Major CMS Vendor Adds LMS/SCORM Capabilities

Relevant to the recent discussions around Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS? and the possibility that we could soon be seeing something that looks more like a Wiki+Tracking capability, I just saw the news: Vignette Provides Online, On-Demand Training For Customers. They've added tracking and SCORM to their CMS solution. So, maybe my previous comments about this being a couple years away may have been too conservative.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Off the Wire, 7-31-06

Many men who have left the workforce over the past few years -- whether by choice or circumstance -- are not rushing back, choosing to live off of savings and home equity rather than take a lower-wage and lower-status job. Approximately 13% of US men aged 30 to 55 are not working, nealy three times the number in the 1960s. Meanwhile, more women are entering the workforce. [New York Times]

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The FDA is considering a move to reverse its policies about the so-called "morning after" or "Plan B" birth control pill to allow its sale without a prescription, but only to women over 18. The pill's manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals, must re-file its application with the FDA for reconsideration. [CNN]

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Arimasa Naitoh, Lenovo's worldwide VP of Development and the "father of the ThinkPad," made some predictions about the future of laptops... Lenovo laptops, at least. Naitoh believes that battery life, wireless capability, security and the ability to run Windows Vista will be critical features in future models. He said that within two years, Lenovo ThinkPads will be able to run all day on a single charge, and (shades of Henry Ford) will be available in colors other than black. [ZDNet]

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You may soon be able to control your computer with a wave of your hand. The University of Buffalo's Virtual Reality Lab has developed a "Fingertip Digitizer" that, when worn on the tip of the index finger, allows a user to operate a computer with hand gestures. [U of B news release]

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For those following the current conflict in Lebanon, The Truth Laid Bear provides a mashup plotting regional blogs and news feeds on a Google Map.

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The heat wave currently blanketing much of the US is creating an all-time record demand for electricity in the Midwest, putting enormous strain on the power grid there. [ABC News]

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According to the website traffic monitoring firm Alexa, YouTube has overtaken MySpace as the world's most popular community website, commanding nearly 4% of all Internet traffic. [Huffington Post]

(Heat) Waves of the Future

Get used to brutal heat waves that cause power outages and take lives, say scientists and weather experts. Not just for this summer -- above normal temperatures are forecast for August across the US -- but for the long term.

Global warming may be the culprit, scientists say, causing more frequent heat waves with higher temperatures. If current trends stay on track, temperatures may continue to rise over the next several years to rival the record-setting heat of the 1930s Dust Bowl era.

Experts believe that residents of older Northern cities, where homes often lack air conditioning, may be at greater risk than their counterparts in the South and Southwest, where air conditioning has always been a necessity. Many cities have prevented heat deaths by establishing emergency cooling centers where residents can stay and cool down.

Source: AP

Instant Evolution: People Bigger, Healthier than their Ancestors

It's no secret that people live longer than did their ancestors. In 1850 the average life expectancy was about 60; today it's close to 80. But new research also finds that we are also taller and heavier than our great-great-grandparents, by about two inches and 30 pounds since 1900.

We also have fewer chronic illnesses that take people out in the prime of life, according to research conducted by the National Institutes of Health that compared the heath of Americans in their 40s and 50 to heath surveys of Union Army veterans taken during the 1860s. Whereas it wasn't uncommon for those in the Civil War era to suffer from arthritis or to die from lung or heart failure in their 40s, their counterparts today have few health problems at that age. Even IQ has seemed to go up, and dementia appears to be falling.

The NIH researchers were particularly surprised at the number of chronic conditions showing up in young people 140 years ago, noting that one in six Union Army enlistees aged 16 to 19 was rejected for a disability (interesting, bearing in mind that the army often accepted recruits who were blind in one eye or who had other serious ailments).

Each generation has experienced better health than its parents -- a phenomenon that's reflected in both developed and developing countries all over the world. The reasons are many, from better nutrition from in-utero through childhood; to more sophisticated surgical treatments, vaccines and medicines; to decrease in workplace hazards; to greater awareness of health issues overall. Researchers also believe that those who survived serious illnesses such as tuberculosis lessened one's resistance to chronic conditions later on, and also theorize that health and nutrition in children before birth and in the first two years is critical to determining one's long-term health prospects. Other studies have found that those born during famines and epidemics (such as the 1918 flu pandemic) are overall less healthy than those born during healthier, more prosperous times.

So, how much longer can the upward trend continue? Transhumanists argue that the sky's the limit, that people should be able to live indefinitely given proper healthcare, body part replacements and nanotechnology. But other healthcare researchers worry that countertrends such as obesity, unintended consequences of medications or environmental phenomena could reverse the upward trend.

Source: The New York Times

A China Bubble Burst by 2009?

MSN Money financial editor Jim Jubak believes that China's economy is way overheated -- fueled by low interest rates, lots of high-risk borrowing and the government's inability to manage production -- and may crash as early as 2009. Naturally, because China has grown to become such a major player in the world economy, even a moderate recession would affect the global economy.

Some of the effects of an economic crash in China might be:

• Massive unrest if widespread unemployment were the result, threatening the stability of the communist government, which is already struggling to maintain control.


• If China were no longer perceived as a safe place to do business, short-term higher prices for goods could result... and could open up opportunities for China's global competitors. Long term, prices could fall once unrest settled down and if China were aggressive in getting back in the game.


• A drop in China's consumption of oil, leading to lower prices on the world oil market -- perhaps even a crash. Good news for Western consumers; bad news for oil-producing countries (especially those in the volatile Mideast), which are currently enjoying the revenues generated by high oil prices.

Where are open source learning applications?

Good post by Harold Jarche - Where are open source learning applications? In it he points to the learning space and says that the current status of open-source learning applications is:

• Innovators - Elgg Learning Landscape and several others
• Early Adopters - Moodle and a few others
• Early Majority - nobody
• Late Majority - forget about it

I would tend to agree with him that there are relatively few open-source learning applications, but would add a few thoughts...

First, open-source generally succeeds once an application domain is fairly well understood and the feature sets are relatively more stable. If you look at the slow creep up the application stack of open-source solutions (OS, app server, database, CRM), then its easy to see the pattern. So, we should naturally expect to see open source solutions emerge where we see relatively stable feature sets.

Second, while for my corporate clients I wouldn't recommend any open source solutions today, I'm only avoiding it because it's probably worth the $ savings in the time you would lose dealing with a tool that is not quite as robust. In other words, the cost of Captivate is less than the lost time dealing with Wink. I do think it's worth keeping an eye on:

* Virtual classroom solutions - after having gone through trying to find inexpensive solutions, there's real opportunity here for Skype+conferencing. A few early tools exist, but they are in the early adopter stage.

* Demo + Audio recording solution - Wink is early adopter stage as well, but will soon be moving more mainstream. Think of it as freeware Captivate.

* Fun Interactions - Hot Potato

* Audio Editing - Audacity

and I know there's some that do essentially PPT + audio, lots of ways to create podcasts, video, and the list goes on.

Finally, I'm not really sure that asking about open source right now is as relevant as asking about free software as a service (SaaS) models. Having used surveymonkey, blogger, pbwiki and other tools quite a bit - it's even better than open source and even less expensive (open source you need time/dollars to get it up and going). While I wouldn't recommend open-source solutions today - unless you really, really don't value your time over dollar expenditure, I would recommend using SaaS solutions.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Off the Wire, 7-27-06

Infamous computer hacker Kevin Mitnick has reportedly taken ill in the Colombian Andes, and was hospitalized for a severe flu that he attributed in part to the high altitude there. [CNN.com]

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The trend toward "consumer producers" continues with the offer of a customizable version of Jessica Simpson's new video "A Public Affair" through her website. Fans can customize the lyrics, inserting their own name in the video. [Trendcentral.com]

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GlaxoSmithKline has developed a vaccine for the H5N1 "bird flu" virus that could be ready for distribution as early as next year. Testing has proven successful so far, though infectious disease specialists warn that the virus could mutate before the vaccine reaches production. [AP]

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The latest drug for teens and young adults -- and possibly the newest drug hysteria -- is sniffing bags of mothballs, or "bagging." Mothballs contain paradichlorobenzene, a substance that produces a high, along with possible liver and kidney failure. And, of course, mothballs are legal. The trend mirrors a move among drug-using teens toward legal yet supposedly controlled substances such as OxyContin and Vicodin, which are often available for purchase over the Internet. Look for moves to reformulate mothballs and control their sale to minors. [CNN.com]

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Who's up for a swim? Scientists reviewing data from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn believe that the planet's largest moon, Titan, sports a cluster of lakes containing a mix of liquid methane and ethane. [CNN.com]

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Americans have become deeply pessimistic about the future, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. While worrying about current events such as the Iraq war and the fighting in Lebanon, 65% of Americans surveyed feel less confident that life will be better for their children. Seventy-three percent felt that America is "on the wrong track," and of those, 81% believed it's part of a long-term decline. [MSNBC]

Does the discussion/debate do any good?

