[Bear with me - long setup to the payoff] So I may have mentioned this a few thousand times but I am actually not an instructional designer. I don't play one on TV. That being said, I have taught classes, built curriculum, and so on but as an anthropologist and a historian. I have also been ranting a bit about conferences of late. Then I went to the eLearning Guild's excellent, Learning Solutions conference and saw a couple of things - the 1st was Ellen Wagner's highly illegal and excellent presentation on the Secret Handshake of Instructional Designers and the second was Heidi Fisk's (co-founder of the Guild) willingness to engage in discussions about what could be done differently at conferences to create richer, more compelling experiences. Then the whole PECHA KUCHA mess got going when I read this post from Lorenz Khazaleh on "Beware: No Pecha Kucha allowed without consent from Tokyo" and wow, that kind of got some attention. That post led me to a couple of great posts by Greg Downey on "Thoughts on Conference Organizing" and "Why Do Speed Presentations?" These in turn led me back to "What's the point of anthropology conferences?" by Lorenz. Phew.I guess the whole point of all of this is that I have been thinking a lot about conferences and its interesting to me to read conference experiences from the other half of my life (the academic side) because although I do have degrees in anthropology and history - I actually only ever attended 1 academic conference (A military history one co-hosted by the CIA and my fav memory is of the luminaries of my profession, lined up 8 deep in front of the counter at the CIA gift store). A couple of the highlights leapt out at me from these posts:(Greg) - Keynote speakers matter a lot. Oh yeah. Not just should the speakers align with the focus of the conference, I think one great idea would be to have a session with the keynoter after the big speech. Clearly, if the keynoter is super popular, this could present some logistical problems but the chance to have a real talk w these people would be very cool. (Greg) - Sweat the details - especially the conference program and handouts. Terrific. Now look, I understand that the program is a source of revenue for the conference organizers but give the planet a break. The Guild did a GREAT job with the iPhone app version of the guide. (Greg) - Food, food, food.Amen brother. Listen, I know - food costs and hotels are incredibly brazen at what they'll charge for food - but I think for too long we've missed the social opportunity that food offers. I mean, we all finish sessions and then head to the winds for dinner or worse...breakfast...please...no more "breakfasts" with no protein at all. I know, protein costs but c'mon, we have to be able to do something. Greg Downey even says "food pulled the conference together, creating opportunities to talk, meet people, lightening the mood, reinvigorating the audience, and generally serving as a social lubricant and psycostimulant." (Lorenz) - Don't neglect the social.I know - I just kind of touched on this above but its important. We all know we don't really go back to conferences for the sessions but for the people (SHOCKER right?). So why not pay more attention to that important aspect? Now academic conferences are different - I know that AERA sessions go late and Lorenz, in talking about one anthropology conference, says "the lectures actually lasted until 11 o'clock at night! I especially enjoyed these less formal after-dinner lectures." Go check out that post and scroll down to the picture of the guys sitting around with beers having a debate on shrines and tolerances - I don't want to really geek out here but c'mon that kind of interaction is really attractive especially compared to more 'sit in chair, face forward' sessions. To sum up then....lessen the carbon footprint, increase the food and the chances for social interaction and try to set up something so that people can interact in smaller venues with the headlining keynoters. Let's also think about ways to maybe stretch the day...maybe move the program forward but do it in a different way...maybe some activity (a little music?) to help loosen things up and move across a liminal space to a different kind of social interaction...if the conversations are important...do more to support that. 

Still noddling my way around this one but wanted to pass it along.  What Is Communilytics? : A community analytics funnel in practiceView more presentations from Alistair Croll and Sean Power .

