Fascinating topic, don’t you think? And here we are, still in 2013, and already thinking about what the workplace of the future would be like by 2020. Well, one thing for sure is that it won’t be anything like we have today or what we may have had over the course of the last 50 years. Even more, I am suspecting that over the course of time, if not happening already today, we are going to make a very healthy split between work and jobs. Because, you know, they are not the same, no matter what people keep telling you. They have never been the same. And, certainly, with the emergence of digital tools that split is even more natural and in full accordance with a new reality: work is you, you are the work. So what is the future of You? What is the future of work then? It seems that lately there have been lots and lots of interesting and rather relevant insights shared across, i.e. blog posts, articles, mainstream news, insightful whitepapers and whatever else, shared across by folks who have embarked themselves into redefining how we should be looking at work from here onwards over the course of time and also from the perspective of how we are rethinking the role of jobs, even to the point of perhaps venturing whether it’s worth while quitting yours and move on to the next big adventure (Highly recommended and superb read by Irvin Wladawsky-Berger, by the way). Uncertainty will be there. Uncertainty is always there. But that’s perhaps a good thing, because it’s essentially what helps us progress further into the unknown while we keep rethinking what we will all want to be doing as work. Long gone are the times where we were aiming for long term careers and their big aspirations, for loyalty to a specific business or company, for a long-term opportunity to have an impact over the course of decades. Long gone are the times where knowledge workers were aiming at fitting in within a working environment for which they were perhaps not ready for it, while carrying on their work, with very little motivation, waiting for the payslip at the end of the month. Hummm, well, maybe this one is not gone just yet. But perhaps it is a clear indication already as to why certain jobs need to be questioned and redefined in the context of whether they are still purposeful or meaningful altogether. After all, and this is what I keep telling people all around, we only have got one single life, so it is probably a fair game we all try to make the most out of it, don’t you think?  Lou Adler has also got a rather thought-provoking article on a similar topic under the suggesting heading of "There Are Only Four Jobs in the Whole World - Are You in the Right One?" where he proposes how those four jobs are the following ones: Producers, Improvers, Builders and Thinkers. Go ahead and read it through, as it will certainly be rather helpful in understanding what your current job may well be about and it will confirm whether you might be on the right one, or not. Interestingly enough, while I read it myself, I just couldn’t help thinking how in today’s more complex than ever working environment each and everyone of us may eventually be doing the four jobs at the same time depending on the context of the task at hand, which is essentially what keeps driving us all into achieving our goals: that purpose and meaning I mentioned above, along with the right context in such a hyperconnected, networked (business) world.  And to that effect, while I keep reflecting myself on the future of work, I thought I would point you to a recent article that my good friend Jemima Gibbons worked on over at "What will "work" look like in 2020?" where she gathered a good bunch of folks sharing their insights on how they see themselves the workplace of the future. Some pretty interesting insights with key concepts like Intrapreneurship and its impact behind the corporate firewall (By William Higham); or the redefinition of work from a physical space / office into a state of mind where work life integration play a rather key, paramount role (By Karen Mattison) towards sustainable growth; or how the convergence of cloud, mobile and social (Along with the "Internet of Things") will inspire more contractual / freelance work helping organisations become more liquid, hybrid while knowledge workers become freer and more autonomous around their work, owning it and co-sharing that responsibility (By David Terrar); or how knowledge workers will no longer be talking about adoption of new technologies, but more a key concept that I have become rather fond of myself over time and which I find also rather descriptive in terms of where I feel the key is of how we redefine work, that is, how do we adapt to this new digital work environment to make the best out of it, as in how well do we adapt to change (By Helen Keegan). Like I said, lots of great, relevant insights and plenty of key pointers that surely highlight where we may be heading to over the course of time. Jemima asked me as well whether I would be able to contribute with my ¢2 and, of course, I couldn’t reject such generous offer so I added a short paragraph that explains what’s been in my mind for a while in terms of what I sense the future of work would be like in the not so distant future … So I thought I would go ahead and finish off this article by taking the liberty of quoting it across:  "In the future, work will be more distributed and remote - technology means that people will be able to work from wherever they want to. Work processes will be driven by interactions from workers through networks and communities rather than traditional company hierarchies. Large enterprises will no longer need to exist, because of the nature of the hyper-connected and networked workforce. Trust between workers will be more essential than ever - and critical for success. People will find new meaning and purpose through building strong personal business relationships: the key objective for everyone will be sustainable growth." So what will "work" look like in 2020 for you? Care to venture and share a comment or two on what it may well be like? Perhaps in a few years we can come back to this blog post and see how accurate our perceptions were after all. Or not. Something tells me the journey is going to be just as fascinating, inspiring and refreshing as the final destination, if not more altogether! Why? Well, because for the first time in decades it will be us, knowledge (Web) workers, the ones who can choose what we would want it it to be. And that’s a good thing. After all, work is us, we are the work.

This is the first step towards the success of my blogging effort and I'm really excited about it. I thank all of you in the community for your support and I hope to keep writing good stuff that you all can make use of. elearninglearning is a very useful website (and topic hub) that features good blogs related to elearning. It has been a really satisfying journey till here since I started off seriously from January 2009. My posts so far are:Social Learning?Audience Analysis?Social Learning Adoption?Call for elearning Demonstrations by Tony KarrerInstructional Designers Community of IndiaShould you share information?How to make social learning work?Suggestions to measure social learningBeyond Kirkpatrick?April's Big Question: OMG I'm Stuck!Collaborative Learning with Trek EarthLong Live ILT? Whats the point here?Best Practices and Design PatternsAction Mapping in ActionMarch Big Question: Workplace Learning in 10 yearsKirkpatrick's Four Level Evaluation ModelPure Courseware vs Reference HybridsSkill sets of an Instructional DesignerLanguage for technical coursesAnalyzing Technical Information SimplifiedChallenges and solution to technical software product trainingRole of IDs vs SMEs??elearning in IndiaI have been learning a lot in this journey and feel a greater sense of achievement when I write my posts and have your support. Thank you all!

We live in rather interesting, intriguing, complex, uncertain and wonderful times. We surely do. We live in times of extreme negatives juxtaposing themselves with extreme positives. We live in times where the Social Web has become that amplifier of (global / local) events, of our passions, of our emotions, of an unnerving polarisation of opinions and beliefs, where tolerance, compassion, empathy and caring, some times, all shine for their absence. Just like in the real world. Where did we leave all of those characteristics behind in our human nature? Have we forgotten what makes us all, human beings, unique in this world, where we have been given an exclusive, uncompromising, cherished opportunity to enjoy and celebrate it accordingly? Where have we left behind our innate social nature? Is there any hope left? Please do tell me there is. Please. Do. In times where the world seems to keep rejoicing on narrating rather painful and excruciatingly demoralising extreme negatives, I just can’t help but for the rebellious and hippie 2.0 side of me to come out and fight back in search of extreme positives. I guess there is a reality out there that we may not be able to escape, tame nor mitigate, even, in terms of the amount of pain and suffering one might get exposed to, or suffer themselves, but the thing is that I am starting to feel it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight back. There is hope. There needs to be hope. Otherwise, what’s the alternative? I do apologise to those folks who may be reading this blog post today, as I am fully aware it may well not be the article they were expecting. I know this is the kind of philosophical reflection that’s very rare to see in this blog, but I just couldn’t help fighting back. Please bear with me. I need to get it out of my system. Then things will be back to normal, the new post-normal. Like I said, having seen the unnerving (That word again!) increase of extreme negatives we all keep getting exposed to in our daily lives, I want to strongly believe there is a different way. A much different way. A better way. For all of us.  And there is, apparently. Phew! I am really glad there is. I surely needed this extreme positive to compensate. I guess serendipity just decided to do its own magic once again, right when one needs it the most. Earlier on this week, and coming through my Google Plus stream, I bumped into this absolutely delightful, energising, refreshing, inspiring, jaw-dropping, thought-provoking YouTube video clip, that I am sure that once you all watch it through in its entirety it will restore your own faith in humanity. It surely did for me. If anything, because of that strong sense of hope permeating throughout the entire clip of the true potential we can achieve with that amplifier effect that is the Social Web. In an age of polarisation, balance is key. It will always be. And although I certainly realise that video contains lots of kool-aid about us, human beings, it’s also undeniable that we are more than capable. Yes, indeed, we are capable of the most horrifying things, BUT, at the same time, we are more than capable of the most wonderful things. And that’s the reason I wanted to share this blog entry across to perhaps use it as a gentle reminder for us all about what we are here for. Remember? We live in rather interesting times. For real. We should just seek each and every single opportunity we may have to make a difference, to have an impact, to share, not through those negative experiences, since they are always the easy way out, but focus more on the positive ones. The ones that allow us to understand the negative being turned into a positive. Those experiences that the Social Web has helped us treasure over the course of time with that amplifier effect of what we could all achieve if we just put our mind and intent into it. That’s just what the Digital / Social (R)evolution is all about. And, if not, judge for yourselves. Hit Play, sit back, pump up the volume, watch AND enjoy what we are capable of. Today:   See? There is hope. We, too, can do better. Much better. All of us. No exceptions. I guess we just need to be reminded every now and then that right when an extreme negative happens there is another extreme positive in the making just right around the corner. And perhaps that is the intent of this reflection in this post, that, whether we like it or not those negatives may always be with us all, as part of our daily lives, but I guess it’s also going to be up to us to decide how we are going to amplify them, or not, by making a much smarter, sharable, responsible and thoughtful use of the digital tools at our disposal. Welcome to the Social (R)evolution! Happy birthday, mum! [I love you very much!]

