I just finished teaching four sessions over 3 days at TBCON in beautiful Colorado Springs. With me in the photo are Jeff and Sue Rhodes, the organizers who hold the conference every year. It's an excellent value! I taught at TBCON last year and came back for a return engagement. I taught the following sessions: Captivate 3.0 Features You Really Need to Know (Tips and Tricks) XML-Driven Flash Engines and Why They Matter eLearning Games - Updated! When Things Go Horribly Wrong - How to Save Your e-Learning ProjectI love teaching sessions and I think it shows. I always get very positive evaluations (except for once in a while a grumpy person doesn't get my sense of humor!).Soon I'll be teaching at SALT in Washington, D.C., and at Adobe Max in Chicago.Subscribe to my blog.

I had the pleasure of being one of the first, perhaps the very first, to present Captivate 3 in a live conference setting. My company and I personally have been using this product since it was called RoboDemo because it's a great product for doing a lot of what we do for our clients. It's unmatched at creating software simulations but also can be used for creating lots of other kinds of e-learning, including soft skills training. I often tout it as a product that balances ease of use with power - a constant struggle for any e-learning tool developer.Jaws dropped when I showed both Captivate 2 and Captivate 3, which was just released. They loved the trimode recording, how they now can retain animations from PowerPoint imports, the fact that quizzes can now be randomized and the new transitions.Most of the people had never used Captivate before so every feature was new to them. They were really happily surprised by the product. One person moaned about how they had wasted their money on Firefly (a much more expensive competing product) and found it so hard to use that they had given up on it. Now that they had seen how easy Captivate was they were going to have their organization get it right away! You can see more about Captivate here. I'll write more about Captivate soon.I'm proud of the fact that some very good friends of mine were involved in the creation of Captivate 3. Among them are:Group Business Development Manager--Marc HoseinProduct Marketing Managers--Silke Fleischer--Karl Matthews Core Director--Tridb Roy ChowdhuryEngineering--Stefan van AsDon't be upset if your name isn't on the list above. That either means that I forgot you were involved or you need to be a better friend to me (haha).Here's a partial list of new features in Captivate 3. This is directly out of the Help section, so I'm quoting here.Multimode recordingSave time and generate robust software simulations with multiple learning modes in a single recording session, including a demonstration of the procedure, a simulation for practicing the steps, and an assessment.Randomized quizzing and question poolsImprove learner assessments by randomly drawing questions from a set of question pools. Shuffle the answer options for multiple-choice questions, so that the answers are displayed in a different order each time. Share question pools among multiple Adobe Captivate projects.Rollover slideletsProvide additional just-in-time information on Adobe Captivate 3 slides by displaying media-rich content including images, text, audio, and video in a slidelet (a mini-slide within a slide) when the learner moves the mouse over a specified area on the slide.XML export and importSimplify the localization process of projects; export captions to a text or XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF) file. Import the translated text file into a copy of the original project file.Automated rerecordingQuickly update content and automatically rerecord entire procedures in most web applications after the user interface is modified or localized (Internet Explorer® 6).Animation effectsCreate learning content with support for animated slide transitions (besides fade in / fade out) and PowerPoint® animations. Import PowerPoint (PPT) files and retain many animation effects by converting PowerPoint slides to SWF files.New question typesIncrease learning effectiveness with specialized question types, such as sequencing and hotspots, and matching dropdown lists.Streamlined workflow and usability enhancementsWork faster with a wide variety of streamlined workflows and usability enhancements: Improved learning management system (LMS) integrationReusing quiz slides Reducing SWF file size Branching view enhancements, such as slide grouping and zooming New choices for adding captions and buttonsMicrosoft® Windows Vista™ and Microsoft Office 2007 supportInstall Adobe Captivate 3 on Windows Vista and import PowerPoint (PPT) files from Office 2007, or create handouts or step-by-step procedures with the Microsoft Word export option.Re-recording software simulations When changes are introduced into a software application, or when you need to create separate projects in multiple languages, you can use the re-recording feature in Adobe Captivate.To do this, you must select the option to generate re-recording information when you create a new Adobe Captivate project. As a result, a script file (.cprr) is createdWhen changes are introduced into a software application, or when you need to create separate projects in multiple languages, you can use the re-recording feature in Adobe Captivate.To do this, you must select the option to generate re-recording information when you create a new Adobe Captivate project. As a result, a script file (.cprr) is created. You can use the Generate Re-recording Information option when you first generate a project to create a re-recording script file. The re-recording script is saved as an XML file with the .cprr extension.Learn more about Adobe Captivate here.Subscribe to my blog.

"Authorware is Dead"...I have heard these words ever since I started using the product, back when it was sold by Authorware, Inc., in May 1990. I fell in love with this product, its flow line approach, its inclusion of a scripting language...albeit a very limited one in that first version on the Mac. With time, the scripting language got more powerful and JavaScript was added as an alternative, and a few icons were added, including the Framework and Navigate icons.Eventually Macromedia asked me to help with the product and as you can see above, my name appeared in the credits.Articles and BooksThe product for me was simple but challenging and I liked it enough to start writing books about it, books that sold relatively well in such a small niche market. I wrote articles about it for Brandon Hall and for the eLearning Guild, among others. Writing my first book instantly made me recognized by many who previously didn't know me.ConferencesI am the only person alive who has attended every single Authorware conference. Not only that, but I have also spoke and taught at every one of them. Let's start with The Alternative Authorware Conference (TAAC), started by my good friend Tom Adams. Did TAAC really mean Tom Adams Authorware Conference? It was continued later by Mark Henry. A couple of times Mark held TAAC in the Adams Mark hotel - really? Adams Mark? Tom Adams Mark Henry? Strange. I keynoted at several TAACs and was presented with a lifetime achievement award, seen here. The very first year of TAAC I was asked to be keynote speaker by Tom. I arrived in Snowbird, Utah, with bronchitis. The thinner air didn't help. I gave my keynote and then was brought to Urgent Care where they gave me antibiotics and promised me I wouldn't die (ever). Ah, memories of imminent death!Then there was EuroTAAC, which was held in The Netherlands, England, Scotland, and Germany over the years. This year my friend Ole Kristensen held it in Randers, Denmark. I keynoted at several of these and taught precon at most of these as well. This year I even appeared on the Danish TV news. You can see the clip here. It's in Danish, but you can make out the words "guru Joe Ganci", "e-learning" and something about "what a sexy guy."Tom Adams later created another conference called TAW - the Texas Authorware Workshop. Once again, though, we wondered if it didn't stand for the Tom Adams Workshop! Kidding, kidding. This was held in Dallas two years in a row. Very enjoyable, very informative.Finally, there was AMGAC (Aviation, Military and Government Authorware Conference) founded by AMy Blankenship. It was small but wonderful, held in Biloxi, Mississippi. Amy and I became better friends. I was already friends with Steve Howard, who is originally from Scotland, lived in England, and helped take over EuroTAAC after the Dutchies sold it off. Steve and Amy eventually married in Biloxi. I went to their wedding. Never had I heard a stranger mix of accents - Scottish and Mississipian! They are good friends to me and always will be. They were in the path of Hurricane Katrina later, but survived and are doing well today.You can see lots of conference photos here on our Authorware site.TrainingOver the years, I trained Authorware all over the United States, Canada and Europe. I love teaching and it gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of great people, many of whom I count among my friends.LoyaltyAuthorware developers tend to be fierce defenders of the product. The battles between religious sects are nothing when compared with the battles between Authorware adherents and those who liked opposing tools!Recent HistoryWhen I started my own company, the esteemed DazzleTech, I was well-known as an Authorware guru, so naturally most of the work we got were from clients using Authorware. It wasn't long, though, before we realized we had to diversify to be able to reach the largest number of clients. I was an old-time programmer and became conversant with Flash. I had already used Director and other tools and then started looking for contractors and employees to hire that knew more than I did. I hit pay dirt when I brought on Chris Swenson and eventually made him a partner in the company. He not only sponges up new technologies easily, he is innovative and comes up with great solutions all the time. He is the author behind our own authoring system, Substance.The Death of AuthorwareAuthorware's demise has been predicted from the start. Every few months, rumors of Authorware's death were circulated, usually by those who used other authoring tools. Sometimes the rumors came from Adobe employees, but it was hard to know what to believe because the rumors were so frequent and then another version of Authorware would be released. I always said that like any software, Authorware would eventually reach the end of its life cycle. I'm happy to say it has lasted twenty years in the marketplace! That's quite an achievement and a tribute to Michael Allen, who created the product, and to Jamil Zainasheff, among many others, who continued to engineer and defend the product at Macromedia.But now we've reached the end, for all practical purposes. Yes, for the time being version 7.02 will continue to be sold, but it's time to move on. Good luck to us all.Read Adobe's announcement here.Subscribe to my blog.

