Sales Team Portal for Content and Expert Access

I wanted to share some discussions I've recently had around an interesting project where the company provided the sales team a collaboration, content distribution and expert access portal. 

Do you have a case study for me?

I'm hoping to do a lot of case studies over the next 6-12 months looking at interesting examples of the use of social/informal/web 2.0 learning.  If you have an example, please drop me an email: akarrer@techempower.com.  Another example of this is: Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank.

Background

I can't reveal the company used in this case study at their request.  They are a large, distributed organization.  Their large sales team sells a diverse and complex set of products and services to multiple markets.

Traditionally, the sales team searched for information on topics such as government regulations, product support and technology through a confederation of five Web-based collaboration and document management software systems.  The sales team often would find themselves spending time navigating the many software systems for archived knowledge and often found documents that did not exactly address their question.

So, they would then go straight to the experts by phone and email for answers.  And then they would sometimes take these answers and create new pockets of information which made the situation even worse.

This is a fairly common situation that many organizations face.

And a big part of the genesis for the project was when an executive was asked by a colleague about where to go to find a particular piece of information.  The executive realized that they needed "One place to find all of our information.”  That's where things really began to take off.

Exploration

They did a lot of exploration before landing on a solution.  They went around to ask employees what issues they had with existing systems and what they needed.  They asked what web sites the sales teams liked.  “MSNBC, CNN and ESPN were good Web sites and simple to use. They could find just about everything from the home pages. If they didn’t, they could easily find what they needed by searching the site.”

Clearly, they wanted/needed the  knowledge-exchange platform to be easy to use. Employees needed to be able to find information with a few clicks of a mouse. If the information did not yet exist in the system, employees wanted to be able to route it to an expert and get a timely response. They also wanted the expert’s responses to the sales team’s questions to be captured by the system. If the information already existed, employees should be able find information without repeatedly asking the experts. The software would also need to appeal to a cross-section of demographics.

The team went around to other companies to explore how they had addressed similar issues, what their solutions looked like and what their experiences had been.  One particular conversation was with McDonalds where they found that a similar kind of system took several years before it really took off.

Initially they considered just doing the solution as a search solution that would be able to find content across the various systems.  But the need was really for more than that.  They needed to make sure that content was consistent.  They wanted to be able to access experts and begin to build better communication.  They really felt they needed more of a portal.

They looked at several different portal options and chose OutStart Participate.  Part of the decision was also based on that they had good experience with Outstart products previously and they knew that it would be easier to get approval from IT and information security – which it was.

They then went around to executives within the sales organization to talk about what they wanted/needed.  Of course, a big part of the conversation was making sure they had executive support and to set expectations about what was going to happen.  They coached the executives around the need to point people to the system.  They talked about patience.  They discussed iterations.  And they set reasonable expectations around the system.

Solution

The heart of the site is the document repository.  Most all of the sales materials that sales people need are found on the site.  This makes it a mission-critical part of their work.  It means that sales people can upload selling documents or pass best practices back and forth easily without relying on e-mail. 

The site is segmented into eight communities based on different departments.  Those departments have some flexibility in their design and can have their own documents.  Each community has several team members responsible for that community and certainly some communities are more active and creative with the site than others.  For example, the clinical team uses the portal to share updates on new clinical offerings and services as part of their roll-out package.

One of the key features of the portal also is the “Expertise Exchange,” where sales people can communicate with experts.  If you have a question about a particular product, just type in that question and get an answer from an expert or from the existing knowledge bank.  The portal promises to get answers back within 48 hours, but the median time is roughly 4 hours.

The system has a section dedicated to looking at current news and what it means.  For example, if a major publication does an article on the company or their specific part of the industry, it's important that a sales person is ready to address questions on their next sales call.  So, a few directors in Sales Communications continually look for interesting news and then create a piece that links to the article, provides a bit more background and helps the sales person have a good answer to questions around the piece.