An excellent question for one and all, and what better opportunity to motivate me to get back to the blogging scene that I have been away from for quite long now, and so for reasons precisely related to Time Spent. Tony thanks for this excellent question!To start with I'd like to tell folks that I am quite versatile and love doing a lot of things. I live believing that after all I have only one life to do everything that I want to do, so I do not stop myself if i have an urge to do something quite new and compelling, that I would enjoy.So what do I spend my time with?Well I work on weekdays, so my commute to work and back itself takes a away a lot of my time. At work, I manage to tweet and get on FaceBook and chat with my friends and colleagues in breaks between working. These are important to me and I have linked my twitter and FaceBook accounts so the tweets are shared on FaceBook as well. But I have several friends on FaceBook (school time friends, other friends and colleagues) with whom I share a more personal relation, so I quite often set more personal messages on FaceBook only, and enjoy it when my friends come back with comments that often add humor to the situation. Social media does become an integral part of my life as a lot of my friends aren't in the same location as me and it isn't possible for me to meet them otherwise. I was recently, suddenly flooded with loads of work and had several issues to resolve that were making my current project very complex. I was really stressed and bogged down and was feeling guilty for a while that I didn't have time or the bandwidth to blog. My mind was always preoccupied and I couldn't write blogs or read a lot of other blogs and news in such a situation. But, my feeds stay in my reader so I can read them at a later point and time. That way twitter is really effective to keep me up to date and point me to the most valuable posts and latest happenings. It almost comes like a breath of fresh air in such times. So twitter is just great for me!What am I doing less of today?Social media has actually got me connected back to zillions of people whom I had lost touch with many years ago. I don't think I'm doing less of anything but actually doing a lot more things now. Today, I'm more exposed to information and more aware as a result of social media. I love reading blogs and learning from all you wonderful folks in the community. All this gives me a broader perspective while doing my job and I owe a lot to the confidence I've gained in the field of instructional design and elearning to social media. So, effectively I am doing a lot more things that I ever thought I would be doing before. I've also fallen in love with photography and have a group of colleagues who go for photoshoots on weekends once in a while. I'm learning from them and from the collaborative photography site Trek Earth where I post my photos. I have connections and networks here as well and that adds to my satisfaction.I am simultaneously fascinated by several things and also want to do my bit to the environment and participate in tree plantation, play a volunteer role in activities organized by our employee club, learn aerobics to stay fit, yoga someday, eat well, shop...etc. I also love to travel and am absolutely in love with nature. Saving up money so I can visit wildlife sanctuaries in India or anywhere that I can make it to. I love spending time with friends and family too and drop everything when I get a chance to do that. I am also an ardent sleeper and sleep late at night and wake up late in the day on weekends. In effect I love to sleep ... :) So, my life is a mix of all these things and I am not very consistent or disciplined about doing just one thing. So lots of things often result in my occasional lapse in blogging or regularly following on or commenting on people's posts. But I do love to and push myself to multi-task. I tell myself that I should be able to do everything and not complain that I don't have enough time. I take things as they come and don't fret about them before.Sometimes all this gets really overwhelming, so I manage to cut off too when I feel like I'm reaching my threshold, and I enjoy those solitary moments as well. Wake up and sit with a cup of tea, read the newspaper or just a book. I also dream of going off to some far off place with only nature around me, sans technology and gain back my peace of mind. Thinking of such things replenishes my brain cells that get dulled with the daily grind of commute to work and getting back. So, effectively to answer the last question is, I actually have a better life due to social media and not the reverse. My motto is to live life to the fullest learn all I want, do all I want, live the way I want! So social media can actually be used to your advantage .... think about it!

As I have mentioned in a recent blog post, you would remember how I have now moved into a new job role within IBM, as Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM Connections (both internal and external), where I am much more heavily involved with IBM’s knowledge workers’ own adoption efforts of social business and social technologies. So far, the journey has been incredibly fascinating, if anything, because we are just about to enter the last stage of Social Business Adoption and Enablement: Adaptation. And this is the best part, frankly, I am not really too sure we are ready for it just yet. If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you would know how I have been involved with social networking tools since early 2000 to 2001 when I was first exposed to instances of wikis and people aggregators. And throughout all of that time I have seen a good number of different tipping points and different phases of adoption that have marked a rather interesting evolution into helping social networking for business become the new fabric, the new DNA, of the company in terms of how we collaborate and share our knowledge. There have been plenty of interesting and relevant challenges, and yet, the toughest is still awaiting us. Having been involved with social networks inside the company from right at the beginning has given me the opportunity to witness how different waves of adopters have been able to embrace social technologies, at their own pace, in order to help themselves become more collaborative and effective by ways of opening up their knowledge sharing processes. At the same time, it has allowed me to witness how over the course of time those waves of adopters are getting narrower and narrower. Early adopters, first, second, third waves of adopters have all gone through that transformation of how they work and everything. And while there have been some good challenges, I feel the most pressing ones are yet to come. And for two different reasons: The Laggards, The Critics and The Skeptics The first one is that the one or two waves of adopters who still have got to make it across are probably the most intriguing, because they are the ones whom in another blog post I have called The Laggards, The Critics and The Skeptics. Yes, these are those knowledge workers who have already tried and played with social networking tools in some form or shape, and who have definitely heard and have been exposed to social networking and they weren’t very convinced. In fact, quite the opposite. It just didn’t click for them. They saw it, they dived in, it didn’t meet their needs and wants and they moved on back to where they were.  Slowly, but steadily, they turned themselves into skeptics with the earned right to voice out their concerns, issues and what not, in order to make the point across that they are not going to make the change over, no matter what. At least, for now, or till the point where things have changed and shifted so radically they won’t have a choice anymore. And while I think you folks may highlight that as a potential issue in terms of the overall social business adoption strategy, it’s perhaps the one group left we should not try to keep convincing of what lies ahead, but let them re-discover it at their own pace and everything, over and over again till it hits, if needed be, at their own time, at their own pace. Indeed, there will always be different waves of adopters and each and everyone of us, social software evangelists, should be ok with that. The sooner we are, the much better of we will all be eventually. If not, we are the ones who have got an issue, because we are just not working hard enough to understand their context and different working styles and adjust accordingly.  Social Business Mandates The second reason, which is the one that has got me extremely worried at the moment, is that one where we have failed in inspiring to transform our very own knowledge workforce and switched gears thinking that Social Business Transformation can be accelerated by mandating its adoption, whether you, the knowledge worker, like it or not. Yes, I know we are all excited and rather committed to provoke the change, no matter what, even if we decide to go ahead and mandate such shift. But it is just so flawed, it’s scary. Very scary altogether, because it just shows how we haven’t learned much in the last decade.  Social Business transformation is not a project team, it’s not something that you start by date X and you finish it off in a year or two. And then you are done and time for you to move elsewhere. It’s not something that you put together with a group of folks picked up by you to force it down to the rest of the employee workforce, just because you are in one part of the organisation that feels it’s entitled to push down those corporate mandates. Specially, onto those who still haven’t made the switch-over. It just doesn’t work like that, I am afraid. Even more so when those corporate mandates are pushed down into people’s throats by that executive hierarchical structure understanding they are entitled to do so, just because of who they are and the position they hold. No, I am really sorry, but it just doesn’t work like that. Today’s corporate environment is a whole lot different than what it was 10 to 15 years ago. In the world of social networking for business it’s never been about mandating and forcing certain behaviours or a specific mindset (That one of Openness, for instance). It has always been a personal, individual choice of the knowledge worker him/herself to have a play, to try things out, to find new ways of working where openness, transparency, trust, etc. become the norm in terms of how we share our knowledge and collaborate effectively together. And it will always be that: *a* personal choice. So I cringe, and I die a little bit inside as well for that matter, whenever I bump into a group of fellow colleagues who have been mandated by their corporate executive(s) to use social software tools, or, else! Or, even worse, when knowledge workers are expecting to be told / mandated by their management teams that they must do it, or else. Yes, I admit it, it drives me a little bit crazy as well, because it sounds as if they have failed to inspire to transform and, instead, use their position, power and entitlement to enforce it, so that they could put a little checkmark, right next to their yearly performance evaluation, that they have been social and time to move on.  And if there is anything wrong with that is that they have enforced the very same kind of mentality and behaviours that social business has been trying to fight all along: corporate politics, bullying, power struggles and hierarchical clashes. And it gets even worse when they have mandating their team(s) to become social and yet they haven’t even explored it themselves, can’t be bothered arguing all of this social networking stuff was not meant for them or whatever other lame excuse. Whoahhh? Really? Is that what *you* really think? See? To me, that’s the main key difference between a manager, ruling by command and control using their position of power and entitlement, and a true leader, inspiring a new behaviour, a new mindset, walking the talk, taking the lead, while learning by doing, on what all of these social networking behaviours are all about and which this snapshot shared below (Courtesy of 9GAG) captures it very nicely:  The biggest challenge with all of that is not that senior leadership, no longer believing in the power to transform through being a living example of the shift, but it is actually the folks, right underneath those executives, who execute those orders, because they want to please the command from the ranks above. Never mind thinking about questioning the validity of such assertions, or challenging the status quo of something they know it’s wrong, or even rebelling against it since they know very well it just won’t work. It’s just as if they have drunk so much kook-aid from the whole thing that they are still drunk with it and can’t see anything around them anymore.  And this is where the corporate rebel side of me, the hippie 2.0, the heretic, the outrageous and optimist free radical me is coming back and in full force to fight it back as much as I possibly can, because I feel that if I don’t do it, no-one will question it, and everyone will just basically conform with it. No, we shouldn’t. We should keep up the fight and help out our leadership, regardless of the company (As I am sure there are plenty of businesses out there going through the very same thing as I get to write these few thoughts), understand their new leadership role, that one of being servant leaders, that one of provoking that social business transformation by themselves and for themselves first, as a personal experience, so that they can comprehend better the new dynamics of engagement, those where "knowledge is power" transforms itself into "knowledge SHARED is power", where traditional command and control management progresses through into doing is believing leadership. And this is exactly what excites me about my job, that, 12 years later, I still feel like I am just getting started with my social networking evangelism efforts, that there is just so much more to explore, discover, play with, learn and experience that we are just starting to scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg. The difference between today and those many years back though, is that I have now got all of those years of additional experience, skills, knowhow, pragmatic way of 2.0 thinking and so forth that I can apply further along that I have finally decided to make the switch from Adoption and move on… Earlier on this year, you would remember that blog post I put together on me making the move away from Social Business into Open Business, well, a mere 5 months later, I am making the move from Adoption into Adaptation, which I think is much more appropriate for what all of the business world is trying to do with Social Business. We are not doing Adoption per se anymore, specially, driving adoption. Instead, we open up the door to adaptation, where we help knowledge workers adapt to a new way of working, where we become more open by nature, more transparent, more trustworthy, hyperconnected, networked, engaged, participative and so on by doing something we, human beings, have always been very good at: sharing our knowledge. The Industrial Age neglected our ability to adapt. Instead we became machines; robots and drones capable of putting together a massive amount of silly hours working really hard, without applying too much (critical) thinking, or even questioning the status quo, so that we could just get a pay check at the end of the month, hoping that one of those years we might potentially become part of the executive chain that everyone aspires to because we feel things would be much better. No, they were’t. Indeed, things never got better for the vast majority, only for the very very few. In fact, they got worse, because with the current work pressures people are behaving even more like corporate drones understanding that if they don’t put enough hours during the work week (7 days a week!) they may get fired altogether together for not being productive enough. How flawed is that? I mean, how can we keep ignoring over 150 years of research on what’s obvious? Perhaps we should get fired. Maybe we need to go through that massively rude awakening to understand how we need to go back to basics: our very own human nature. They say that we are one of the very few species in this world that can adapt adequately to any given environment, no matter how harsh it may well be. Well, perhaps we may not have adapted well enough to a corporate environment where we have been eaten up alive by the status quo, because we just haven’t challenged it well enough like we have done with other environments. The difference between last 50 years and now is that for the first time ever, we have got the tools, the social technologies, to help us provoke that transformation of how we do business and how we should behave in the new business world that aims at sustainable growth, equity, parity, earned merit, digital reputation, etc. and how the sooner we may be switch from adoption to adaptation, from corporate mandates to servant leadership, from corporate drones into human beings with an ability to think and make beautiful things, the much better our societies would become as a result of it. Not just for each and everyone of us, but for many future generations to come. It’s the least we can all do. Adapt for our mere survival as a species. The race has already started a while ago. The clock is ticking and faster than ever… Think, inspire and execute. Don’t waste any more time trying to conform with a status quo that was never meant to be. Challenge it by helping people understand and fully embrace how they can adapt to a new reality. Their own reality. Remember that life is just too short to have to conform with a status quo you never believed in, nor adapted to, in the first place. It’s now a good time to level up the game and demonstrate what we are all capable of in terms of adapting social business gestures to how we work. Indeed, doing is believing! Adaptation: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."

