLearning Weekly
• elearnspace
• Engaged Learning
• eQuixotic
• Experiencing eLearning
• Ignatia Webs
• In the Middle of the Curve
• Internet Time
• Jane Knight
• Janet Clarey
• Kapp Notes
• Learning and Technology
• Learning and Working on the Web
• Learning Circuits
• Learning Design and Performance Improvement
• Learning Matters!
• Learning Next
• Learning Visions
• Learnlets
• Mobile Learning
• The Learning Circuits Blog
• Will at Work Learning
• Work 2.0 Blog

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SharePoint Examples

I'm trying to help someone inside training at a large organization bridge what I talk about around eLearning 2.0 to their implementation of SharePoint. I'd like to find good examples of what other people have done with SharePoint in their organization. Can you help me find those examples or connect me with people in training organizations who are making use of SharePoint?

If you'd prefer - feel free to connect with me via email: akarrer@techempower.com

We are in the process of getting learning professionals to discuss the use of SharePoint for Learning. Please see SharePoint for Learning Professionals and connect with me around it.

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Themes Of

This month's big question - What Did You Learn about Learning 2008 is almost an annual tradition of asking people to look back on the year and provide some inkling of their aha moments. In reality it does an incredible job of surfacing the themes of each of the bloggers and give a sense of them. I'm hoping more people will take us up on this as I find it really surfaces some good stuff that I didn't quite recognize at the time.

Themes of:

Ken Allan - takes us through his evolution of thinking about blogging and what his readers want. As you go through his posts, you can see how his thinking evolved. He also points us to a fantastic post that shows some core skills for getting into elearning.

Note to Ken - you should definitely look at my post - An Aha Moment - del.icio.us as Indicator of Valuable Content - Importantly My Content - it may give you another dimension beyond what people are reading and commenting on - what they save because they think it will be valuable again. For example, I just saved your getting into eLearning post because I think it will have value later and I think it should be surfaced to the Work Literacy community.

Michael Hanley - A Year in E-Learning: One Blog’s Progress - his top ten list gives a great sense of what he's been blogging about and his post gives a great summary of value of blogging:

Writing and maintaining a blog is one of the best motivators I know to continue developing my professional knowledge - to discuss the kind of topics I like to cover requires a comprehensive and in-depth of the subject of e-learning and all that understanding e-learning entails.

Clark Quinn - What did I learn about learning in 2008? pointed out mobile social which I'm certainly now using with my iPhone. This is different than what I think of when someone says mobile learning. But maybe that's wrong. He's causing me to rethink a bit of my take on mobile in 2008 2009.

But it's also great to just see perspectives and have a sense of someone through these posts. Somehow I feel like I know someone better having read the themes of Jeff Goldman - What I have Learned, Karyn Romeis - Oh dear, the dread annual question, Jason Allen - Nurtured Chaos.

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Google Blog Search Fix Coming

As I reported in Google Blog Search Problems, Google seems to have included the full text of blog pages (including blog rolls) in their blog search. I just saw this post which both confirms that Google changed something which is causing the problem and that then intend to fix it.

According to Jeremy Hylton of the Google Blog Search team, they now index the full content of the page. This means that not only do they index the full post even if the blog publishes a partial feed, but it means that they index the non-post parts of the pages as well. This is mostly an improvement, of course, but it’s causing some problems, particularly for people who have alerts set or do searches for references to themselves, their sites, or their brands when any of these are linked to in blogrolls.

The result is that anytime a blog publishes a new post, Google Blogsearch picks up the new page, including the sidebar details. So you may get an alert that there’s a new blog post about you, but when you go check it out, you find the post doesn’t even mention you!

Jeremy says:

We do expect to fix the problem you’re seeing. We’ll use the full page content, but exclude the content that isn’t really part of the post. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to make the change before the end of the year, but we are working on it and are pretty confident that it can be solved.

Glad to know they are going to fix it. Hopefully I can leave all my blog search filters in place and they will stop feeding me a lot of extra stuff.

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You Like Awards?

Stephen Downes has once again come out with complaints about how the Edublog Awards are being handled this year. It makes me wonder, do "You Like Awards?"

OK, so the edublog awards nominations are out. I honestly don't know what they were thinking this time around - there's something like twenty or so nominees in some categories (and I'm not sure what to make of the result that this website is not among the twenty or so considered for best individual weblog - it's not sour grapes, I'm just bemused). Also, there has been confusion about the rules; people have been posting their nominations on their weblogs, as requested, but apparently you must also fill out a form - this was new to me today and new to a number of people out there (I've been sending them URLs they've missed). And I can't find the weblogs posting the sites that actually appear on the nomination rolls. I do have some nominations, so if you can find them (or anything) in the list of nominees, be sure to vote.

Meanwhile, Doug Johnson has written a post on ranking, awards and other nonsense and then a follow-up today on poking the wasps' nest. Meanwhile, and finally, the best place to find new edublogs is not the Edublog Awards, espite the population increase - it's right here, as it has always been.

Stephen does an amazing job going through a ton of content and surfacing potentially interesting content for the rest of his. That's why he was/is listed in my Top Ten eLearning Blogs. You might want to look at his list as an alternative to what I described in eLearning Blogs - Quick Way to Find Good Ones. Mine are more focused on corporate and Stephen's a bit more on academic environments, but his is much larger and likely includes most of mine. I'm sure both our lists change quite a bit over time (Managing your RSS Feeds).