Originally this system started out as a replacement for several existing systems that had lots of content.  Unfortunately, during the planning of the system the team came to realize that much of the existing content would not be usable in the new system.  A lot of it was outdated or never approved.

Branding, Marketing and Roll-Out

One of the areas that I personally think the team did extremely well is in the branding, marketing and roll-out of the system.

The Sales Operations team branded the new system with a catchy name. They designed a nice logo for it.  Came up with various associated things like the popular pen.  They spent time making sure that the site would come across as something different and fun.  Posters were funny.  Yes, they highlighted useful features, but also made sure it was different from the posters they were used to seeing.  This goes along with the nature of the site in that it's designed to be social.  It's not complete (iteration required).  And while it has a serious purpose, we can celebrate the fact that its not perfect.

To roll-out the project, they went on a road-trip where at each stop he led the users through a game based on "Who wants to be a millionaire?"  The game required people to tell him how they would find some piece of information, get help, etc.  Basically they had to show how they would use the system.  They gave away prizes.  And everyone had a good time.

If you look at the case study Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank, you can find some similarities in how this system was rolled out and the need for a lot of help for users to get things moving. 

The team clearly recognizes the importance of branding, marketing and roll-out.  A lot of similar kinds of sites get launched with an email.  People just won't adopt if they don't really understand it and don't think about it.

Results

There are approximately 1,500 employees now relying on the portal for information, expertise and knowledge exchange. These employees are mainly comprised of sales executives, account managers, clinicians and consultants.

The collaborative nature of the portal is starting to change the culture. More and more people are using the portal as a place to update the sales organization about industry or product news and to share their latest experience.  This practice eliminates much of the mass e-mailing that has gone on in the past, and experts are receiving fewer and fewer of the same kinds of questions.

After unveiling the portal, surveys were sent to several hundred members of the sales team to gauge reaction. Ninety-three percent felt the ability to ask for documents or support was “very or extremely helpful.” Ninety-five percent said the “training was clear,” and they “enjoyed learning about the portal.” Ninety-two percent said they would “visit the portal regularly each week.”

On a weekly basis, there is more than four times the number of active members on the portal versus the old patchwork of tools.  The portal handles 17 times the number of questions from employees that the old tools fielded. All the answers to the questions are immediately available.

In addition, sales people can ask a question using their wireless devices and get immediate answers if the data is available. If the question goes to an expert, the sales person will get an e-mail when the answer is available.

Where's Learning and Development?

You may have been wondering as your read the case, where's L&D in this?  In this company, L&D falls under the same unit as Sales Operations where the team sits.  Yet, interestingly, L&D was not really involved in project. They have another tool they use to put up learning content.  They are discussing merging some of the content going forward.  And they are discussing how we can merge learning tools inside of the portal.

To me, this may have been a missed opportunity for the L&D organization.  If they want to be seen as providing day-to-day value, they need to get into the flow.  And the flow is now going through the portal.  Likely there are some fairly simple technical solution as to get learning content to come through the portal.

Have Patience

Executives, users, and other stakeholders often go into this kind of project having the expectation that as soon as you launch, everyone will immediately jump in and use the system.  Even with the great job that the team did around rolling out the system, he still preached that everyone needed to be patient around adoption.  You will get an initial burst, followed by a lull and then slow adoption.  Be prepared for that.  And know that you can provide real value even with partial adoption. 

You also should expect to iterate to make it better.   The team regularly conducts focus groups with 6-8 users in a room (no executives).  You need a thick skin during this, but you will get some real nuggets.  And again, you need to set the expectation that this is a work-in-progress.  Lots of changes will be required.  For example, discussion boards and blogs have not been used that much in the system.  The team has some ideas on where these might go.  They also expect to have lots of changes to the UI over time to make it easier to use and easier to find information.

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ePorfolios Blogs and Audience Response Systems at Back to School Night

I must say that many back-to-school nights are a bit painful.  For those of you who are not familiar with this, it's an evening where you go to the school (without your children) and the teachers tell you a little bit about how they will approach the year.  This year, I attended three different back-to-school nights for my three children (elementary, middle school and high school). 