I started thinking about putting together some qualities of an instructional designer (ID) versus the skills of an instructional designer, when I attended the April 2009 Learntrends webinar by Jay Cross. The tool used for online conferencing had a chat feature and I got speaking to many of the participants and moderators. Cammy Bean and I happened to discuss what qualities an instructional designer should posses. Clark Quinn intervened with some of his suggestions too, and this got me thinking. The few qualities that came out of the discussion:InnovationCreativityBusiness sense (goal)PassionSensitive to learnerMinimalistTo start with, an instructional designer has to be open-minded, self-directed and self-motivated with one goal of making the learning experience for learners complete. An ID has to understand the business need that drives the requirement for any learning. Having good communication skills, an ability to gather and analyze information and organize it into a structured format are critical skills for IDs. An ID also needs to be really sensitive to learners and their needs. Understanding how people learn should be an ongoing study, and his/her focus on addressing business needs by leveraging evolving technology and standards. An ID also needs to be a minimalist (apply minimalist theory). Over and above a whole list of must-have's, IDs need to have the discretion to selectively apply what is relevant and will enhance learning, rather than bombard a learner with information.Some guidelines for all IDs are:Perform a thorough audience-analysis and remain focused on the learner profile and his needs.Design meaningful and measurable goals.Design task-based courses after performing a thorough task-analysis.Use relevant examples and analogies to aid learning.Device methods in which the learner can interact and discover facts, concepts or procedures themselves to keep them interested.Design minimalist, or loosely-coupled, self-contained modules that focus on learner goals and drive to the point quickly.Keep it simple and use animations, demos, practices selectively and only where absolutely necessary.Whatever you do, you do need to think 'business' at all times and be able to provide quick, relevant and no nonsense information to learners without getting them distracted. All of this calls for you the ID to do your homework well before you get down designing your course.

I'm quite thrilled to let all of you know that my effort to push social workplace learning in my team has been recognized. Post my queries posted in my blog post Social Learning Adoption, I have been slowly evangelizing social media tools and social learning to management at every opportunity I've had. It has been a great recognition for me the last week, when the manager of our team from the US, acknowledged my efforts and my knowledge in the domain, and included the use of social-networking to benefit our global team in my goals for the next year. I know this is a tough job, given the challenges I listed in my post, but never-the-less its an encouragement that motivates me to work at it in an organized manner. I believe I owe my knowledge and confidence to the community who willing contribute and encourage me. Getting listed in the elearninglearning site was very encouraging too and I thank Tony for it.I'd like to use this post to also answer a question one of my co-bloggers Sahana raised on her blog, do people need training on how to learn? Her post suggests that when she urged one of her colleagues to use twitter, he came back to her asking her to create training on how to use it. I think and agree that the process of using social learning tools like twitter does have a learning curve for everyone. How fast one can pickup the tools and use them to their benefit depends on their 'tech savvyness' and their familiarity with Web 2.0 tools as such. But what I also want to emphasize, is that it doesn't make sense to talk of formal training on the use of such tools for the following reasons:These tools are quite intuitive, and if one wants to use them, they should just go out and read relevant resources and get started.You cannot show the 'value' these tools bring unless you go out, use them and participate actively. You cannot expect to sit back and just have information 'come' to you from others. So it requires 'active' users to 'proactively' go out and look for information and figure out how to use these tools to your benefit. So 'pull' learning always works with these tools, as these tools are designed to promote 'pull' learning.Once a user figures out the tools, they need to be persistent and be able to identify their own learning patterns, interest areas, what works for them and what doesn't. So it does require mature self-directed learners. The tools promote what Web 3.0 is trying to achieve with personalization of information and limiting it to what users find useful to them. So it does call for self-directed learners.In spite of these facts, what I'm saying here is that it doesn't mean that all learners need to be self-directed and well-versed in the tools from day one, but they do need to be self-motivated and persistent. What we, who are savvy with the use of such tools can do, is to provide people tips and tricks that we figured out, guidelines on getting started and most importantly urge them to go out and look for information, participate and contribute their experiences. Then they will just figure out for themselves! The only way they are ever going to see value, is by being part of this virtual community and figuring out what they're interested in. A good analogy is a seeker of information, going to a book store with no specific book in mind, exploring the available options and finding a subject of their interest. After this the user may buys the book. He will then read it after which he may like it or not like it. If he does like it, he recommends it to others or he may go out and write a book review highlighting whats good and whats not. That's how social learning works as well, except that the whole process takes place in a virtual community and you won't be spending money on that book!Trying to get to the background of the mental pattern a user goes through while using social media for learning is well explained by the Cynefin Framework. There's also this video I found useful:So it is important for us who recommend social media to others, to understand the patterns that a new user will usually go through and help them work through those. The best way is to recommend reading the online resources available. A more theoretical insight into understanding the learning pattern is the double-loop learning concept.To solve the problem in question, I would recommend reading specific online resources to the user:Twitter for learningA beginners guide on how to Twitter?The Twitter network modelWhy I suck at twitter?The Social Learning Guide by Jane HartI will also recommend telling them about successful collaboration initiatives like Trek Earth and reading stories or case studies of social learning implementation. Looks like I have a plan already!

I am attending a deep dive training for the product I work on, and this is probably one of the first detailed internal trainings that I'm attending. I have a lot of observations and learning from the way the training has been designed. In effect, attending the training gave me a much deeper perspective into what goes on in the learners mind during a class. I recommend that all IDs attend trainings sometime, just to get a better insight into the learner's mind.When creating training for complex and advanced products, learners benefit from having a greater number of hand-on exercises and demos. They help in improving a learner's confidence on the subject tremendously. Such cases call for classroom training. Here are some of my insights...Examples and scenariosI think the instructor needs to be loaded with relevant real-world examples to help learners grasp the concepts better. Examples help build the connections that learners are looking to make. As you delve deeper into a subject, learners benefit from scenarios that make sense to his job, rather than random analogy. The examples should also keep in mind other systems interacting with the product in question. Thankfully, our instructor is not short of examples when somebody asks a question or he explains a concept.Hands-on exercisesI must say that in the specific case of the training I am attending, the product is really complex and we are working on exercises that are over 3 hours long. So how does an instructor address such a challenge when it cannot be avoided? I think such exercises should be chunked down to no more than 20 high-level steps, and the task and concept explained before beginning each part. Our instructor is doing a good job with that.The other thing with exercises that I realized is, how important it is to have standards and be consistent in your way of referencing things, in order to enable students to see exactly what they need. Some suggestions:The classroom setup needs to be detailed and communicated to the class prior to starting the session.For each exercise, ensure that you mention the prerequisite requirements.Give a short summary of the task and objective that will be achieved using that part of the exercises, just before it.Have standards and be consistent in your way of referring to components that repeat.Group instructions of one screen or component under a high-level instruction.Write short sentences that start with where the object of action is located.Emphasize the button/option where the action needs to be performed and the value that needs to be entered/selected.Overall, I think the class also needs to be very interactive and solicit participation from learners. But you really need to plan your time well so you can cover everything needed, and also have the class contribute to the learning.

If I were to highlight one of my favourite and preferred traits from the world of Social / Open Business and the single one that perhaps makes it all worth while the effort and energy spent on already, it would be that one from a concept that’s been out there for a while, since 1970, to be more precise, and which has been truly inspirational to me in terms of how I have lived Social Networking all along, ever since I first bumped into it a few years back. I have blogged about it several times as well and I guess today’s blog post is not going to be the last one either, I am sure. Of course, I am talking about Servant Leadership and its inherent nature of having a purpose to serve.  Robert K Greenleaf first coined "Servant Leadership" in a 1970 essay and defined it as follows:  "The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature." "The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?" Now, if you look into it and start digging deeper, way beyond the social media marketing / vendor funnels and what not, you would notice how the Social Web aims pretty much at the very same goal: "that natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first", to help out others in need, essentially. Yes, once again, it’s all about the givers. It’s always been about the givers. The truly fascinating thing is that more and more we keep coming up with wonderfully inspiring examples of what servant leaders are all about in this Digital Age and we get to find out, and experience!, their true leadership. They are very conscious of their purpose to serve others. They are naturally open to share their knowledge, to collaborate, to help others learn about their own environment, their own contexts, their own selves. Essentially, through the use of these digital tools they lead by example in demonstrating actively the huge potential and impact of the Social Web in each and everyone of us in our society. Never mind in a work environment. Take a look into Commander Chris Hadfield, for instance, as one of my favourite examples as of late of what servant leaders are all about. It probably doesn’t get any better than this, that is, him performing a Space Oddity cover (Click here to listen to David Bowie’s original track in Spotify, if you would be interested) where he gets to share with us a glimpse of the world from high above, a glimpse of what it is like being part of our collective human history:  I know, and fully realise, how plenty of people out there would be saying that this is just another cool video / cover of a brilliant track. Not much of a merit on that one. Well, yes, it may well be just another video clip, but how many video clips do you get to watch during the course of your lifetime where an astronaut is playing music and singing beautifully  from out of space sharing that strong purpose to serve across the world reminding us why we are here on Earth in the first place? Well, to make a difference. And he certainly has!  But it gets better, because of the course of the weekend, and while doing some casual catchup reading, I bumped into this interview he gave after he returned back to Earth. And it’s probably one of the most inspiring, thought-provoking and delightful interviews you may be watching this year:  The interview lasts for a bit over 11 minutes and it’s worth every second in terms of what it is like being an astronaut in today’s Digital Age and the kind of impact personal experiences can have when you make use of those digital tools to reach out to people, engage with them, share and show them how there are plenty of powerful ways of how you can impact people’s lives, if you set your purpose to it. His description of how he uses social media tools (From minute 5:15 onwards) is just brilliant in terms of one single key message that I took out of it: sharing the experience. Yes, indeed, that’s what all of these digital tools are all about, i.e. connect with others who share our very same passions and share the experiences, and, as a result of it, create some more magic. Yes, when I grow up, I, too, want to become an astronaut. Actually, a servant leader, digital astronaut. 