I just saw a great comment from Mark Oehlert around my post: Informal Learning - Harold Tells Us Where To Put It - Now What. In the comment he says relative to discussing Informal Learning:

P.S. Can I just say that I love this debate and think that it is serving our
industry well and that we need more of this and we need it at conferences, up on
stage in front of thousands of people.

This comment really struck me, because one of the questions that I struggle with all the time is whether spending time speaking/writing/talking about these issues does any good?

If you've attended Training, Performance, eLearning conferences over the past 10 years, I'm sure you've had the same experience of seeing the same presentations year-after-year. Many of them talk about:

• We need to focus on business outcomes and performance - not butts in seats.
• We need to look beyond training to other kinds of interventions.

But, the rest of the sessions will be about "Adding Interactivity" to your courseware. Getting your LMS in place so you can count butts in seats. How to build your eTraining more cheaply. Basically, how to do more of the same. If you look back at my Hot Topics in Training - A Crude (but mildly interesting) Analysis, you can see this. At least Games and Simulations were new intervention types getting more discussion.

So, while some of the speakers talk about new approaches (e.g., Marc Rosenberg - Rosenberg's Beyond eLearning - Is that eLearning 2.0?) the reality is that 98% of attendees are going to go home and do the exact same stuff as before.

So, I seriously question Mark's statement:

• Do we need people talking about this at conferences?
• Does it do any good?
• What can we do to have greater impact on the practice of learning (as opposed to the rhetoric)?

India Says No, Nigeria Says Yes to Negroponte's $100 Laptop

Good news and bad news for the One Laptop Per Child initiative spearheaded by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, which seeks to build and distribute laptops costing a mere $100.

First the good news: The government of Nigeria has placed an order for $1 million worth of the OLPC laptops. Said Ernest Ndukwe, Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), "This is in consonance with our vision which aims to create an information rich environment in the country. The Commission believes that preparing the future of Nigeria is to educate the young generation... [T]herein lies the richness of our country."

Now the bad news: The Indian government gave OLPC a major smackdown, revealing an entirely different set of educational concerns. The Indian Ministry of Education called the laptop immature and "pedagogically suspect." Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee summed up the government's concerns by saying, "We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools."

In the scheme of things, OLPC probably lost more by losing India than it gained through Nigeria, considering India's technological sophistication and its growing role in producing computer engineers. For India, it may also be the growing realization that laptops are proving themselves to be less than productive in classrooms, and that computer-literate Indians might be more likely to buy regular laptops anyhow. Plus, as Banerjee said, the correct priority among educators in the developing world is securing the basics -- functioning classrooms, supplies like pencils and paper, and skilled teachers -- even though initiatives like OLPC offer students an edge in an ever more technology-driven world.

Sources: All Africa, The Register

Teen Mags, Dow Jones Lead the Migration from Print to Digital

Teens and business executives: two groups that don't have much in common. Except that both are tech-savvy, and are driving the move of the publications they read from print to the Internet.

Time Inc. announced yesterday that it will cease publication of its magazine Teen People... making it the second major teen magazine to shut down after ElleGirl folded earlier this year. However, in both cases the online versions remain, suggesting that the magazines' readership is still engaged, but just prefers to get content online rather than in print. Plus, the online versions are free...

Also, last week, Dow Jones announced that it will "reassess its news delivery" to provide more content online and less in traditional print formats. Perhaps the end result will be to convert its venerable Wall Street Journal to a wholly online format.

The Journal is an interesting case because it's one of the few publications whose online edition has been successful at attracting paid subscribers (768,000). The Internet offers Journal readers particular advantages, such as delivery of breaking news that's essential for traders who rely on up-to-the-minute information. If an all-online move were to occur, it would be precedent-setting to say the least, and could indicate the final step in legitimizing online publications.

By then, its younger readers -- who grew up reading Teen People online -- might go to the online Journal first, and consider the print version an oddity.

More specifics about Dow Jones' future will likely emerge as current Journal managing editor Paul Steiger nears his announced retirement at the end of 2007.

Sources: Huffington Post, Advertising Age

Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS?

I should be working on content for my presentations at DevLearn in October that look at what's next in eLearning. (As a side note: if you are going to DevLearn and are reading this, please drop me a note.) However, the "what's next" question has become more challenging recently as we've seen the rapid growth of simple and easy to deploy tools displacing more complex systems. My last post, Direction of eLearning - Emergence or Big System, received a couple of interesting comments and I wanted to add a couple of follow-up thoughts.

On Creating Passionate Users they had a great picture that captures how many of us feel about LMS products:

As the number of features increases our satisfaction level begins to go down because of the complexity of getting it to work for us.

What often happens when systems become very complex is that they begin to get replaced by simpler systems. This is exactly what's happened in the Content Management space. Wiki's have exploded onto the scene. They only do about 10% of what a typical CMS will do for you. But, they are so dang easy to get going and use. So, they've supplanted the low-end of the market. It forces the CMS products to seek ever higher features to continue to differentiate - a vicious cycle.
I believe we are poised to see this happen in the world of the Learning Management Systems (LMS). They are rapidly growing features that are far beyond what anyone needs. If you look at what's going on at Saba, SumTotal or any of the major players, they are adding features and major functional areas at an amazing pace. There are definitely some low-end LMS products that are easy to get up and going. But that's not really what's going to replace the LMS. They still require you to think and act in terms of "course" and "training" which is slowly becoming the wrong way to think.

Of course, this raises the question - well if we don't really want an LMS, then what's the replacement?

Scott Bradley Wilson helped by providing a post with more detailed visualization of this.

I think that folks who are in the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) space have a much better idea of what will come next. In fact, many of us have all created our own Personal Learning Environment by cobbling together using a variety of tools (RSS Reader, Bookmarking, Social Networking, Desktop Search, Web Search, Personal Learning Blog, To Do Lists). I'm not 100% sure that we've quite got this right, but it's certainly much more meaningful to me as a learner than an LMS.

If you step back and take the perspective of a learner, an LMS is simply one of many content sources and there is no advantage to me as a learner of having to go through and register for the course (except that I won't get bugged about not completing the course). The tracking is not for me as a learner.

That's what makes me think that something more along the lines of a PLE will begin to come together to replace it.

However, I remain skeptical that we really understand how to use these tools to be better learners and thus, are a bit away from having well-formed personal learning environments. In fact, I believe this to be one of the bigger questions that we face as an community.

Direction of eLearning - Emergence or Big System

I ran across a post by Dave Boggs - More Standards In e-Learning?.... that pointed me to some presentations at alt-i 2 -lab 2006 that look at where the eLearning interoperability standards are going in the future. This is an interesting topic because it highlights a schism that is echoed in the larger world of IT: Enterprise IT (Big Systems) vs. Emergence (see Enterprise 2.0 and emergence).

The idea of Emergence is somewhat simple. You put out small, flexible, relatively easy to use systems and you see what results. The best analogy that sticks in my mind is building a new school and not paving paths between buildings. Rather, you wait to see the dirt paths that emerge based on where people walk. Then you pave those paths.

Enterprise IT on the other hand, attempts to provide significant support for processes and business rules. A great example is accessing an eLearning course. Most LMS products (out-of-the-box) require you to search, register and then launch the course. If you want the content to be searchable through your Intranet search mechanism, most LMS products get in your way (even though the content may be easily indexed by the search mechanism).