Most teachers hand a sheet with all the information they plan to present (which is good because there are often lots of links and other helpful information).  And then they proceed to walk through it.  I'm sure most of you can relate.  You are sitting there while the teacher reads what's on the sheet to you.  You could have got the sheet delivered to you and then just visit the teacher another time.  Of course, I'm not exactly the best audience and there's no Session Hopping available at back-to-school.

I believe that many teachers will tell you that it's equally painful going through from their side.  My wife used to dread both back to school and open house nights.  Not sure how my mother felt (a school teacher for 35 years).  I should really have asked her before I posted this.  But my guess is that she didn't really like it that much either.  The nice thing about being a professor is that you never saw parents except on rare visits (shake their hand, exchange pleasantries) and at graduation.  You never had to do a presentation to them.

So while I was really dreading having to do three different back-to-school nights, I must say there were two very pleasant surprises.  And, just in case any of the other teachers who have my children in their class this year read this, I must say this whole year was an exceptionally good back to school night.  Still there were two standouts.

ePortfolios and Blogs

My oldest daughter, a freshman in high school, has a fantastic teacher, Ms. Gerber, for Honors English.  Ms. Gerber has the class creating ePorfolios and Blogging as teaching tools!  I honestly almost fell out of my chair when she casually mentioned this.  And I was struck by the stares of the other parents who clearly had no idea what she was saying.

Now I know that many of my fellow bloggers who come from education will be saying "no duh, Tony" this is happening all over the place.  But it's a bit different when you see it really being applied.

As an example, the students watched the courtroom drama 12 Angry Men.  Ms. Gerber asked the students to post comments in the class blog: Assignment Two.  Certainly, seeing what the other students said in their responses is a great thing.  There wasn't much interaction among the students as in Assignment One.  But it was still good to see answers.  And it was funny to see my daughter say:

I used to have a feeling I would be a good lawyer, because I have a lot of arguments with my dad, but now I'm not so sure. If that's what it's like in a courtroom, I wouldn't last very long!

Ms. Gerber also has started the students on a journey of creating an ePorfolio using Google Sites.  They aren't much to look at yet, but having recently run across a few examples of ePortfolios that students have pulled together across several years – I'm sure that it's a great idea to have them starting on one now.

I'm quite curious what recommendations people have around how to effectively create an ePortfolio that will help you get into college.  Currently, my daughter's portfolio is oriented around Years and Subjects.  That doesn't seem right to me, but maybe it doesn't matter at this point.  Any pointers?

Audience Response System

The other pleasant surprise was Mr. Luke Olesiuk, at the middle school.  He teaches math and went through all of the normal stuff that all the teachers do.  However, he made it quite enjoyable because he used an audience response system in the classroom and presented most everything that way.  As we walked in, he provided each parent a clicker.  It's from TurningPoint Systems – see it below:

Then he spent what I have to believe was a fair bit of time designing his presentation.  Instead of saying, my goals for the year are X, Y, and Z.  He would put a question on the projector that said - "My goals for the year are all of the following except one of these …" and he would list X, Y and Z and at least one funny response.  I was surprised how effectively it kept everyone engaged.  Most parent intentionally would get wrong answers (at least I hope), but it gave him opportunity to talk through why those were the goals or whatever.

Truly he turned something mundane into something fun.  And he ended exactly on time (used a timer in his hand to track).  Clearly he spent time designing this out, but the result was great.  It made me think that with the advent of audience response via web solutions, this is going to make in-person presentations a lot more interesting in the future.  Quite topical given: Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online Presentations and New Presenter and Learner Skills and Methods.

The only drag was the following note that we received:

Parents - I'm still missing Clicker # C14 from Back-To-School night last night...if you accidentally borrowed it after the presentation yesterday, please send it back with your student on Monday. Thank you!

Amazing that he doesn't lose them with kids, but does with parents.

