Monday, August 31, 2009

Trends in Learning

Someone was just asking me about the big trends in learning and the implications of those trends on corporate learning and development. I initially said - "Look at my blog," but when I looked, I realized it might be a bit harder than I thought to pull out the central themes. So, here's a bit of a compilation of some of the things I've been talking about in my blog which points to some of the major trends in learning.

Environmental Changes

Some of the common trends I discuss in presentations are:

Decreased L&D budgets
Faster pace
Increased workforce mobility
Shorter job tenure
Increased job fragmentation - fewer numbers in any one role
Constant increase in complexity
Greater concept work
Need for faster proficiency
Changing expectations for learning

The bottom line is that Learning and Development needs to do more with less these days or they will be marginalized.

And the risk is pretty severe as described in the Business of Learning.

Trends in What L&D Organizations are Doing

As a result of these trends, some L&D organizations are looking to social and informal learning. Training Method Trends suggests that social learning tools are beginning to take off. This will be a slow evolution. And surveys such as Web 2.0 Applications in Learning suggest that this will be scattered.

There's considerable discussion throughout my blog around topics that relate to social / informal / learning 2.0:

The whole social / informal / elearning 2.0 discussions implies some very Disruptive Changes in Learning.

In Long Live, I discuss how we are not talking about eliminating instructor-led, but that organizations are looking at alternatives.

The whole problem is Long Tail Learning. There is just way too much stuff that people need to learn that we have to make choices about what we spend our time publishing into formal learning events. The audience has to be large enough. As concept workers, we quickly go past formal learning opportunities. There's no course on what I do every day. And you cannot Separate Knowledge Work from Learning.

One option is to say that limit of training / workplace Learning Responsibility is formal learning. Once you go beyond formal learning, then there's an immediate question of what else you will provide. I know from Data Driven performance improvement solutions that often informal learning can be very effective in driving results. To me, the answer is pretty clear. You've got to look beyond formal.

The Result

When you look at Examples of eLearning 2.0, none of them individually seem all that radical. Many organizations are using SharePoint to implement these kinds of solutions.

But when you look at the difference in control in Learning 1.0 vs. Learning 2.0, it's a pretty radical change.

There are significant opportunities around Online Coaching. I'm hearing more on this all the time.

Examples of how social and informal learning is happening in the consumer space:

Approach to learning strategy needs to be different: Learning 2.0 Strategy

You need to think about systems quite different: LMS and Social Learning

You have to prepare workers for web 2.0

L&D professionals and organizations having changing roles and responsibilities:

Other Thoughts

In Corporate Training, I look at the challenges learning and development organizations face in heading towards these kinds of solutions.

There are lots of possible Objections to making this happen.

Social Learning Measurement is still an issue.

Corporate Policies on Web 2.0 are emerging.

Desired Learning Outcomes may differ based on these changes.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Dashboards for Project Management

by Brian S. Friedlander, Ph.D. & Wallace Tait

Sitting in any vehicle; what’s the center of visual control? It’s the instrument panel, better known as the “dashboard”. Every vehicle has one, we require them and they give us an accurate measurement of performance and capability. Consider the vehicle analogy while using information mapping software. It makes perfect sense for the information manager to use a dashboard to measure key process variables (KPV”s) within business.

Have you considered a dashboard approach as a “single point of access” to all of your KPV”s while using the tools, methods and mindset of visual mapping? Another pertinent question may be asked of the developers of visual mapping software. Why is a dashboard approach unavailable in most of the applications that utilize a mind mapping approaches to information management?

A visual map can, when used effectively, be an ideal tool for graphically communicating ideas and gaining team buy in right at the genesis of a project; and as a dashboard, an excellent way to graphically track the progress of any project. While a visual map is extremely effective as a communication tool, it’s much more effective and powerful when used as, or synchronized with a dashboard.

ConceptDraw Office is a product suite that, in our opinion, has a very unique and powerful dashboard function that enables tracking and reporting of critical KPV’s within a business management project. Analysing CD Office through the eyes of a busy project manager; the power of the

dashboard function is evident. For those of you who may not be familiar with ConceptDraw Office; it consists of three distinct applications:

All of this is supported by the CS ODESSA InGyre technology; the tool that seamlessly synchronises the information exchanges between the three products within CD Office. In any business there are many shift points where data is transformed to meet particular audience requirements. InGyre Technology Adds Value at any Stage of a Business Process. InGyre Technology supports delivery of information in an optimal visual manner for specific audiences.