When I looked through the discussion around the next generation of standards, it made my head spin. There are many overlapping product sets (virtual classroom, LMS, LCMS, Authoring, Assessment, Search, Collaboration, HRIS, Talent Management, etc.), standards and new technologies allowing them to interoperate (SOA, Web Services, REST). Further, the standards are becoming much more complicated to support richer kinds of interoperability. It makes you yearn for the days of SCORM 1.1 where there was pretty much an LMS that needed to talk to courses.

In many corporate environments, I'm already seeing the pendulum swinging away from Enterprise IT. Sure, we'll stick the compliance training and formal training kinds of things under the LMS. But, a lot of content and tools are now not under the LMS. It's accessible through the Intranet. We cobble these together from smaller, cheaper, lighterweight solutions such as Reference Hybrids

It would be great if the LMS could help us by tracking this, but instead, we end up using other tracking mechanisms.

It continues to feel like LMS Products are Two Generations Behind and that they are going to continue to make it such that Leading with an LMS - Harmful to Your Health (or Skipping Stages in Bersin's Four Stage Model).

Keywords: eLearning Trends

[NEW FEATURE] Off the Wire, 7-25-06

"Off the Wire" is a new FutureWire segment, a roundup of links to various stories that FutureWire readers may find interesting. I will post "Off the Wire" segments as frequently as possible. Naturally, suggestions for stories are always appreciated...

At a recent Brainstorm Conference hosted by Fortune magazine, an age gap became apparent when discussing the benefits of the Internet. Hmmm... how do you suppose that played out? [CNN/Money]

Though President Bush recently vetoed a bill that would have increased federal support for embryonic stem cell research, he is clearly going against the tide of public opinion. A survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that Americans strongly support using embryos for such research (57% to 30%) -- support that cuts across nearly all religious categories. White evangelical Christians were the only group found to strongly oppose embryonic stem cell research.

Back in June, members of Congress -- with input from environmentalists, industry and even the "big three" Detroit automakers -- kicked off a "25x25" campaign to convert 25% of US energy consumption to renewable sources by 2025. Despite its broad support (politicians from Newt Gingrich to Bill Clinton have signed on), and the fact that 98% of Americans favor developing renewable energy, the fate of the effort is uncertain. Plus, with the news being dominated by events in the Mideast these past few weeks, you can be forgiven for not having heard much about "25x25." [Christian Science Monitor]

Go see a glacier now, while there's still time. The melting of glaciers in the European Alps has accelerated greatly since the 1970s; they now cover only half the area they covered in 1850. Scientists at the University of Zurich estimate that if summer temperatures rise by 5°C by 2100, virtually all of Europe's Alpine glaciers will vanish. The situation mirrors that of North America; in Montana's Glacier National Park, the number of named glaciers has shrunk from 150 in 1850 to 26 today. [LiveScience.com]

The Pew Internet & American Life project has released a survey of bloggers. Not surprisingly, the survey found that most bloggers are novice writers under age 30 who blog primarily to share their personal experiences. [UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis explores the implication of this survey, especially the suggestion that bloggers "don't consider themselves journalists."]

Venture capital investments in startup firms have reached the highest level since the first quarter of 2001, totalling $6.73 billion. Biotech, pharmaceuticals, alternative energy and IT were among the winners. [Red Herring]

Tech-savvy book lovers in Sweden can now download and listen to audiobooks through their cell phones, through a new service by Bokilur (literally, "book on phone" in Swedish). [Springwise]

Marketing firms that have had success in online ad campaigns see social networking sites as fertile ground. A survey by Forrester Research in December 2005 found that 51% of marketers surveyed planned to leverage social networks substantially over the next 12 months. A slightly smaller percentage planned aggressive campaigns around RSS and mobile devices. [eMarketer]

Jeff Bezos Bankrolling Private Spaceport

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is reportedly funding a spaceport to be developed in west Texas, servicing spacecraft that both take off and land vertically.

Bezos has bought a 165,000-acre ranch in sparsely populated Culberson County, and has filed an environmental review with the Federal Aviation Administration. The spacecraft company, Blue Origin, could begin suborbital space tourism flights as early as 2010 if everything goes as planned.

Source: CNN.com

Informal Learning - Let's Get Real - Part II

I've received quite a bit of input on my blog post Informal Learning - Let's Get Real. I feel like many of us are in the same boat. We want to figure out what the process and mechanisms should look like when we are going after Intentional Informal Learning. Interestingly, Stephen Downes' new presentation - e-Learning 2.0 - Why the New Tools includes a slide that quotes my blog post:

I'm becoming convinced that folks in the informal learning realm are quite
willing to live with "free range" learning. It's way too touchy-feely and
abstract for me. If this stuff is important, then I want to:

• Know that it will work
• Know why it works
• Know that its repeatable

At first I was surprised, because Stephen is more of the "free range" approach, but once I listened to the presenation, I realized he was using my quote as a counter-example to comment about how wrong I am. Stephen's counter arguments are roughly that (a) informal learning happens all the time "so we know it works", (b) it depends on how you define "works", and (c) if your definition of "works" is that people learn what you want them to learn then you have defined it wrong.

The good news is that it actually helps in clarifying my thinking (and our differences).

Let's me define "works" for most of my projects - changes human performance in a way that achieves desired business outcomes. For example, changes how store managers work with front-line employees in order to improve customer satisfaction scores.

If I look at what I do, I often start by breaking the problem up into Intermediate Factors (see also - Elves, Measuring Results and Informal Learning). In this example, an important factor might be Knowldge of Store Layout. And when you take a look at that factor you realize that the performance in question is really all about how the front-line employee answers a particular kind of question - "Where do I find X?" Unfortunately, there's a lot rolled up into being good at answering this question (product knowledge - what is that thing, store layout knowledge, how you answer questions, helping store managers instruct and work with front-line employees). And there are many, many ways that we could use to help the store manager help the front-line employee improve their performance here.

The answer to whether it works is quite scientific, has our customer satisfaction score improved on that question (in stores where the numbers were down).

So, while our solution allowed for limited bottom-up content creation (best practices capture), this was controlled and closely monitored against metrics - certainly not "free range." I'm not sure that I buy that we would have had nearly the same effectiveness by providing a more open environment. I think the initial seeding of best practices, the on-going follow-up and the control structure we put on top of this system where critical to driving the numbers at the end of the day.

Finally, back to Stephen Downes' comment that if you define "works" as "learning what you want them to learn" ... Well I didn't define it that way, but it was awfully important at the end of the day for the managers to learn certain things about how to affect positive change around the numbers and important to help the managers help employees improve their performance. Maybe it's the difference between corporate environments and academic environments, but I think there's more to it than defining "works" ... there's a fundamental difference in eLearning 2.0: Informal Learning, Communities, Bottom-up vs. Top-Down.

Keywords: eLearning Trends, eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Informal Learning, Collaborative Learning

That New-Time Religion

How could the national discussion about religion evolve in the coming years? The future of faith could hold some surprises.

A survey conducted by the City University of New York in 2001 found that the third most popular "religion" in the US was, in fact, no religion at all. After Catholic (24.5%) and Baptist (16%), the third largest religious category was "no religion" (atheist, agnostic or secular). Even in "Bible Belt" states and Mormon-dominated Utah, "non-theists" represent a significant portion of the population. Currently, many of these people don't think of themselves as part of a religious group. But what if they were to discover their commonality, or identify with a leader who could offer them a political alternative? Would any of today's leaders consider taking up the challenge?

On a different note, the new blog The Digital Sanctuary speculates on how new media might change the nature of religious worship. The blogger, Cynthia Ware, notes that, in her experience, Internet technology has already become critical to keeping her congregation informed about events and activities. How else could the faithful leverage technology... and how might the use of technology influence the development of religious faith?

Technological change has had an enormous impact on religion, from the first printed copies of the Bible that helped trigger the Reformation, to television that led to a new form of worship in televangelism. Rituals and doctrine have been created in response to the needs of the populace; the stationary, land-bound serfs of medieval Europe built grand cathedrals, while the nomadic tribes of the Islamic world memorized the Koran and prayed wherever they happened to be. How else will future trends and technologies shape and redefine our religious faith?