Maybe if Turning Point Systems sees this post they can send him a new one. :)

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Multitasking

As way of background for this month's big question - <Insert link to Big Question>, I went to eLearning Learning and looked up Multitasking.  Found some great posts.  But the basic gist is that

Multitasking Generally is Bad for Work and Learning

Clive Shepherd - A challenge to the multitask assumption tells us:

According to work conducted at Stanford University and reported by Constance Holden in ScienceNOW Daily News under the heading Multitasking muddles the mind, "cognitive performance declines when people try to pay attention to many media channels at once." Clifford Nass, co-author of the study, claims "the study has a disturbing implication in an age when more and more people are simultaneously working on a computer, listening to music, surfing the Web, texting, or talking on the phone. Access to more information tools is not necessarily making people more efficient in their intellectual chores." Also disconcerting, he notes, is that "people who chronically multitask believe they're good at it."

Will Thalheimer - Younger Generation NOT Good at Multitasking Either!

Read this great article in the Monitor on Psychology by Rebecca A. Clay.

It says:

1. People in general are not good at multitasking.
2. Young people are no better than their elders at multitasking.
3. Multitasking actually takes longer. It is NOT a time saver.
4. Learning done while multitasking is shallower learning, leading not to deep understanding (and flexible mental models) but only to an ability to regurgitate rote information.

George Siemens – Multitasking

A report on multitasking (via Mark Bullen) states “heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set”. BBC provides more commentary.

Ray Jimenez - Over-rated - The Myth of Multitasking

Christine Rosen writes on The Myth of Multitasking,, on the different studies debunking the idea that we learn best by multi-tasking.
"Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, Poldrack warned, “We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient.”

Doodling and Note Taking is Good

Lars Hyland - Doodling, multitasking and memory

doodling doesn't detract from concentration. On the contrary, a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander.

I did a cursory summary of note taking and found that most research suggests that effective note taking practices with appropriate summarizing generally results in greater retention.  I didn't find a really good summary of this, so would appreciate any pointers that provides a pretty good summary.

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Contest - Win a Free Copy of Digital Habitats via LearnTrends 2009

I've known Nancy White and John Smith for quite a while. Nancy has been my go to person for all things Communities and Networks and worked with me to create Communities and Networks Connection. So naturally when Nancy and John (with Etienne Wenger) put out the book Digital Habitats; Stewarding Technology for Communities I was very excited. And I've got to say that I agree with the recent comment in a post I saw:

Whenever I get stuck I’ll contact my friends at CPSquare: Etienne, Nancy and John. And while I know they all have a deep understanding of CoPs I tend to ask Etienne the theory questions, Nancy the technology questions and John the group dynamics questions. Together they are a formidable team. Sadly I think their new book, Digital Habitats, will give them strong cause to suggest I should RTFM: Read The Flipping Manual.

This is a really awesome book. I almost think it's more a performance support tool than a book. You really should get a copy and put it next to your computer. So, if you don't win the free copy, then you should go buy it.

So I'm very happy to announce to make two announcements:

1. Nancy White and John Smith will be doing a session at LearnTrends 2009 (a free online conference – you should definitely go register). And as a bonus, John will be doing another session with Jack Merklien of Xerox Global Services on communities. You can see details below on these two sessions.

2. Nancy and John have generously offered TWO FREE SIGNED copies of their book to people who help promote the conference and their sessions.

Entering the Contest

Twitter

1. Follow me - @tonykarrer on twitter.

2. Tweet and include a link back to this post.

I will use BackTweets to find people who link to this post. It handles short URLs. You can test to see if your tweet appears here.

Suggested tweets:

Twitter Contest – Free Copy of Digital Habitats – Stewarding Technology for Communities - http://bit.ly/MYIw #learntrends

Twitter Contest - LearnTrends 2009 – Free Online Conference - http://bit.ly/MYIw #learntrends

Retweet to enter contest: Free copy Digital Habitats – Stewarding Technology for Communities http://bit.ly/MYIw #learntrends

Retweet for chance to win a free copy of Digital Habitats http://bit.ly/MYIw #learntrends

Blog

Post an entry in your blog that links back to this post.