CD Office provides a turnkey approach to creating, managing and exchanging information and knowledge, while easily generating reports and utilizing the graphical power of the product. Using the “Generate Reports” function, the project manager can generate an impressive report of KPV’s within seconds.

The process from mind mapping your project in CD MindMap and sending it to CD Project is

processed with ease while using CD MindMap. Making it easy to communicate ideas and brainstorm project paths before moving into project management is what CD Office does well. You can determine which branches of your mind map are moved over to CD Project which gives you lots of control. Once you have synchronised the mapped information with CD Project you are in the full featured project management function and ready to go.

CD Project has several different views which are useful in planning your project. Most users of project management software will spend most of their time in the Gantt Chart as

they set up the dependencies, schedule, and track the tasks. You can also view the Resource Sheet, Network Diagram, as well as Resource Usage from within CD Project.

The absolute power of ConceptDraw Office is the generation of the business system reports. Simply chose the “Generate Reports” function, and you can create highly visual reports to keep you and your team up to date with project status, capabilities and performance measures. Communicating project information in a clear and succinct manner ready enables the elimination of ambiguity for stakeholders and shareholders alike. So we encourage you to take a closer look at ConceptDraw Office, use the dashboard approach and manage your projects, while keeping them on time and within budget.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Where do you stop as a DBA? Thoughts about problem solving....

This is one of my few posts that are not about Informix features. I will write about a real life situation and use it for developing some thoughts about problem solving ability (or lack of it).

I will not use real names from either customers or suppliers except of course Informix and my employer. The scenario is this:

Several IBM Informix Dynamic Servers will be upgraded from version 10 on platform P1 to version 11.50 on platform P2. P2 is from a third party supplier, let's call it S1.
Currently the customer uses ontape utility for backup, but wants to take advantage of OnBar. So tests were made using OnBar, IDS 11.50 and a Storage Manager from another supplier S2 on platform P2. After some issues the tests run fine and some development instances are migrated. Suddently we start having issues. OnBar reports a BAR_TIMEOUT in BAR_ACT_LOG file... This message informs us that OnBar executed a BSA (XOpen standard for backup API) call which failed to return (successfuly or unsuccessfuly) within a specific ammount of time. OnBar will not give up, and will keep logging messages in BAR_ACT_LOG file. The Informix error message description is this:

"-43296 Warning: BAR_TIMEOUT Storage Manager Progress may be stalled. The current command has exceeded the BAR_TIMEOUT value. This might indicate a normal transfer of a large data set or it can mean the storage manager needs attention. Check to make sure the storage manager is still running and that data is still being transferred to/from the storage manager. Refer to the storage manager message log (or equivalent) for more information. If the cause of the error is still unclear, contact your storage manager Technical Support. If you are using IBM Informix Storage Manager, contact Technical Support at tsmail@us.ibm.com"

The message looks explicit and clear, but the Storage Manager operators decided that it should be a problem with OnBar. Let's make a small pause here... this is the first point I'd like to raise... What would you do? Trust the Informix error message that explicitly says to contact the Storage Manager technical support or do your own investigation?
Well, as an onsite consultant I decided to do some investigation... First things I did were:

Running truss against onbar_d processes
Running dbx/gdb/adb against the onbar_d processes
Running lsof against the onbar_d processes

These simple steps revealed that:

truss showed OnBar was "stuck" on send(). This is an OS function used to send data through a socket
gdb showed that onbar_d had called the BSASendData() function which in turn had called send(). BSASendData() is part of the dynamic library we have to configure in $ONCONFIG (BSALIBPATH)
lsof showed that the file descriptor (fd) used in the send() call was a socket opened to the storage manager "media server". This is a host which has direct access to the storage manager allocated tape drives

So, it was clear (only for me as we shall see...) that there was a problem in the storage manager while it tried to send data from the database server to the media server. The next logical step would be to analyse the status of the process receiving the data in the media server. Since I had no access to that server I asked for it, but without success... In the following days I received all kinds of evasive replies and useless requests both from the storage manager team and from the storage manager supplier (S2) technical support. Some of these were:

You cannot run a whole system backup with more than one concurrent process
True for versions earlier than 11.10, but incorrect for version 11.50 (and this suggestion ignored all the debug info above)
We were trying to use more onbar_d processes than what the storage manager was configured to support, leading to waits on the OnBar side
This could make sense, but when this happens, the onbar_d processes wait for a free "slot" at the begining of a dbspace backup.... they don't get "stuck" in the middle (usually it happened around 90% of a dbspace backup)
They suggested that we should change the BAR_TIMEOUT parameter (it exists only in XPS, not IDS....)
They even suggest me that I should consult the OnBar manual ;)

Finnally the tech support guy from S2 was on site, and I managed to have him collect the info (truss, gdb, lsof) from the media server processes. At that moment I understood why they ignored the info above. He didn't knew how to use or what were these utilities...
But I got a big surprise when I saw the outputs.... The process receiving data was "stuck" on recv(). This is an OS function used to get data from a socket. So, in short, we had an ESTABLISHED socket between two servers, one of them was on send(), and the other was on recv().... But no data was being transferred.

This made me think about network or TCP layer issues. But usually this are the last places to look for issues. Note that I don't consider network problems a rarity, but these usually translate into broken connections, not exactly hangs...
This observation was a turning point. I immediately assumed that the platform provider (S1) would have to be involved. The situation was even more complex because the media server was a Linux machine. So the problem could be in either platform...

During the next two months (!), I've been through a real nightmare, because the customer insisted that there could be something wrong with OnBar, I spent several hours in useless conference calls (customer and S2) and meetings. They insisted in making all kind of weird tests like:

Running onbar with few and more processes
Reconfigure their whole backup infrastructure
Reconfigure their storage manager parameterization

At some point they asked me the following:

Do you have customers running with this setup?
They seemed desesperate to prove OnBar was doing something wrong...
They don't understand we don't keep any kind of tracking on customer environments. We do keep an incredible useful internal knowledge base where customer problems are recorded, but as expected I was tired of making exhaustive searches on that KB without finding any similar cases...
They proposed to use another storage manager (interestingly from vendor S1)
The point was more or less this: If it doesn't work with that, surely the problem is not with the storage manager (and that again would imply the problem was with IDS...)
They insisted in having a tech support case opened on IBM
This seems reasonably, but the behavior of OnBar was completely explained in detail by me previously

At this point I was rather tired of the whole issue. Interestingly the tests with the second storage manager revealed two things:

The new environment hit another problem
This problem was already reported in IBM knowledge base and it was a problem in that storage manager BSA library. I had to wait one week in order to know if the version they were using included the necessary fix... it turned out it didn't ;)
After solving that first issue the backups aborted with some sort of storage manager timeout... The real difference was in the storage manager behavior. First one waited indefinitely and this one establishes a timeout (much like OnBar does, but since it's the one calling the low level OS function it aborts the process instead of just warning the administrator like OnBar does)

After about two months of outstanding time waste I understood the only way to solve this in a timely manner was to reproduce the issue without any Informix or storage manager layer. Let me point that some people in the customer team had made exhaustive tests sending data across servers using scp for example. All these tests were successful, and they concluded it couldn't be anything in the TCP layer. I warn them (and showed them using the tools above that scp didn't use the same functions, block size etc.). if the tests had failed it would have beeen nice, but a working scp session didn't proove us that there was nothing wrong with the TCP stack.

After a few more days and a lot of GB sent, I was able to create a test case with just C programming. A simple client/server program that kept sending data through a socket. I made sure I established the socket options and block size similar to what the storage manager's BSA library used.

After this, they finally accepted that something was wrong with the vendor OS functions (specifically send() ). In the next day we had a conference call with all the parties involved. And in less than a week we had a fix (newly coded) for the OS. After installing we never had another similar hang on send() function.

The purpose of this post is to show how important it is to know how to debug a problem. Tools like truss, dbx/gdb/adb and lsof are invaluable for this. I personally think anybody working on IT problem solving independentely of their role (DBA, programer, system administrator, network administrator etc.) should have a minimal knowlege about how they work and what kind of information you can collect with them. There are obviously other tools equally useful in some scenarios. Tools like tcpdump, netstat etc. This whole case revealed that many people involved in this area don't have a clue about how these tools work and the info they can collect.
Everybody involved had a theory about the problem. But none of those theories were based on facts or real observations. They were merely speculations of what could be happening and all these tend to pass the problem to a different team...
Some facts about the situation:

lots of emails including polished accusations were exchanged
during two months I spent a considerable amout of time paying attention to this, trying to lead people into the righ direction (mostly without success)
Vendor S2 had a very large team involved. They even sent a consultant from another country into this customer site (when he arrived we were about to receive the fix, so apart from politics this guy was not able to do much about this problem)
The problem could have been solved in around two weeks (one for debugging and another for the vendor investigation and code fixing)
No one admitted that didn't understand the output of the tools above and no one (even after the conclusion) took the opportunity to ask me to explain how to use this kind of tools
I don't think I know everything (and in fact my knowledge about these tools is somewhat superficial), but I only learn how to use this kind of stuff because in some situation in my past I came across some references to them and I took the time to experiment and read about them. In other words, we should use the problems as opportunities to gather more knowledge and to learn new things.

I keep receiving reports about problems without any useful information. My favorite ones are:

I tried it and it doesn't work!
Surely I believe it doesn't work... But usually when something "doesn't work" it raises an error. Only rarely people include the error code/description. More often they include possible causes (usually not related to the error) than they include the error code or error message
The process was hang! It was probably in some kind of loop! So I killed it
Well... processes don't "hang". They wait on something or they effectively stay in some loop. And the way to see that is by using the tools... And the tools don't work on a process that doesn't exist anymore...
I've found a bug!
Sure... A bug is a malfunction. Something that works differently from what's documented or what is expected. Most of the times people find a problem. After some analisys (many times involving supplier's technical support) it may be mapped to a bug. People tend to expect something. If it doesn't happen they "found a bug". Usually they don't bother to read the documentation and try to understand the reasons for the unexpected behavior.
Obviously people do hit bugs. Most of the cases that I open within IBM end up as bugs. But this is just a very small portion of the problems that customers report.

In short, I feel that in general, people's ability to study a problem in the IT world is vey limited. Usually people spend more time trying alternatives than collecting and understand problem data. Error messages and codes are ignored many times. And all these translate into a big waste of time, and obviously money... And of course, this directly impacts the quality and availability of the IT systems.

Qarbon Camtasia and Adobe Captivate

Question from a reader, hoping you can provide your thoughts:

I am in the process of selecting an elearning tool that is easy to use, quick to create the demos and does not bloat the file size much. I want to create some online videos that will be a total of about 6-7 hours and upload them on my site. These videos would have software demos, screencasts and PowerPoints embedded inside them. Also every screen would have audio (voiceover with my voice) accompanying it. I will want to have a simple menu system to break up the content into chunks. And I may eventually, but not initially, want to be able to track them under an LMS, i.e., have SCORM tracking.

I have been looking into various tools. Here are some pros and cons I found about them.

Qarbon

Pros:

Less File size.
Qarbon seems very easy to use.

Cons:

I'm finding it a bit difficult to integrate my voice with my demos and pull everything together.
Creates as screenshot. To present a moving demo I need to integrate another product called Viewlet cam.
Makes it a bit harder to pull everything together.

Camtasia and Adobe Captivate:

Pros:

Heard lots of good thing about them.

Cons:

Worried about file size for both of them

The more I am researching, the more I am getting confused.

----

There are quite a few Software Simulation Tools out there. I understand the confusion though because it's a combination of several different kinds of needs that are often addressed by different Rapid eLearning Tools.

What questions would you have? What might you suggest? What would you do to find a good solution?

Would you consider using a solution that integrates several tools that are possibly best of breed?

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Models for Learning Questions

We wrapped up our free elearning webinar on Models for Learning in a New World. My portion was a fast paced look at several important environmental trends such as:

Decreased L&D budgets (see Business of Learning)
Faster pace
Increased workforce mobility
Shorter job tenure
Increased job fragmentation - fewer numbers in any one role
Constant increase in complexity
Greater concept work
Need for faster proficiency
Changing expectations for learning

The bottom line is that Learning and Development needs to do more with less these days or they will be marginalized. We also have so many more kinds of solutions we can offer. I described some common eLearning 2.0 patterns that are emerging much along the lines of my previous post Examples of eLearning 2.0.

Questions

There were some great questions during the session. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to discuss.

1) Two issues that come up, at least in the world of training in a government environment, is that of a) security of information, and b) control of the information given to the learner to make sure it is accurate. Can you comment on those two issues?

Both of these concerns/objections come up quite often even outside of government. Security of the information is something that hopefully your IT organization is already dealing with. I recommend adopting their tools and their security mechanisms. If that's not possible, then start with content that doesn't have the same level of security concerns.