  So I was reading about new developments on the browser front, Firefox 4 is under heavy development, Opera 10.63 is out, I just found ExtensionFM which is a Chrome extension that builds a library of links to every free MP3 that you run across-in essence building a nice little instant MP3 library. We also now have syncing in Chrome and Firefox. Now I know that #e20 and #mlearncon both just finished up (BTW, I think I just want to start referring to confernces by their Twitter hashtags, deal with it) and watching those associated tweet streams, I was really impressed by what I saw coming out of both conferences. Again though I'm struck by how we sometimes seem to running to the next thing without really looking at what we currently have and what can done with it or even if we need to keep it. I know, this is a weird dynamic for me, I'm usually the kid who comes running in yelling 'this is cool..look at this' and then someone asks (they always ask) 'how will it help us?' and I say 'I don't know...but its COOL.' So I'm taking a bit of a step back here but not really. I think we already have several things in our environments, things that we use every day, that if we used them smarter, thought about them more, we could actually make some pretty serious productivity gains. First up is the browser. The browser. Possibly the most ubiquitous piece of technology any of us online use.  I may be dating myself here but I used to be really familiar with that screenshot over there. Ah, Mosaic. Back in the days of WinSock, Telnet and PINE, Mosaic was my browser of choice (more accurately, the only browser I could get). You know, put in a URL and the go get coffee. That's also back in the day when the most important stuff we did on computers we did using stand-alone, installed apps. Now I would really like someone to name me a mission-critical piece of software I have to use as an installed application whose functionality is not replicated or surpassed by some Web-based client or service. My point (and a super-obvious one) is that not only does the browser now offer us an unprecedented level of functionality...between the services/sites we can get to all the way but they offer us an unprecedented level of customization and the various extensions and widgets provide entirely new layers of capabilities. So how much are we studying this incredibly extensible, customizable, powerful environment? Where are the comparisons across browsers of the various configurations/extensions/widgets/add-ons that could be created to support learning, performance support and collaboration? (Firefox Add-Ons, Chrome Extensions, Opera Widgets) This is not a rant against IE either but where is the questioning about why in so many instances, IE is just the default browser? (Mush like someone somewhere started the myth that the classroom is the gold standard for training/education...that's a whole other post though) Are we really satisfied with IT just handing us something that we'll use every day and not knowing if its the best we can get? I personally have IE, FF, Chrome and Opera installed and am constantly checking out new features...shouldn't we continue to look at this technology with a critical eye? What the heck...let's take a crack at email."Reply All"? What idiot thought of that? I think more damage has been done to corporate productivity by   that little button then by all the games of Tetris combined (Check out how Zappos handles it). If we're not in the browser, we're probably in Outlook. So alright, how many of use have had ANY training at all regarding email? Yeah, I know that the COO of Facebook has said that email is going away and I think this may be the ultimate instance of closing the barn door after the horse has run out (run out, found a new place to live, settled down, and grown old frankly) but I think this is symptomatic of a deeper issue. We use and abuse this particular technology with absolute abandon. We've even created "email bankruptcy"...does that seem healthy? But its this tool we have that because it seems simple, we all think we know what to do with it and how to best use it like that knowledge comes to us genetically or something. So how do we know if we are using this tool to the best of our ability? To the best of its capabilities? How do we even know if we need to be using email at all? Are we searching for alternatives? If we implement social media tools w/in the enterprise, are we doing the necessary change management to get people off the email addiction? What the heck...let's take one last swing...hey! PowerPoint c'mere...  The story of this slide from the Afghan War has already become legendary. That however is soooo the tip of the iceberg. How much time has gone down this particular rabbit hole? Why do exceptional presentations standout so clearly? I think its because we've seen so many bad ones. Thank goodness for conferences like TED that have been raising the bar on presentations to a level that we can all aspire to. Thanks to to books like Slide:ology and Presentation Zen and Edward Tufte who have been helping us make visual sense of information. I'd just like to ask, how many of our organizations offer training in constructing visual stories, storytelling in general or how to think about presenting information in a compelling, understandable manner? What productivity gains could we get if we invested in some training from some folks like VizThink? We even have multiple tools for converting PowerPoint into training, thus extending the potential for good or ill. So the browser, email and PowerPoint. How much time do you think those tools take up in our daily work lives? How much thought have we, as organizations, put into the optimal use of these items?I think there are gains to be made and innovation to be had and solutions to be found. Maybe we need to develop some more 'field independent' thinking...maybe we just might need to look more closely. 