UPDATE: Flying in the face of assumptions that religion would decline in the modern world, researchers at the Pew Forum for Religion & Public Life believe that religious observance is growing worldwide. Freed from oppression of communism and other regimes that saw faith as a threat, religion is manifesting itself in forms ranging from evangelical Christianity to radical Islam to "neo-orthodoxies" that adapt religious observance to politics and other aspects of the modern world.

Dashboards - Performance Intervention Opportunity

Found this via a post on Column Two - Productive dashboards. Definitely worth a read since we've been seeing this trend as well and there is a definite opportunity to tie performance interventions to dashboards. The approach we've used with various clients is to tie each KPI to a set of performance suggestions, learning opportunities, etc. In some cases these are static lists, in other cases these are composed into action plans that must be approved.

The beauty of the Action Plan approach is that we can then do follow-up (based on the dates in the Action Plan) to ensure that the plan is worked. We have also been able to track the effectiveness of each performance suggestion based on the delta in the KPI after the plan is worked. It definitely surprised us what worked and what didn't in some cases. We pulled down stuff that didn't work and created more interventions using approaches that did work.

The end result of this kind of process is that you are able to impact performance that has a tangible effect on numbers in the dashboard. These have been my favorite projects!

"E-Mail Has Become the New Snail Mail"

If you're e-mailing instead of IM'ing or text messaging... well, sorry, you're behind the times.  Increasingly, tech savvy people are relying on texting and instant messages rather than e-mail to communicate, citing immediacy and convenience, as well as relief from spam overload.  "In this world of instant gratification, e-mail has become the new snail mail," says 25-year-old Rachel Quizon from Norwalk, Calif.

Even though texting and IM'ing are making their way into the workplace, the obvious generational divide persists.  While young people embrace the new communications media wholeheartedly (they prefer IM over e-mail by a 5-to-1 margin), their older colleagues still prefer e-mail.  "Adults who learn to use IM later have major difficulty talking to more than two people at one time — whereas the teens who grew up on it have no problem talking to a bazillion people at once," says social media expert Danah Boyd. "They understand how to negotiate the interruptions a lot better."

Source:  AP (via MSNBC)

Pew Survey on Blogging - Training Professionals Far Behind

Found via Joho Blog - Pew has a new report on a national survey of bloggers and blogging (PDF Link Directly). Interesting information:

• Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog.
• Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs – a significant increase since the fall of 2005.
• 37% of bloggers cite "my life and experiences" as a primary topic of their blog
• More than half (54%) of bloggers are under the age of 30.

The 39% seems very high to me. It especially seems high because my experience at Training 2006 suggested that very few people in Corporate Training read blogs.

Question asked of 200 Training Professionals - "Where do you learn about what’s new in learning?"

• Publications, e.g., Training Magazine, CLO, etc. – 99%
• Blogs – 2.5%

Granted that much of what is being blogged these days is by teenagers telling their friends what they did today. But still it makes us seem a bit behind?

Why is our writing and readership level so low? A comment on a previous post by John Cleave:

I "use" blogs frequently via Google searches, but have never managed to integrate them into my daily practice, because there are only so many hours in a day.

I would suspect that John has hit the nail on the head. We are all so busy, how much time can we spend on Scanning/Reading as a way to stay up on what's happening? An hour a week? Two hours? If so, then what sources should I look at? CLO Magazine or a blog?

Personally, I've come to find that my Scanning/Reading activities are equivalent across magazines and blogs. Further, while I'm still a person who sits on airplanes reading trade magazines, I find myself doing more and more of my Scanning Online so that I can take advantage of Personal Learning Strategies.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

China Tech Trends

Silicon.com interviews Sage Brennan of Pacific Epoch about emerging business and technology trends in China. Brennan, a China expert based in Shanghai, says that despite bureaucracy and the trappings of communism, the Chinese economy is surprisingly similar to those of the West in terms of being consumer-driven. The Chinese, he says, are also heavy Internet users, blogging, chatting and posting to online forums, even in the face of government attempts at censorship. The Chinese workforce is also very mobile; in a seller's market, a skilled worker who speaks English has his or her pick of jobs.

Brennan believes the biggest weakness in the Chinese economy is a general lack of innovation, stemming from a centuries-old culture that values tradition instead of change. But Brennan believes that the Chinese will become more innovative over time as they are exposed to different ideas and see the value of innovation in their own economy.

Where Might We Be Living in 2025?

Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR) has created a map of projected population shifts between now and 2025. The map takes into account population migration trends, growth of certain populations, and possible evacuation of coastal areas threatened by rising sea levels.

Predictably, much of the world's future population growth will come from areas that are already densely populated, such as India and China. But some highly populated regions -- Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Japan, and Central and South America -- are projected to experience population declines within the next two decades.

"By bridging these two areas of demography — mapping and long-range, aggregate projections — we're getting a better idea of where people are likely to live in the future and why," said Stuart Gaffin, associate research scientist at CCSR and lead scientist on the project. "Hopefully, work like ours will play a central role in improving environmental policies around the world and in reducing natural hazard risks faced by the most vulnerable parts of society."

The map is expected to help climatologists, conservationists and others determine which populations are most susceptible to natural disasters and resource shortages in the coming years, as well as anyone else needing to understand how regional populations will change.

Source: ScienceDaily

The Downside of the Long Tail

The "long tail" phenomenon has received renewed interest in part because Chris Anderson, who coined the term, has recently published a book on the topic, arguing that the long tail helps niche markets. However, Jonathan Rowe offers a contrarian view, suggesting that the long tail is not the free-market panacea that Anderson claims:

Anderson contends that this means the gradual demise of the blockbuster. There will be more niches, and less mass on top. But as John Cassady points out in the current New Yorker, it more likely means the demise of the middle -- that is, the items that sold pretty well but not extraordinarily so. “A long-tail world doesn’t threaten the whales o\r the minnows,” he writes. “It threatens those who cater to the neglected middle.”

I wonder if it’s a total coincidence that what’s happening to merchandising on the Web is happening to peoples’ fortunes in the society at large. Is there a connection between a world in which the mechanisms of selling tend to drive out the middle, and one in which the very rich get richer while the middle morphs into a long tail at the bottom?...

[W]hat happens to a community when every member has his or her head up their own little niche? One of the advantages of the old model – or paradigm, or whatever -- was that we sometimes had to listen to things we didn’t entirely agree with, or like. We had to moderate our annoyance and leave room in our psyches for someone else’s views.

Now people can crawl into their cocoons and spend their lives nursing their outrage at people who don’t think exactly as they do. Cf the political arena today. Isn’t "polarized" just another word for "niche-ized"? There’s something to be said for not always having exactly what we want...

Is the long tail also a long maw that reaches into this non-market realm and cannibalizes it? You could make a case. A story in the New York Times a few days ago dipped into the world of male college students who spend 4-6 hours a day playing video games, with a corresponding deficit in social skills. The long tail, Anderson writes, reflects new technology that can “tap the distributed intelligence of millions of consumers to match people with the stuff that suits them best.”

Intelligence? That’s market orthodoxy with a techno-futurist spin. Everything we do as consumers is a "market choice", and therefore by definition intelligent and good. There’s another possibility, which is that the market can be as dumb as we humans who comprise it; and therefore technology that provides greater range for market selections also provides greater range for this dumbness as well.

Source: OnTheCommons.org

Shopping by Text Messaging

Spawned by the ability to link a PayPal or credit card account to an SMS-capable cell phone, several US startups are helping to promote text-to-buy shopping.

New Yorkers can use Mobo to order food from take-out chains across the city simply by sending a text message containing a "fave" (saved order from a favorite restaurant via your phone or the Mobo website); Mobo texts you back when your order is ready, and automatically bills your credit card.

LiveBuyIt is a similar concept, though many other types of products are available. Produced in partnership with Lucky magazine, LiveBuyIt makes available everything from clothes to jewelry to cars (!), though as of this writing only a few items are available.

Both systems require a fair amount of technical savvy, so they're not for everyone. Both appear to target young, affluent buyers who may be most comfortable making purchases (large ones in particular) via text messaging. Of the two, Mobo would seem to hold the most promise, helping make a task that all of us do everyday (get a meal) as quick, easy and inexpensive as possible.