Further to my post on Should you share information?, I'd like to express my thoughts once more, based on a recent discussion with some colleagues . At the recent training I attended, I met a whole bunch of pre-sales and consulting people who were also there to learn more about the product. It was amazing that in a class of 20, we had people from at least 10 different countries! What was more important was that all of them had the task to sell the same products and were not really connected until this training. Thus the training was also very critical for them to network. Being the social media evangelist, I obviously suggested that people use our social tools and share their knowledge online. At a later point when we were discussing offline and I was suggesting to our trainer that he should share his experience online, the obvious debate came up. One of the colleagues started telling him that if he did so, someone else would learn his job and he could be replaced. My opinion of course is:When you share your knowledge, you actually grow to the next level. Being a trainer he was obviously already sharing knowledge but in a limited forum.Your clarity on the subject is further enhanced and you end up researching it further.You have people in the community write back and add value to the content.It is also practically impossible to share all the tacit knowledge you gained over several years. If you even attempted, you would perpetually always be on a blog or wiki and not have time for your actual job. That knowledge always stays with you and is your 'value' to the organization over what you share with other people.Effectively, the percentage of people who read your information and get positively impacted and make the most of it, is a really small number when compared to the whole lot who have read it. Very few might have got the exact value you are trying to share.Also it is important to remember that the knowledge you gain when part of an organization is also the organization's asset and not only yours.I also suggest seeing the video who owns information.From here I leave the rest open to debate.... Really, what do the rest of you think?

IDCI Session HighlightsToday's IDCI session by Abhinava (Twitter ID: @Abhinava) was extremely thought provoking for me. The topic of discussion, LH Theory (Love-Hate Theory) triggered on a lot of thought on how to be sensitive to the learner and use 'love' to design courses. To know more about the session go to twitter and search with the hash tag #IDCI. The session highlighted the need to be sensitive to the learner needs more holistically. At the same time, the session compared two modes of creating learning; Love and Hate. The session also emphasized on when to use each mode of learning.Here's the presentation that Abhinava put on Slideshare:The LH TheoryView more presentations from abhinava.sn.So when do you use the LH Theory?You use Love when:You want to create learning for a long term.You want to create a long term relationship/bond.When you have time to create good learning.When there is a lot to gain.You use Hate when:You want to create learning for the short term and don't really care much about the outcome.When you don't need to create any long term relationship/bond.When you don't have time.Why Business-driven Learning?So, you use Hate theory when you only mean business and don't plan to invest a lot of time. You want a quick-fix solution that just serves the purpose. I found this discussion extremely relevant in today's times, as most often we seem to get pushed towards the Hate theory for purely business reasons. It is also important to be sure that you don't use Hate out of ignorance.Sometimes, when you're in a situation where the business demand is high, using Hate does seem like the most practical thing to do. The need analysis moves from addressing the learner need towards addressing the business need! One could easily argue here that isn't the learner need the business need as well? My answer is yes at a high-level, but probably not exactly how we define it when we get to the specifics. I call this kind of learning 'Business-driven' or 'Business-centric'. The following are some justifications for creating 'business-driven' learning:You really need a quick solution to address the business need and get training out there to learners. Meaning your TTM (Time-to-market) is the #1 priority.Shelf life of the learning material is short (6 months to a year) and content changes/updates very often.Your learning supports the business and is not the primary revenue generator.Topic for learning is a mature one (like a product for niche areas) and people in the domain already know a lot of the basic concepts. Some are very advanced users. So, all you need to do is to tell them the new features and concepts and they will soon be using the knowledge hands-on.The ideal ID world?Given a chance, IDs would love to make the most effective and engaging courses. Some attributes that contribute to making such courses are:Perform a thorough learner analysis.Do a thorough needs assessment for your learners meaning drill down to the exact learning outcome that is expected.Empathize with the learner and create simple, usable and easily navigable courses.Don't make the course a content dump. Take time to make the course effective and engaging.Use well-researched real-time scenarios to add relevance to your learning material.Personalize feedback and strategies if the learner has high EQ (Emotional Intelligence) Design simple but effective practices.Use practices when absolutely necessary and not for very simple procedures.Validate and choose the appropriate delivery medium based on content complexity. Very advanced courses with lots of hands-on are better delivered in classroom training. Do not try to achieve this goal using online learning.Business-driven learning; the reality and the solutionWhen you create business-driven learning, you may tend to skim/rush through many of the above steps. But business-driven learning becomes a reality as end of day 'business' is what everything boils down to. This of course does not undermine the fact that you do need to deliver the best possible solution in this situation. Here are some things one can do:Be extremely clear about the business objective.Do a periodic detailed learning profiling and assessment of the prerequisite knowledge and skills of your learner. Knowing the prerequisites will enable you to reduce the flab on your course and focus on a smaller amount of content. Eventually, this reduces your TTM.Research on and recommend a list of rapid elearning tools that work for the business solution.Leverage on existing material and spend time refining and updating it to the most current information.Focus on reducing knowledge gaps rather than covering the whole bulk of content.Use social learning as much as possible and focus on creating short and effective micro-learning strategies.

The elearninglearning site managed by Tony Karrer has come a long way in the last one year. It plays a significant role in bringing together some of the best elearning blogs on the Internet, thanks to Tony's efforts. My blog too came a long way after getting listed, as it was one of the most exciting and encouraging achievements for me. I'm really late to post this announcement, but the site now has a new look and some new options as well:A new feed that is just the "Best of" which are basically the hot lists and other similar supporting items.You can of course also subscribe to a "Full feed" of the site.There is also an email subscription option at the top right of the page.A blogpost describes how people can participate in the site.Some interesting topics from Tony are:Alltop vs Browse My Stuff Social Filtering Topic HubsUsing Social Signals to Find Top eLearning ResourcesI wish Tony good luck and I hope a lot more enthusiastic bloggers get listed on elearninglearning.

One of my favorite topics of all times since I got into the profession. I'd love to share all I have on my mind relating to this topic and from all perspectives I've seen it apply. I remember once when I was working on a course, a certain part of it was more like paper work and some planning activity to be done before beginning the project and come up with a list of resources needed. The product enabled the user to use these resources and flesh out a complete process that interacted with real-time systems to deliver a service, say a shipping or billing service. But the planning activity was a critical and essential step.The process of planning and building up the working model of the service using the product was what I had to teach the learner. After analysis, my solution was to transform this planning activity into a scenario and have the learner work through it in three parts with some questions on decisions, drag and drop and multiple select. It finally turned out to be quite interesting when the graphic designers took a jab at the layout and came up with some cool interactivities to depict what I had in mind.So what are Learning Strategies?Learning strategies, as the name suggests are direct or indirect strategies employed by instructional designers to help learners easily understand learning content. By using a strategy, the instructional designer eliminates the need for a learner to learn just by memorizing information provided in a course. The strategy justifies the benefit of the learning content and indicates how the learner can use and benefit from it.At a high level learning/instructional strategies can be at a macro-level or micro-level. So what does macro and micro-level strategy mean? A Macro-level strategy is designed at a course or curriculum level. It would be more in the lines of providing a learning solution that works for a certain audience when we consider the tasks they need to learn. The macro-level strategy governs the overall direction of the learning solution. I've written about one such strategy in a previous post on Pure Courseware vs Reference Hybrids. You should use this as an example only, and remember that you can come up with several such strategies based on certain criteria that you gather in your research and analysis phase.Micro-level strategies are more low-level strategies that you use to teach the different information types (fact, concept, process, procedure and principle). Lets look at few examples here.Strategy 1: The derivative approachUsually good for teaching facts. Rather than just stating facts, its nice to start with an example of a task a learner needs to do and then conclude to the fact. In this way, you would have stated the benefit of having a certain feature in a product, and how it will be useful to the learner. You could teach concepts similarly. For example, the fact is that youtube is an excellent tool for sharing videos online. Assuming tools like youtube have just arrived, you could present this as: you have bought a really cool camcorder, went on a long ride with friends and recorded some nice videos. You now want to share these videos with other friends and family. To conclude, you introduce youtube as the tool that can make this experience possible.Strategy 2: The questioning approachGood to teach concepts and principles. You can start the section by introducing questions into the learners mind. This triggers the learner's thought process and makes the learner make the right connections and build up a concept. For example, the learner is learning Newton's 3rd Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. How about asking the learner, when you throw a ball it bounces back with nearly the same force. Why does this happen? Once you raise the question the next thing you do is briefly explain why that happens, or drop a few hints and ask a few more questions about a similar scenario, before bringing out the principle behind why this is happening.Strategy 3: Learning from mistakes/experiential learningThis strategy can be used to teach multiple types of information. Allow the learner to run through a set of quizzes or play a game with certain rules. Here even a decision tree is an appropriate strategy. All through the exercise, make sure you give the learner sufficient facts to make decisions, along with hints and guidance at the right places. At the end, have them review their actions and analyze what they could have done differently in the quiz or the game. Make them realize what differences their choices made to the situation. By the end of it the learner will figure out the facts, build connections and understand the underlying concept or principle being taught.Strategy 4: Demos and recordingsWorks best for procedural topics. Create short recordings of procedures that the learner should know, containing audio and instructions in the form of callouts, with the procedure that needs to be learned. This should be preceded by some introduction to concepts and facts in previous screens. For example, create a new PowerPoint file and insert a new slide.Strategy 5: Practices and hands onAgain useful for teaching procedures, but especially those which are really big and complex. This should usually be preceded by a demo, so the learner has already seen the procedure taking place. This strategy requires very detailed instructions to be given to the learner starting from where to begin a task and where to end it. The instructions should be simple and step by step, give the location of the area of expected action and have really short sentences, so that a learner can perform the procedure independently.Strategy 6: The scenario approachThe scenario approach works very well with many complex products to teach the learner a task they need to perform on their job. The scenario works well with generating relevance as the learner can immediately relate to something that they do on a day to day basis. Based on time constraints and business requirements, one could choose one of the following ways to deal with a complex concept or procedure to be taught:Use a scenario and create a series of quizzes with simple drag and drop, click the relevant area and multiple-choice interactivities, all focused at making the learner use his knowledge and take decisions. This causes the learner to think through a situation and make connections. This strategy is simpler and requires less time and expertise on tools.Use a scenario and come up with a game to help the learner achieve the objectives. This approach probably takes more time and requires some technical programming skills. This is also an area I haven't explored myself.Overall, one may argue that there are many ways to combine and use each strategy to teach different kinds of information. My answer to that is yes you are right! You could build a complete game and employ a different strategy to teach different skills, all in one big scenario. I would also like to emphasize that strategies should not be used for the sake of having one. It is extremely essential for an instructional designer to measure what is absolutely essential and what is excess flab. A strategy used to create a better learning experience and aid the learning process is valuable. This is where one needs to be practical and remain focused on the learning goals. Ask yourself these questions:Will the strategy actually make it easier for the learner to grasp the concept?Given the audience level, the learner is an advanced learner. So would it be better to list the basic concepts and focus on using strategies for the really complex ones?Is this strategy becoming too redundant in the course? Then I should probably change strategies and try something new.Is the example I used a strong enough case or should I change it?Does this information need a complete scenario or a small example?Is the procedure simple enough that one can just learn it by seeing a demo, or, is it so complex that it is better to design some hands-on after the demo?

