This is just what I needed - clarification on Facebook pages, groups, and profiles. Thanks to Eliza Sherman, for this straightforward explanation. Profile = Individuals connect with friends and see (and share or tag) their status updates in a News Feed. You can be removed under Facebook’s terms of service, something I wrote about before in Avatarcide, when a friend who is an avatar in SecondLife was booted from Facebook. It’s complex. Page = A fan base for individuals, products, companies, organizations, and campaigns. People become FANS of pages. This is good for promotion and are fully viewable to the public (even when not logged in). Administrators are not visible. Group = For building a community. Administrators are listed. You can send a message to the entire group (something you can’t do on a page). Additional details are on her post along with a nice reference table (below). THANKS!

I write an analyst blog and contribute to a group blog for my employer, Brandon Hall Research. The blogs are on the company’s URL. I also have this blog on my own URL here. So it was interesting to read of Forrester Research’s directive to analysts using their own personally branded research blogs: take them down or re-direct them to the Forrester site. Ugh. Forrester’s reasoning: to increase value to clients by aggregating all of the content in one space. Jacob Morgan wrote about the downside of their decision: "No analyst with a shred of talent or ambition will likely ever choose to work for Forrester, assuming this policy is enforced." He thinks the move will "kill the spark of innovation and curiosity that most research analyst have in their DNA…" I disagree with that part. Read my analyst blog and you’ll know I am curious, innovative, and ambitious. Talent, you have to be the judge of but I do know I drive traffic to the main site. Some of the other downsides Morgan lists I DO agree with: SEO value for the company, feelings around ownership, and brand visibility. That middle one - feelings around ownership- is the tough one. I’ve spilled my guts on my analyst blog. I’ve dug deep and worked through some research questions publicly. I’ve thrown half-baked ideas around. If the company suddenly deleted me, I’d have four years of learning undocumented. Nothing to refer back to…"I wrote about that once…" would be no more. And, I’d have lost hundreds of hours of (additional) "work" I was not paid for. After all, I can’t be paid for 8 hours of work a day just for blogging. But if it takes me three hours to write something, I eat that cost. I find reward in the process of writing, thinking, reading what others think, etc. It’s difficult because I get paid to write about work on the blogs but a lot of what I write drifts from that. I feel that’s mine. I did that on my own time. Too bad so sad, huh? Dawn Foster wrote about it. Given the current economic situation, I agree that this decision is unlikely to have much short-term impact on Forrester, but the long-term effects could be devastating. I suspect that several of their analysts will leave over this decision, although they may wait until the economy starts to improve before making the jump. I also think that they will have a hard time recruiting top talent. Very few people who have built active blogs in their areas of expertise will be willing to give them up. I know that I would never consider working for Forrester under these restrictions. She points to one analysts feelings on the issue. Am I thrilled at the prospect of giving up Experience: The Blog, my personal/professional blog? Well no—it’s become part of my digital identity and represents thousands of hours of time and effort. But I also understand Forrester’s reasons for the changes. There are obvious benefits to the company of aggregating intellectual property on Forrester.com, including Search Engine relevance and creating a marketing platform that demonstrates the breadth and depth of analysts’ brainpower and coverage. Dennis Howlett also wrote about it. He refers to SageCircle’s assessment of Forrester’s reasoning: Forrester CEO George Colony is well aware of that savvy analysts can build their personal brands via their positions as Forrester analysts amplified by social media (see the post on "Altimeter Envy"). As a consequence, a Forrester policy that tries to restrict analysts’ personally-branded research blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure. In addition, forcing analysts to only blog on Forrester-branded blogs concentrates intellectual property onto Forrester properties increasing the value of the Forrester brand. Forrester’s Corporate Communications posted this response to Sage Circle’s post: Regarding Forrester analyst blogs: We believe we can best serve our clients in their professional roles by aggregating our intellectual property in one place - at Forrester.com. Make no mistake: Forrester is committed to social media, and the number of our analyst bloggers is increasing, not decreasing. Analysts will still have the ability to blog outside of Forrester on topics not related to their coverage areas. Dennis Howlett calls the decision an epic 2.0 fail. …both Jeremiah and Ray (former Forrester analysts) were generating huge interest in Forrester thinking. Not bad for a distant second placed player in the analyst community. Crucially and largely as a result of their solo efforts, Forrester was getting a LOT of new, incoming revenue. But equally crucially, neither Jeremiah nor Ray were rewarded for their efforts, often on top of 80+ hour working weeks. He goes on… Enterprise 2.0 mavens consistently argue that bottom up adoption of Enterprise 2.0 will make business better. That’s fine except in one crucial regard: pre-existing success history dictating future policy. There is plenty of evidence for that. Forrester’s belated but still knee jerk reaction confirms. Worse still. Rather than behaving as the doyen of what it preaches regarding social media, Forrester is showing itself as hypocritical in the worst possible way. Josh Bernoff, Forrester, tells it like it is: Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our products. Blogging is an extension of the work… I hope I don’t have to deal with having my company blog deleted. But it is always a possibility and that said, if I had a choice, I’d put it on my own site.

I wrote this about analysts and blogging and said… if I had a choice, I’d put it [my blog] on my own site. Brandon Hall Research is cool with that so I’ve moved all my content to my own URL.  If you’re reading this in a feed reader or email, I’ve done it right. If you’ve just stumbled across this website, you can subscribe via an RSS  feed or email subscription. Here are the addresses. RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/janetclarey/mZXF Email feed: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=janetclarey/mZXF

I read some of the traits (or eccentricities) of the highly creative, as identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in the post Tortoise-brain vs hare-brain: creativity at work. It was one of those head nodding reads. I have a propensity toward creative work. At least I think I do. I say that after repurposing content for most of the day and wishing I was doing anything but that. However, the work must get done. Every day isn’t about rainbows and unicorns. At first I thought there was a correlation between that propensity toward creative work and my desire to change my work frequently. After reading the post though, perhaps my need for change comes from my dislike of too much structure. There’s a quote from Peter Cook in the post about that…"too much creativity without structure and nothing ever gets finished." So, yes there must be SOME structure. I know how hard it can be to manage the highly creative. They can be a real pain in the ass. But you need them because creativity is an essential component of success. Organizations that are highly structured probably won’t/don’t retain the highly creative. Who do you work with that has some of these characteristics of the highly creative? Is this you? Fond of asking dumb questions, despite their intelligence Arrogant when they know they know something, humble when they know they don’t Highly self-critical Often markedly introverted, but sometimes quite the opposite Very honest about their own shortcomings or knowledge/skills gaps Tend to see situations and issues in more complex terms than their colleagues.