I will use IceRocket to search for your post. If you don't come up in the search, then drop a comment here to let me know about your post. Sorry if that turns out to be extra work, but I wanted a way to enter for those who don't use twitter. You can test that search here.

We would really appreciate if your blog post can also mention the conference and the innovation awards and the Digital Habitats Contest:

LearnTrends 2009 - Free Online Conference

LearnTrends Innovation Awards

Rules

1. We will accept only one entry per blog and per twitter account. If you have a blog and a twitter account, you will have two chances to win.

2. We will do our first drawing on October 21 based on all entries to the contest prior to Midnight Pacific Time on October 20.

3. We will do our second drawing on November 11 based on all entries made after the first drawing deadline and prior to Midnight Pacific Time on November 10.

Yes, that means that you will need to blog and/or tweet again on or after October 21 to be entered for the second book.

Feedback? Questions?

This is the first time we've ever tried something like this. I know that most of you have been nice enough to promote the conference even without any kind of a reward. So, I hope this is fun and seems like a good possible reward for helping get the word out. I'm certainly open to feedback on the idea, how we could do it better, etc.

And, of course, happy to answer any questions.

Session Descriptions

Below are the descriptions of the sessions that Nancy and John will be involved with at LearnTrends 2009. There will be a bunch of other sessions that should be announced by October 15.

E-learning outside the training box with Nancy White and John Smith

Once you've mastered enough of the new social media tools, training and development professionals are figuring out that technologies can change the boundaries around training itself, just as they can interrupt organizational boundaries. We offer two cases that illustrate the benefits and opportunities of these changed boundaries. In one, Nancy White talks about triangulating internal training and capacity building with external actors who part of the training and who validate it; that leads to more connections between people and has gained manager support. In the other, John Smith talks about a workshop that brings social activities into the center of the training experience, investing time in making the social connections a lasting and practical resource. We use the polarities that are developed in Digital Habitats to tie these examples together and give you design ideas for program development.

Nancy White, Full Circle Associates (http://www.fullcirc.com)
Nancy brings over 25 years of communications, technology and leadership skills in her work supporting collaboration, learning and communications in the NGO, non profit and business sectors. Grounded in community leadership and recognized expertise in online communities and networks, Nancy works with people to leverage their strengths and assets towards tangible goals and meaningful process. Nancy’s blog and Twitter stream are regularly recognized as leading sources on online communities and networks, knowledge management and knowledge sharing. Nancy is a respected speaker and workshop leader. She is a chocoholic and lives with her family in Seattle, Washington, USA.

John David Smith, Learning Alliances (http://learningalliances.net)
John brings over 25 years of experience to bear on the technology and learning problems faced by communities, their leaders and their sponsors. He coaches and consults on issues ranging from event design and community facilitation, to community design and evaluation, and technology selection and configuration. He has worked in the communities of practice area for the past 10 years and is the community steward for CPsquare, the international community of practice on communities of practice. He's the host of com-prac, the longest-running conversation about communities of practice on the 'Net. He is a regular workshop leader in CPsquare and elsewhere. He grew up in Humacao, Puerto Rico and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Common tools for diverse communities at Xerox Global Services, with Jack Merklein and John Smith

Communities of practice are a well-established part of Xerox Global Services' knowledge strategy. Over the years, the tools that Xerox communities use has evolved through experimentation, innovation, and technology stewardship. All Xerox communities have access to a common set of tools: standardizing on that set of tools helps reduce the learning curve as staff move from one community to another. But communities choose a subset, evolve their own conventions and habits, and individual preferences determine what communities actually do. The current the mix of tools that are available includes blogs, wikis, document repositories, live meeting software and a calendar. Using the community orientations framework from Digital Habitats, we'll talk about some of the different communities at Xerox and how they use the standard tools in ways to fit their individual styles and needs. We'll also talk about how the different tools work together (for example, about community vs personal MS-Outlook calendars or how a wiki and a document repository overlap in some ways but serve different purposes at the same time).