This bold move by the HRD minister of India to bring in radical change in the Indian education system, shift to a grading system, and eliminate ranking and the mark sheet, triggered a huge furore! In a country where citizens have grown up to 'always' be measured by marks, compared to others who always score well and yet are all rounders, been pushed by our parents to 'study' so much, that they reach a point where they didn't want to hear the word anymore. Somehow even today in India, young people are pushed into engineering and medicine, as they are the most highly respected streams. Such stereotypes make parents put enormous pressure on kids and the competition just gets stronger. Kids cram and prepare for competitive exams and sometime commit suicide when they fail, as they feel they've let down their parents. I'm sure so many Indians of this and the previous generation can relate to this experience unless they 'were' those ideal kids all parents liked to have; good at studies (the greatest stereotype)! Yesterday the HRD minister Mr. Kapil Sibal was called on to one of our news channels (NDTV) to recite a poem he wrote on his and the government's vision in this bold decision.So many of us in this field of learning and education talk about various ways of engaging the learner, creating a great learning experience rather than dumping information on the learner. Some have even blogged about Killing the curriculum and have made some really bold statements. Harold Jarche makes some great points in his post First, we kill the curriculum and some great discussion came up in the comments on the post. Gilbert actually tried a whole new way of self-learning for several years! I thought that was interesting. I like some points Harold makes:As books are to subjects and disciplines, the Web is to processes. David Weinberger says that Everything is Miscellaneous, and in our interconnected world it sure is. That means that ALL subjects in school or university are miscellaneous and it doesn’t really matter what you study. It matters how you study and what you can do with your knowledge.How apt! If you learn and only learn and don't figure out how you can make a significant difference with all you've learned, it does seem futile. Often, Indians are also known for their vast general knowledge. Their ability to dream big and struggle to reach greater heights at all times, is probably ingrained in this 'traditional' system of education and upbringing. This definitely is a good thing, but maybe not all in the population of 1.2 billion can be expected to be run of the mill. In a country where basic education is a struggle to deliver to so many, bringing in such a radical change all of sudden can lead to a lot of chaos, unless it is gradually brought about and with a proper implementation plan that takes into account the deficit in the existing system to take on such a change smoothly. Any change is good, only when it is done keeping in mind everything that is needed to to be done, to reach the vision in mind.Some interesting statistics on the subject of the use of social media in schools in the U.S. are detailed in this post by Geetha Krishnan. Coming back to the scene in India, here are a few thoughts on what I think maybe issues in the implementation of the new system of grading students:The majority (including rural India) existing teachers are certainly not qualified to move into this new system. Existing teaching styles and practices would make the implementation come with a lot of resistance to change. News reports already show so much concern and speculation.The existing infrastructure of the majority of schools do not support advanced and alternate means of learning like access to the internet and other learning resources.'Making learning fun' calls for not only changing the final event of a board exam, but improving the overall learning experience in schools. In India more often than never, teachers cling to older methods of teaching and it will be very hard to get them out of this. It would stir several out of their comfort zone and this will not help bring value.Given everything, bringing about a mindset change seems like a major issue to me. The size of the population and our binding to culture, tradition and most importantly 'stereotypes' could make this an implausible proposition at least in the near future.Just like accepting and imbibing social media in general has come through so much resistance globally, changing the system of education and a new way to look at and design curriculum seems a really long way to go.Given everything, I am positive that change will come, but in its own time, as it is the way of nature as such. But to have the conviction to bring in this change is a quality that is needed going forward. I wish our government good luck in this noble endeavor and hope to see positive outcomes.Another good point Harold makes in his post:All fields of knowledge are expanding and artificial boundaries between disciplines are disintegrating. Our education system needs to drop the whole notion of subjects and content mastery and move to process-oriented learning. The subject matter should be something of interest to the learner or something a teacher, with passion, is motivated to teach. The subject does not matter, it’s just grist for the cognitive mill.I believe this is true and it is only a matter of time before subject-purists start seeing the diminishing lines and start looking at the bigger 'subject' called knowledge. As we evolve as human beings we will slowly start seeing life and learning from the bigger picture and that's what will make the real difference!

About a year ago, I put together an article where I was reflecting on the fact of how plenty of the early thinkers of Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business, the social evangelists, were starting to become rather scarce and very rare to be seen out there on the Social Web. So I wondered where were they? Well, a year later, I think I may well know now where some of them are. Doing perhaps the very same thing that most of us would not have expected and find somewhat rather strange: getting their work done protecting their turf. Almost a year later, my good friend Euan Semple pretty much nailed it when a couple of months back he put together this rather insightful and very thought-provoking piece under the suggestive title "Defend your mess", where he stated what happens when people begin to notice your efforts, as a social business evangelist, facilitating the adaptation to social networking behaviours in your business. To quote:  "But it was beginning to be noticed by other people; people who were less experienced on the web; people who liked things tidy and organised. We came under pressure to make the forum more structured. They wanted a structure that reflected the organisational structure at the time. They thought that people would find it difficult to navigate if it didn’t follow the familiar patterns" I guess nowadays it’s what most people would be calling Collaboration, but this time around happening through social software tools. In fact, for vast majority of practitioners social / open business is all about, and just about, collaborating with your peers, although perhaps nowadays with a fancier set of collaborative and knowledge sharing tools. So if you look into it, it seems that we are still putting lots of lipstick on the pig, because apparently we don’t seem to have progressed much from that obsession of living social into what I feel is much more interesting and exciting altogether: Transformation. In another superb, and worth while reading article, Matt Ridings, pretty much detailed what the challenges are in terms of how enticed we may have become with diving into social business, but perhaps not pushing far enough in terms of provoking that social business transformation I just mentioned above. To quote:  "My frustration lies not in their understanding of ‘what’ a social business looks like, but rather their lack of understanding in ‘how’ an organization can make that transition. The prevailing view seems to be that if we simply show companies what all the benefits and traits are that they will simply ‘become’ those things. "The organizational culture must change!", "The technologies must be put into place!", "The hierarchy and silos must fall!". While all true to one degree or another, these are still statements of ‘what’ must happen and not ‘how’. The most important factor missing here is a ‘why’. Why have organizations evolved in the way they have? It is only through understanding that evolution that one can design and justify a means of effectively changing it." I suppose I know now where a good number of those social business evangelists are hanging out nowadays. They are not necessarily hiding out behind the firewall, as it may well have been perceived for a while, nor are they bored with the whole thing and decided to move on, but, on the contrary, they are fighting the good fight, "defending their mess", as Euan mentioned on that article, by helping those new to this whole brave new world of social / open business to get it right. To think different. To live different. To adapt to a completely new world where business interactions are totally opposite to whatever has happened in the past. And this is where the challenge comes up, because those new to social / open business are those very same laggards who have been waiting long enough to see how they could structure, control and manage the whole experience through rather tight, strict and cumbersome business process that certainly don’t allow those chaotic, unstructured, networked, hyperconnected behaviours, that social networking tools inspire, to flourish and disrupt the entire organisation around the edges into a new way of thinking. That one of Openness and Transparency. And that’s why organisational, or team, silos keep flourishing more often than not, even today, despite plenty of efforts that have been tried for a long while to be done with them once and for all. Yet, that doesn’t seem to have happened as we keep seeing how more and more practitioners keep claiming that for as long as they are collaborating they are doing social business. Well, not really, because, eventually, we are not changing much of our own behaviours in terms of how we have traditionally collaborated and shared our knowledge, even though the tools suite is different, much different.  This is where I feel we are going to have one of the biggest challenges yet to be seen within the corporate world, because on the one hand the social / open business evangelists are excited all of their efforts, hard work and energy are, finally, at long last, becoming mainstream within their own organisations, so they are all rather excited about it. And, in a way, they have started to let it go, thinking things would be all right as they just start to look after themselves. And then on the other hand, we are starting to see how that mainstream is just absorbing all of that effort structuring it, formalising it, and establishing a rather tight and strict series of business processes around social that, if anything, are starting to strangle all of that emergent flavour that social networking for business has been having all along and bringing it down to its knees and, once again, straight back into the organisational silos, what we have been traditionally calling collaboration. Now, don’t take me wrong. I am pretty much in favour of collaboration and knowledge sharing. I have always believed it’s what dictates the mere survival of every single organisation in today’s more complex than ever world. However, what I have been seeing for a good couple of years now is how by having social business become more mainstream within the corporate world the kind of collaboration that’s encouraged is that one that we know just far too well: the one happening in small, private, secretive, opaque teams that pretty much don’t care about anything else that’s happening around them. And that’s just wrong, because it’s proving we may not have learned much over the course of the years in terms of what we should be aiming at: Open Collaboration, across silos, organisational units, geographies, countries and what not. Porous organisations swarming around, anyone? Yes, silos are good, they are there for a reason. They have a purpose. We should treasure and nurture them, but, at the same time, we should also challenge their own existence, thinking that, unless you have a pretty good reason to have that silo, where you would want to protect specific knowledge flows because of the confidentiality or sensitivity of the information, then there isn’t a reason to have one and this is what I feel us, social / open business evangelists, should be fighting for in terms of "defending our mess", i.e. fighting our turf. Or as Euan himself stated brilliantly:  "Don’t let people try to tidy up your internal use of social too soon. At least let it find its feet before you start worrying about mess. Mess is in the eye of the beholder.  Part of your job as the instigator of social in your organisation is to defend it. You are there to keep reactive forces at bay until the tool achieves a robust enough culture to look after itself. This will probably take years." And that is exactly one of the main reasons why you may not have seen much of me, and a whole bunch of other social evangelists, out there on the Social Web in the last little while. I, too, have embarked on keeping up that fight, more than anything else, because I am just not ready yet to let go all of that hard work, energy and strong effort put together over the last decade around Social / Open for then seeing some bean counters, lawyers and social wanna be pundits destroy all of that work of emerging digital tools helping transform the way we do business, just because they want to get their way, ignoring everything / everyone else. Yes, somehow I suppose that ignorance has always been very brave, if you know what I mean.  No, it doesn’t mean all of a sudden I have become anti-social either, not at all. Perhaps I am now even stronger and more committed to the cause than ever before. My good friend Greg Lowe described it pretty well in a recent tweet he shared across:  Please don’t confuse busy with anti-social. Unsuccessfully trying to find that balance. — Greg Lowe (@Greg2dot0) May 23, 2013 Yes, indeed, I am not too sure whether I am, myself, succeeding as well in terms of finding that balance now that my interactions behind the firewall seem to have taken a life of its own in terms of me needing to focus on internal work rather than spending time on the Social Web out there. In fact, I am starting to think that, given how things are moving along, I may just need to resort my external exposure to those idle moments in between work and personal life where I can dip in my toes, see what’s going on out there, get a breather or two, raise my social periscope up, see what my extended networks have been up to, and if I don’t see them, by any chance, I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that they are probably just defending their mess, just like I am doing myself, or as Matt himself concluded:  "These leaders need help. They face a difficult task balancing the competing interests at play. While I suppose you could measure their effectiveness based upon whether they are tweeting or not, might I suggest they have plenty of other things on their plate that are more important" That’s it. That’s what it is all about! Don’t worry, we are not gone, we may have gone silent for a bit, at times, it may look as if we have just disappeared, but we will always be there. It’s just that we are ensuring that social / open business transformation doesn’t get bastardised, once again, just like Knowledge Management did 18 years ago, when vendors and consultants decided, on behalf of all of us, that KM was all about team work and siloed collaboration. This time around it’s vendors (Once again), along with marketers, bean counters, lawyers and command and control, process driven zealots, the ones who keep insisting on designing and shaping up the workplace of the future thinking they know better than everyone else, no matter if you have been there for a long while.  Well, we are not going to let go that easily this time around, are we? Some of us have learned from that KM past and, somehow, I suspect we are not very willing to go and commit the very same mistakes, once again. There is just plenty at stake at this point time. Essentially, the workplace of the future:  PSFK Future of Work Report 2013 from PSFK