Control can be similarly avoided as an issue by initially moderating all edits. Yes that takes work, but it's less work than keeping all the content up-to-date yourself. Over time you will have some areas where moderation can be removed.

2) How do you sale to the NON-Gen Y's and Millennials who are in upper management who fear things like wiki's?

9) When introducing these new learning methods, I have the impression that the resistance from organisation is lies more in the new role of the training department rather then new technologies. Is this also your experience?

Resistance can come from a lot of places. I used to find IT very resistant, but now I'm finding more often there are allies with IT who are helping to make this stuff happen. I gladly jump on their shoulders (and systems). So, I would agree that new technologies is less the issue.

More often real resistance comes from senior VPs who are not willing to okay something they don't really understand. Yammer (internal twittering) is almost impossible to explain to someone who has no experience with any social networking (and probably not with anything more than email lists).

My suggestion is that you don't really try to sell Yammer or a Wiki or any other kind of tool. Instead, you simply say that you want to provide a means of editing the content more easily, or following up on the training to get dialog to happen, or whatever the obviously smart solution is that you are proposing.

As a side note, I think selling Twitter/Yammer is harder than selling social bookmarking and wikis. Twitter/Yammer is something new. Social bookmarking and wikis are often a smart replacement with obvious side benefits.

Many of the suggestions in Learning 2.0 Strategy still hold:

1. Start Tactical and Bottom Up
2. Avoid the Culture Question
3. Avoid Highly Regulated Content (and Lawyers)
4. Learning Professionals Must Lead
5. Prepare Workers for Learning 2.0
6. Technology is Tactical not Strategic
7. Avoid the CIO

3) Tony, what is "secondments" that is listed on your last slide?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondment

4) How is "accountability" for learning specific things being handled in 2.0?

5) How do we ensure learning transfer with Learning 2.0 methodologies.

This was discussed a fair bit during the session. You can certainly still test whether learning objectives were achieved, but … the point is often that "learning transfer", i.e., testing knowledge, is not really the thing you are going after. Instead, you often don't quite know what content will be covered and accountability is more the end result – for example, a presentation might need to be created. I might use the analogy of the thesis associated with an advanced degree. You are not testing for content, rather you are expecting the completion of a process leading to something that is fairly well defined. You will evaluate using much the same way that we Evaluate Concept Work.

6) Can you comment on the advantages/disadvantages of company-created social sites (private networking sites) vs public sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Not sure I even know how to answer this. Most of the time, there's pretty clear separation between private and public sites in terms of your goals and use cases. I will say that sometimes companies get it a bit wrong when it comes to leveraging existing sites to create value that extends beyond the firewall. For example, having a robust group and network on LinkedIn can be quite valuable when you have employees who should be able to reach outside the firewall for expertise and can leverage LinkedIn to find internal expertise as well. Similarly having content that flows outside to partners, customers, etc. can be an interesting solution. I do think there are interesting opportunities here. However, most L&D are focused much more on the private kinds of solutions at this point.

7) Is there a method to map different models of learning to different types of projects?

Great question. I don't know. There are lots of patterns emerging, but I don't think there's a "method" yet. Is there a method for mapping blended learning to types of projects even taking away some of the newer complexities of learning 2.0? Not sure. Help?

8) We are in the brainstorming sessions of creating a blog and podcast. What tips or advise can you give on the focus and direction of these?
We want to allow users to get to know us and our abilities. One of the challenges we have is that many departments don't understand that we could help them identify and solve many training issues.

We would like to create a "Get to Know Us" site where we discuss what we are working on lately and some of the recent products we have released.

This is interesting. I personally would be really concerned about making sure that my blog or podcasts were valuable to my target audiences. Creating an internal newsletter as a blog or podcast that doesn't have compelling information may find few followers.

I think rather than "Get to Know Us" or "What we Offer" – maybe instead focus on "Smart Ways to Solve Your Problems" … Taking a focus on case examples or new methods or ??? that is all around how they can get their work done better would seem to be much more interesting. How about becoming an aggregator for them of this kind of information? Show them interesting solutions at other (related) organizations so that they can have a more interesting conversation with you.

In some ways, I would think of this as you taking the lead in learning the kinds of things that they would want to have time to learn about themselves. How are other organizations using these things? How are they improving performance? What are some interesting trends out there? Bring that together for them. That's high value for you and them. I'd think that's a compelling internal blog and/or podcast.