My friend Susan McDonald-Osborne just started a new m-Learning forum on Facebook.If you have a Facebook account or are ready to start one, click here. Subscribe to my blog.

Even if you're not in the Denver area, you may want to consider joining this Yahoo group. It is very active:Denver Metro E-Learning Developers Grouphttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmeldMeets about four times a yearNext meeting date: see linkTime: 7:00 - 9:00 pmLocation: FX One Seven Zero, Technical Marketing Group, 424 East Simpson Street, LafayetteContact: Phil Tobias philtobias@aol.comSubscribe to my blog.

It has been my pleasure to be associated with The eLearning Guild (www.elearningguild.com) since near its start in 2002. I have taught preconference classes and sessions at most of the Guild conferences and at each conference I have also enjoyed myself immensely and have learned tremendous amounts from others.The folks running the Guild are topnotch professionals and awfully nice to boot.David Holcombe and Heidi Fisk have run the Guild from the start, helping it grow from a few hundred members to several tens of thousands! David is the executive leader of the Guild while Heidi wears several hats, including the all-important organizer of all the Guild events.Steve Wexler is the Guild's Director of Research and Emerging Technologies. The Research site is the best around; in fact, it's downright fantastic. Besides several valuable reports that have been published, the site has live, up-to-the minute reports based on surveys being filled out around the clock on various subjects by Guild members. Remember there are tens of thousands of them and they represent a cross-section of e-learning professionals and learners. It's very interactive, allowing you to drill down and find the exact answers you need. WELL WORTH IT!Bill Brandon is the nicest editor with whom I have ever worked and that is saying something considering how much work it is for him to put together each issue of the Guild's Learning Solutions e-Magazine! As of this writing, there are 230 issues of of this great publication and each issue is chock full of practical advice, strategies, discussions and more. We're talking good stuff here, folks. I've had the pleasure to have had a few articles published in the Magazine, though I'm sorry to say it's been a while since I've written an article for Bill. He's a very patient man. Soon, Bill, as soon as I can!Karen Hyder runs all of the on-line forums and conferences. Officially she's the Online Events Moderator and Speaker coach. I can't think of anything to say about Karen that doesn't sound as if she's paying me. I hold her in high esteem, very friendly and a real pro, she makes both teaching and learning online very easy. She also is at all the conferences and is always running around helping out. What a great asset she is to the Guild.Tim Martin arranges for the conference expositions and advertising. He also is a great guy with whom to work, friendly, knowledgeable and always ready to help. Luis Malbas is the tech guy, and he knows what he's doing. The site is powerful and runs really well!The Guild has an Advisory Board that has some of the biggest names in eLearning on it (no, I'm not on it yet haha). They help guide the Guild in various ways - I guess you can call them Guild Guides!I know I'm leaving out some folks but these guys and gals are the heart and brains of the Guild. They have made the Guild what it is - a fantastic resource for all e-learning professionals and those who are interested in e-learning.DazzleTech has helped the Guild whenever possible and we're happy that in our own small ways we have been privileged to be associated with this great organization! There are several levels of membership, including a free level - why not take advantage of the Guild's offerings? I am very proud of my eLearning Guild membership! Join and you will be too!Subscribe to my blog.

I had the pleasure of delivering an on-line presentation this week for the eLearning Guild called Choosing the Right Tools for your e-Learning Project. You can see the description by clicking here.I guess it went well! Here is the feedback I got from the Guild today:Thank you for another great session. The eLearning Guild and I appreciate your commitment and willingness to share your perspective and extensive knowledge with Online Forum participants. My survey numbers:Number of respondents to survey: 15 1. The presenter was knowledgeable about the topic strongly agree 12 agree 2 disagree 0 strongly disagree 0 2. The presentation content matched the session description on the website. strongly agree 14 agree 1 disagree 0 strongly disagree 0 3. I will be able to apply the information I learned in this session. In the next 3 months 13 In the next 6 months 1 In the next 9 months 0 In the next 12 months 0 Never 0 4. The speaker effectively used Polls 10 Open- ended questions/ Chat 11 Demonstrations 11 Slides 11 Sample file 2 5. Materials were appropriate to the session strongly agree 12 agree 3 disagree 0 strongly disagree 0 6. I would attend another session by this speaker strongly agree 15 agree 1 disagree 0 strongly disagree 0 Feedback: - Entertaining and engaging delivery style - Used polls very effectively to get and give information - Joe's depth of knowledge on the subject was greatly appreciated by the attendees (see Chat Pod contents) - His comparison and demonstration of the major content-creating tools was extremely well-done - Very attentive to both the regular Chat Pod and the Presenter Chat Pod It’s always a pleasure to work with you. See you in San Jose!Subscribe to my blog.

You may find these results interesting! These are the participant polls I conducted during my forum session. Click the image below to see it full size.Subscribe to my blog.