RELATED: A somewhat different use of shopping via cell phone is being forged by Quickpons and Cellfire, two services that allow shoppers to download store coupons to their cell phones. Quickpons is SMS-based, whereas Cellfire requires a software download that is only compatible with Cingular phones.

UPDATE (8/3/06): The production version of LiveBuyIt is now live.

Source: Trendcentral

Tokyo Becomes a "Heat Island"

While much of the US broils with abnormally high temperatures this week (99°F in my little corner of New Jersey yesterday), other parts of the world are coping with uncomfortable summer heat as well. Tokyo, for instance, experienced very high temperatures last week (96.8°F on Saturday), due in part to the "summertime heat island" phenomenon.

A local condition, the "heat island" effect occurs in cities lacking trees and grass cover that promote natural cooling. Buildings, meanwhile, retain and reflect heat, keeping cities uncomfortably warm even at night. The Japanese government is studying ways to relieve heat islands such as Tokyo, which experienced record heat last summer and appears on course to remain hot this year. Among the proposed solutions are to develop new structures that dissipate heat more efficiently, enforce traffic control, promote more use of low-emission vehicles, energy conservation, increased planting of vegetation, and recreational activities outside the city center in the summer.

Source: Kurashi News from Japan

Informal Learning - Harold Tells Us Where To Put It - Now What

Great post by Harold Jarche - Informal Learning and Performance Technology responding to my post - Informal Learning - Let's Get Real. His post is the kind of reasoned thinking that helps make sense of different approaches. It's interesting how Harold has broken up the world, and, frankly, I'm not sure how universal this is, but I think it helps.

* Performance Interventions
** Learning Interventions
*** Instructional Interventions (e.g., Training)
*** Non-Instructional Interventions (e.g., Job Aids)
**** Informal Learning Approaches
** Other Interventions
*** Long list here including things like Career Development, Feedback Systems, ...

Harold then gives a sample list of non-instructional performance interventions:

1. Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS)
2. Workplace Design
3. Knowledge Management (KM)
4. Just-in-Time Support
5. Communities of Practice
6. Multimedia
7. Internet and Intranets
8. Corporate Culture changes
9. Process Re-engineering
10. Job Aids

Learning Professionals I think would say that they commonly use: EPSS, parts of KM, Just-in-Time Support, Multimedia, Intranets, and Job Aids as part of their tool set. And realistically, we are beginning to see all of these be parts of the solution mix. And realistically, this is part of the challenge today, the broadening to look at a broader solution mix.

What is curious though is that much of the discussion around Informal Learning seems to center on Communities of Practice. I like that Harold has gone back to the more classic definition of HPT and just includes these kinds of solutions as part of his overall mix.

Harold states:

I think that informal learning is a way of categorising a whole range of strategies that we now have available with the advent of cheap web access, powerful personal computers and low cost applications likes blogs, wikis, tags, etc. Informal learning offers a new array of tools for the learning professional’s tool box.

So, it sounds like Harold positions this in with non-instructional learning interventions and sees the new array of tools (blogs, wikis, etc.) key to informal learning solutions.

I personally like Harold's direction on this because it is hopeful that we can find more systematic ways to think about where, when and how Informal Learning solutions can fit into the overall mix. I personally think that there's a disconnect between the design and implementation of HPT solutions and the "free range" approach that many in the Informal Learning community take.

Of course, even if we tend to agree with Harold's positioning of Informal Learning and his assessment of some of the kinds of tools used in Informal Learning, it still leaves us with an awfully blurry picture. A comment on my last post by Guy L. Levert provides a telling picture of how most of us feel on the subject:

my take on informal learning is a little blurry but I think there is value in there ...

I have more questions than answers - hence the blurryness of my understanding of that informal learning beast. Lots to find out - but that's good, it's informal!

So, I want to go back to my challenge in the last post:

But, are we collectively making progress in this? Where are the resources for learning professionals that help us learn? Where's our great examples of informal learning support? Please don't tell me it's TrDev and ASTD. Is that all we've got?

Let's get real... If supporting informal learning is the wave of the future and a critical capability for learning professionals of tomorrow, we had better come up with something more than "unclear process" and based on a "rough end target."

Life as a Clone

What would life as a clone be like? How deeply would they empathize with their other clones? Would they be true individuals?

Scientists are beginning to ask such questions, despite the fact that no true human clones exist, and despite strong scientific and ethical opposition to human cloning. To better understand the mindsets of genetically identical individuals, UK and Austrian researchers have been studying identical twins.

The studies show that, while identical twins value their relationship with one another, they do see themselves as individuals. Factors such as environment and proximity have formed their personalities much more so than genetics, the studies have found.

Even though, like clones, identical twins share identical sets of genes, identical twins are the exact same age and typically grow up together, whereas clones could be born years or even decades apart. A clone that's very elderly or deceased could have a co-clone who's an infant; based on the UK and Austrian studies, these clones would have very different life experiences that would shape their personalities much more so than their shared genes.

This kind of study, the researchers say, is critical to understanding the functioning of clones and how they could impact society, even though human cloning is years away, if it happens at all. It also shows that clones would be, indeed, true humans, and not mere automatons.

Source: BBC

Movie Rentals via iTunes?

The blog Think Secret has scoop about a possible pending announcement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs that the iTunes Music Store will soon feature downloadable movie rentals -- presumably for playback on computers and video iPods, a la Vongo. The deal, between Apple and several major movie studios, represents a departure from Apple's previous strategy of endorsing movie sales. The service will supposedly place date-stamp coding in movie files that prohibits play after either a certain date or a set number of viewings. No word yet on the price per movie, or when the service will be fully available.

The reported announcement is scheduled for August 7.

RELATED: Ars Technica reports that movie download service Movielink is partnering with Sonic Solutions (makers of the Roxio CD/DVD recording software) to allow its customers to burn downloaded (and copy protected) movies onto DVDs for more convenient viewing.

Better Questions for Learning Professionals

If you've been reading my blog, you know that I often discuss Personal Learning:

• Improving Personal Learning - A Continuing Challenge for Learning Professionals
• Tools and Strategies for Personal Learning
• More Effective Conferences for Learning Professionals

A big part of what I've come to realize that the barrier to us moving beyond being The Worst Learners are:

• We (like many people today) lack the intrinsic motivation to systematically improve our personal learning capabilities. We already have too much to do.
• We lack the right questions.

While the motivation question is certainly a big question, I want to skip over this for now. I'm going to assume that since you are reading this blog post, you must be in the top few % of motivated people.

What is more concerning is that I don't really think we know the right questions to be asking.

The Value of Questions

Now, let me start this diatribe with a brief rant on the importance of asking the right questions. In my mind, it is THE most important skill or ability to have. Maybe it's just the whole brainwashing they give you as part of a Ph.D. program, but the biggest aha while getting a Ph.D. is that it's the question that is most important. The answer is often easy once the question is formulated correctly.

As a funny aside, I will carry to my grave a memory of one meeting with a potential client. They were a start-up run by a strong Type-A CEO. As part of initial meetings, there is considerable value provided by any consultant in terms of the questions that help frame exactly what the problem/need is. After asking two hours worth of questions to help the CEO go from a hopelessly vague initial concept to a much better defined, more realistic product concept, the CEO looked at me and said that he was hoping that our next meeting we would come prepared to show some real value. After all, he had spent two hours of his time answering all of our questions and expected some value in return. It was a truly eye-opening experience.

In past writing about More Effective Conferences for Learning Professionals, I realized that the most important aspect of making sure you get the most you can from the conference is determining what the questions are that you should use to focus you during the conference. Otherwise, you will swim through the sea of sessions and vendors and will not get nearly as much from the conference.

What Questions Are We Asking

So, before going on, consider what the most important questions are that you face as a learning professional?

At training and/or eLearning conferences where this question was asked of the attendees, the common kinds of responses are:

• How do I get more interactivity into my courseware?
• How do I reduce the attrition rate in my course/courseware?
• What's the best authoring tool to use?
• What are other organizations doing?

One conference organizer told me that eLearning session descriptions with "interactivity" in the title would draw larger audiences. Clearly people are trying to get that question answered.