Sorry for the vulgarity in the title but I read a whopper of a quote from my always thought-provoking colleague, Gary Woodill, and what ensued in my mind was nothing more than a clusterfuck. (My definition of clusterfuck is complicated confusion and chaos.) Anyway, here’s the quote: "learning through the use of social media is a set of implicit assumptions that if people are using something called "social media", then "social learning" must be taking place. This is a confusion of the means with the ends." Think about it. I did. When you Google "social learning" you’ll notice that "social learning theory" is returned first. The "social learning" hits that follow are primarily bloggers. Bloggers like me. And then there are theorists like Etienne Wenger talking about social learning and social learning systems in the  context of communities or practice and stewarding technology for communities. I love that stuff. You can see that "social learning," as a term, appeared enough to make Google’s trend chart in 2006 and has gone up-and-down since. From the end of 2008 and on, it really grew some legs. A trend term. Vogue. Maybe rogue. Definitely ill-defined. Often misused. Tossed around without much serious inquiry into its meaning. In fact, it’s a  clusterfuck of meaning. As much so as ‘learning’ itself is. Ponies and unicorns. I guess what I’m saying here is that there’s not enough push-back on the term. Is it harmful? Effective? What’s the theory behind it? Were Bandura and Vygotsky full of shit? Lave and Wenger? What do we need to be thinking about? I think, when it comes to the new social learning crowd, we’ve got us a case of groupthink. I’ll be the first to say I’ve been part of the problem. However, I think we’ve got to slow down before we flood search engines with models that are not models and definitions grounded in little more than what someone else said.

After spending so much time investigating the positive aspects of learning through social media, I wanted to start looking at the possible negative aspects. Here’s one that’s possibly problematic: Our ability to show admiration and compassion may be declining due to our fast-paced digital culture. Neural correlates of admiration and compassion is a study that explores the social emotions that define humanity - admiration and compassion. Brain scans show it takes longer to respond to admiration and compassion than to respond to signs of something like physical pain. There is greater cognitive processing involved in feeling compassion. Does our fast-paced media culture (fueled by social media) mean we are becoming indifferent to the emotions of human suffering? Is it redefining our humanity? For instance, we flock to YouTube over and over again to view the death of a luger at the Olympics and say OMG! and then share that on Twitter so someone else can ‘re-tweet it’ and say OMG! and repeat it to the point that it spreads like a cancer. Or it ‘trends’. But are we ‘there’ long enough - in the moment - to display compassion? Do we allow enough time? In the study, the researchers say: The rapidity and parallel processing of attention requiring information, which hallmark the digital age, might reduce the frequency of full experience of such emotions, with potentially negative consequences. This made me think of a highly emotional e-learning course about palliative care. (You can see a marketing demo of this course if you register.) The course elicits strong emotions. In the demo you get an idea of it but I actually ran through the  course and it made me cry. E-learning that made me cry (for the right reasons). Feeling emotions was something I previously would have said "no, that’s probably not good for self-paced e-learning." I think this course allows time to process feelings. The course guides the learner to assess situations on their own using various resources like charts, glossaries, video, etc. Learners don’t just pull out a mobile device and watch a video or YouTube clip of a suffering patient  and then go into the room to provide care (and there’s a process to that care). So I guess what I’m saying here is that content that needs to tap compassion may need to be designed without rapid digital exchanges common to social media. I’m not stating fact. I’m putting it out there for consideration based on this one study. Our ability to show admiration and compassion may be declining when it comes to rapid digital exchanges. Don’t rule out e-learning for emotional content. Perhaps we just need to consider the time we’re allowing for a learners response.

I was tweaking my LinkedIn profile and saw this…

Today’s different. Really different. Because instead of firing up my computer and working exclusively for a company, today I’m non-exclusive. (In Facebook relationship "non-exclusive" is like being "in an open relationship.") Today, instead of being an employee of Brandon Hall Research, I’m a Brandon Hall Research Associate meaning I will continue to do work for Brandon Hall but am free to explore anything else I want to. ANYTHING. This is a very, very good thing for me. As Hannah Montana would say, the best of both worlds. Here’s what really feels different about today. Throughout my professional career, I’ve always been an employee. So I feel this amazing sense of independence and also this pit in my stomach. My husband went through this transition over ten years ago and has been encouraging me ever since to do the same. The pit, of course, is a result of kids, mortgages, health insurance, vacations, and all that other shit that makes me wish I was this guy. Not seeing a weekly paycheck in the future is nerve racking and a difficult hurdle to cross when making the transition. I’m sure several of you have felt the same. I put the word out about my role change to a portion of my online network and YOWSA, what a response I got. I love love love my network. I’m serious. The best network EVER. This may not be the best economy for making a change, but I really needed it. I’ve got some new projects and look forward to what the future holds. So, if you need skillz that kill and are not afraid of someone who uses words like clusterfuck, I’m your dudette ; ) Meantime… My work at Brandon Hall Research will take me to the Marcus Evans CLO Summit April 11-13 in Braselton, Georgia. I’ll be presenting on cloud computing. Followed immediately by… AITD National Conference in Sydney, Australia April 20-22 where I’ll be speaking on the topic of "E-Learning 2010: Innovation & Implementation" and leading a pre-conference workshop on social media tools for trainer’s. Day 1…wish me luck.