I really owe a huge apology to those who have so ardently followed my blog for being away since September. Not for the shortage of ideas or things to blog, but due to a lot of changes that I had to go through at work, and personally grapple with managing time. Yes, there are still many things happening and I have slowly got back to the blogging circle, started reading stuff people in the community are sharing, trying to observe changes that have come about during this gap, etc. I do like to spend significant time researching matter that I want to write about, by reading other blogs where people have written about related topics. To me blogging is like a research, a constant quest for solutions for tomorrow and a means to express ideas that run through my head every now and then.Fortunately, the 'changes' I'm talking about have helped me see things in a new light, to understand my domain from a broader perspective and understand how it fits into the bigger picture of things.Things on my mind for a while now...I have always wondered about the two aspects of instructional design: the theoretical side and the application side. I see how each time application tends to fall behind on going research. By the time you build a system to add in the most current trend, there is already something new. I believe this is the way it works in other domains as well, but the question that keeps running in my mind, is how does one reduce this gap? The smaller the gap, the more connected research will be with application. For example, if someone researches and writes about the ADDIE theory and I have to implement it in my organization, it is most common that I will not able to implement it as it is defined in books. What will likely happen, is that the way I work through it in my work place, gets driven by actual events that occur, functioning of other departments associated with the completion of my task and so on. I personally feel that research should not just run parallel to application. There has to be a means to constantly go back and forth between the two, take into account dependencies when writing a theory, and finally define more realistic theories and processes. It is important not to look at each domain in isolation and imagine it implemented in a running organization with real-time challenges.This has been on my mind for really long now and I will continue to think on it. Please add your valuable thoughts as I would be glad to hear from you all.

A few recent events have compelled me to think harder on a previous post of mine about a change proposed in the education system in India from 2011. This post was my first reaction to the decision while also highlighting the realities associated with education on our country. While it is easy to pass a rule, but bringing in a change in the mindset is going to be the hardest. I have been guilty of becoming an infrequent blogger, but from time to time there has been a reason to come back. This time it has been after a friend told me that my post had been used as a topic of group discussion in one of the premium management institutes. It was totally by chance that I found out, thanks to KP. That sort of woke me out of my slumber and made me want to come back, to learn more and write more.Before each post I spend a lot of time reading and listening to other related resources. I have done so this time as well and will try to bring them all in here as well as I can. There are various problems that I was discussing in the post about No board exams, including my own disagreements with the way I was educated. Doesn't really mean that I don't acknowledge that what I am today is due to my education and the ICSE board is certainly one of the most respectable boards from my point of view. My comments are on much broader lines based on the kinds of problems I faced when I studied certain subjects, of what I would have rather done versus what I did, of the fact that I believe I realized my strengths much later in life after I had made choices, of how my confidence was higher only after I had figured out very many things. So I am not criticizing a single board but the entire system. How the system assumes that one kind of learning suits all and how you are drilled down with a bunch of subjects read out of a text book, learned by memory in which you understand some part of it and just remember the rest so you can score in the exam. After having completed my studies and in my present life, I find I hardly remember several things I learned in school. I find no application of many of the things. I only remember those topics which had seemed interesting but are just in my memory to tell people things like - I know laughing gas, its nitrous oxide!! Now who even cares about that?So what has effectively happened, is a lot of the learning is irrelevant to my job and my daily life. I tried cramming several things initially and then it just became too much. I always wanted to stay out of the race and never could. Finally I chose to be an instructional designer after having a taste of it and reading related information on the net. I am glad about this one decision though as I came in to this field by complete chance when I had no idea where I was going after having done a BSc and MSc. Sounds silly doesn't it? Well my parents wanted me to do science and I did. I chose computers as a subject and somehow got in here and I am glad of not having to be an engineer writing a small piece of code who's greater application I have no clue of (no offense to coders there but that's what happens in jobs) or even the customer.Bringing changes to the education system?Process-based learningSo what are the kind of changes should we be comprehending to the education system? Maybe to get rid of the term 'system' in the whole thing and introduce 'process' instead.I like quoting Harold from his post:Some of the processes that readily come to mind are critical thinking; analyzing data; researching; communicating ideas; creating new things; etc.These are the skills that should be taught to students Reasons backing process-based learning are mentioned in Charles Jennings blog. Quoting from there:Dr Ebbinghaus’ experiment revealed we suffer an exponential ‘forgetting curve’ and that about 50% of context-free information is lost in the first hour after acquisition if there is no opportunity to reinforce it with practice.The rate at which the Internet has caught up has made information available free and faster at all times. So we can reduce the load on our brain from 'remembering' facts which can be Googled at any point and time, and spend it in learning techniques for solving problems, interpreting information, improving communication, reusing data rather than trying to reinvent the wheel where possible, and making innovation and creativity the main goals of our existence. You may note that the previous line has dropped the word learning at the end and quoted on existence. I would like to take a step back and explain why I said this. Enhancing learning is our goal as instructional media professionals, but the bigger impact of 'learning' in our lives is what we do with what we learn. We can learn just for the passion of it but until it is put into good use it remains passive and is almost the same as having learned by rote. If we can use the learning to improve the existing 'system', it would make a huge difference.Problem-solvingI consciously chose to mention problem-solving skills as I read how problem-solving skills are important to each one of us. When people are trained to be engineers they solve loads and loads of problems to crack entrance tests. I've noticed that engineers are hired as programmers, because their degrees certify better problem solving skills than people who have studied the very same subjects and curricula in pure-science streams. So we're talking about people who are trained to solve problems based on certain facts given. These are called structured problems and they usually have a correct answer. But the irony about problems is that there are several kinds of problems. The CSPS site talks about unstructured problems where facts are vague and you don't necessarily have a single correct answer, but multiple options based on which you need to take decisions. This is how our real life day-to-day problems are designed. It would be ideal if schools could assist students in the process of thinking through such problems and letting student discover the outcomes. It is also important to reinforce and be realistic here as several problems do not have immediate answers and how one can choose one path over the other knowing the pros and cons of each option.Help Students Identify their TalentsAfter relating some of my own story, I find this point to be so very critical to education as a whole. Teachers should be trained to identify the strengths of students and curriculum designed to help students identify them. Without this you would always have only some all-rounders topping the class and the rest biting the dust. They would eventually get branded as 'average' students for no real fault of theirs. The problem more often is that they do not know where their strengths lie. If one can identify their strengths and focus their energies in those areas supported by a more flexible curriculum at school, it would make the life of several students much easier and they would shine much better in areas of their strengths. That way we would have many more happy students who would love going to school rather than the opposite.Focus on doing more than rote-learningProvide students ground to explore possibilities about the subject they are learning about. Give them space to explore and discover, to feel and analyze, to give what they read about a thought, to discuss and collaborate, to work as a team and try experimenting. This kind of learning will not only increase their interest level but help them complete the learning cycle for a topic. Thus curriculum should not prescribe text books from which to ask questions in an exam. Text books limit information to no end and I used to quite hate them. I used to like that the ICSE board occasionally gave questions that students would love to rate as out-of-syllabus, but there was no big deal with them because all you needed to know were basic common sense techniques and simple concepts you had already learned. So help students 'use' their learning and not expect to see a dumb-xerox of what they read in a text book, in the exams. Don't spoil them, but encourage them to be independent and proactive learners. Don't try to control what they learn but teach them how to learn and how to use what they learn.After revisiting Harold's blog right now I see some recommendations made to the University of New Brunswick. Now these are interesting.Education for under-privileged children: Helping them catch upI also came upon this recording from Hole in the Wall Education which is an initiative by NIIT. Their take on educating poor children in India brings in a whole new perspective into the effectiveness of informal training, self-learning and short elearning modules to educate children of poor parents for free. Since the children face several challenges to complete their education, there is a high dropout rate and these children are unable to cope with the bulk of the syllabus in schools. So informal learning and the Internet can save the day for such children and help them learn and grasp basics easily. Here is where process-based learning and problem solving can be of great use. You can teach kids the processes and then help them apply it to various situations. Teach them the techniques and they will be able extrapolate them to other applicable areas. If these kids run after the existing curriculum, they will never be able to learn for the next generations.