Jack Merklein is with Xerox Global Services where his responsibilities include the development and care of communities of practice, internal knowledge management training and knowledge sharing initiatives. He also consults privately, and his client list covers both the public and private sector. Previous assignments include being the Director of Knowledge and Learning for Xerox Global Services. He is also a retired Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, with degrees from West Point and Golden Gate University. His service assignments included Director of Knowledge Management and Distance Learning while assigned as a senior faculty member at one of the Army's schools. He has served as a board member and chair of the Knowledge Management Certification Board, was a founder and first president of the Knowledge Management Professional Society, and was one of the original members of the U.S. federal government's Knowledge Management Standards Committee under the federal CIO's council. He has written articles for several magazines concerning how knowledge sharing initiatives can impact learning.

John David Smith, Learning Alliances (http://learningalliances.net)
John brings over 25 years of experience to bear on the technology and learning problems faced by communities, their leaders and their sponsors. He coaches and consults on issues ranging from event design and community facilitation, to community design and evaluation, and technology selection and configuration. He has worked in the communities of practice area for the past 10 years and is the community steward for CPsquare, the international community of practice on communities of practice. He's the host of com-prac, the longest-running conversation about communities of practice on the 'Net. He is a regular workshop leader in CPsquare and elsewhere. He grew up in Humacao, Puerto Rico and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Curator Editor Research Opportunities on eLearning Learning

eLearning Learning continues to improve, but I'm hoping to find people who want to work with me to make it even better.

How eLearning Learning Works

I've described all the elements of eLearning Learning before, but never in that much detail.  I've pulled together the following diagram to hopefully help explain it a bit better.

Curators

Topic Hubs like eLearning Learning start from a group of Curators deciding what content should go in.  We currently have several different groups of Curators.

• Calendar Curators – they find free eLearning webinars that will be of interest to people interested in eLearning.  They add these into a calendar that then gets pulled into the topic hub.  I've announced a couple of the people who are contributing this way: Second Calendar Curator Joins to Help with List of Free Webinars, and Brandon Hall Free Webinars Added.
• Blog Curator – right now this is me.  I try to find the best blogs that will flow into the topic hub.  See 15 More Workplace eLearning Blogs and Top 99 Workplace eLearning Blogs for a bit more detail on this.  For now, I plan to continue in this role.
• Content Curators – we allow people to manually mark pages that should be included.  The content should be like an article on a topic related to eLearning.  As these pages are marked, they flow across into the topic hub.

Combined this forms the body of content that the topic hub aggregates and organizes.

Everyone and Social Signals

The second very important group is Everyone.  We don't divulge all the details of how this works, but basically we are looking for social signals that indicate that someone thinks this content is good stuff.  I've discussed some details of this in Social Filtering.  The gist is that as everyone interacts with the content by:

• Interacting on the Topic Hub
• Viewing content
• Social Bookmarking
• Tweeting
• Linking
• Searching

We obtain signals that indicate Valuable Content.  See also An Aha Moment - del.icio.us as Indicator of Valuable Content - Importantly My Content.

Eventually, we will get more sophisticated and treat some people as being more important, but for right now, everyone is treated the same as they interact within the network.  We will definitely get more social signals over time.  And as more bloggers add the widget to their blog, we should be able to get more information that helps bring their best stuff to the top.

Topic Hub

The topic hub brings together content that its told about by the Curators, organizes it based on keywords that act a bit like tags, and uses social signals to figure out the best stuff.  This all sounds pretty simple, but there's some real complexity to managing all that's going on in a scalable way.  But rather than focusing on that, I think the key is some key decisions we've made around Aggregation:

• Centralized content or distributed content. Do they pull all the content into the central site or leave it distributed on the original source?
• Organization and Access - how do they organize the content. Human tagging? Automated? How do you access it?
• Editorial Distribution - Single person, small group or widely distributed control of what comes in and what is best?