I traveled to Buffalo, New York (yes, on purpose ; ) last Friday to speak at the ASTD Niagara Chapter meeting about learning in the workplace through the social web. There was a lot of energy and knowledge in the group. Instead of getting hung up on "what is Twitter?" type of  conversations (which I often get), we had conversations about bigger issues like control, privacy, standards, the role of L&D, knowing, and "why" (addressing what problem?). I came away with this: A business can not control the social web because employees are already using the very tools their employer wants to control. And, they’re using them to get work done, not to play Farmville. The social web is not private. Once you create any type of content - a rating on Amazon, a blog, a comment - you’re privacy ceases to exist. However, the amount of privacy you want is somewhat within your control. Fear (of loss of control and privacy) is best addressed by establishing standards for engagement and working with internal groups. Understanding new roles is critical. Where can you be the most effective? Is it helping people find the right person or the right content? Is it helping people to access and retrieve information more efficiently? Knowing is crucial…you don’t know what you don’t know. How is the work actually getting done? Being able to articulate why the social web is right for a specific problem will get you needed resources. Don’t say "social." Say collaborate, say communicate, say increase productivity, but don’t say social. ASTD Niagara, thanks for having me. And, I must give a hat tip to my virtual cube mate Dave Ferguson for sharing some slides and ideas the night before the event. The photo in this post is from Dave’s presentation. It’s by LuluP on Flickr and represents Dave’s way of explaining things - in this case tagging. Thanks Dave.)

When I was sitting on a research panel at DevLearn 09, Brent Schlenker - the moderator - asked each panelist what they’d invest in if they were venture capitalists. I said Augmented Reality (AR). I haven’t wrote about AR much and I haven’t done any serious research on it but I have had a Google alert going for "Augmented Reality" now for several months. (I get back an enormous amount of information so actually I should modify my alert so it limits hits to those related to learning and education.) I am, however, hesitant to do that because I probably wouldn’t see stuff like this from Blaise Aguera y Arcas demo’ing AR maps using Bing maps, Flickr, Worldwide Telescope, Video overlays and Photosynth. He tells the crowd at TED to think time travel, think telepresence, think crowd-sourced commerce to enhance decision-making. It makes me think of all sorts of possibilities for learning. Here’s to augmenting the visual representation of the world. (This video is a month old so you may have already viewed it but I wanted to share it because it blew my mind.) Via Eric Tsai’s Posterous (he has some other AR examples as well)

Longtime blogger Jim Groom, an Instructional Technology Specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington, wrote about giving credit where credit is due (in traditional academic journals) when it comes to using ideas authored in "unconventional academic media," i.e. blogging, etc. The catalyst for Groom’s post is an article in the EDUCAUSE Quarterly about the post-LMS Era, a topic he has written about extensively. (There’s actually a lot more to his post - and the comments - than "credit" and well worth a read.) I came upon Groom’s post at first via a Skype conversation with my colleague Gary Woodill who was pointing me to a George Siemens re-post from 2006, A Review of Learning Management System Reviews, which George wrote while at the University of Manitoba. (He re-posted it to maybe "give it a bit more of an existence.") Many of you may not have read Jim Groom’s 4+ year-old blog bavatuesdays before because it doesn’t focus on corporate learning & development however, many of the issues he dives into are the same issues we face in L&D and it’s been valuable reading to me - it’s like an ongoing free education. George Siemens too although, he does write (blogs and journals) about corporate learning - in addition to academic topics - and is always involved in setting up the annual LearnTrends - The Corporate Learning Trends & Innovation Conference. Hybrid George. Lest you think I’m only talking about bloggers writing about their favorite topic - blogging - this background info provides the type of "implied credit" that exists among a network of bloggers working through contemporary issues. L&D has a blogger network where generally a first name is all you need to  recognize someone - Tony, Mark, Brent, Karyn, Jane, the other Jane, Harold, Gina, Marcia, Cammy, Dave, Stephen, George, and many others. Those names mean little  to many in L&D and I’m going to guess are not even recognizable for most. Among corporate L&D types, I think reading blogs is still new. To tell the truth, when I was working in the corporate environment - and even when I first started blogging 3+ years ago - I thought it was like this secret world of narcissistic people who just linked to each other and theorized. I didn’t have much use for it when I was up to my eyeballs in creating Captivate recordings to demonstrate how to use an antiquated mainframe system that still permeate the corporate world due to their tentacle-like properties. Shame on me. I digress. The entire ‘credit where credit due’ issue made me think about corporate learning periodicals. I read them less often than I used to but did this morning while my PC was going through some sort of Windows upgrade that allowed me the time to make a freakin’ omelet. Of course, those that write in L & D periodicals do not have the same issues as the academic/ journal "game" where tenure and 16 pages of citations are the rules. What is a game but rules right? However, in L&D periodicals, I do think there’s the same "marginalization of blogging" (Groom writes about) and the failure to give credit where credit is due. There’s (still) a certain respect associated with corporate learning periodicals (and many are very, very good and include those that blog) but I often get the feeling that when something is written on a blog (vs. within an article) it’s not taken seriously. It’s everywhere.  Just the other night I was watching House and the actress Laura Prepon, forever known to me as Donna Pinciotti on That 70s Show, was playing a patient who was a professional blogger. (She looks nothing like Jim Groom : ) I thought they made a joke of her blogging on  the show even though she had a pretty good explanation (the psychological issue of not seeing people aside) of the feeling one gets when writing in an online public space. In my opinion, blogs are frequently viewed as a joke because of the author’s attachment to them and the whole idea that one cannot have a true social connection with online "friends" (quotations are theirs). I digress again. (This post is long enough be a chapter in a book or an article in a training periodical ; ) Anyway…back to Groom who said, in part, of blogs… "…we all know that these ideas [like the post- LMS era] have been vehemently discussed and hashed out on the blogosphere, where credit is often and necessarily inconsistent and erratic, but somehow implied-and given we are all working for bigger idea…" I won’t call anyone out publicly or name the periodical but there’s an article by someone who (best I can tell) does not participate in the "work for bigger ideas." Within the article there’s a reference to "subject matter networks" with no attribution. I choked on my omelet and immediately thought of Mark Oehlert’s Subject-matter Experts: The Origin Post. (This same author later speaks about Twitter and I’ve yet to find them on Twitter.) While the ’subject-matter networks’ term can be found in  articles that pre-date this (primarily articles about professional development and teachers, see Google Scholar) in the  context of the L&D article, it should have been attributed to the person (Mark) that spent "almost three days of non-stop talking about social media and how it can impact learning" framing it. What to make of all this? It’s a helluva lot easier to write a static article that outlines the ideas of others than to actually have (and to write about) the ideas. If you think everything on blogs is crap and that content should be cited and vetted like a professional journalist, you’re marginalizing the author’s work being done for the greater good of the industry. And shame on those trying to attain L&D celebrity status at the expense of bloggers.