I was recently asked by one of our strategic partners to offer my "Top Ten List" of the most significant events (e.g., new stories, technical advances, market trends) that shaped the "mlearning marketplace" in 2009. It was actually a great question and I enjoyed pondering and preparing my responses to that question (as offered below). Given the constant and oftentimes harsh distractions 2009 dealt us all in terms of budget cuts, canceled/postponed projects, long decision cycles, there was actually a lot of positive news and both technical and market innovations to make 2009 an outstanding year in the maturity of mobile learning. IMO, many things happened in '09 that position us all to start benefiting more from the promise and potential of mobile learning as a way to really drive organizational performance, improve operational readiness, and simply make anytime/anywhere learning more interesting, practical and affordable too.So, in no particular order of importance, here's my "Top Ten List" of mlearning highlights and milestones and look forward to seeing other lists and sharing comments. 1. Market Activity/Consolidations. RIM bought Chalk for their mobile Chalkboard offering. This certainly helped establish a strong market value for platform-based mobile learning solutions and generated market interest/demand for all mlearning vendors. In my opinion, this was the biggest news of 2009 for everyone involved in the enterprise mlearning space.  In addition, longtime mobile learning tool provider Hot Lava Software was purchased by LCMS platform provider Outstart and interest in their combined offerings was well received. As they say, the rising tide lifts all ships. 2.  Market Activity/Consolidations #2.  Blackboard enters mlearning market by purchasing Terriblyclever Design, LLC, makers of MobilEdu(TM), for around $4M. The 2-year old company had modest sales but a growing collection of interesting higher-ed customers (including Stanford U, Texas A&M and Duke) and since the acquisition 6 months ago, has come to market with a new consolidated offering (called Blackboard Mobile) which is now one of centerpieces of Blackboard’s overall solution offering (and currently occupying the main screen on Blackboard’s corporate web site). Blackboard also just introduced a BlackBerry application to work alongside their current Apple iPhone offerings. IMO, the price and focus paid by an established LMS platform vendor are significant. 3. Cheap but Capable Devices.  An Apple iPhone 3G can now be purchased new for US$99 (plus data plan of course) - this sets the price bar at an approachable level for virtually anyone who wants a smartphone and other vendors must cover Apple's bet here too.  Virtually all of top-shelf models from Apple, RIM, Motorola, HTC, Palm and others (save Nokia here in the USA) are available (subsidized via a 2-year plan) for around US$200.  While market research may indicate otherwise (see #4 below), I believe the rate of smartphone adoption for enterprise mobile learners is growing much faster than the smartphone market in general.  4. Compelling Market Research.  A recent Gartner Group report highlighted mobile device trends and included some compelling news on Android’s 3-year growth projections wherein Android will start to gain on Apple while also taking market share away from current leaders Nokia and RIM.  These trends will help ensure a very complex and hybrid device ecosystem will emerge within the enterprise mlearning market that will have an effect on mlearning content creation and delivery. In short, the landscape is getting more complex, not less complex and true mobile learning solutions will need to help mitigate all these factors. Add in the recent Morgan Stanley analysis on the growth of the mobile Internet and all the right trends seem to be lining up!In a related matter, the release of some many different Android-based phones this quarter will change the device landscape starting in 1H 2010; the early indicator is the fact that Motorola has now sold 1M Droid devices in less than 6 weeks into the USA market where iPhones and BBs and WinMos already abound. To throw some perspective in, analysts estimate that Apple will sell around 10M new iPhones this quarter (after delivering 7M in Q3); both are significant in their own right.5. Flash Support Arrives for Mobile.  The announcement of the coming availability of Adobe's Flash Player v10.1 supporting all most major device platforms (save Apple iPhone) will provide improved ways to create and deliver mlearning content to advanced smartphones. That said, I still don’t believe this is the panacea many others think it is as Flash content will only work WELL on a select number of higher end phones and offers limited support for interactivity on most devices (e.g., all BlackBerrys except the Storm/Storm2 series devices probably can’t use their pointing devices to accomplish complex interactions).6. Pricing for Smartphone Data Plans Decrease . The monthly price people need to pay for their data plans and messaging plans here in the USA and Canada is failing and "all you can eat" plans are becoming more popular (how truly American - we're gluttons at both the buffet and while communicating aren't we!). More people with data-enabled devices will drive demand.7. Mobile Meets Social & They Fall In Love.  The marriage of social tools and mobile devices is getting better and better; this trend is accelerating and will drive demand for a new class of mobile learning tools and applications/platform extensions. Our company sees user-generated content as a true business driver beginning in Q1 2010 and this will make the mobile learning application suite "sticky" and help drive mobile learners to use their devices more and more resulting in a situation where they’ll be more inclined to consume content they’ve been assigned by their managers or generate by their peers (or customers or partners).8. Mobile Starts to Make (Mean) Money. Technologies like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (and the companies behind them) are starting to really explode and make $$$ for the first time. And a key trend for 2010 seems to be enterprise-aware social networking tools. SMS in general is still gaining tremendous traction; as an example, I’ve recently started hearing and seeing adds on TV or the radio where the "call to action" isn’t "go to www.acme.com to learn more" but is now presented as "Text ‘tellmemore’ to 77777 to sign up for more information about XXX!".More to the point here, our company finally started bidding, winning and delivering projects in the mobile learning space that generated the same or higher contributions (revenues/profits) as similarly sized online/desktop elearning engagements. Real customers prove there's finally a market for mlearning platforms and tools, custom content development and related value added services. This fact will drive other previously passive/sidelined vendors into the "mobile pool" as they look for ways to stem the tide and stop losing deals to next generation competitors who can already deliver on mobile learning's promise.  9. Increased Levels of Interest from Learning Industry Colleagues. Judy Brown’s (mlearnopedia.com) first 7:15 AM "Mobile Learning Breakfast Byte" session at last year's DevLearn Conference in San Jose, CA was attended by 60+ people this year - that’s up 52 people from 3 years ago the first time I went to DevLearn. The 2009 DevLearn event also had a widest variety of mobile learning sessions and speakers of any general audience learning conference to date indicating the trends towards not only understanding but adoption are accelerating.10.  More mLearning Books are Being Published. Several books on or covering Mobile Learning are all due out in Spring 2010 including commissioned efforts from Gary Woodill (Brandon Hall), Clark Quinn (Quinnovation) and Jeanne Meister (New Learning Playbook) and we're hoping to contribute something to all of these (e.g., case studies, insights). OnPoint also co-wrote a chapter for the upcoming ASTD book on new technologies on the ROI of mobile learning solutions. If the publishers are preparing now for the next year, the trend is growing for sure.Looking forward to comments and reading other Top Ten lists too!

My friend and colleague Brent Schlenker posted a Tweet yesterday that both caught my attention and also quickly made the rounds through the SoMe ecosystem which read:Making Video Encoding Easy and Affordable with Encoding.com http://bit.ly/4TmAWU) This is VERY cool! #mlearning #elearning  The offering cited in the post is for a new cloud-based application/service called Encoding.com from a company of the same name. Their mission, as stated on their corporate web site, is as follows:"Until we launched Encoding.com in the summer of 2008, video platform operators had two choices: inflexible encoding software or expensive hardware encoding appliances. Now, there's a third and better option — encoding in "the cloud" wrapped within an "on demand, pay as you go" delivery model... Site operators can now focus on content and the user experience while allowing us to ensure that content is available to all users on the most popular Internet and mobile devices." As a techie actively involved in mlearning content production every day - much of that media-based - I can fully appreciate the benefit this sort of service can offer mlearning content producers and practitioners. In fact, we've spent over 2 years working to develop an efficient  way to streamline all of the necessary media conversion processes and business work flows our mobile customers/partners face prepping and deploying content both to the web and out to mobile devices.  As anyone who works in an environment where "device diversity" is a challenge (where you've got RIM BlackBerrys, Apple iPhones, Android phones, Windows Mobile, Symbian-based smartphones, netbooks, whatever!), a video format that's ideal for one device is likely not ideal for others in your population, and even older devices from the same company (e.g., RIM) may not play (or prefer) the same encoded media files as their newer siblings.Brent's post piqued my interest and so I decided to do more than just RT the same news to the same people and see what this new service had to offer.  Here's my quick take. The Pros: This software-as-a-service application is well conceived and polished.  It uses an installed "desktop client" (though PC only) to help you organize your files for conversion and nicely packages, delivers and manages secure file uploads and downloads for your media.Customers can select/utilize a set of predefined conversion templates that make it easy to "transcode" a master/source file from one format into a variety of different output formats.  Or they can change/edit these core templates to meet their own specifications.Uploaded files are processed and returned back to the producer's desktop computer where they can then be prepared for deployment out to the web or destination mobile devices.Pricing for the service can be handled via a monthly plan or can also be usage-based.  The Cons:This sort of cloud-based offering is ideal for single authors but not necessarily great for content creation teams. The predefined encoding templates don't offer as many options as some of the other higher end offerings.  And actions like automatic insertion of DRM information isn't possible and will need to be added manually after the fact if required.  While the output files are nicely delivered back to your computer, most of them will need to be uploaded back into the cloud for distribution to your web site, LMS or mobile devices. Given decent looking videos for mobile devices can run from 1-2MB/minute, producing long form videos in multiple formats will result in lots of content shuttling.  In comparison, an enterprise transcoding process (like the one we have integrated into our CellCast Solution platform) will automatically post the output files onto the destination servers and can even streamline your efforts to package your new media files for automatic distribution to all your target mobile devices. While the pricing options are generally fairly reasonable, the cost of a mid-level to professional media encoding software suite -- which you can also configure to run in your own cloud -- is probably cheaper and can serve a bigger production team.   Bottom line: As an enterprise mlearning platform provider, our requirements differ from those of most T&D teams just starting to get their feet wet in the mobile space.  However, I do think this is an innovative and novel approach for encoding media files.  And as mobile devices get more capable, the appetite of your mobile learners for compelling content that's professionally encoded for their devices will surely increase. And thanks to Brent for bringing it to my attention too!