But, is that a good question? I think we can all step back an critique the question - it presupposes that I need more interactivity. Likely the person asking it wants more interactivity because they've been producing courseware that is basically "Click Next to Continue" type learning. The reaction is that this is boring. Or, they've not produced anything, but they know they don't want to only do that.

Better Questions

My guess is that just as most learning professionals can tell you the problems with the interactivity question, they can similarly suggest lots of much better questions that might be appropriate instead:

• Is courseware appropriate for my audience and topic? What are some alternative blends that might work?
• Does interactivity make a difference in terms of learning? What does the research actually show? Is there demonstrable return that I can use to justify greater budget? Where's Will Thalheimer and can you introduce me?
• Can I reduce the duration of courseware and still get an effective result? How would I supplement that with reference? What's the cut-off point?
• What are some possible ways I teach topic a process topic so it sticks? What are the pluses and minuses of those interactive styles?

As we drill down on any one of these we can successively improve the questions until we arrive at much more meaningful types of questions.

Going back to my example of preparing for a conference by formulating better questions, I think you'll get a much better conference experience if you are prepared with questions such as the above when you go into a booth or go to a session. But, even better would be to start with the underlying issues that your company, your organization, your team faces and formulate questions starting there:

• What are other organizations who have an aging, highly skilled workforce doing to train the next generation of professionals? How are they getting them up to speed?
• How are organizations handling the cross-over between management, knowledge management, learning?

An Industry Challenge

The good news is that for most individuals, coming up with much better questions for your particular situation is not necessarily that hard to do. If you are having a roadblock, start with the desired performance. If you are still stuck, drop me a note.

But, what I've been finding is that as an industry we seem to have landed on some basic questions that get answered over-and-over and we are not necessarily moving things forward. Maybe that's just because I've heard the same sessions given at every conference for the last 10 years. It is also that some questions in learning are hard to answer such as "Does the media make a difference?" (Although you normally can redefine the question to make it answerable and hence much more useful.)

I think the challenge of the right questions today is also because we are in the midst of a fundamental shift away from course as the unit of learning, a shift towards on-demand and at-work learning, a dramatically different technical landscape, a move towards business results and performance as the focus ... the world is allowing us to look at things in a very different way ... and we don't necessarily know that questions that we should be asking.

So, to get us started towards some better questions, here are some that I might ask of other attendees, presenters, vendors, etc.

• Informal Learning - How can I provide a development process, tools and systems that foster informal learning in a way that I know will have impact on the performance that I care about and that is repeatable? What can I borrow from KM, collaborative learning, and management practices? What does this look like in practice? When do I use it? When are you using it? What effect is it having? How do you know?
  
• Personal Learning - What systems, tools, techniques can I use to make myself a better learner?
  
• Reference Hybrids - How have you organized landing pages to support both reference and learning modes? How do you define what will be treated as reference and what as learning? What tools are you using today? What do you expect to use in the future? How do you track this kind of learning? Do you have metrics on impact?
  

So what are your questions?

Eggs as Billboards

With the effectiveness of TV advertising and overall viewership on the decline, how else can a TV network promote its fall lineup? The solution is obvious -- put advertisements on eggs!

Egg-centric? Egg-xotic? Perhaps. But how better to catch the eye of fickle viewers than when they're preparing their sunny-side-up? The marketing eggheads at CBS plan to brand 35 million eggs this September with tag lines promoting the network's new and returning shows. Phrases include "CSI: Crack the Case on CBS" and "The Class, New Grade-A CBS Comedy." (rimshots, please!)

To produce the eggs, CBS is partnering with EggFusion, which has developed laser technology to produce "OnEgg Messaging." Originally created to emboss expiration dates on individual eggs, the technology can print virtually any kind of marketing message. Considering that Americans consume 50 billion eggs a year, that's an egg-tremely high number of potential impressions.

One must wonder if CBS will see a spike in viewership this fall among short-order cooks... of if they'll just end up with egg on their face. But even if egg-vertising doesn't crack you up, remember that not that long ago, people thought placing ads on websites was a pretty weird idea, too.

Source: AP (via Yahoo)

Social Networking Sites Serve Niche Audiences

Now that MySpace has become the dominant general-purpose social networking website -- as well as the most popular destination on the web -- new entrants are focusing on specialized audiences. Witness Dogster and Catster, sites where dog lovers and cat lovers can create their own web pages, post pictures of their furry friends, join forums, look at dogs and cats up for adoption, and even chat.

For people looking for a clever way to share their life story with others, dandelife is a beta "social biography network" that allows members to create biographies along a timeline, integrating links, YouTube videos and Flickr photos to document people, places and activities. Not everyone wants to document their life this way, but for those who do, dandelife offers an innovative and intuitive means of doing so.

In addition to serving niche audiences, specialized sites cater to users who may be overwhelmed by a general site like MySpace, or turned off because of the controversy it has generated lately.

RELATED: Dating sites have similarly become more specialized. Prescription4Love.com is an online dating service for people with chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity and even STDs. STD dating sites have been around for some time, but those with other chronic conditions have not been as well served. As TechCrunch says, "One consequence of the falling cost of computers will undoubtedly be an increase in the number of people who have chronic medical conditions but are now able to afford to be online. Im sure in the future we will see many, many more services targeting the life styles and needs of demographic groups previously unable to use the web at all."

Source: Smart Mobs

First Half of 2006 Was Warmest Period Ever in US

Hot enough for ya? As much of the nation literally sweats it out with triple-digit temperatures, we learn that the first half of this year was the warmest period on record.

The average temperature for the continental US, measured by the National Climatic Data Center, was 51.8°F, or 3.4°F above average for the 20th century. Five midwestern states experienced record warmth -- warmth that likely contributed to drought and subsequent wildfires.

Globally, early 2006 was the sixth warmest period since records were first kept in 1880.

Source: AP (via Brietbart.com)

[BREAKING NEWS] Space Shuttle Discovery Lands Safely in Florida

After the madness in the Mideast, wildfires, and record heat, a bit of good news: The space shuttle Discovery made a perfect landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida just moments ago after its 13-day mission.

Maryland Gov. Proposes Renewable Energy Mandate

When it comes to government promotion of alternative energy sources -- action rather than just rhetoric -- individual states may lead the way. Earlier this week, Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich proposed that the state government buy at least 10% of its energy from renewable resources to power its buildings and other properties. Ehrlich has specifically cited wind and solar energy, as well as "forest residue" left behind from logging, as potential fuels.

"We need to get with it," the Republican governor said. "We want to be No. 1 when it comes to alternative energy in the United States of America."

If Ehrlich's proposal is enacted, it would put Maryland on the forefront of alternative energy use. Environmentalists and other observers are cautiously optimistic, noting similar pledges dating back to 2001 that have received no funding and produced no results. Says Brad Heavner of Environment Maryland, "My feeling is, show me the contracts. We've been hearing promises like this for six years."

Source: WTOP 103.5 FM

Informal Learning - Let's Get Real

I recently read an article by George Siemens - Changing Models where he points to the changes that necessarily need to happen in our understanding of how to support learning. I think he's right on the money (as usual), but then he points out:

ISD can be very effective for learning that has both a clear end outcome and
process. Often, today's learning has neither. We have a rough end target (solve
this problem, innovate, adapt, etc.)...and we really don't have a clear process
(other than teams, meetings, and emerging collaborative spaces).

Wow, I have a really rough time signing up to be in charge of something that doesn't have a defined end target and no process. In fact, this is the antithesis of what I would suggest is the cornerstone of my professional life (see: ADDIE Not Relevant?). I can understand the desire to allow for end-user contribution and an evolving system, but my software development background gives me great pause.

I've written about exactly this issue several times:

• Elves, Measuring Results and Informal Learning
• Informal Learning is Too Important to Leave to Chance
• Guidance Needed - Are we Misguided in Informal Learning and Collaborative Learning Techniques

and have read lots about this. I'm becoming convinced that folks in the informal learning realm are quite willing to live with "free range" learning. It's way too touchy-feely and abstract for me. If this stuff is important, then I want to:

• Know that it will work
• Know why it works
• Know that its repeatable

For kicks, go look up the definition of informal learning on Wikipedia. Whoops, there isn't one. Why not? Well I tried to figure out what I'd say and it's hopelessly vague.