I launched a new blog this week for showcasing e-learning examples. The plan is to provide a centralized location for examples of e-learning courses and details about the instructional design process used in creating them. I also hope to share specifics about the logistics of the courses. Anyone is welcome to submit an example using the submission form.

I will be traveling to Australia for the first time in April and I leave in just two and a half weeks. I’m speaking at the AITD conference in Sydney. Totally awesome. Freaking. AWESOME. I did the Visa thing last month but, true to form, when it comes to traveling, I’m just getting around to asking myself smaller questions about currency, electrical adapters, cell phones, what the heck to wear based on seasonal temperatures, and what to see when I’m in  tourist mode. I’m an organized procrastinator - which means I’m terrific at organizing for tomorrow - so I have a comprehensive list of stuff with checks and question marks next to each thing listed. (Sidebar… as I’m writing this I see I’ve got a beautiful, helpful email from Cathy Moore in response to a Tweet for tips along with several responses there from recent travelers and residents of Sydney. Another use for Twitter.) OK, so more important than the travel details is the talk. I titled it "E-Learning 2010: Innovation and Implementation." I’m also doing a social media pre-conference workshop. (It’s a ‘laptop optional’ session so requires some planning for those who do and those who do not have their laptop. Been there done that, check.) So the workshop is good to go and the ‘2010′ presentation is primarily done. I’m at that point of tweaking, timing, and making the presentation run smoothly, when all conditions are ideal, while also having a plan-b. I’m using a lot of actual examples of courses so need offline versions of courses to run that are short enough - but understandable - while trying to get the clearest view on a screen and, of course, adequate audio. My small dilemma is where rapid e-learning fits (rapid used here = rapid development using simple authoring tools). (Rapid, of course, can also mean rapid deployment or rapid consumption. In my experience though it usually is about development using the type of authoring tools non-programmers can use.) See,the presentation is not about what will be…it’s about what is happening in 2010 and how people are doing it. What’s innovative and implemented today. None of us will deny that rapid e-learning is today. I think it’s a safe bet to say it dominates the e-learning market alongside PowerPoint. So that’s where I am. I do have rainbows and unicorns to show and talk about - what I see around the corner or being implemented by a few early adopters - but where does rapid e-learning fit in? Somebody help me out and point me to innovative uses of those tools they’ve seen. Because I’ve only got 2 1/2 weeks! Oh, and last thing…what souvenirs to bring back for the kids? Coins are a hit for the youngest along with anything relating to the platypus because he just did a report on that. Teens? Perhaps the greatest gift is me staying there ; ) My husband hopes I do come home.

David Shoemaker, eCornell, highlights a higher ed blog post about the imminent unbundling of courses from curriculum both from colleges offering degrees and entities that do not offer degrees. Unbundling meaning: …the notion that students could cobble together a curriculum that includes courses designed and delivered by a variety of different institutions … - Steve Kolowich Unbundling is nothing new to those of us in corporate L&D. In my mind it’s one traditional differentiator between higher education and corporate education. You might have a curriculum or a learning plan in corporate education but you’re not setting out to complete a bundled group of courses so you can get a degree at a specific university (usually within a specific time period). Corporate education tends to be a career long series of unbundled experiences. By way of background, I had lunch with David a couple of weeks ago in Ithaca, NY, the home of Cornell University and eCornell which is wholly owned by the university. eCornell provides online learning for professional and executive development. Their designers team with faculty from Cornell colleges who create the courses and often participate in the delivery of the courses. (eCornell’s blog is a good one to read it you’re interested in links to news that often straddles corporate education and higher education.) Moving along…the catalyst for David’s post was Steve Kolowich’s The Specialists written for Inside Higher Ed. The  comments under Steve’s post touch on several volatile topics such as training vs. education, "real" college degrees, online vs. classroom interaction, quality of online education, and others. Steve wonders if the "bundled" model of higher education is outdated. Based on what I read from early adopters - and my own experiences - I’d say it’s more outdated than not. "As it has with industries from music to news, the logic of digital technology will compel institutions to specialize and collaborate, find economies of scale and avoid duplications," - journalist Anya Kamenetz Steve writes about relics. I would fit Steve Kolowich’s definition of a relic because I’m enrolled in an academic program at a single university.However, I wouldn’t define myself as a relic because I blend my academic program with my "unbundled" personal learning experiences here on the web (which, BTW, often cause me to sit back and ponder why).  Relic or hypocrite…verdict still out with the latter gaining strength with every post I write about online education. Again with the moving along…the thing that stands out to me  in Kolowich’s post is the quality and rigor concern (of online commercial courses vs. courses charging tuition at traditional institutions). Michelle Everson, a lecturer at the University of Minnesota who also serves as a consultant and an instructor for Statistics.com, says there is, pound for pound, no difference in rigor between Statistics.com’s introductory courses and the ones Minnesota offers as part of its curriculum. She teaches both. The gist of the post is the value in specializing. You can pick the highest value online education in a specific topic through the wonderful thing we call technology. This can be a boon for corporate education - more specialized courses in the commercial market can provide employees with more high-quality experiences.

I was doing some research for an article and ran across a new (to me) term: cybergogy. It’s way cooler than pedagogy or andragogy, no? I’m think I’ll start calling myself a cybergogy strategist. Kidding. The cybergogy literature references date back to 2003 and it seems most of the conversation has been in the higher ed area vs. corporate ed. (Probably since we’ve all but banned the ‘gogy’ words from our corporate vocab.) My first thought was why didn’t you all tell me about this term? Second, I’m not reading enough. So here’s the definition, from the cybergogy entry on the edutech wiki: One of the central elements of cybergogy is the intent to combine fundamentals of both pedagogy and andragogy to arrive at a new approach to learning (Carrier & Moulds, 2003). Cybergogy focuses on helping adults and young people to learn by facilitating and technologically enabling learner-centered autonomous and collaborative learning in a virtual environment. At the core of cybergogy is awareness that strategies used for face-to-face learning may not be the same used in the virtual environment. It was coined by Dr. Minjuan Wang, Assistant professor, Educational Technology, San Diego State University. You can follow her on twitter @minjuan. Here’s Dr. Wang’s cybergogy model for engaged learning. (click to make larger) I like seeing the emotive factors. Also, from the entry: The Cybergogy model values affective learning as highly as cognitive learning, and sees the two as interwoven. The authors (2006) argue that current educational systems must value the learner over the curriculum, and must tolerate learning outcomes that may be less predictable but highly worthwhile. Dean Groom has some nice posts about this learning paradigm shift. Just search the term "cybergogy" on his website or choose the the "pedagogy shifting" category. In this post you’ll find some interesting infographics. I think it’s a nice way to visualize the changes we’ve been talking about. (see the cybergogy wiki entry for the above literature references)