As active practitioners and consultants for enterprise mobile learning initiatives, a frequent question we get asked is "What kinds of tools can you recommend to help us test our mLearning content before we release it to our mobile workers?"  It is a great high level question and the answer is both complicated and multifaceted as each deployment environment comes with its own unique requirements that inject their own set of delivery complexities.  If you’re fortunate enough to have a highly structured and standardized delivery environment where everyone has the same BlackBerry Bold/9000 wireless handheld or your users have two or three different brands of Windows Mobile devices, your testing efforts can prove to be straight forward.  But the bigger your audience is, the greater your challenge can become.  And this may mean that full and comprehensive testing can take you as long as the content authoring effort itself - at least for simple content!Building & Testing for a Broad AudienceDepending on the "device diversity" of your environment, you may need to create mLearning content for a wide audience who carry an even broader range of mobile devices ranging from basic feature phones to a selection of today’s hottest smartphone devices; in order to do so, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty too.  More to the point, you’ll need to test and verify the functionality, effectiveness and overall user experience of mobile learning content by trying it yourself on real devices under real world conditions whenever possible.  And if you want to ensure the best possible experience for every class of mobile learner, you’ll need to build a collection of working mobile devices, simulators/emulators and testing tools to span the potential reach of your target audience.  Leave "no stone unturned" by testing the full end-to-end experience from distribution/delivery to installation/loading to access/playback to reporting/analysis.  We commonly see teams making assumptions that because something worked fine on one device - even one from the same device OEM - it should work on others and that’s not always the case.  These variations are often the result of myriad factors like different processor speeds, available device memory, device OS versions, encryption settings, etc.From our experience, there’s no 100% substitute for actually using a physical, operational handset to perform all your testing but this method may not be practical and/or affordable for some teams/content developers.  On the good news front, the longer you’ve been in the mobile learning field, the more likely you are to have an expanding office drawer full of recently retired but still functional mobile devices; all they generally lack is a SIM card module to activate them on a particular carrier network and anyone with a little skill and patience can quickly get comfortable "swapping cards" from one device to another to perform their structured testing protocol (it’s always a good idea to develop one) for any new mobile learning course they plan to deploy.  Those teams that don’t have full device drawers or enough representative physical devices can also try using available device simulators and emulators  which can generally be downloaded (for free!) from the device manufacturer’s support site or other common web locations.  The price is right but, remember, the experience will not the exactly the same as the real thing especially where possible concerns about access security, content encryption and download speeds are concerned given simulated phones attached to broadband Internet connections are not a perfect equivalent.  After many years of using available simulators and emulators, we’re now comfortable and quite familiar with where they work and where they don’t too; they can certainly be used for most of your initial testing and content verification exercises.  Finally, the best simulators/emulators are from the device OEMs themselves including RIM/BlackBerry, Google/Android, Nokia/Symbian and Microsoft/WinMo.  If your team is developing native Apple iPhone and iPod touch applications, a fully functional simulator can also be accessed using Apple’s Xcode IDE too.  Don’t forget your testing environment may also need to be expanded to include appropriate devices for testing 1-way and 2-way SMS messaging across multiple carriers as well as voice/IVR-delivered services on entry level phones.   Finally, it may also be practical to have a few other non-phone mobile devices on hand like a Netbook computer or an Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer ("UMPC") to test content delivery to alternative mobile devices wherever appropriate.The image below is of my office desk and it presents several of the devices and tools we keep on-hand to ensure that all mobile content prepared for wide distribution works as intended across the broadest array of smartphones (old and new), basic feature phones, netbook computers, specialized ultra-mobile personal computers ("UMPCs") and even spanning carriers and wireless delivery methods (GSM vs. CDMA).   This picture demonstrates how we use a combination of both virtual and physical devices and we’ve certainly learned from experience that there are minor yet myriad differences between a real and simulated playback experience - in short, the only 100% verification test must be performed under the same target delivery conditions using a physical device across an actual wireless network.  So, what’s in your drawer? My physical mobile devices and virtual tools for testing include:a. Windows-based RIM BlackBerry Simulators (for all devices & carrier-specific) - we have about 10 of these we use regularly.b. Mac-based Apple Xcode-based Simulator (for all iPhone & iPod touch device for testing apps)c. Android G1 and G2 Emulators (for all 1.x, 2.x devices) d. Windows Mobile Emulator (for WinMo 5, 6 and 7 using VMware Windows partition)e. Nokia Symbian/S60 Sims (using VMware Windows partition)f. Windows -based Netbook (for Netbook applet testing); we also have an Android Netbookg. Sony basic feature phone (for voice and SMS testing on T-Mobile)h. RIM BlackBerry 9000 smartphone (media support and encryption on ATT)i. RIM BlackBerry 8703 smartphone (limited media support)j. Vulcan Flipstart Windows-based UMPC device (1024 x 768 display)k. RIM BlackBerry Storm2 (full media support and encryption on Verizon)l. Nokia 5800 smartphone (Symbian 60/v5 testing on ATT)m. Android G1 smartphone (on T-Mobile) n. Jitterbug basic feature phone (voice/IVR and SMS testing on MNVO)o. OQO Windows-based UMPC device (800 x 480 display)p. Apple iPhone 3G (on ATT)q. RIM BlackBerry 8310 Curve (no Wi-Fi, no encryption on ATT)r. RIM BlackBerry 8330 Curve (with Wi-Fi, unlocked for GSM carriers)s. RIM BlackBerry 7210 phone (very limited media support)t. RIM BlackBerry 8800 World smartphone (on ATT) Next time I’ll explore some of the fee-based mobile testing solutions and alternative platforms you can consider instead of investing in all the physical devices and long-term carrier contracts required to replicate our current methods.

I happened upon a tweet last week while trolling my Twitter in-box that heralded a product announcement from Saba for their new "Saba Anywhere" offering which they described as follows: "Saba Anywhere is a mobile platform that lets people take their learning on the go." The press release continues with details on how flexible, capable and secure the new offering is so I read on with great interest. Instinctively, I reasoned another one of the "Big 10" LMS/Talent Management platform players was finally joining the mLearning party introducing their own well conceived and highly polished solution for the creation, packaging, delivery and tracking on mobile-friendly content to on-the-go workers via their omnipresent smartphone devices. If you're thinking this announcement/product branding meant the same thing, a little further investigation would prove you wrong too!  The marketing post outlines the following:At first blush, this all sounds great!  But peeling back the onion a bit reveals the plain fact the supported mobile device all this "mobile-accessible" content is delivered to and consumed on is a standard Windows-based laptop or desktop computer. Thump!Okay, that's interesting news on a few levels but the likelihood today's typical enterprise mobile employee/executive traveling around for business doesn't have an enterprise smartphone in their pocket/purse in addition to their enterprise laptop computer taking up space and adding heft in their briefcase is increasingly slim-to-none. Furthermore, a recent Mobile Workforce Report conducted by iPass on "Employee Device Preference" revealed that 63% of respondents preferred to whip out their smartphone for work-related tasks versus cranking up their laptop computer to conduct those same biz chores. If booting my laptop takes me 2+ minutes and acquiring a suitable wireless signal takes another 1-2 minutes in some appropriate hot spot, by the time I'm finally ready to get down to learning something I may have already missed the window of opportunity. Contrast that experience/hardship to using your at-the-ready smartphone that enables true "Anywhere" and anytime learning and we begin to question the potential of this strategy.  Not to mention that smartphone-based learning can happen whether I'm seated patiently in a lobby waiting to see a customer/prospect, or standing in a queue ordering lunch or smashed into a commuter train heading home after a long day -- try opening your laptop and taking your course in those environments!  Agreed, the desktop/laptop course experience is richer (more Flashy) today versus the mobile experience and considered by many to be easier to view and consume compared to some mobile content, but true engagement and learning are not only possible but highly achievable on the current crop of next generation mobile devices like the BlackBerry, Apple iPhone/iPod touch and iPad, Google Android and Windows Mobile smartphones that now proliferate across the enterprise. Yesterday's desktop/laptop-optimized content may need to be rethought and re-factored as well but the set of available tools and methods to accomplish these tasks improves daily...the rate of change is accelerating like nothing I've witnessed before and the mobile device (READ: smartphone) will soon be the dominate platform for content delivery (and training delivery) globally.   Much of what the Saba team gleaned in designing and bringing their new Anywhere offer to market can likely serve as foundational knowledge for the next anticipated step in their evolution towards true mobile learning. They can even re-purpose their adopted product tag line too when that time comes ("...Complete your training anywhere, anytime, regardless of network connectivity.").