 So my office is in the midst of packing up again. No, we're not moving this time, just packing. Don't ask. Anyway, in the midst of this I got an email that sparked this post and I wanted to tie it together with an article from Harvard Business Review that I had been pimping for a few days on Twitter.  The article is titled "No, Management is NOT a Profession" and yes, it is locked behind a paywall but I read it in the print issue and I do think it hold some worthwhile ideas and HBR isn't trying to hide the fact that its a money-making publication behind some bullsh*t "academic journal facade while just using the "publish or perish" pressure that academics who are seeking tenure face to generate free content for their OUTRAGEOUSLY priced walled gardens of content...the creation of which had already been paid for by a school...but I digress. The point is, pick up the magazine in print or buy a copy of the article. I think that the way the article lays out the defining characteristics of a "profession"...eg LAW and MEDICINE...can really inform the discussions that we regularly seem to have about "what makes one an ISD" and so on. I'm also sitting here thinking that one of the main problems might be the messy humans in the equation. I mean let's be honest...law and medicine INVOLVE humans but they are not ABOUT humans. Law is about, well, the law. That is a definable body of content, the mastery of said content can reasonably be judged across populations. Medicine LOOKS like its about humans but its not...its about their bodies and their bodily processes...by definition, a discrete set of knowledge. Management though, and full disclosure-I have a degree in this topic, LOOKS like its about things like accounting and finance and marketing and HR but really its about leading humans and human efforts. So maybe learning/training falls into the same space...it looks like its about ADDIE (drink) or models and theories but what's its really about is learning...something so indescribably human and messy and individually constructed..that it could be the poster child for uniquely human endeavors. Maybe that's why our field will never be viewed as a "profession"...the body of knowledge required to operate in this domain is simply to varied to ever be judged as "complete" and so by definition, is really hard to define when it is "incomplete." If a doctor fails chemistry, they can not practice medicine. If a lawyer fails contract law, he or she can not practice law. What piece or pieces of knowledge MUST an ISD master...without which they would not be able to function in this field? So maybe we quit worrying about being a "profession" since to qualify for that appellation, it seems that one must work in a fairly limited intellectual landscape. I prefer my messy, human, learning world where we can act professionally but celebrate all the while, that our particular domain of knowledge is far too broad and deep to be considered something as prescribed and constrained as a "profession."  

SO I got this email about participating in an awards program. The subject line of the email is "Get more visibility, vendors." That just screams impartial adjudication right off the bat doesn't it? It says, 'you can trust these awards to guide you toward really remarkable solutions' right? Of course it does. Now let's be clear, the email in question came from Brandon Hall Research and while I do think that BHR does some good work and has some really fine people working there (I think Gary Woodill is particularly smart), I couldn't hate this email any more. From the email: "If your commercially-available product "raises the bar" in any of seventeen categories, then we have an awards program for you"...ouch. So I'm going to self-nominate my own product as a bar-raiser...so what...am I actually supposed to sit down and compare my product honestly and objectively with other products in the field and determine that yes, indeed my product is better than everyone else's...I'll send in a nomination? Does anyone actually think any company out there might conduct such an investigation and conclude the opposite? "Darn, we were going to nominate Widget X, but turns out that its just crap compared to everyone else." Hmmmm.Also from the email:"We make it as easy as possible to enter. You can link whatever gives the judges the best look at your product: a trial version of the technology; a recorded demo; videos, Web pages, documents, or slides describing the technology; or whatever combination of descriptive information you choose."Wow. That's great. So there won't be any kind of standardized submission...so if someone else does really great slides but I send in an actual product, they could beat me. That seems...odd. Kind of like the Oscars saying we're going to give prizes for really great films but if you have some stills you'd