When you live in a rural area, flying general involves a connector flight to a larger airport. Connector flights are the type of flights where they rearrange people for proper weight distribution and balance. I’ve never been asked to move. I imagine my size isn’t something that would have much impact on the balance of the plane. The connector flight I’m on now is piloted by a soldier who returned to work just last week after a year deployment to Iraq. He was flying Black Hawk helicopters there so I feel secure in the event we come under enemy fire near say, Yonkers, NY. My first flight ever was on a plane like this. I was a teenager traveling overseas and my Dad flew with me to NYC on the ‘puddle jumper’ (he called it), gave me a kiss on the cheek and turned around and flew back home. I didn’t understand why he wanted to do that at the time but, of course, do now thinking of my own teenagers. Anyway, I went to Atlanta for the CLO Summit (marcus evans event). Wandering through Atlanta’s airport always feels futuristic to me. There are a lot of soldiers coming and going (returning soldiers getting cheers from the USO…very emotional) along with the calm recording of the Homeland Security threat level (orange). For such a busy airport, it’s pretty quiet. It’s modern and easy to get around. Newark New Jersey’s airport, on the other hand, has people sprawled all over the place, someone playing guitar, and a people mover (golf cart type) driver yelling ‘beep’ (in Russian) instead of actually honking the horn. A shuttle bus ride is needed to get to my flight. We board on the tarmac…going up the stairs. No sky ramp. It’s as stark a contrast as my hotel/motel experience on this first leg of my travels. The day before I left I realized (ok, my husband realized) that I’d need to get up at 2:30 AM Sunday to catch my plane. He suggested I get a room the night before near the airport so I could get a few hours sleep. Apparently he didn’t want to get up at 2:30. I jumped on priceline.com and just picked something cheap without giving it any thought. The motel was in the middle of nowhere (and I know this because I also live in the middle of nowhere). It really was straight out of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I toughed it out. It’d only be a few hours and I didn’t want to go look for something else. I don’t usually check the windows but felt I should. Not locked. Creepy. The bathroom window didn’t lock at all so I hung a coat hanger on it so I could be awake when the serial killer showed up. Got into bed and noted there was a plastic bed liner. Yes, it’s the place where adulterous lovers meet for a couple of hours. I have no experience with those shenanigans. I just heard about it. When getting my bag out of the car all I could hear were crickets and all I could smell was burning wood. It felt like camp. Camp with plastic liners on the beds. Fell off to sleep at 1 AM and had to get up at 4:30. Of course, someone had lost their dog and was shouting for it at around 2:15. Right outside my door. Clearly, leaving my own house at 2:30 would have been a much better situation. Anyway, I arrived at the Chateau Élan, the location of the conference and found a luxury room. No plastic in site. No need for coat hangers to masquerade as serial killer alarms. The biggest decision was deciding which of the eight pillows might be the most comfortable for me. I’ve jotted down some notes on the conference and have links to various things but I’ll have to post tomorrow because it’s late and there’s another one-night layover hotel in my future. Hopefully I made a better choice.

I had the pleasure of speaking at the marcus evans CLO Summit in Georgia last week. The other presenters and most of the attendees were directors, VPs, or CLOs. There were also several solution providers that I had the pleasure of catching up with or meeting for the first time too. The venue was a winery and resort  50 miles North of Atlanta. It was an intimate event…probably about 100-150 people total. I sat on a research panel with Dr. Arthur Paton, Motorola, Inc., and Gary Whitney, VP at InterContinental Hotels Group. The panel discussion was facilitated by Jenny Dearborn, Director L&D, at Hewlett-Packard. She also served as chairman of the event. Our topic was "Has eLearning taken the World by Storm?" We had an interesting discussion and my contribution probably was memorable for my push back on the multi-generational stuff. I couldn’t really answer all of the questions asked because they were "at your organization…" questions. As you know, I’m my own organization and I study other organizations…some of which were there. I’ve been to one other marcus evans event in San Francisco a couple of years ago. They do about 150 conferences a year and have it down to a science. I sent my slides to the event planner prior to the conference (as requested) and just assumed there would be Internet access. I had planned on doing the entire presentation in the cloud switching back and forth between various sites but learned there was no Internet service in the conference center. Event planners have to arrange for (and pay dearly for) that in advance and they weren’t aware I would need it. I just assumed the default was "yes." So…Dr. Jay Colker, SVP & CLO at ShoreBank Corp. and I met up on a break and I had an interesting conversation about working in the cloud, crowdsourcing, and other things and I shared with him my original plan of doing the cloud prez in the cloud. He tried to make the Internet thing happen but it wasn’t to be. I’m 99% sure I was the most high-maintenance presenter there. So, I arrived with Plan A, fell back to Plan B, returned to Plan A (based on "let’s try" discussions) and ultimately back to Plan B. Plan B+: original slides, video, Twitter on my mobile, and screen shots. My talk, the last of the day on Tuesday, was about cloud computing (hence my desire to deliver it in the cloud). I’ve uploaded my slides to SlideShare. It’s missing the ‘slideography’ which is a bit sloppy on my part. Once I add that, I’ll free it up for download. Couple of takeaway’s for me… SharePoint is more commonly used than I thought. The gap in knowledge between traditional delivery of eLearning and self-service eLearning through the social web is ginormous… …however, there is tremendous interest in moving beyond a content- and infrastructure-centered approach to a socially-centered approach. The topic generated excitement. Gangsta hats make people wacky. Learning executives are taller than average L&D types (random observation). There’s a need for some PowerPoint best practices. I need to find a way to do more to address the knowledge gap. There is a "one-way" mentality with a lot of the newer social tools and technologies. I find myself switching things up constantly. That was never the case in the corporate environments. I think that prevails today. Some of my friends on Twitter came through for an impromptu flash conversation on the topic of cloud computing during the presentation. I gave my BlackBerry to the person lucky enough to be in the front row and he was kind enough to read off responses. It was described as provocative. Of course, I was unable to respond to anyone since I didn’t have my device so it must’ve appeared rude to my friends. That’s how friends are on Twitter though…forgiving of longer than normal absences and sudden requests for "say hi" type stuff. All speakers were good and I particularly liked what Donald O’Guin, Director, e-Learning and Learning Technologies at Pfizer, Inc. shared. Pfizer has opened various apps up to employees and they seem to understand the power of the social web. I also enjoyed Nancy Lewis’ (former CLO & VP at ITT and former VP, Learning, IBM) talk about the future of learning and next generation tactics. Another person who gets it! All my prior communications with Nancy have been on the web so it was especially nice to meet her and see her friendly face up front during my own presentation. That helped (thanks Nancy). Karie Willyerd, former VP, CLO at Sun Microsystems was also fabulous. Her talk was "Social Learning Innovation: A View to the Future." She recently wrote a book with Jeanne Meister about the 2020 workforce. Lots of data and discussion. A meaningful conference rich in networking. J Clarey Cloud Computing View more presentations from Janet Clarey.