a.k.a. How On Target Were My 2011 Predictions?  It’s time once again to take stock of what happened in enterprise mobile learning and see if any of my 2011 predictions hit their intended targets. One year ago today, I offered nine predictions running the gamut of hardware, software, industry players and general market movements based on trends we were experiencing in the commercial mobile learning marketplace; here’s my analysis of where these predictions landed twelve months later.Prediction #1 - mLearning Engagements Expand. If 2010 was the year of the pilot, 2011 will be the year of the deployment. As I stated in the previous post assessing my 2010 predictions, the size and complexity of mobile learning projects/programs will continue to expand across all geographical and line-of-business boundaries. I think case studies from enterprise organizations on the leading edge will abound by year’s end for successful mobile learning initiatives by thus providing the "I want to do what they did!" examples the industry has waited for over the past many years. Case studies featuring accelerated ROI with tens of thousands of learners (or more!) using different types of devices in multitudes of languages across diverse geographies are sure to drive awareness in mobile learning and generate interest from organizations of all sizes seeking to achieve their own successes and become more innovative in the way the train and support their ever-mobile learning communities.  On the Target - But Barely.  2011 proved to be another year more focused on the pilot project rather than the production deployment for enterprise mobile learning solutions. True, most of our partners and customers who launched mLearning initiatives in 2009 and after all seemed to be ramping up their efforts to include other divisions and geographies but pilots remained "the norm" for newer accounts. There are certainly fewer obstacles holding back broader enterprise deployments of mobile learning solutions but an array of challenges remain including limited budgets, limited experience, the scarcity of flexible AND AVAILABLE authoring tools (see #5 below) and general macro-economic concerns every company is harboring.        Prediction #2. Device Diversity is the "New Normal". After years of BlackBerry dominance in the pockets and purses of enterprise personnel, iOS (Apple) and Android-based mobile phones and tablet devices will supplant RIM-supplied smartphones as the primary desired (and likely used) smart devices for mobile learning - at least in North America. This shift will be driven by a combination of factors including learner (and executive) demand, IT acceptance and infosec approval plus a movement towards the adoption of "bring your own device" use policies within the enterprise... Bullseye! This one was spot-on and even I was amazed how quickly the omnipresent BlackBerry wireless handset, the standard issue weapon of choice for mobile enterprise workers, started to lose its’ place inside every corporate pocket and purse. Not only did we witness many IT organizations allowing non-BlackBerry devices like iOS and Android handsets onto their networks, several historical "BB only shops" moved to cut the venerable BlackBerry totally out of their long-term device strategies. The BYOD movement certainly gained momentum in 2011 across a simple majority of enterprise organizations we work with too. Finally, the trend towards "single user with multiple devices" really started to resonate with mobile learners wherever the option was available for that learner to access training on whatever device they happened to be carrying, be it corporate provided or personally owned, and enablement of the notion they could switch between their handset, tablet, eBook reader or desktop/laptop to seamlessly continue a training interaction whenever the mood struck them.   Prediction #3. Mobile Apps Become Essential to Enterprise mLearning. As stated in our previous post, the mobile learning "app" has proved its superiority over less compelling mobile web-delivered training materials. True, mobile apps are harder to create and to support but the value derived from an installed app proves far more beneficial and powerful for the typical enterprise customer, especially those looking to support their own defined workforces versus a broad general audience…  Near Bullseye. I still think the Mobile App is King in the enterprise mobile learning space although the drum thumps of HTML5-based mobile web apps can be heard faintly in the distance. We still contend there’s no real comparison between a native app and any web app equivalent especially as it relates to core functionality that IT teams really care about like security, encryption, remote wipe ability, off-line access, support for device features (cameras, recorders), data synchronization, content tracking, and the overall playback experience. We should know - we offer a mobile web app and virtually no one opts to use it when the native app is also available given the lack of content types and features supported today.  HTML5 web apps might be ideal for consumer-centric marketing efforts, mobile games and some social tools but these experiences are one-dimensional compared with the full-on, multi-functional mLearning experiences mixing formal and informal interactions, performance tools, ready access to information and experts, gaming systems and more. We’ll certainly see the features and functionality of HTML5 maturing through 2012 along with access to better and faster networks (LTE, 4G, Wi-Max) but, for now, we still feel the best customer/user/learner experience happens via a native but customizable app framework.  After all, would you rather check your email, Twitter or Facebook on your smartphone using your device’s native email/twitter/FB app or launch your mobile web browser to stay connected? Vendors (and consultants) touting the "myriad benefits" of the mobile web over the mobile app are everywhere but most are latecomers playing mobile catch up and haven’t spent the requisite time needed to learn and master the  native app IDEs that are central to success today.  Prediction #4. Pad/Tablet Use Explodes! The emerging pad/tablet market will gain further momentum and an increasing number of enterprise organizations will start to support/provide the larger form factored devices to their field sales, technical and professional staff.  Given the fact these devices slot into our device lineup somewhere between the typical smartphone and a laptop in terms of size and capabilities, many organizations will start to drop the laptop and supply BOTH a tablet and a smartphone for every mobile worker/learner - and don’t be surprised if these are supplied by different vendors too like having a BlackBerry (or similar) handheld AND an iPad (or similar) tablet. Bullseye #2! The adoption of tablets, initiated by Apple’s iPad but closely followed by several others, proved to be a true driver for enterprise mobility in general and mobile learning is a real beneficiary of this trend. We witnessed more than two dozen companies who had purchased 200+ tablets for their workforce because it was cool rather than with a plan in mind - this situation drove ample opportunity given employee training and workforce development are universally needed and desired by every organization and tablets are viewed by many as the first practical mobile device to overcome the plethora of perceived limitations in mLearning (e.g., tiny screens, static content, awkward user experience, others). The other interesting tablet trend we experienced in 2011 centered on heterogeneous versus homogenous device selection criteria; either the customer wanted their mobile learning accessible on any tablet (iPad, Android Xoom, RIM PlayBook, Kindle Fire, whatever!) or they locked down their choice to just one platform (iPad only, Android only, PlayBook only) based on a combination of factors including support for existing content and sometimes just price. Wherein more deals were "iPad only" in the first half of the year, an increasing number of mLearning programs went non-iPad in the latter half of 2011.  As tablets get ever more popular, and people start bringing their own to work in their briefcase or satchel, we think this form factor will be the key ingredient to driving mobile learning adoption and leverage into the enterprise.      Prediction #5. Authoring Tools Will Evolve. Flash will still not be supported on iOS devices in 2011 but this fact will matter far less over time. Apple’s insistence on never wanting to support Flash content on iOS devices will drive innovation across the authoring tool market that is sure to benefit everyone in the Training & Development field. I feel the time is just around the corner than "Publish to HTML5" options appear within the leading content authoring tools making it easier to design, generate and support compelling interactions and animations without needing a Flash Player on-board the device. On balance, the downside to this means we will actually need more tools to create content that spans all the mobile devices we are targeting for training delivery given most older enterprise mobile devices support neither Flash nor HTML5 due to their very dated browsers. If we lived in a world where everyone had brand new (and updated) devices, mobile learning would be easy but they don’t so it isn’t.    Near Bullseye. The prediction was right but the market timing lagged a bit as the leading authoring tool vendors accepted the fact Flash content wasn’t going to rule the mobile learning market the same way it did the online learning space but the practical reality was it harder for these established vendors to design and ship their next generation, mobile-friendly alternatives to their waiting customers than I thought. As 2011 draws to a close, Articulate’s new Storyline offering is about to be released but without the promised "Publish to HTML5" option in its inaugural flavor. Adobe’s Q4 announcement that it planned to stop developing Flash Player plug-ins for future mobile web browsers was huge and then they directed they were redirecting their own focus towards adding HTML5 output options in Adobe Captivate and their other popular learning market tools also took many by surprise especially given the timing; they essentially burned their ships with these announcements given the needed tools to support their new notions were far from commercially available.Other capable suppliers have jumped into the void left open for now including some nice offerings like dominKnow’s Claro package, Rapid Intake’s mLearning Studio, Impatica’s Impaticafor PowerPoint version 5, Brainshark’s Slideshark (iPad only), Xyleme Pastiche, edCetra Anan, and a few more.  All that said, it is worth noting that HTML5 content is not a 100% solution either given most of the HTML5-based outputs we're testing don’t run on every mobile device - the older the device the less likely it will run - and the content itself isn’t scalable in the same way Flash content always has been meaning certain handsets with super high resolution displays -- like the latest Samsung Galaxy Nexus -- will render courses optimized for last year’s Samsung Nexus One with a huge border around that content. Prediction #6. Private Social Networks Win Over Public.  It was no surprise to many of us that Facebook was the most heavily trafficked web site in 2010 and displaced Google for the first time in many years. There’s no denying the power and reach of social networking in the technology space but we remain convinced that PUBLIC SOCIAL sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube all have diminished value as part of an enterprise learning community when compared with the various PRIVATE SOCIAL sites and applications now available. We strongly agree having anytime/anywhere access to our business social network can provide great value, that having tools to share information like pictures and videos and podcasts generated by users instead of business functions can bridge learning divides, and that weaving informal into formal makes us all better equipped and informed.  We believe that public sites like Facebook and Twitter (amongst others) will not end up becoming the hubs where the learning organization wants their community to gather and share insights due to the lack of security, privacy, oversight and control that are relevant today and even more essential tomorrow. As such, most business-centric social interactions must to seamlessly integrated into the enterprise learning environment and at every mobile access point too.   Target Missed! I missed this one completely…perhaps planting the arrow in my foot instead of the target given public social networks like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter still reign supreme over virtually all private social networks. That said, the trend towards enterprise social collaboration is still one to watch and will probably become something of a reality in the coming year as companies like Yammer and Jive Software (who delivered one of the most successful tech IPOs of 2011) have proven that enterprises want to build and manage their own internal and proprietary social networks and that security is key to marshalling our intellectual assets as they ricochet around our social circles. Google’s new Google+ offering aims to start making inroads into enterprise social interactions as well and the message layer social functions of Microsoft’s SharePoint platform are perhaps the only mobile friendly features of that platform ready to work on today’s most popular mobile handsets and tablets. Suffice it to say, mobile and social are becoming intertwined so this prediction may just need another year.  Prediction #7. Market Consolidations Will Occur. Some form of consolidation will come to the mobile device/handset sector as a few of the key but descending players -namely Nokia, Microsoft, HP and RIM - aligning themselves together to try and overcome the momentum of the two ascending players - namely Apple and Google.  We wouldn't be shocked to find Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 OS appearing on upcoming Nokia handsets or tablet devices, or RIM getting acquired by Microsoft or another tech titan like IBM Global Services in a deal akin to HP acquiring Palm in 2010. Bullseye #3. As crazy as I thought this prediction was last year, it proved to be center-of-the-target with several large transactions and events occurring throughout the year. Indeed, Nokia not only decided to ship Nokia handsets with Microsoft’s Windows Phone mobile OS they actually killed off their own Symbian OS in the process; talk about burning your ships on the shore! RIM was beleaguered throughout 2011 with tepid market perceptions about its aging handset line and its not-ready-for-prime-time PlayBook tablet resulting in their stock being off 75% from historical highs and even rumors of a possible buyout in the future. Google surprised everyone by buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5B in 2011 and plans to jump square into the hardware game to better control the Android experience. We can all trust there will be more market consolidation next year across both markets and industries as mobility becomes a central tenant in every overall IT strategy.  Prediction #8. Here Come the Experts! The growth of mobile learning in 2011 will beget a slew of newly-minted mobile learning and mobile content experts, boutique consultancies, mobile development shops and "me too" vendors all claiming they possess the knowledge, expertise and experience we all need to make us successful in mobile; take most such claims with a grain of salt…  Middle Ring. A few popped up but not as many as I predicted.  That said, every vendor and consultant is now a tablet-carrying, smartphone talking resource and where there’s money to be made, there’s plenty of shingles to get hung out. Content shops are definitely getting into the game and offering expertise in the design and delivery of content and games for tablets like the Apple iPad. The web sites of virtually every top tier LMS/Talent Management provider now touts their mobile capabilities and makes sure their customers (and investors!) know they’re in position to take advantage of any mobility opportunities that come their way. I also find it interesting the concept of mobile now gets injected into the conversation as early and often as possible in industry announcements and press releases.  For example, the byline of press release detailing SAP’s recent acquisition of SuccessFactors clearly states the importance of mobile in their decision to acquire (and pay handsomely for) SFSF’s cloud and mobile-centric offerings but the actual depth of that mobile offering is weak in comparison to other available solution sets. Prediction #9. New Features and New Possibilities.  One of the greatest joys and challenges of being in the mobility space is keeping up with the constant pace of change and innovation. In our experience, learners within and teams supporting enterprise mobile learning environments are all interested in finding ways to derive the benefit of new features and functionality offered on better and faster devices. Our own development roadmap is expanding with the many possibilities afforded through upcoming advances like (a) geo-location, (b) near field communications ("NFC") that may help contextualize learning at a specific location or assist in the bi-directional exchange of pertinent data, (c) augmented reality delivering just-in-time learning opportunities via interactive overlays, (d) the use of gaming scenarios integrated within a structured mobile learning experience, and (e) tighter integration between learning and a devices universal in-box function.  And along the way we plan continue to innovate and iterate on "mil-spec" mobile security, authentication/single sign-on, cross-platform integration tools, and interface customization features that will benefit all our customers and partners. A Hit and a Miss - for Now. We start each calendar quarter with some solid ideas of what we’re going to be working on as a development team - or at least what we planned to work on - but the real world tends to bend your arrows as they leave the bow (so to speak). My predictions about working on near field/NFC and augmented reality/AR functionality certainly got sidetracked for a variety of reasons (lack of devices in the first case and lack of market interest associated with payment in the second) but that didn’t matter and those missions remain on the long-term road map.  What did we fill our time doing? We actually scored direct center hits on several fronts with these efforts:We succeeded in our efforts to make our entire platform more enterprise IT friendly with enhanced security functionality, single sign-on integration and more sophisticated APIs to tie our tools into other 3rd party platforms (e.g., LMS and TM platforms, CRM, ERP, SFA platforms too).Our quest to support the universal inbox concept matured far beyond our vision for it with the outcome of a extensive scripting library we developed that makes it much easier for our customers to integrate whatever learning tasks they’ve defined with not only the learner’s inbox but provides pipes that connect to other 3rd party applications as well.We added device-specific Mobile Apps to support several new tablets including Android 4/Ice Cream Sandwich, Cisco Cius, Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook eReaders, and RIM’s PlayBook. We’ve now added a new gamification layer to our enterprise mobile learning platform - think support for badges, leader boards, rewards/incentives, levels, etc. and these are available to learners whenever they are online or mobile.  While all of these advances are great in and of themselves, the most demand we’re experiencing is coming from the interest in using these new gamification features.Conclusion.  All tallied, not a bad showing on my 2011 predictions. It is safe to assume that 2012 will prove to be an even more interesting, challenging and rewarding year for everyone involved in enterprise mobile learning. Thanks for reading this far down the page and in advance for sharing with others as you feel appropriate! All the best to everyone in 2012.  And watch for my new predictions later this week too! Robert :?)