Recently, someone from Bloomfire contacted me over LinkedIn and requested me to give answers to some questions. I have been late to respond but thought they were pertinent given the way things have changed in the training world. So let me answer them for myself anyway before I send them to Bloomfire.From your perspective, what are some of the challenges in writing curricula that resonate with the learner?The main challenge I see is Knowing your audience precisely. Knowing your audience helps you scope out the training accurately and achieve the right level of detail. It will be the key to any kind of task you want to do; build a product, create a game, or plan training content.How might these challenges differ from the challenges of yesterday?I believe the challenges of yesterday were more than the challenges of today. The intervention of Web 2.0 and the increasing tech-savvyness of the learner have made information immediately accessible to one and all. Today, most information is easily searchable, Internet connections are much faster, Web technologies have come a long way and social media has gained ground. We no longer have the challenges of providing learners access to information. What we need to focus on is planning our training curricula in a manner that incorporates hands-on training in a simulated environment, and promotes collaboration with peer and subject-matter experts. The key is in knowing how to leverage social media to make the learning curve easily achievable and in a shorter time.What are some technology and research trends today that will have an impact on tomorrow?The study of users in general has revealed that giving the user information based on their existing knowledge on a subject is critical for their success. The research has shown a need for greater user-focus. Tomorrows applications will be increasingly user-focused and minimalistic. Minimalistic because we will have a clear picture of the user's profile and be able to focus on what the user needs to know. So organizational learning will be designed to support performance, and training will be largely collaborative and exploratory in nature. Learners will be mature and be able to determine their own learning paths. Learners will be more independent and able to access information in a manner that will help them accomplish tasks. In other words, Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) will be a norm.What might organizational learning look like 10 years from now?Ten years is a long time and we are already stepping into the era of Web 3.0 where personalization and social intelligence will be key. Ten years from now social and collaborative learning will become commonplace and will be built into the system. Learning will be less controlled, more learner-driven and minimalistic. Formal training will be supported and followed with collaborative, experiential, and exploratory learning. Content will be open and designed to be accessible from all kinds of devices; it will be simple and very specific. For example, the use of a screen shot or graphic can replace the use of words. Information will need to be to accessed faster and during execution of the task. A learner's performance will be supported by pertinent, short, and instantly available information anytime and anywhere.Could you envision a 21st century training program for us? What might it look like?A new employee is hired into an organization and needs training. The machine is automatically setup by the network. Once the employee logs in to the system, he is automatically shown a screen which will predict the first questions on his mind like, what am I here to do? What do I need to learn to do my job? How do I learn what I need to learn to do my job?The employee is informed by the system that he needs to learn how to use the company's CRM product to capture and process customer requests. The system finds out based on the employee profile from HR and social intelligence date, that the employee is already familiar with similar CRM systems and does not need to under go the basic-level training. The system automatically directs the employee to the next level of the CRM product training.The employee learns by working directly on the CRM environment. There are short Whats new? and product overview modules to get him quickly up to speed with the tasks the product is designed to complete. The modules instruct him to interact with the environment in real-time. The modules are not sequenced linear courses but reference-hybrids in any form like demos, examples, scenarios, and real-time exercises on the product. Reference information is easily available on the product interface. The training encourages looking at the help and other references like real-time use cases, FAQ information, common problems faced and the resolution.The goal of such training is to get high-specialization individuals up to speed on the job in the shortest possible time. The training is planned based on learner profile information and studying the background knowledge levels of the learner.Also, the system will have collaboration built-in as a norm and will suggest appropriate contacts in the CRM domain within the organization. The employee will be able to collaborate with technology similar to tweets, chat and web conferencing to learn from subject-matter experts. Social media tools will allow him to search for existing information on the subject, or start a new live conversation about his queries on the product. Using the tools, the new employee is now able to network within the organization and get acquainted with appropriate persons related to his job.In short, I am hinting at the use of intelligent-training techniques by leveraging on social-intelligence data.We've seen online communities proliferate, from online communities just for friends (Facebook.com) to communities just for tackling complex R&D challenges from Fortune 500 companies such as P&G (InnoCentive.com). What do you think of organizations supporting their own learning communities?Supporting organization-wide learning communities is becoming essential so that employees within an organization are well networked. In medium to large-sized organizations, it often happens that knowledge is in unknown pockets with individuals or teams. A lot of the knowledge could be documented and made available, but it is almost impossible to capture tacit knowledge and the knowledge gained from real-time experience. The use of social media connects people based on areas of interest, and aids the discovery of resources with the required domain expertise within the same organization. This positively impacts efficiency on the job and improves employee productivity a great deal. In future, the normal way one does their job in an organization will be using collaboration and social networking techniques. Social media is causing the breakdown of hierarchy to build communities using wirearchy by enabling horizontal and peer-to-peer based communications.Looking at things from a bigger picture, I'd like to leave you with this note: Are you Ready for the 21st Century?Are You Ready for the 21st Century ? from Michel Cartier on Vimeo.What books, blogs, and/or magazines would you recommend for our readers if they'd like to stay current in your line of work?There are tonnes of great online resources and blogs. I recommend the best-of-breed approach so one can reach out to the maximum number of resources in one area. I suggest going into elearninglearning.com and performing a keyword search. The site filters your information to various levels as you may need. It is also a good idea to subscribe to the 'Best of' feed on this site to get a summary of the best blog posts for the month.

The social chatting culture has been quite rampant and people seem to love an online discussion with 'tweeple' as they are known. Or is that term old already? Today, I chanced up on lrnchat on Twitter in a time that I could attend and quite enjoyed the conversations. The dexterous manner in which planned questions for a topic were put forth and people responding with quick thoughts itself was really enjoyable and overwhelming. I think some of the key things to note in an online conversation is the spontaneity of the answers and often every one has a valid point. The answer often comes without much thought or speculation and is very instantaneous and I believe it is this quality that makes it interesting.We have similar social chats on Fridays in our organization and they're quite fun too. Such sessions give employees an outlet to express how things can be improved, what they think is important, and overall build a conversation that has a capacity to bring out what people have in mind in an informal manner. The outcomes can be interesting as people are uninhibited as they might be in formal meetings; they joke chat and contribute whatever comes to their mind, and you automatically have some excellent points made in the end. Overall, every one enjoys a brainstorming session on a topic with some guiding questions to carry the discussion forward to a possible outcome. In addition, they have an ability to help you network with like-minded people or people who share your interest areas.Some tips for planning a social chat:Choose a topic that appeals to a larger audience using voting or polls.Choose an organizer who can plan how this topic can be discussed or guided.Assign moderators to help the main organizer and act as guides during the session. Schedule a time and date for the discussion to take place. An hour of discussion is the ideal amount of time. It can be less or more depending on the volume of participants expected, and capacity of conversation that the topic can initiate.Have the organizer prepare a short excerpt of the goal of the discussion, why it is important, and what will the key points in question.The organizer may share this information with the moderators and use some of their feedback.Find ways to pass on this information to the larger audience by tweeting to groups, setting up an event, writing on your website or blog.It may be a good idea for the organizer and moderator to be an expert in the topic but also be open to new ideas and feedback.Tips to Organize the session:Have the organizer write a welcome note and ask all participants to introduce themselves.Initiate the conversation in any fashion deemed suitable. A question a picture or video to look etc.Once the conversation is on, the organizer should keep an eye on the time and initiate the next question or point for discussion. In the end, thank people for participation, ask them to share links, feedback, or suggest more topics.Finally, publish a transcript of the discussion for the benefit of the others who wished to attend but could not.I would recommend anyone to attend social chats simple to experience the value that they can bring if done right.

It has been a while since I was first figuring out how social media works and how it could benefit my job and organization. It was easy to see what I was able to do with social media, but hard to imagine how an organization as a whole would reap the benefits.When I first started blogging and thinking about social media influencing learning and improving performance on the job, it was slowly sinking in and I think today I have a lot more clarity. I have changed teams within the same organization and dealt with people with a very old school of thought versus people who though are not big fans of social media but are quite open to it when I talk about the benefits. In my previous team, no one really thought much about it except a few managers who added the activity in my goals to make sure I find ways to benefit the entire team. People with not open to try a new way of communication and wanted to hold on to traditional email for everything. A basic thing as finding your remote team counter-part online itself was an issue. On being asked they responded saying they don't 'like' to be online so the best way to contact them was email. That was not an effective solution for a team distributed globally. It made things very complicated. I tried giving people suggestions to blog and share their knowledge about a product area on the wiki and use the forums instead of email. I sent invites over our internal networking site and also tried to encourage people to use tweet but participation was poor, and it was hard to show any substantial benefits. The thing missing then was the enthusiasm to look at a new way of communicating. I can empathize with that thought as I realize it was even hard for me to explain how everyone would benefit from participating. Once I moved into a different team I made it a point to share my interest in social media and my blog. My team was more open to the use of certain other tools like tweet and instant messaging. That was a good start. A team of over 100 people used tweet as a medium to receive updates on the status of a product environment, uptimes, downtime etc. It quick and hassle-free. Given that I had already earned the reputation of being an advocate of social media, I'd have people question me about the use of various tools. Things do get easier when people ask questions, because then you know that they want to learn. Even if some were mildly resistant to the idea, I managed to come up with a few examples of using certain social tools and benefit from them when compared to the current way people were doing them. I had to clarify the bigger goal these tools aim to achieve and the fact that they are not perfect but constantly evolving.In a more recent instance of a similar conversation amongst my team, I was able to push out the benefits of using a white board in conferences for brain storming and aiding a group discussion. I was happy with the positive reactions. Later on today, I was contacted by someone from my previous team. He conveyed that they were planning to use social media to help technical writers do their job more easily. He asked me of what I thought about it to improve the quality of technical documents. He had reservations like so many from the old school of thought about things like, what if information on social networking sites is inaccurate? I surprised myself with my clear response to his queries. My response made the following points:Our company has a bunch of social networking and business collaboration tools that one can use. Blogs are available both externally and internally.Imagine a community of employees from various product teams collaborating with customers and partners, about the product on the company blog. A plethora of information is shared over time. Implementations experiences, customizations, problems faced, workarounds, solutions, best practices, tips and tricks....the list is never ending when there is a community.So, if an individual has to blog 'inaccurate' information they will soon realize they have a greater responsibility to the community. When someone blogs they are in the glare of the public eye. Experts and novices will read the information and validate if they found it useful or not. If someone's information is not satisfactory, they automatically receive less traffic and someone in the community would let them know about their view of the content. So generally everyone would try to give their best rather than their worst. Your blog or profile becomes your public image and people know and respect you for the thoughts you share and the value you add to the community. Moreover, blogging what you know helps you organize knowledge you've gathered over time in a meaningful fashion and clarify several areas you may be in the process of figuring out. What is nice is that you're able to keep a record of what you thought and how your knowledge evolved over time.For large corporations where knowledge is distributed in unknown pockets, social media can be the medium of discovering that wealth of knowledge and putting it to good use.Today, the fact that I feel so much more confident handling questions from colleagues and friends, whether positive or cynical, is simply because I am an example of the evolution I'm talking about. I can slowly coax people into participating and getting a glimpse of what is going on. I can empathize with those who do not see the benefits because it is almost impossible to see it without being a partner in crime. Social Media needs your participation for you to see any benefit and only when you participate will there be a community, and when there is a community is there scope for collaboration, conversations and innovation!!

Instructional design provides a gamut of principles and models that enable you to train people effectively in various areas of expertise. The role of an instructional designer is essentially driven by a need to find appropriate solutions by applying instructional design strategies and models to transfer information to users who use a particular product or service to perform their jobs. Changed Learning MethodsAs time progressed and technologies evolved, the role of the instructional designer as we understood it several years back, underwent a paradigm shift. In spite of client demands to create conventional elearning courses, the fact is that the way people are learning today has changed phenomenally due to the increased access to social media tools and advanced mobile devices. Twitter, blogs, wikis, and discussions have become the new age learning methods. Learner's look for relevance and access information only when it is needed. The concept of reading everything that comes your way and conventional ideas about increasing knowledge generically have phased out. Learner's now search for what they want, skim through to establish relevance, and move on if the information is irrelevant. The attention span of today's learner is short and they want quick and easy access to information. Working smart is the code word and learner's will only use resources that enable them to do so.In such times, we can no longer talk about the standard learning deliverables, like elearning and instructor-led training materials in isolation. It has now become important to understand the factors influencing the learning process. The solution lies in viewing the job of an instructional designer more from the perspective of convergence of discrete learning entities that were created earlier and new ones that have evolved. It is also important to be aware that the concept of learning styles of a learner were never proven or found beneficial when designing learning content. The extensive variation in learning styles of individuals and lack of proven theories in the area, have automatically eliminated the need to talk about learning styles any more.The New Role of IDs When I listed the skills sets of instructional designers, I tried to be a generic as possible, but today I would not like to classify them only as skills sets any more. The way conventional instructional designers used to think about designing learning content needs to change.Here are some things we can do to change the way we have been planning the creation of learning content: Look at an IDs role as a supplier of information to audiences who are consumers.Understand that learners have matured and are capable of finding what is relevant to them, while deciding on the value of the information available.Appreciate that learning will be influenced by several information resources due to the learner's access to social media tools. Leverage available information resources and help organize them effectively for the learner. Plan learning in a manner that assumes the use of social media resources like wikis, social groups, blogs, and tweet as part of the learning process. Start looking at learning as an ongoing activity that does not just end with a training. Identify the need for performance support on the job and create modular content that is accessible when ever a user requires.Stop assuming users read course materials and user guides sequentially. Break content into smaller independent learning units targeted at an audience role, ensuring you accommodate those learners who may access learning content using mobile devices.Employ strategies to make the content searchable and increase the relevance of information to the task the user is performing.Design content solutions that are specific to an audience and the tasks the role is expected to perform.Design models that address the needs of constantly changing information. Plan learning deliverables in various forms to make them accessible from intranets or centralized content management systems. Present information succinctly rather than beat around the bush in the name of overviews and long winding introductions.Applying the above, does not de-emphasize the underlying principles of instructional design:Know your audience.Thoroughly understand the tasks they perform in their jobs.Employ appropriate learning strategies to improve learning.To me instructional design has always been a guideline of the mental process of creating any kind of content that a learner will consume. It is therefore imperative that we stop thinking of elearning or instructor-led training as the only learning deliverables. Being aware of the fact does not undermine the value of these traditional learning materials, but rather helps you identify the gaps and think about how to reorganize the existing models to make learning effective.Quoting from Harold's blog on social learning for a business:Tacit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships.Training courses are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and connections were few; that time has passed.Social learning networks enable better and faster knowledge feedback loops.