in·ten·tion, n. Pronunciation: \in-ˈten(t)-shən\ 1 : a determination to act in a certain way : resolve 2 : import, significance 3 : what one intends to do or bring about I’m just back from the 2010 Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) Conference in Sydney. And if I could put one word on the message there it was intention. I have to say the organizers of the conference were among the most gracious I’ve come across. I have only good memories of the week I’ve spent in Australia (thanks, Paul Dumble & company, if you’re reading this!). I facilitated a pre-conference workshop on social media and learning. We collectively created a wiki, explored blogging, Twitter, social networks, etc. I never know how these learn "how-to" while emulating "how-to" will work out. This one worked well. Although most of the participants weren’t heavy social web users (mostly personal use) they had no difficulties with creating wiki pages and stuff. I think it worked well because there was only 1-2 computers per table of 4-5 people. Collective research was easier this way than with everyone using their own laptop. I would do that again. I even had an impromptu Skype visit first with Gary Woodill and then later, with Jay Cross. (It was 9 pm in California, where Jay lives, and midnight where Gary lives, in Canada.) They are two people who walk the talk. All it took was a "are you around?" Skype message. There were others too who answered my request for help via Twitter. That’s how it works. Ask and the community steps up. Every. Single. Time. It was great meeting up with Anne Bartlett-Bragg at a social media club event pre-conference and then hanging out and attending her brilliant conference session. There were literally a handful of people Tweeting at the conference - Michael Eury (@stickylearning), Anne Bartlett-Bragg (@AnneBB), Iggy Pintado (@iggypintado), Marc Ratcliffe (@MRWED_CEO), Janelle Amet @janelle_amet, Tony Hollingsworth (@hollingsworth), and Annalie Killian (@maverickwoman). And oddly enough, I had never met Allison Rossett (it took a trip to another continent to meet her). She’s cool. Funny. Authentic. Brilliant. I like that she focuses on reality - what is really happening. I think Allison’s presentation and mine complimented each other in that regard. Titled E-Learning 2010, mine contained examples of e-learning courses along with a demonstration of a "2.0″ environment at the end. What is…what could be. Allison’s was titled E-Learning is What? and contained a lot of the research around what is really happening - now- in e-learning. There continues to be little adoption of new methods. See What’s Old Is New Again in ASTD for more on that. Excerpt: Opportunities are being left on the table. Today, there is little evidence of collaborative and user-centered approaches in corporate and government settings, though there are suggestions of influence to come in the future. It is the same for mobile devices, ranked last in reported current practice, and jumping closer to the top of the list as practitioners look forward. The virtual classroom and blended learning were also less prevalent in reported practice than anticipated. Old favorites dominated in our study. E-learning today appears to be mostly about delivering assessments and designs, testing, personalization, scenarios, and tutorials. All these are familiar, and they all have deep roots in the training and development community. Should we lament that the habits identified in this study are not much different in 2009 than they were in 1989 (although, of course, enabled by technology)? Is this good news or bad? And most important, what do you intend to do about it? An underlying theme throughout the conference was on this idea of intention. I left wondering if we are, as an industry, (1) driving nails in our own coffins or (2) on the verge of something great. I guess it comes down to (as Allison notes) intentions. Anyway, there were many opportunities to spread the collective learning / 2.0 / social media [whatever] message. I had great fun and made many new connections (including a cute and cuddly Koala). I also have a strong urge to go to New Zealand…and it’s all the kiwi contingents fault!

I brought three books with me for my flights to Atlanta and then to Australia. The first one I read was "Self-Promotion for Introverts." I flipped the book over whenever I set it down (including when it sat on the front seat of my rental car) because I really dislike the "self-promotion" in the title and didn’t want anyone to see it. If I saw someone with it I’d look to see if they really had an L on their forehead - you know as in ‘LOSER.’ The presentation section I read in great detail and I think it was one of two reasons my talk went well. I made more eye contact. I loosened up by silencing the "you suck" backchannel in my brain. And I did that with music and dance. Seriously. Music always has a profound effect on my mood and when possible, I try to listen to something I like prior to speaking. My choices are usually rock/hard rock. Probably not the best choice for me because I don’t need to get going, I need to chillax (chill out + relax = chillax). That genre isn’t really conducive to dance unless head-banging is dance to you. I’ve tried self-talk before. You know, like Alec Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy psych-up speech on the TV show 30 Rock. (Just do it. Is it in you? I’m lovin it.) Humor helps sometimes. Not always. Normally I act more like the Tina Fey character in this snippet. (Note: the following videos in this post are not safe for work if you work at a lame company) Anyway, this time, I did something different with music and I have my lovely daughter to thank (her playlist on my iPod is literally "my lovely daughter." She must have known that would draw a smile). The iPod often appears in the bathroom so one day I decided to turn it on while I showered. My daughter’s favorite genres are quite different than my own. I picked one of her short playlists. Empire State of Mind and Watcha Say really made me feel good and I found myself dancing in the shower (apologies for THAT visual). Anyway, I played Empire State of Mind prior to my presentation and just wanted to get up on that stage and grind it out. Who knew? The words don’t mean much to me (the JayZ part anyway is rap w/ ‘n’ bombs and stuff) but it did the trick. Perhaps a fluke, but I think it also brought out my real voice and not the voice I think I should project when presenting. In my mind the delivery for a presentation for CLOs would be very corporate, tight-lipped, ultra professional and laced with buzz words. That’s not me. I kind of think I look like that Michael Bolton character on Office Space when he’s rapping. Embarrassing. Oddly, not so with Slipknot in the minivan which is actually more lame. It’s messed up. So, the attendees - mostly CLOs - seemed cool with stories about my kids, my use of PG-13 profanity, humor, etc. So they seemed to like my style but better yet, I was OK with my style and I actually felt comfortable on stage. Hope it’s not a fluke (says the self-talk). Try NOT to dance in the shower with this one…I can’t.