For Browse My Stuff and eLearning Learning, I've made some very specific choices about how we approach aggregation.

• We believe strongly that this is part of a distributed network of content and people.  The goal is to help people find good, relevant content.  But to make sure that they ultimately arrive at the source of that content.
• Our content is organized around keywords that act a little like automatic tags.  This is not perfect, and we hope to improve it over time.  Still we believe this does help people find relevant content.
• We allow for distributed curators and editors.  I'd like to see more of this.  Hence this post.

Editors

Each week I generate a Best Of post that uses the social signals to tell me what the best content is for that time period.  This results in posts such as:

• LearnTrends - Sound - Best of eLearning Learning
• Design - Knowing Doing Gap - Best of eLearning Learning
• Camtasia - LMS - LCMS - Best of eLearning Learning August 2009

These posts are sent via email to people who have subscribed to the Best Of.  I won't rehash the discussion in Subscribed to Best of eLearning Learning – but just let me say that I believe this is a really valuable subscription that everyone should subscribe to if they are interested in eLearning.

Certainly, the Best Of can and will improve.  I've received feedback on these posts that they are much better when there's a bit more editorial to them. 

Today I saw this post: Best of Tony Karrer’s E-learning.  Sophie has added editorial to my Best Of post.  I'm hoping that I can maybe get other people to produce Best Of with additional editorial.

There are lots of other opportunity for editors.  The Top 100 Learning Game Resources by Upside Learning is a human edited (think editor) that came from a process where the person went around collecting web pages and articles on games and simulations.  They then used the Best Of capabilities within the system to pull back out the top items.  This is the approach I used to create: 100 eLearning Articles and White Papers which is a fairly popular item on my blog.

Opportunities to Get Involved

If you've read this post in detail, then you probably noticed that there are several places where you can get involved in eLearning Learning:

• Calendar Curator:  Look for events that will be of interest to the audience and add them into a calendar.
• Content Curator:  Look for interesting content or as you see interesting content bookmark it into eLearning Learning.
• Best Of Editor: Help with posts about what's the best stuff for the week, month, etc.
• Research Curator/Editor: Pick a topic you want to research.  Find good content and bookmark it to be included.  Then edit a Best Of post with all the good stuff you found.

I want to really highlight the last kind of involvement.  If you are about to research just about any topic, this is a great way to do it.  While not related to eLearning, you can see me doing it to learn about professional speaking with posts like:

• Speaker Introduction
• Rehearsing for an Upcoming Presentation

Contact me by Leaving a Comment or by email: akarrer@techempower.com if you are interested in any of these opportunities.

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Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online Presentations

Are people noticing this? It seems that face-to-face and online presenting are becoming more similar. Some aspects:

• Wireless access is becoming more common in places where presentations occur. If you are a conference organizer and you don't arrange for wireless, be prepared for some negative comments. See Better Conferences.
• A larger percentage of the audience these days brings a laptop to presentations and it seems that the factor of Laptop Distraction is quieting down.
• If your audience is already on a laptop and connected wirelessly, then you can use techniques such as Twitter Conference Ideas with twitter as a back-channel or twitter to post links to the audience. You can get the audience to provide thoughts and suggestions just like chat online. In fact, this is on of my favorite things about online presentations (see Examples of eLearning 2.0 for how great the audience input can be). But now you can somewhat do this at Face-to-Face presentations.
• It used to be that your online audience was distracted. Now your face-to-face audience may seem distracted as well. I had a recent presentation at a large corporation. 75% of the audience had a laptop. Some percentage of that audience was taking notes and chatting on Yammer. Some percentage was reading email. Hard to tell which was which.

The last bullet is probably the biggest change here. I'm used to presenting in-person where the audience is highly engaged, taking notes, etc. It was a bit different for me to see an audience looking at their laptops that much.