I never thought I'll write about learning games and mobile learning until I bought my Android. People have asked me, why Android phone? My answer has been that I love Android as it is breaking new ground for mobile computing and open technologies. Android is versatile as it is not limited only to mobile phones, but it can be installed on various devices. Android gives developers the opportunity to leverage their development skills, while also building an exciting and active community, just as ground breaking as Java. Just thought of adding this: "When technologies don't restrain you, they enable you to innovate." I truly believe open technologies are the future!I couldn't have written this post without experiencing the real thing. I had set aside to buy my Android (Nexus S) after some expenses were out of the way. But my 5 year old Nokia gave in and I had no other choice but to buy my Nexus immediately. I am extremely happy.Having the power of a smartphone , I am now always connected irrespective of my tight deadlines at work. Oracle Fusion is on its way to the first release and the Information Development team is busy, extremely busy. These are exciting times and the Nexus was just the icing on the cake!I started off a couple of weeks back, very cautious initially about randomly installing apps fearing security issues and malware. When i inserted my sim card, the phone just configured everything like a breeze. Everything started working on a simple 2G connection. I didn't even have to call my service providerTo start off, Twitter and, Facebook were safest bet.I was soon reading articles and blogs voraciously as it was so much faster that logging into my laptop, opening the browser, and using a mouse. This was smarter and everything I wanted was accessible using my fingertips. The feeling was amazing. I missed tweeting and following up with news so frequently before. A phone had changed the world for me. I was even replying to my manager's emails immediately during the harrowing time to renew my passport.The world was at my fingertips and I felt empowered. I was managing my time better now despite my deadlines. Not that other phones don't have such features, but what makes the Nexus S special is the user experience and the speed at which I'm able to complete the same tasks. Being in Information Development I have a lot to take back to my job from these experiences.I have also been skeptical about computer games and NEVER got hooked to one till now. I saw Jane Bozarth tweet on #lrnchat last week about Angry Birds teaching you Physics. Today I can admit that I'm hooked to it for the following reasons:- Incredible user experience.- It's ability to teach you using experiential learning.- Shows how there are multiple solutions to a problem. - The game teaches you strategy.- Ensures you remain motivated.- Encourages and rewards you interestingly.- Last but not the least, the birds are so very cute.- Jane Bozarth also mentioned it instills love for nature. I think compassion too.Moreover, this is my first blogpost from my Nexus S! And I've finished writing it in exactly 45 mins! Now that's a record for me. I'm now motivated to blog more! Get the message? :-)

I have been through this battle of encouraging people to use social media for learning and knowledge sharing. I will admit my style is subtle and not aggressive. But that's also because it doesn't work by being aggressive. What does help is empathizing with the users and their various styles of social interaction. Just because someone is not on social media sites often doesn't mean they are not social or don't want to share information.This calls for us to stop thinking run-of-the-mill. Yes, over selling social media is becoming run-of-the-mill! We need to get back to the basics and think again. I can give examples from my team of people who are collaborative by nature and achieve the same results by meeting people face-to-face or over web and video conferences. They are some of the most brilliant people in their jobs and communicate effectively. They are always happy to share their knowledge for the benefit of our team. Such people will always excel in communication whatever means they choose. But they are not necessarily the most communicative on social media sites. They just have their own style of doing it and I respect that.The value of personal meetings as well as eye contact is immense in effective communication. Our goal must be to encourage information flow in whatever way is effective.Yes, I agree I have learned a lot due to social media websites and they have greatly increased my reach. But that is me and others have done the same differently. It is for us to choose what works best for us as individuals or teams and stick with a strategy until we know a better way. Remember that tools can only enable us but our personal styles and attitudes dictate how we choose to communicate and how we ensure we do it effectively. I don't think a single social media tool can facilitate the various communication styles or can ever be accessible to a large section of the 7 billion people in the world!

It looks like this is the year of Transformation, of Change, of Thinking Forward -out of the box- in terms of what may well be awaiting us in the next 5 to 10 years, within the corporate world, trying to figure out what next. Or, better said, where to next. You would remember how at the beginning of the year I decided, for myself, to start making the move away from Social Business into Open Business, and how, just recently, I also decided to move further along from driving adoption of Social Business into facilitating the adaptation to Open Business. Exciting journeys so far, for sure, more specifically, from the perspective of how both concepts (Although not necessarily rather new) are already starting to catch people’s attention in terms of how organisations could as well be provoking their own business transformation just like it is happening in our very own societies, all around a single key concept: The Era of Open. Indeed, it is undeniable how the whole mantra of being open, specially, in a business context, is starting to catch up plenty of steam and a whole lot of attention , more than anything else, perhaps, as a reflection of what’s happening out there with a good number of global (or local, for that matter!) events, where more and more knowledge workers (AND citizens) are demanding a whole lot more openness and transparency in terms of how organisations across sectors and industries actually function around their day to day business operations. It’s been fascinating to witness how the current financial econoclypse, the social unrest, the massive workforce shift and those very same global events I referenced above are leaving a profound mark in terms of how it may well be about a good time now for the corporate world at large to re-gain back that social responsibility towards society through becoming more open and transparent in how they operate as well as how they communicate. Open vs. Closed. That’s it, really. That’s what it is all about. "Connected, messy, loose and open", as my good friend, Harold Jarche, wrote about brilliantly a couple of months back. It’s essentially what the Open Social Web is helping provoke on a scale that’s going to be rather tough to stop, but also to ignore, or neglect, specially, seeing the huge impact those open collaboration platforms will have over the next couple of years, if not already. And I am sure that, at this point in time, you may be pondering about going a couple of steps even further and start thinking about Radical Transparency. Or Radical Openness for that matter.  I can imagine how a good number of people out there may have just gone, a little bit, into panic mode when reading above about radical transparency. The thing is that we don’t know (yet) whether it might help out the business world to come back in good shape aiming as sustainable growth, or to help re-define a whole bunch of the business operating models (and processes) carried on from the 20th century that would help us address a good bunch of the business problems we still face today. Take, for instance, employee engagement: still the number #1 business problem in today’s corporate world.  The thing is that Radical Transparency can be really good for employee engagement, as David Zinger wrote nicely about earlier on this year, picking up from a piece from HBR under the rather enticing and suggestive heading of "Why Radical Transparency Is Good Business". The challenge, as I have written about a couple of times already, and I am sure most folks out there would be thinking along these terms, too, by now, is How Open Is Too Open? Ahhh, the limits and the limitations. They always have to be with us, don’t they? The constraints that little by little keep regulating and overruling our lives, whether at work or on a personal level. Those constraints that once they start being part of our own comfort zone(s) it’s almost impossible to get rid of them in order to keep evolving along. That’s what’s stopping us at the moment from progressing further into exploring that whole new Era of Open. Jacob Morgan pretty much nailed it when he recently blogged about it and what it would mean. To quote:  "We talk about openness, transparency, and sharing, but how far would we be willing to go with it? Would you feel comfortable working in an all glass building where people can see everything you do and every move you make? I do believe that organizations need to be much more open and transparent but there’s a balance that needs to be struck here" Yes, indeed, there may well be a need for a balance at some point, in terms of how open and transparent you would want to become over the course of time. The thing though is that I have always believed that people should not be transparent. It’s organisations the ones that need to be transparent. And the more radical they are in that approach, the more each and everyone of us would benefit from it. This is essentially all about how much you would want to protect and hoard your own knowledge as an organisation understanding that what may have worked relatively well in the 20th century does not guarantee it will work the same in the 21st century. In fact, it won’t. That’s why we need to provoke that mindset shift from sharing knowledge on a "need to know" basis into "default to open" or, basically, sharing publicly everything by default unless you have been told otherwise.  That being told otherwise pretty much refers to what I think is the only one use case scenario for which organisations may still want to hoard and protect their knowledge. That is, when that piece of content truly is confidential and of a rather sensitive nature. Mind you, you should still challenge it a great deal, if you feel that what may have been flagged as confidential in the past, may not necessarily mean it needs to be in the present or near future. Remember, the more that you may be able to share out in the open, the more visibility, the more re-findability, the more reuse your content will go through. And that’s a good thing.  That’s essentially why I am such a huge fan of both mantras "narrate your work" and "working out loud", without forgetting for that matter "Observable Work". In my new job role, the rate of confidential, rather sensitive information I am exposed to on a daily basis has increased quite a bit from my former role, yet, time and time again, I keep challenging my own assumptions and those of others in terms of opening up and what it would mean for our overall efforts if we do. Vast majority of times I have discovered how the reason why people may not want to share their knowledge and information is not necessarily because they may not want to, but more because of inertia taking over with mutual agreements along the lines of "Yes, that’s how we have been doing business over here for a while and we never thought about questioning or challenging its status quo, because we thought it was all right. It was working". Well, obviously, it’s not. Because if it were, I could guarantee you that we would not be having the good number of the business problems, challenges and what not we keep facing day in day out.  Jacob, later on in the article, quoted: "Being open and transparent is a scary yet interesting thing but as with everything else there needs to be a balance" and I keep thinking that perhaps that balance needs to be a bit unbalanced after all. Yes, of course, it’s going to be scary. After all, it’s new ground, within the business world, that we  are trying to cover over here, right? I mean, when was the last time you heard of an organisation, the larger, the better, whose main mantras were to become more porous enough to permeate throughout on both openness and transparency? I haven’t heard of many so far, when trying to strike that balance. Yet the potential for that unbalance is massive, and here I am thinking that perhaps one of the things we could do is to get started with it and aim for radical openness instead. The one Jason Silva shares across in this absolutely exhilarating, inspiring, refreshing and thrilling short video clip:    "RADICAL OPENNESS" - for TEDGlobal 2012 by @JasonSilva from Jason Silva on Vimeo. What do you think? Ready for some yet?