We are about thirty days out from the Float Mobile LearningSymposium and I am getting excited! I’m ready to pack my saddle bags, mount the proverbial horse and head up the cattle trail to Chicago for this year’s event to be held at startup incubator 1871 and in conjunction with TechWeek 2012 Conference in Chicago. This year’s Float Symposium builds on momentum gained from last year’s inaugural event held down the trail in Peoria, IL (Float’s outpost/HQ) and is sure to please.Why am I excited?  That’s easy, Tex! It is all about the people - from those putting it together to those hosting the venue and everyone speaking but, more importantly, those attending. This event may be boutique in size compared with mega learning events but everyone in the crowd are likely "twin sons (and daughters) from different mothers" who each think about mobile with every action, reaction and breath they take. Sure, there will be sessions and speeches along the way, but the real opportunity is in the connections you make with peers who are excited to share their experiences - both good and bad - with others.If you know about the event, you’re likely part of the "minority crowd" of real mobile practitioners rather than the "majority crowd" still sitting on the fence and not out there riding the mobile rodeo bull.  My advice -- strap in, listen for the bell, and hold on for eight seconds as best you can! When you fall (and you will at some point), know the distance down isn’t too far and just make sure you get out of the way!  Mobile is something to experience, not just talk about, and the best way to learn from others is to share your own practical lessons with them so we can build on what’s proven possible, practical and productive.For my part, I’m pleased to be delivering a session on Enterprise Security for Mobile Learning, an often overlooked and misunderstood topic for individuals and teams tasked with the creation, delivery and management of mobile learning that live within the confines of an information security department’s strict policies and expectations. The introduction of mobile devices across nearly every aspect of our business lives has introduced a wide array of technical, operational and managerial challenges every organization must understand and find ways to address. Every organization approaches security in their own way and the variables differ across industries and use cases.  A combination of IT policies like BYOD, varied use of mobile devices/operating systems, the selection of native apps/mobile web, the need for online versus offline content delivery, to issue of track or not to track, and even exempt/non-exempt employee work rules can all coalesce to make security something many teams think of last and, before they realize it, their projects can be in real jeopardy.My primary goal is to share experiences on security with everyone at the Symposium seeking to plan, implement or manage an upcoming mobile learning initiative, and arm them with tips and tricks to get their IT, infosec and management teams comfortable with the fact mobile is here, it’s real and it really can be secure. My other goal is to connect with other rodeo riders (and clowns) like me and learn as much from their time in the saddle as I have mine.Yippee, ki-yah!