Update: A few days after this post was published, Jessica Peter was removed from Facebook. I also updated this post to omit the individual company names. Dear Jessica- I noticed you have 887 friends on Facebook and that we have 117 friends in common. I probably accepted your friendship for that very reason because I know we’ve never met face-to-face. I noticed you’re 24 years old and graduated from a high school with the same name as my high school in ’00. That would have made you 14 years old. Congrats on being a whiz kid. I noticed we also graduated from the same college in 2006 (congrats again for being a whiz kid). Your bio looked real familiar to me: …Now work virtually from my home office. I blog professionally about the social web, research and write about learning technologies, present, teach, and (sometimes) attend graduate school. (Oh snap! It’s mine. Verbatim. From Facebook.) I’m flattered you’d find it good enough to lift but please get your own life. Mine’s not incredibly exciting and with your beautiful photo (you could be a stock photo!), I’m sure your life is rich in experiences. I noticed you’re a Sales Manager at [name omitted] eLearning Solution (note: you’re missing the ‘s’, it’s actually [name omitted] eLearning Solutions). This would have been another reason I may have accepted your friend request. Wow! I just noticed you gain about 25 friends a day ( I read that’s the max allowed on Facebook). Anyway, I wanted to contact you so went to your contact information: [Name omitted] eLearning Solutions (administrator for Facebook group.) A total of six medical transcription companies A "Green" Google custom search engine Speech recognition training for lawyers (You must be moonlighting as a transcriptionist. Those college loans can be a bitch, I know.) I noticed that you do little more on your profile than post marketing messages, "friend" people and accept birthday wishes . Happy 23rd! Because you don’t respond to things like "Thanks for connecting. Delighted to see so many mutual friends" (from a mutual friend), I’m afraid I’ll have to remove you from my friends. I’m here for conversations not marketing messages. I noticed your Twitter handle no longer exists. That saves me the time of removing you from my followers as well. I noticed today you posted something about medical transcription and that’s totally fine but again, I’m not interested in marketing messages and don’t have a need for transcription services. Thanks though, for that post because that’s what made me check out your profile. I’ve sent you a message about the bio thing and asked empower to contact me. Nothing yet. Anxiously awaiting to hear from you. Best of luck in your future endeavors- Janet

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be." ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 22, spoken by the character Holden Caulfield, via quotegarden.com I watched Jon Meacham, Editor of Newsweek, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last week. Meacham had learned earlier that same day that Newsweek is being sold. He described the decision as a "rational economic decision" (based on journalism today). I applaud him for being there. I would have been curled up in the fetal position with a bag of Cheeto’s. "Who is going to be doing the reporting?" Jon Stewart asked. "If we’re all aggregators, if we’re all commenting, if we’re all analyzing, who exactly is going to be doing the reporting?" Hmmm. This might as well be a question asked at some "social learning" session within the "emerging" track at a national conference that is rich in sessions about traditional training ("dino" track ; ) It’s the same conference where there’s one person tweeting for each 100 attendees and there’s often no wireless. The one where you use a #hashtag so you can go back and link to the stream to illustrate how lame it was. Anyway, Meacham made this statement which has generated some critical commentary: "I do not believe that Newsweek is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we’re one of them. And I don’t think there are that many on the edge of that cliff." From Peter Wehner at Commentary Magazine: "We still need journalists reporting on oil wells that explode and leak, British elections being held, wars being fought, genocide unfolding, riots occurring in Greece, and all the rest. The good news is that we live in a world that features both "hard news" and informed commentary, to a degree we have never had before. In that respect, what we have today is a vast improvement over the past." Ethan Epstein at True/Slant in Journalists Try To Hold Democracy Hostage also wrote about the Meacham interview. "Meacham is, of course, wrong on the facts. There are now more catchers in the rye than ever before. Paradoxically, the same forces that are killing Newsweek are responsible for a blossoming of scores of specialized news outlets. Newsweek has to die so democracy and journalism can live. Simply put, it is the fact that web publishing is so cheap that has both killed Newsweek, and allowed all forms of niche publications to thrive. (The kind of publications, it should be noted, that never would have made it in an era when you needed deep pockets to produce news.)" Meacham, when responding to a question from Stewart, points to The Economist as being successful today. He doesn’t give his opinion why. Mine would be that The Economist is (and  has been) a meritocracy. And that’s the nature of the social web. The Economist is different from other publications not only because it offers a broad international perspective but also because it has no bylines. It is written anonymously, because it is a paper whose collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists. This ensures a continuity of tradition and view which few other publications have matched. Or, is it Vanity Fair’s, Matt Pressman’s take? The Economist is like that exotic coffee that comes from beans that have been eaten and shat out undigested by an Indonesian civet cat, and Time and Newsweek are like Starbucks—millions of people enjoy them, but it’s not a point of pride. Reading The Economist or drinking cat-poop coffee shouldn’t be either, but as the quirky lead sentence of an Economist article might say, "Human beings are peculiar in many ways." At some point here, the Newsweek’s of the traditional training content world need to "get" the social web. It’s about human beings. Or is that too elitist? Too cat poop coffee? Is the clusterfuck around social learning a naïve view of learning or are the staunch protectors of traditional training taking a naïve view of learning? BTW…this is where The Economist was over three years ago. Tackling Social Media At The Economist And, a short piece about where they are today. BTW…You can watch the Meacham / Stewart interview here. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Exclusive - Jon Meacham Extended Interview Pt. 1 www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox calls it "gender asbestos:" "…a massive corporate mis-adaptation to today’s talent realities and the subsequent inability to retain and develop women as well as men." She would say any gender pay gap is not about salary inequities at all. I agree. It’s not just about salary inequities. I have a history of self-development. I don’t wait around. I purposefully took jobs throughout my career that were either just above what I thought I could handle or where I was the token "skirt." It has worked out for me. However, so long as my ATM card gives me what I ask of it, I don’t think of the gender pay gap except on Equal Pay Day or when I read a good article or something. I wonder what your reaction is to the phrase "gender pay gap?" Rolling of the eyes? Perhaps your reaction is to stop reading this right now. (Good. Thank goodness they’re gone.) You might think it’s non-existent or a non-issue. What a bunch of whiners right? You may think gender pay gaps only matter to the person who makes up the lower bar on a gender salary graph. Too bad so sad and all that. But it’s really a societal issue. You may react, as Cammy Bean did, with "…that really ticks me off." Cammy’s reaction came after summarizing Temple Smolen’s eLearning Guild’s 2010 Salary and Compensation Report (US). There continues to be a consistent gender gap in pay between men and women. On average, men are paid 14.5% more than women. This gap is most notable in part-time employee pay, where women receive an average hourly rate that is 49.4% lower than the rate men receive, while working a comparable number of hours. (p. 25) Why I thought? I remembered Clay Shirky, writing earlier this year about a once-removed issue… "…not enough women have what it take to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks." [ ...that many men, because they have this "skill," tend to get disproportionately rewarded.] After my first read (when this was posted back in January), the Shirky rant suggested to me that I should learn to lie a bit better. However, as is often the case, the thoughts of others got me thinking about this issue a bit more beyond my initial reaction…like this comment from Danny O’Brien which I picked up via Sarah Milstein. Sarah Milstein also linked to a great comment by Gisela that I think gets at some of the other below-the-surface reasons for gender pay gaps (and I do not have her research source)… So what is behind the gender pay gap? Is there a massive corporate mis-adaptation to today’s talent realities and the subsequent inability to retain and develop women as well as men? Do too few women have what it takes (call it what you will) to self-promote; to show assertiveness? Is there a societal behavior bias? Are women just devalued in the workplace? All of the above? Perhaps. It’s certainly alive and well in the e-learning industry (at least in the U.S.). Why does this matter? The U.S. can’t afford it. Those in charge of salary should step up and address it. For women…one idea: back up your negotiations with data from the report. This post is part of a blog carnival on the subject of the gender salary gap. Read more from Kelly Garber: Shark Attacks and Salary Reports, Julie Dirksen: Ranting on the Gender Pay Gap in E-Learning, and Cammy Bean: The eLearning Salary Gender Gap. Have something to say on the subject? Join the ride and contribute. Then share a link to your post in the comments on one of our blogs.