All that said, let's take a look at the interesting issues being raised. Like Stephen, I was a little surprised at some of the nominations. However, with open nominations by Edubloggers, we are likely to see quite varied nominations. In a way, I'm very glad to see that. If the nominations had come back with exactly the list I would have nominated (note to self - nominate next year) - that would have been disappointing. Also, given that there may be 100,000 plus edublogs, narrowing it down to a few is always going to be hard.

Doug Johnson raises some very interesting questions in his posts and through the comments. Let's look at some of his points.

I would certainly label the Eddies as a form of extrinsic reward for bloggers. Depending how they are used, rankings are the same. And as Alfie Kohn’s classic book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’S, Praise, and Other Bribes (Houghton Mifflin, 1993) ...

Rewards can punish those who do not receive them.

Likely this is true. Anyone not receiving a nomination (and potentially not winning the award) who perceive that they are deserving will look at the process negatively.

This potential negative has to be outweighed against the positive aspects of having opportunity to recognize efforts, surface interesting blogs, provide insights to casual readers, etc.

Rewards can rupture relationships - If I link to or comment on your blog, might I be pushing your rank above mine, make you more popular, more award-worthy? Am I cutting my own throat if I help you make your blog better?

Actually, I think this is likely the opposite of what happens and is a common misconception. Bloggers who link more (and write interesting things) are more likely to get links as well. It engages in the conversation. As someone working on a couple of relatively high Page Rank sites, theoretically when I provide a link to someone it carries more weight (with Google). Should I restrict who I link to then? Should I require lots of links to me before I link back? No, that be a lose-lose situation in the long-run. If I don't link, then fewer other bloggers will link back to me. Period. End of story. There are a few well known blogs that never link out, but for the vast majority of us, linking to each other is the only way to go.

In this case, rankings are not directly related to nomination. I would say that total readership will likely be a determinant in who wins.

So, I must say this argument is bunk and helps perpetuate a common myth about linking.

Rewards ignore the reasons for a desired behavior - Is blogging about improving education, having fun, and debating the issues .... or winning fame and recognition?

Anyone who starts blogging to make money, achieve fame, gain recognition will quickly stop blogging when the see the dismal readership that everyone has at first. The only counter examples are bloggers who transition from email newsletters to blogs and point their email list to their blog to immediately gain readership. The rest of us slog through very low numbers for a very long time. People who stick with blogging do so because of the intrinsic value of blogging ...

So, yes, maybe by providing recognition we "ignore" the intrinsic value, but I'm not sure that this is all that significant an issue and by even having the conversation that Doug is fostering he somewhat is perpetuating another myth ... that blogging relates to recognition, reward as opposed to personal learning.

Rewards can discourage risk-taking - Might I be less likely to take a controversial or unpopular stance if it might mean losing readers? Might I avoid trying a different style of writing or type of post if it would cause people to drop a subscription?

Actually, it's true that as a writer of a blog, you sometimes censor yourself based on your readership. Or sometimes you get slapped because of what you've said. Periodically, I will post something and people will let me know that they don't agree, don't think I should post it, etc.

You then have to make a decision of whether it makes sense for you to blog about that the next time.

But, this has nothing to do with awards! And, again, the awards are so far removed from the day-to-day writing of any blogger that I would say this is total bunk. As a blogger, you have to decide what you will do with personal stuff, attacks, etc. You make those decisions independent of awards.

Rewards can actually discourage desired behaviors. - There must be something distasteful about blogging if it is only about rankings and awards

I'm pretty sure that Doug and I basically agree on the heart of the issue, I just wish the language he used around it was a bit different.

Again, no one is blogging to win that award. And while a few people might start blogging to make money or get readers (and soon after stop), I can't believe anyone would start blogging thinking, "I'd really like to work hard so I can win an Eddy."

Instead, I have to believe that Doug is more complaining that the awards may perpetuate these myths. So, if that's his point, then likely we agree, but maybe the title should be changed from "You Like Awards" to "Blogging Myths Perpetuated by Awards."

So awards and ranks probably won't bring about the end of the world as we know it. But let's not grant them any more importance than they deserve, either.

I'm really curious if other people think that something like the Eddie's are on the balance a negative. I don't even see it as close. Of course, I'm biased. But there's way too much time spent by individual bloggers for awards to be seen as truly being that important.

Doug - when you write a post - do you actually think - I wonder if this will help me get an Eddy?

Does anyone think that way?

Do You Like Awards?

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Edublog Awards - Vote Now - And Some Commentary

I'm happy to say that thanks to several fellow bloggers, this blog - eLearning Technology - is one of the finalists for the 2008 Edublog Awards under the category Best elearning / corporate education blog.

You can click the badge below to see the other finalists and to vote on your favorites ... hopefully that's me ... :)



It was a bit surprising that I didn't even know a few of the fellow finalists. One of them has not posted since August? What is Britannica's blog doing there? Actually, Presentation Zen is a bit of a surprise too. Great blog. But not sure I get that as eLearning per se. If they win, there's something wrong with this. And there's a notable gap in that Articulate's Rapid eLearning Blog is not listed. Actually, the rest of the eLearning Learning blogs should have been in the mix as well.

Oh, and while you are at it, consider voting for ...

• Michele Martin - The Bamboo Project - Best individual blog
• WorkLiteracy - Best group blog
• Stephen - Stephen’s Web and Jane - Jane’s E-learning Pick of the Day - Best resource sharing blog

And in Lifetime achievement - you've got to be kidding that you are supposed to select between this list?

• Stephen Downes
• Scott Leslie
• Will Richardson
• Nancy White
• David Warlick
• Chris Lehmann
• Graham Wegner
• Michele Martin
• Jay Cross

I can't possibly cast a vote on that one. Although isn't Michele far too young to be nominated? Deserving, but too young. :)

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