Hagemann is the CEO of Executive Development Associates, a boutique consulting firm specializing in top-of-the-house executive development and the development of high potentials into senior leaders. Hagemann has over 13 years of experience successfully leading consulting firms through times of rapid growth and acquisitions as well as economic downturn and downsizing, in addition to 22 years of experience coaching, educating and developing leaders. As a leader, Hagemann drives a visionary culture with high quality, extreme professionalism and a deep compassion for the leaders and organizations EDA serves. Her firm focuses on excellence in client partnerships and delivery, offering to clients some of the best and most authentic consultants in the industry as well as innovative programs in such core leadership areas as Critical Thinking, Cognitive Readiness and Influential Leadership. She has delivered over 300 presentations and speeches on leadership issues. She has 33 published works including a book on the shifting workforce demographics and their impact on leadership called Decades of Differences. She leads research initiatives and publishes results in the areas of Trends in Executive Development, Executive Coaching and High Potential Development. The post Test Post appeared first on Bonnie Hagemann.

Here are a couple more images from a character I designed. We were supposed to make a character and draw it in different styles. Here is a comic book rendition and a style of one of my favorite artist's, Sean "Cheeks" Galloway.Hope you guys like 'em!As for Sonic, I've been working on it a little bit every few days. Act 2 should be finalized by the end of the month. I'm excited!

After hours upon hours of beta testing the movie in different browsers, computers, versions, I've come to the conclusion that the latest flash player version, v10.1.53.64, sucks. It has been the constant factor that has given me problems while viewing the movie. When viewing the movie using this version, it will randomly drop or skip frames making the animation appear choppy or slow. Sure, if you have a slow computer to begin with you may not be concerned with this issue, but for those of us with powerful PCs, this abnormality seems out of place.For the untrained eye it might not be a big deal, but I know every frame of this movie and when I don't see one, I find out why. There are a few fixes for this if you experience issues and you want to watch Cosmic Chase without a problem.NOTE: These fixes only apply to flash player v10.1.53.64. All other players I've tested turned out just fine. To find out your flash version, click here.There is a built in navigational system in the movie. Once it begins, hover your cursor over the bottom of the movie to bring it up. Usually clicking on the emerald will readjust the movie and the frame skipping will go away temporarily. Downgrade your flash player. From what I can see, the next one down, v10.0.45.2, is your best bet. It's the one I'm currently running and the movie works as intended. To do this, simply visit Archived Flash Player Versions and scroll down and download the flash player 10 archive zip. Inside that you'll find all the releases and simply install the /10r45_2/flashplayer10r45_2_win.exe.Rigorous Beta TestingSo if you follow those directions if you have any problems, you should be fine. I managed to squeeze the file size down to 9.84 MB so we're still on schedule for the release.

Quell [kwel] verb (used with object) 1. to suppress; put an end to; extinguish. We base our work year around quarters, like a lot of companies do. At the end of each quarter, we have a "quell" week. It’s the end of the quarter, and it’s time for us to spend some time and think about what we did and what we’re going to do next. Quell weeks are a mix of meetings, good food, and change. We change a lot around here, but that’s how we get better. Quell weeks make some people nervous, and some excited. As our last quarter ended, some of our developers suggested that we do a "hackathon", and see what we could achieve. We decided to do it. But in the true Rustici Software spirit, we couldn’t call it a "hackathon" — we called it a Quack — half quell, half hack. Mike and Tim (the owners) stayed out of it. They let us come up with our own ideas and organize into groups as we saw fit. …and there were awards. $500 to the team that Mike and Tim saw as the winner, and $500 to the team that the company, as a whole, voted to win. We quacked last week. We built things. We created things to help the company and our customers. I’m not going to list them all here; they’ll be explained in a subsequent blog post. While Mike and Tim retreated to Mike’s office to discuss their "winner", we all voted. It’s important to note that we had to put our names on our ballots, so if you self-voted, everybody would know it. It could be an endless opportunity for your peers to shame you (not that we’d do that). There were too many good quacks for Mike and Tim to decide on one winner, so their award was split between two teams. Winner #1 was "Team John and Andy", with their easy-to-use Tin Can API statement generator that can be deployed to customers that want to let their users capture their experiences. Winner #2 was given Ervin, Nathan, and Brian M. for their work in making our software development process more efficient. The "Mike and Tim" $500 award was split between those two teams. It came from an envelope full of $20 bills, so I’m not sure which team got the extra $20. The company-voted prize was awarded to the team of David, TJ, and me, for giving the SCORM Cloud LRS a real home inside SCORM Cloud. So, my team had to figure out how to split up our $500 between three people. You can’t split up twenty-five $20 evenly, so somebody had to get an extra $20. We left that job up to TJ. TJ’s personal quack vote went to Joe Donnelly. Joe didn’t finish his quack because he got wrapped up in helping our customers with their support issues, but TJ realized the value of Joe taking the time to take a deep dive into our code, the Tin Can API spec, and learn more about code in general. When our customers have issues, Joe is the first person that has contact with them, and by Joe having a better working knowledge of the code, over time, the added value to our customers and our company is priceless. TJ divided the cash award and handed me a folded stack of $20 bills. I didn’t count it. I didn’t know where the extra $20 bill went. Mike made a joke about how it would be funny if TJ gave the extra $20 bill to Joe. TJ: "What else would I have done with it?" I was speechless. Awesome. That mindset is what makes Rustici Software the best place to work.