Heck, I'm not even all that convinced that we, as learners ourselves, are particularly adept at learning (Do Learning Professionals Make the Worst Learners?). I've been trying to write (Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective) about some ideas on how we can participate in improving our personal learning skills.

But, are we collectively making progress in this? Where are the resources for learning professionals that help us learn? Where's our great examples of informal learning support? Please don't tell me it's TrDev and ASTD. Is that all we've got?

Let's get real... If supporting informal learning is the wave of the future and a critical capability for learning professionals of tomorrow, we had better come up with something more than "unclear process" and based on a "rough end target."

Fabled Bell Labs Facility Sold, Faces Wrecking Ball

The Holmdel, New Jersey headquarters of Bell Labs, the legendary R&D organization that gave the world the laser, the transistor, LED lights, the Unix operating system, fiber optics, microwave communication and cell phone technology, has been sold. The real estate investor who bought the site wants to use it as an office park and plans to retain its pastoral charm, but says that the unique building is outdated and cannot be renovated, and therefore needs to be demolished.

The massive facility has been a part of the Holmdel community (approximately 30 miles south of New York City) for 44 years, and at its peak held 5,600 employees. In the '90s, Bell Labs was folded into Lucent Technologies, which was hit hard by the 2000 tech bust. Lucent continues to maintain two smaller labs in northern New Jersey, and remains active in emerging fields such as nanotechnology.

The demise of the Holmdel facility marks an end of an era for corporate R&D, as well as for elaborate corporate facilities in general. In an age of aggressive cost-cutting, outsourcing, globalization, mobile workforces, mergers, decentralization and rapid business change -- all practices that Bell Labs helped make possible in one way or another -- monolithic R&D organizations have lost much of their relevance. Yet without the innovations they produced, the world would be a much different, and poorer, place.

Source: New York Times

Africa May Be Climate Change's Biggest Victim

Poverty-stricken countries in Africa will likely bear the brunt of the effects of global warming -- drought, temperature fluctuations, and flooding from heavier rainfalls. The result will be more crop failures, famine, diseases and military conflicts in already fragile regions, despite increased aid from developed countries.

Hilary Benn, the UK's Secretary of State for International Development, has suggested that developed countries reconsider the Kyoto protocol (which the US has never ratified) in light of the threat to African countries, which produce relatively little greenhouse gases. Benn also says that the impact will hit sooner than we think. "Climate change is happening faster than any of us anticipated even five years ago. It is the most pressing global challenge of all, yet does not have a global framework for solving it. Climate change knows no boundaries and neither should we."

Source: The Independent

Your Very Own Satellite

Admit it... you know you've always wanted one. Astro Research Corporation, a Japanese aerospace firm, has developed MySat-1, a "personal Earth orbiter" that can be yours for a mere $860,000.

The 44-pound cube can be launched within a mere 18 months of an order placement; the first one is said to be ready within a year. Once in orbit, the MySat-1 can perform a variety of sensing, observation, and scientific tasks, and can hold an assortment of payloads. Owners can track the satellite, which will orbit the Earth 14 times per day for up to 20 years, through an intranet site.

Already, MySat-1 has potential competitors, as firms in the US and Europe are developing satellites weighing two pounds and launched at a cost of $100,000. Critics, however, question the wisdom of launching personal satellites. Not only will these contribute to the growing collection of space junk in orbit, but they could also be used for nefarious purposes. Imagine the possibilities, and problems, associated with someone's "personal" spy satellite, a "personal" communications satellite used by a criminal syndicate, or a satellite used to jam or even hack into legitimate communications.

Otherwise, what, pray tell, would someone really do with their own satellite? It might not matter -- once Paris Hilton and Angelina Jolie have their own, they'll be all the rage.

Source: Discovery News

Future of ISD in a World of Read/Write Web

Interesting post by Brent - ISDers: The Master Filters that parallels some of my recent posts talking about instructional design transition as delivery models have changed. Brent's main point is that in a world of user-generated content (or even SME) generated content then the role of ISDers is different. I tend to agree with most of his assessment, but disagree with his statement:

If we are good/lucky we meet in the middle and the compromise is the
mediocrity of elearning click2death courses that we have today.

Instead, I see ISDers continuing to act as filters (that's almost the job description) and probably looking a lot like aggregators. In other words, we'll be creating a lot of pages that point to all the best resources out there and putting a bit of context on those resources. Embedded within those resources will be links to interactive exercises, tests, etc. This is something that I call a reference hybrid.

One difference will be the source of information and content. Today, we often are interviewing SMEs and searching for source materials. Tomorrow, we will be finding much of the source information already posted.

Ideally, we will figure out ways to have continued contribution from SMEs and Users that adds value. But, the need of filtering and adding context will remain.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Lowest Week Ever for Prime-Time Broadcast TV Viewing

WIth few new shows on and plenty of other activities afoot, early July is historically the quietest time for TV viewing in the US. But this past July 3-9 set a precedent.

The four major broadcast TV networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox) experienced their least-watch week in recorded history. Let me repeat: the networks had their least-watched week in the history of television ratings!

The networks had a combined average of 20.8 million viewers during prime time (one-fifteenth of the total US population). Only one show, NBC's new America's Got Talent, captured more than 10 million viewers. Meanwhile, cable and Spanish-language networks continue to post respectable numbers that are beginning to rival those of the "Big Four."

Is this an anomaly, or part of a long-term trend? Considering that the previous low record was set in July 2005, we may indeed be seeing a pattern emerging. What will be interesting to see is how well ratings rebound in the fall.

This news was cited by Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog, which also notes that the movie industry is experiencing similar long-term struggles, despite recent mega-hits like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis suspects a connection between declining TV ratings and the fact that YouTube is now serving 100 million videos a day.

Source: AP (via Yahoo Asia)

Microsoft, Yahoo Become Chat Buddies

Microsoft and Yahoo have launched a pilot program to test the interoperability of their respective instant messaging systems, Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) and Yahoo Instant Messenger. Once live, the combined services will create the world's largest IM network (350 million accounts), and will include voice chat.

So where does this leave AOL's Instant Messenger, currently the most popular IM platform in the US? AOL is teaming up with Google to make AIM compatible with Google Talk, though details remain unclear.

Aside from recognizing an economy of scale, these partnerships help alleviate one of the biggest problems with instant messaging: vendors' proprietary technology that does not allow for interoperability, and forced users to maintain several applications to manage various buddy lists. Also, the incorporation of voice could be potentially disruptive to long distance phone service, particularly for international calling.

Source: CNN/Money

"Urban Dorms" for Young Professionals

So you're a young college graduate eager to make your way in the world. You want to strike out on your own, yet your modest starting salary doesn't begin to cover rent in the big city where you live and work. So what do you do?

In New York City and other metro areas with ridiculously high real estate prices, young people are turning to "urban dorms" in which creative landlords match groups of renters together in single, large apartments (a task made easier by online classified systems like Craigslist). For affordable (yet still hefty) rent in a safe and desirable location, the tradeoff is a lack of space and privacy.

Urban dorms appear to be meeting a need. However, the greater problem in many cities are real estate prices that are out of synch with the means of the majority of their residents. Urban dorms, therefore, represent a workaround rather than a direct solution to one of the major problems in urban America.

Source: New York Times

What Young People Want in Cell Phones

The cell phone market for teens and young adults is evolving into something quite different than the market for older adults. The last thing kids want is the same kind of phone Mom and Dad carry. And for the hippest and geekiest, don't even talk about the Motorola Razr -- it's soooo 2005!

The cool phones for young trendsetters are the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 and Virgin Mobile's Switch_Back (both with retractable keyboard), the Boost Motorola i875 (with video camera, MP3 player and walkie-talkie ["chirp"]), and the Amp'd Hollywood (with downloadable video clips). Boost and Amp'd are "pay as you go" services that target the youth demographic with attractive extras such as videos and games, and affordable no-contract plans.

In addition to offering sophisticated phones, many youth-oriented services also intregrate with e-mail systems, instant message services, and even MySpace pages. Clearly, the customers of these carriers see regular phone services as just one of many communication offerings that they leverage routinely. Boost, for instance, says that 65% of its traffic consists of "chirp" messages rather than traditional phone calls.