One last note – podcast implies that you have a set of people who have access to iPods / iPhones and time to listen. I personally, listen sporadically to podcasts. A blog would be much better to reach me personally. Maybe you have a good audience for the podcast. But my guess is that the blog will fit much better. Heck, you can probably get the blog posts emailed to people. :)

Adobe Presenter 7 Updated

Adobe Presenter, one of the key rapid authoring tools in the Adobe eLearning suite, has released an important product update. Paresh Kharya, the Project Manager for Adobe Presenter, has covered some of the key highlights of this release in his post on the Connect User Forum.

A couple of key feature enhancements that are sure to get users excited are:

Improved PowerPoint Conversion and PPTX format support: This update would include support for various PowerPoint SmartArt Animations. It would now be possible to work with and synchronize PowerPoint SmartArt animations. This release would include enhancements for improving the flash conversion fidelity of embedded images in PowerPoint. The release would also enhance the conversion fidelity for various text and shape effects created in PPTX format. Resolved issues where alternative text inserted using PowerPoint was not being exposed to screen readers. Based on what I’ve seen, the PPT conversion capability with this update will whip the other presenters out there.

Tighter integration of Captivate Content in Presenter: We have enhanced the support for embedding Captivate created flash content in Presenter presentations. Captivate content having full motion recordings would now play properly without the need to manually copy the Captivate output files to Presenter data folder. We have also fixed issues related to loss of display fidelity when Captivate content would sometimes get imported with incorrect dimensions.

Fixed some of the audio errors and sound clipping

This update addresses a number of issues related to making Presenter content more accessible.

You can download the Adobe Presenter 7 Update by clicking on this link. I plan on demonstrating how I use Adobe Presenter 7 at the DevLearn 2009 Conference in San Jose, CA in mid November. If you are planning on attending please stop by my session and say hello.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

TheBrain Expands Worldwide

FYI:

TheBrain Expands Worldwide through Rapidly Growing Partner Network

A Complete Turnkey Affiliate Program and Global Alliances with Top Tier Resellers Augment PersonalBrain’s Market Reach for Growing User Community of Dynamic Mind Mapping.

Marina del Rey, CA.—August 25, 2009—TheBrain Technologies announces the expansion of the PersonalBrain product line, securing key partners in Europe, North America, South America and Asia Pacific.

The company reseller program now in full swing makes its acclaimed PersonalBrain software available for resellers to pass on to their clients. With PersonalBrain any idea or file can be linked to anything else. Users can connect their ideas associatively and create networks of information that concretize thinking, illustrate complex relationships and visualize business processes. In contrast to static mind maps or folder structures, PersonalBrain’s dynamic visualization shifts contexts, enabling multidimensional data organization. The program’s fluid interface and unlimited linking capability is popular with Fortune 1000 companies due to its context rich view and scalability.

TheBrain Affiliate Program and Reseller Network

TheBrain offers several programs for both small and large resellers. TheBrain’s affiliate program offers a turnkey purchasing system that allows participants to receive commission for users who purchase from their web site. This highly accessible program makes it easy for anyone with a web site to sell and market PersonalBrain. Additionally software resellers gain access to latest product releases, special marketing and training. Although the program has just started the company has signed up key partners worldwide including: SHI, Creation Engine, Mindsystems Pty Ltd Australia, Dynamic Logistics Systems GmbH Germany, Boss Japan Co. Ltd. Japan, Olympic Limited and Draughtmark Limited both in the United Kingdom.

“TheBrain has enabled Olympic to offer a powerful alternative to the current choices for information mapping applications,” said Nigel Goult Managing Director of Olympic Ltd. “TheBrain’s unique way of navigating and representing information makes it a popular consideration for customers who value simplicity and speed when it comes to organizing and accessing data.”

Benefits of TheBrain Partner Program include:

Increased market distinction by providing award-winning knowledge management software
New powerful solutions to help customers succeed who are struggling with organizing and accessing information
Access to TheBrain Partner Network which includes: marketing materials, updates on product releases and go-to market sales tools
Training on how to organize information and implement visualization software

“We are thrilled with our new partners and the traction our affiliate and reseller programs have gotten” said Shelley Hayduk, Vice President of Marketing of TheBrain Technologies LP. “This program underscores the worldwide demand and need for solutions to overcome information overload and provide a more intelligent context for information organization and delivery.”