like us to look at or maybe just a script to read, we'll do that instead. If you are going to judge products, then judge PRODUCTS. Not marketing materials. Not slide decks. Products. Wanna know why? Because as a potential customer of said product, I could give a crap about the powerpoint behind it. Get it? "Wow, the product is money pit, but the slide deck was AWESOME - thanks BHR Awards!"So I click over to the awards site and BANG <slaps hand to forehead>...it all makes sense now! From the site: "The entry fee is $795 US." Oh, and I thought you really liked my product. You do? You really like my product and think it would be great if everyone had one and it would make learning that much easier and it would end poverty and cure hunger? Awesome :-) What? You're still going to need $800 from me to get considered for an award? Well...um...that's awesome. So I have NO idea how the process works once I pay the $800. I don't know who will judge my product that I have self-nominated and paid to have judged. I also don't know from a consumer standpoint, how much I can trust these awards. You've limited them to self-nominations. You've established a paywall. Now do you really expect me to believe, ESPECIALLY given the subject line of the email, that this is ANYTHING other than another product line for you? Do you really expect me to give ANY credence whatsoever to these awards? I'll tell you this, if-as a potential client, you give me a presentation and tout in that presentation that you've won one of these awards, that might not kill it right there, but your credibility as a vendor just took a hit in my eyes. "wow you won an award that you nominated yourself for and you paid to have judged. Here's a contract." Not happening. Now look, you want to run an awards program because you want to highlight advances in the field? Unique contributions? Brilliant new products? That's terrific. You guys know a lot...have smart people working there...you could probably set up real, very strict criteria and do a real service to both companies and the marketplace by highlighting the superstars. You know what? You'd also generate a lot of good PR for your own firm. This though? This serves no one but you and the companies who "win" (what's the percentage of 'losers' by the way - and the percentage of those losers who pay for the privilege the next year?). So let's keep the awards and just do them in a way that makes then real, earned badges of honor and not literally, bought and paid for.  

 So last week I had the honor of attending the retirement ceremony for combat veteran, Master Sergeant (MSG) Roy Stiles. At a time when I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to be when I grow up, Roy is finishing one career and starting another. There were speeches and awards and pictures taken. MSG Stiles (pictured here with some dopey civilian type), kept his game face on through most of the ceremony, right up until he had to thank his mom for her 'holding her breath' for about 20 years while her son went in harm's way. I think this was really powerful considering MSG Stiles' son has just completed Navy basic training and will soon be going in harm's way himself. Turns out too that MSG Stiles, now to be known as "Roy" - was an honor grad of just about every training school or class he attended. He did what I'm sure was a brutal tour in Hawaii and of course Germany and by his own choice - Afghanistan, where he served as a First Sergeant (1SG). He also volunteered twice to serve as a Casualty Notification officer.  Volunteered to go to Afghanistan. Volunteered to notify families that their loved ones had been lost in service to this nation. Humbling. Why do I bring all this up? Well first, cause I like to count Roy as a friend and a co-conspirator at work and I told him I'd make him a star. Second, because I know its all cool now to put the "Support the Troops" magnet on the back of the car or to talk about how we can disagree with the politics of whatever war but still support the troops (not insignificant lessons mind you, learned by this country largely on the backs of our Vietnam veterans) but I wanted to make the idea of who we are supporting and the kinds of jobs these people do, just a little more personal. I also wanted to talk about the qualities of the Non-Commissioned Officers. One speaker at Roy's ceremony described NCO's as "mission focused, smart and they do not whine." Having worked with more than a few NCO's, I can add my personal testimony to that description. Think about what would happen if you advertised those qualities for your next job opening. So I just really wanted to write this post to say thank you to MSG Stiles for his service and to also say thank you to the other soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who continue to go in harm's way for us and for this country.