Source: New York Times

The New Cubicles: Liberation or Dilbert Run Amok?

Introduced in 1968 -- and a huge improvement over the open "bullpen" office configuration that existed before then -- the office cubicle has become a symbol of the conformity and soullessness of corporate America. It's a perception so bad that pioneering cubicle designer Robert Propst cursed his invention (which he called the "Action Office") as a tool for "monolithic insanity." The term "cube farm" is particularly demeaning, Scott Adams built a lucrative career out of lampooning cube culture through Dilbert, and the cliche "thinking outside the box" in no small way refers to the modern office environment.

Now, office furniture designers are rethinking the cubicle. For workers, they seek to make the office more ergonomically sound and visually appealing. For bosses, they promise greater productivity and more efficient use of space.

Some of the designs offered by cubicle inventor Herman Miller, Steelcase and other office furniture vendors hardly resemble the traditional cube (boo hoo!). The typical gray or almond fabric-covered panels are replaced with colorful plastics, brushed steel and translucent panels -- even, in Herman Miller's new My Studio, closet space and doors.

Herman Miller "My Office"

The new designs are meant to offer a sense of privacy, muffle voices (having to overhear others' conversations is a top employee gripe), and accommodate modern electronics (an afterthought in cubicles designed in the age of typewriters). Designers are even offering modular "conference rooms," where two or more people can gather to talk away from others.

Designers are hoping that workers will be so impressed with the new designs that they won't notice that workspaces are, on average, about half the size they were three decades ago. Back then, the typical cubicle measured 12'x12'; today's counterparts average 6'x8'.

Source: TIME

Time for a National Telecommuting Initiative?

A recent study of telecommuting conducted by the National Technology Readiness Survey revealed two startling pieces of information:

• If all workers in the US who are able to telecommute actually worked from home an average of 1.6 days per week, the gasoline savings would total $3.9 billion (not to mention reduced car emissions, less stress and more productive time).


• However, only one quarter of those capable of telecommuting do so, and 14% of workers who have the option of telecommuting choose not to.

Surely, there are valid reasons why people don't telecommute even when given the ability. In some organizations, the perception may linger that teleworkers are less productive and less engaged than their in-office colleagues, or that telecommuting is somehow unprofessional. Even with a variety of electronic communication at their disposal, many organizations still place a premium on "face time." More ambitious employees may feel that working from home may hurt their career path. Some may not have a home environment that's conducive to work (lots of small children, for instance). Others may simply miss the face-to-face interaction of the workplace and the company of their co-workers.

The energy savings alone should be enough to prompt a national initiative to encourage telecommuting. Sooner or later, our government is going to have to face reality when considering the value of energy conservation, which can yield immediate and concrete benefits. Businesses should be encouraged to allow and promote telecommuting wherever possible, and maybe even receive tax credits for employees who work at home a minimum number of days per week.

Later this summer, when the media give President Bush his annual lumps for taking an extended "working vacation" at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, perhaps they should instead hold him up as a role model for telecommuting. After all, the business of state goes on regardless of the season or the President's physical location, and his staff ensure that the Teleworker-in-Chief is just as wired in Crawford as he would be in Washington.

UPDATE: Jonathan Shaw's Fixing Foibles and Follies blog cites this post, and adds one other reason for making telecommuting a national priority -- the possibility that, in the event of a bird flu or similar pandemic, telecommuting might be a necessity to keep the economy going.

UPDATE 2: An article in Red Herring suggests that the combination of high gas prices, the proliferation of broadband Internet, tools such as instant messaging that allow for informal chatting, and the move of the "MySpace Generation" into the workforce will create a "telecommuting explosion" in the coming years (or maybe even months). "There is a perceived risk that the telecommuter will not be taken seriously by the company..." the article says. "The perceived risk will only begin diminishing as younger workers who are currently about 20 years old and younger begin having an effect on the workplace." (via Velcro City Tourist Board)

UPDATE 3: Techdirt notes the elimination of telecommuting at HP due to purported abuse. However, commenters theorized that such a cutback could be construed as a layoff by proxy, forcing workers to quit by making their lives miserable.

Source: Reuters (via Excite)

The Business Web

Richard MacManus posted an email by salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and it really does a good job capturing how significant of a shift we are seeing in software. This is something I've pointed to before: Promise of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic. I've got a copy of the email below, its well worth reading.

Here's a copy of the email:

"Is it the end of software as we know it?

Just three weeks ago, Bill Gates announced he would leave his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft, and turn his title of Chief Software Architect over to Ray Ozzie. Why did he choose Ozzie, a relative newcomer to Microsoft? Ozzie had made his views widely known in his October 28, 2005 memo called, “Services Disruption,” where he stated the future would be dominated not by software like that made by Microsoft, but by services offered by companies like Google and salesforce.com who were changing the software game forever by delivering a new paradigm.

Simultaneously, companies like Google and Yahoo have announced their intention to compete against Microsoft Exchange by offering a version of their consumer email services repurposed for business. Gmail for Domains (http://www.google.com/hosted) and Yahoo Business Email (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email/) are serious competitors to the traditional email server franchise. And, it’s not stopping there, as competitors to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (http://www.google.com/googlespreadsheets/tour1.html) (www.numsum.com) (www.irows.com), and even those taking on Microsoft Word processing (www.writely.com) (www.writeboard.com) begin to take hold as serious and viable alternatives to Microsoft Office software. Ozzie was right. Steve Ballmer has publicly fretted that he would not be “out hustled by anyone,” but the fact is that Microsoft is being out hustled by everyone.

In January, Salesforce.com introduced AppExchange (http://www.appexchange.com), and already has more than 200 independent software vendors providing more than 300 different software as service applications. They applications range from sales, service and support, utilities, and tools to health care, education, real estate, and manufacturing. Thousands of customers have already started using these applications simply by adding them to their existing salesforce.com implementations.

And, many other companies are finally delivering a wide variety of software as service offerings from Business Objects to Adobe to Skype. And, Oracle and SAP
both have announced they would take the software as service market seriously as well with their own on-demand offerings. And, finally, Microsoft has announced that it will begin hosting its own business software under the Live brand.

The world has changed. Everyone and everything is becoming a service.

It was not so long ago that most executives and companies disregarded the movement to software as service, claiming it was limited technically, or isolated to a specific market segment such as small business. Now, everyone agrees that the future of software is no software at all—but rather an industry dominated by tens of thousands of heterogeneous services delivering everything from traditional Office productivity to Verticals to VOIP to ERP and CRM systems. All companies and executives now agree: no software application will remain standing at the end of this widespread transformation. Every market segment, geography, and customer will use these services with all of the rich customization and integration they demand–
and much, much more.

Put it all together and what do you have? The Business Web. And The Business Web– with all of its innovation, creativity, and most important, customer success—won’t wait for Microsoft.

We have seen the consumer Web dominated by companies like eBay and Amazon. Now we are seeing a wide variety of new software as service applications (http://itredux.com/blog/office-20/my-office-20-setup/) emerging to dominate The Business Web. And, it’s only starting. We are only at the very beginning of a huge change.

It will not be dominated by any one particular company or application or geography. The reason is that The Business Web will be best known for its ability to easily create composite applications, or what is now popularly known as “mash-ups.” Made popular on consumer sites such as http://www.housingmaps.com/, a mash-up driven by Google maps and craigslist.org, or www.bikramfinder.com, a mash-up driven by salesforce.com and Google maps, the point is simple: the future of business applications is multiple, heterogeneous applications talking to each other and sharing data.

Customers of all sizes are making the decision to choose software as service as evidenced by Cisco’s multi-thousand person worldwide sales organization now running on salesforce.com, or Merrill Lynch’s decision to jettison Siebel. Just a few years ago, that would have been unheard of. But, now ask any of salesforce.com’s 22,700 customer or 444,000 subscribers, and you’ll hear the same story.
No one can turn back time, and the Pandora’s box of services is now opened. New companies being funded on Sand Hill Road are not software companies but services companies. And, entrepreneurs around the world are starting their own companies to take on this great new opportunity of creating The Business Web.

Aloha,

Marc"

In talking with friends at software development companies in Southern California, the general consensus is that this is going to be the way forward.

Keywords: eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0