We’re happy to announce we have a new addition here at Rustici Software! When I first heard that we hired someone from Mississippi, I was overjoyed! You see, I get teased a lot around here for my super southern accent. I was thrilled that I would have someone to spread the teasing around with. I mean… he’s from Mississippi, surely he’s got a southern accent, right?! Boy was I WRONG! While Tim Edwards doesn’t have a southern drawl, he has a bunch of other great qualities that made him a perfect fit for our DevOps position. Tim (or Tedwards, as we call him) will be joining Ben, our chief worrier, in the never-ending task of keeping our services available and scalable. If you’d like to learn some more about him, check out his profile! Welcome aboard, Tim! We’re glad to have you, even without a southern accent

All work and no play, well, that’s just not how we do things.   The first thing people usually learn about our company is that we work with e-learning standards like SCORM and the Tin Can API. The second thing that people tend to learn about us is that we have fun. Part of the fun we have at the office revolves around ping pong — singles matches, doubles matches, inventing new variations of pong (we have one called "grand canyon pong"), and keeping track of our office rankings on the "Pong Ladder". We even have our own language around the pong table…almost every score combination has its own codename. Here are a few: 10-8: we call it "Ten-eight-cious"…or "Tenacious" 7-7: we call it "un-cola"…get it? 7up? 10-4: "over and out" 0-0: we call it "7-2", because John is terrible at keeping score and has been know to call the score "7-2" when it’s really "0-0". Side note: I’m as bad, if not worse, at keeping score. 5-8: vivacious 9-9: nein! 4-2: fortitude 10-0: ten-o-cious (a very prized score) …and there are a lot more, not to mention our doubles teams’ names (The Wooves, The Kings, 7 Wonders, Engine Room, etc.) So, you see the importance of pong at Rustici Software — it’s serious business here.   We used to keep track of our rankings (the Pong Ladder) on a white board. There were some specific rules, but it wasn’t too high tech. Well, when we hired TJ, he realized that the pong ladder could be better. We have a big screen in our main meeting room/pong room that displays important company stats, and TJ had a vision for a system that we could put on that screen that would include a new pong ladder. It would keep track of all of our singles & doubles matches, our rankings, and it would use the Elo ranking system. He found an open-sourced Elo ranking system on Github, but it was written in Ruby, a language that he hadn’t used before. TJ did exactly what any of our developers would have done. He took a little time to learn Ruby so he could implement the Ruby Elo ranking system for our company. Voila! We had a new pong ladder on the big dashboard in our main meeting/pong room. It looks like this:     It’s fancy, it stores all of our game results, and it even sends Tin Can statements to our public LRS when a pong match is done. What does all of this have to do with hiring the right people?   Whenever we tell people that we’re looking for good software developers (which is all the time,) the first question we get is "what language?" We give the same answer every time. "If he/she is good enough to work here, then their familiarity with certain programming languages doesn’t matter." The story of TJ and the pong ladder is a perfect example of this, but it’s not just TJ. This is how all of our developers are. So, now it’s time for me to be a marketer: if you know somebody that fits our definition of a good developer, let us know. We want to have a conversation with him/her.

I like to take care of people. It’s in my blood. I like to think that being "southern" has a lot to do with it, but most likely it comes from watching my mom take care of everyone I knew growing up. It just comes naturally to me, I guess. A few months ago, Mike and Tim (the owners of Rustici Software) asked me to head up a new project that would change the ways in which we cared for our employees. They wanted to launch a new program that would amp up our existing employee benefits package, allowing us to be able to recruit more amazing talent and give them (and existing Rusticians) an even more awesome place to work. Thus, "Jenafits" was born. You might have even seen our new #Jenafits shirts here and here… pretty cool, huh?! Jenafits is our new employee benefits program that goes way beyond the normal health, vision, and dental insurance. We want our employees to do awesome work while they are here, and lead exciting lives — free from some of the everyday stresses of life — when they aren’t. We believe in the power of a happy, less-distracted workplace and I’m here to make sure our employees stay that way. With Jenafits, our employees have access to twice-monthly house cleaning (yes, the employee’s house or apartment), a pretty cool wellness program, lawn care, and a bunch of other pretty sweet services. Rustici Software pays for these things, for our employees. They also get Jenafits on-demand, which covers everything from picking up cat food for Little Guy, to dropping a package at the post office, to planning a birthday party for our employee’s children, and everything in between. There are some companies, not many, but a few, that offer things that are similar to Jenafits (although without that awesome of a name — am I right?) Most of them have a catch — you’re expected to put in more hours at the office, since the company is taking care of so many "personal life hassles." Not here. We still work 40 hours a week; the only difference is we’re all a lot happier now. Oh, and your friend that’s the best software developer that you know…you should tell him/her about Jenafits, and send them our way.

The Jenafits that you pick at Rustici Software can be pretty telling. My Jenafits profile is "Wellness + Internet." It’s no secret that I like to run, bike and swim — A LOT. So, when I heard that there was a Wellness Jenafit that can help offset the costs for my gym membership, coaching fees, race entries etc., I was super-psyched. Triathlon training can get expensive! My other Jenafit, the high speed Internet + Amazon Prime membership, feeds my guilty pleasures. I call this one the "instant gratification package". Some might love this for the streaming videos etc, but not me. Now I can surf and shop at lightning speed, without leaving the living room. Many folks at Rustici will tell you that I’m a bit of a Groupon hoarder (I’m a sucker for those deals). So, a faster way to buy the latest massage deal is right up my alley. But, my online shopping habits aren’t just limited to Groupons. If I can buy it online rather than go to the store, I’m all for it. That’s where Amazon Prime comes in — free 2-day shipping? Dog food delivered to your door? All for it. So there you have it — the Jenafits that I chose. Want to learn more about any of us here at Rustici? Just ask us which Jenafits we picked.

If you’ve been keeping up with us over the years, you know we don’t take ourselves too seriously. For example, we have a running contest I’ll call "who can spit this (insert fruit pit/seed) the farthest". Yep, we do a lot of silly things around here. But, there are many things that we take very seriously, and one of those things is our customer support. If you’ve ever worked with our support team, you know how insanely awesome they are. If you haven’t experienced our customer support team, get ready to have your face melted off by their awesomeness. Joe, TJ, Freddie, Brian Miller, Brian Rogers, Tammy, Tim Edwards and Nathan all handle support, and together they form the mythical "Team Delight". In my humble opinion, these are some of the best support people in the world. And you know what? Our customers agree. See, we have this thing called the "Delight-O-Meter." Whenever a customer support ticket is closed out, our customers get automatically asked to let us know if they had a delightful support experience, or if they didn’t. The Delight-O-Meter keeps track of our customers’ reactions to the 100 most recently closed support tickets. Recently, there were two months in a row where the Delight-O-Meter held steady at 100%. That means that for 60 days, we delighted every…single…customer! This is a HUGE deal to us! These are the kinds of things we’re hearing from our customers — the kinds of things that make the work that we do a delight: "I was very impressed with the support I received. In fact, I was blown away as he offered to speak with me BY PHONE!" "Anyone I work with always goes above and beyond. Thank you!" "Efficient, no blabla, and quick. That’s how I like it. Thanks guys!" If you haven’t already, check out our Delight-O-Meter. We’re really proud of the work that Team Delight does — it’s amazing to see how hard they work to keep our customers happy. Doesn’t a page filled with tiny Jena smiley faces illustrate that just perfectly?!

When I was growing up, I had a friend who had a HUGE family. She was 1 of 12 brothers and sisters and I was super jealous of her. You see, I was stuck smack dab in the middle of two brothers, and having more siblings just wasn’t ever in the cards for me. Then I came to Rustici Software, where it’s essentially the workplace version of 19 Kids and Counting (I don’t actually watch this show, but it chronicles an ever-growing family). Today, I’m excited to announce that we have TWO new employees joining us! Not that this is surprising, given our previous pattern of behavior. Unfortunately, I can’t find a way to make their names rhyme. Anywho, Stephanie Fletcher and Zach Lowry are the newest additions to our family here at Rustici Software. Stephanie is bringing her business development talents to the Tin Can API team. She has also single handedly increased the percentage of females at Rustici Software to 28%! We’re really excited to have her and see what awesome things she can bring to the Tin Can API team. Zach has also joined our team, but he’ll be focused on developing cool software. Zach drives into work everyday from Manchester, TN (over an HOUR away, now that’s dedication!) and we’re looking forward to seeing him bring that dedication to our software and our culture. Think you’re ready to join our family? Let us know! We’re always on the lookout for great talent