There are those who write cautiously on the web and those who don’t. What’s your style? I try to write what I’m thinking and write it like I’d say it if I was sitting around having coffee with you. Sometimes wine : ) Saying "what I’m thinking" can often be confused with bluntness. (Let’s just say my 360s always said "can be blunt." ) Blunt is not cautious. (I guess it could be if you were super diplomatic.) And blunt, when presented as a negative attribute,  always made me mutter to myself (1) don’t ask me your god damn opinion if you don’t want to know or (2) grow a pair, a spine or, at the very least, some elephant skin. Now when I say cautious writing, I’m referring to the dictionary meaning: a reluctance to speak freely in anticipation of some future event. My favorite writers are those that approach a subject without fear of the future. Liz Strauss, in an older article said, "To write with an authentic voice I had to learn to let go of what people might think of my truth or of my saying it. Authenticity is risk-taking with a marvelous reward." For the past several weeks I’ve found it difficult NOT to write cautiously. Difficult NOT to fear the future. Difficult  to write what I feel without wondering what others will think. That mindset for writing sucks. Big time. The cautiousness I’m feeling I let build up over time. I realized after spending much of 2009 having the control tweezers pluck the strands of creativeness out of me one fucking check box at a time, I had become reluctant, resentful, and downtrodden. Not a good state for creativeness and innovation. I started to think "if I write this then this might happen."  Yup, it was time to give myself a good slap up side the head. The results… I’m: reading cage-shaking books to get back on the edge making room for some more "focus" time in my schedule by shutting off my presence indicators more often partnering only with cool people, companies, and other creatives bitch slapping my anger into a box and making shipping labels with ATTN: ASSHOLE on them (which I’ll never send of course) spending more time in nature…(BTW…my garden looks awesome) getting more sleep contemplating doing "no way" stuff like learning how to (1) bowl or (2) raise chickens (because my son wants to do those things). These are some of the things that are getting me into a beautiful flow state on a current writing project. Hopefully I’ll rediscover my non-cautious, creative writing mojo soon. I may have just done that and am glad because frankly, writing here is actually a pretty cheap form of therapy that results in the need for less shipping labels.

Sometimes I forget that people don’t know about potential learning/work tools that may have been around for several years. Such is the case with Google Custom Search (which has been around now for more than four years). Anyway…my catalyst for this post was a wonderful online workshop I did last week for AITD. They’ve got a nice line up of professional development opportunities and I was happy to be asked to present on one of my favorite topics - GOOGLE. (Note: Even if you’re not a member of AITD, I think you can could send an inquiry to see if you can sign up for an online event. What’s nice is I did it at US 8:00 pm ET / 5 pm PT (10 am +1 Sydney) so it’s a nice evening option for those in the US.) One featured tool I had kind of forgotten about was Custom Search Engine. The name is pretty self-explanatory. You can create your own search engine using one or more websites or specific web pages, host a search box on your own website, and create a custom look and feel. You can add other people’s custom search engine  when shared by the creator. One nice example I found was in Adobe’s Community site. They use it to selectively index Adobe learning and support content as well as the best content from the Adobe community. Uses for learning…. directed learning acts as a scaffold discovery learning guided exploration embed it in an LMS like Moodle to search for content co-creation by employees (collaborative web search engine) electronic performance support efficiency and productivity improvements community search lots of others There seems to be a business edition (fee) that will search your intranet. You can set a basic one up in about 5 minutes. You’ll need  a Google account. Here’s the Custom Search Blog (there’s also a Twitter account)..recent updates (from the blog) include auto completion of queries (think misspelling or suggestions), an AIR-based companion for Adobe Creative Suite 5 (E-learning Flash developers can search for relevant code samples to write better,  code, faster), support for synonyms, mobile search results, and on and on and on. Enjoy! Let me know if you’re doing something special with Custom Search.