I've talked about this in Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences and made the comment that:

In-person conferences have an advantage of getting more attention from the attendees.

That's still probably true as there's a higher commitment level, but the gap is narrowing. Clive as points to this in Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem.

What struck me is how the gap is narrowing between face-to-face and online events. You could usually rely on a fully attentive audience face-to-face while bemoaning the ease with which multitasking occurs online. The reality is that the same phenomenon is now occurring in each setting.

What's interesting here is that it used to be that you could count on your in-person audience to be singletasking (is that a word?) and paying attention. Now, they are going to be multitasking just like your online audience. I've always said that one of the wonderful things about face-to-face presentations is that you can see your audience and get immediate reaction based on their faces. But what about when they are looking at their laptop? If anything it's worse than online. When you present online and the chat channel is active but on-topic, you feel you are doing good. When you are in-person and everyone is looking at their laptop, it doesn't feel good. Hmmm…

One last thought … I recently presented to a group of professional speakers about the use of social media. There was quite a bit of discussion around Face-to-Face vs. Online Conferences. I'm still of the opinion that Face to Face Still Matters. However, because of the dramatically different characteristics of Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences and because of the narrowing gap between face-to-face and online presentations – we will see a shift towards more online conferences such as LearnTrends 2009.

Update: Since this comment block is too small for such big questions, I've decided to make this the Big Question on ASTD for October 2009. You can find the question here:

New Presenter and Learner Skills and Methods

Feel free to comment here as well, but I'm hoping we will attract a few longer entries there.

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2.0 and Interesting Times

Interesting post by Dan Pontefract where he provides definitions of some different "2.0" definitions and the HR & Organizational impacts. It's worth taking a look at some of these:

• Enterprise 2.0

  • Definition (via Andrew McAfee):
    • the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers
  • HR & Org Implication:
    • Enterprise 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 concepts in an organization; thus, failure to drive its introduction may result in redundant platforms/processes & confused employees
• Learning 2.0
  • Definition:
    • the shift from a predominantly formal instructor-led/eLearning model to one that encompasses formal, informal and social learning methodologies
  • HR & Org Implication:
    • organizational culture can evolve via a strong learning ecosystem; to continue with antiquated ‘spray and pray’ formal only training models is akin to GM’s 2011 automobile lineup being full of SUV’s
• Work 2.0
  • Definition:
    • the shift from a 9-5 workday to a flexible workweek inclusive of work location (ie. home, shared workspace, coffee shops, etc.)
  • HR & Org Implication:
    • the performance of an individual should be measured not on when they are in the office or present in their cubicle; rather, on the end result and its merits for the organization itself (whenever the deliverables are accomplished)

While people may not like the "2.0" terms, I believe there's merit to using them if only to indicate the substantial impact that these things will have on organizations and particularly on Learning and Development.

The theme of LearnTrends 2009 is a term I call Convergence. It's really about the fact that learning and development leaders have an opportunity to embrace 2.0. This means:

• providing solutions beyond traditional training / courses
• working closely with other parts of the organization including Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, Corporate Library, OD, IT and, of course, the business
• getting smart about a whole lot of new kinds of solutions
• looking outside the firewall for solutions

And all of this comes in an ever more challenging world:

• The Business of Learning faces real pressure and we are expected to do more with less.
• We need to provide value to concept workers who are the highest value people in the organization and are in a continuous learning mode – it's part of their work. But concept workers don't get as much value in traditional learning solutions.
• These workers direct their own learning. Learning and Development is likely not producing much content that will be useful to their day-to-day work except by building core skills. Thus, we must look to provide value in the long tail of learning.
• The nature and value of content production is changing.
• There's a ton more content available both inside and outside the organization and some of it is free learning
• There's much greater accessibility of experts inside and outside the organization and ways to engage with them.

When I described eLearning 2.0 back in February 2006, I focused on the technology aspects. But there's so much more to all of this picture. I'm not sure if Convergence quite captures it, but …

These are truly interesting times.

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