For more information on TheBrain Partner program potential partners can go to http://www.thebrain.com/partners to apply online or email dberman@thebrain.com.

About TheBrain Technologies
TheBrain Technologies helps people see, share and find information faster. TheBrain’s PersonalBrain™ dynamic mind mapping software helps users see and organize their information the way they think about it. TheBrain also offers an Enterprise Knowledge Platform, BrainEKP™, which combines a natural language search engine with a compelling visual display of topics so users can see and discover critical information relationships. TheBrain’s customers include: Encyclopædia Britannica, Navy Special Warfare, Tyco, Accenture, Park Nicollet, Medtronic, US Department of Defense, California Casualty Insurance, a leading media research company, retail chain, financial services company and other Fortune 500 organizations. Download PersonalBrain at www.thebrain.com or e-mail info@thebrain.com for more information.

If you are interested in learning how theBrain can help you or your business, please consider contacting me for a free on-line session. If you decide to purchase theBrain from this link I will provide you with a free 1-1 on line session to get you started.

Slow Evolution of Learning Solutions

Great post from Charles Jennings –Down But Not Quite Out: what can we learn from the plights of Learning Tree International and Readers Digest?

Learning Tree reported a decline of 31.2% in earnings compared to 2008. Operating expenses were down from $22 million to $14.6 million ($1.5 million of that contributed by producing less of those damn catalogues). And overall operating profit was down by 40.7% compared to the same period in 2008. Net income was down 44.7%.

This is similar to what I've been discussing in the Business of Learning and we are both citing Learning Tree's woes. This whole topic has got me thinking about all of the implications and I've been regularly posting on it:

Charles discusses what Learning Tree (and all training providers are up against). There's free content and the assumption that content should be Free.

Charles talks about the Changing Expectations of CLOs:

Many CLOs in large corporations around the world now subscribe to the view that most organisational learning is informal and even where formal learning is used they expect more than a one-off event from their suppliers. The expectation is that the provider will make on-going support available through some form of online forum and email at least, or make their content available online in an on-demand way such as the excellent Books 24x7 has done. And CLOs want to integrate their provider's learning materials and learning tools with their own internal systems so that they can be made available across the corporation.

This echoes what I've heard from several other CLOs. At the same time, I would be cautious on the word "many" – yes, there are many, but quite a few CLOs still take a very traditional view of their focus (see Learning Performance Business Talent Focus) and are fairly traditional in their view of solutions. Many vendors are looking forward to the day when CLOs are willing to pay for more of these things. The reality is that many vendors offer expertise – but if CLOs are not willing to pay for accessing that expertise outside the classroom, then it's not going to work out from a business model perspective.

Charles discusses the Reuters Institute of Technology which won a CLO Magazine Award for innovation.

The Institute didn't include any courses from suppliers such as Learning Tree, but was rich with resources from Books24x7, TechChek (a web-based technical skills assessment tool), internal company communities and knowledge sharing wikis. A ning site, podcasts, video learning resources, RSS feeds from the large technology providers such as Cisco, Sun and Microsoft, and a number of other facilities including a range short formal modules deep-linked from the corporate LMS that could be pulled on-demand.

A lot to be learned from these kinds of examples. Thanks for sharing Charles.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Top 99 Workplace eLearning Blogs

I just saw a post by Amit Garg Top 47 eLearning & Workplace Learning Blogs. His list was very similar to the list of sources that eLearning Learning includes. It made me wonder how many sources does eLearning Learning include? Turns out it's exactly 99.

Please let me know if I'm missing any blogs that produce good content on eLearning and more particularly Workplace eLearning that would make sense to include. eLearning Learning is looking for a bit deeper posts that focus on applied issues.

If you don't want to subscribe to all 99 sources individually, then you can subscribe to either the Full Feed or Best Of feed from eLearning Learning. The full feed provides snippets from each source. And the Best Of feed provides a weekly summary with the top content from all of these sources. The Best Of also includes upcoming free elearning webinars. Personally I find that this is high value even though I try to stay up on all the latest and best content.

I'll also mention that there's one source that's a bit different than the others. It's Tony Karrer delicious links. As I find interesting items that are not part of these sources, I manually mark those. It's part of the overall social filtering that the technology relies on. I would definitely welcome involvement of more content collectors. So …

Wanted: Content Collectors

and heck, might as well mention…

Wanted: Calendar Curators

So here are the 99 sources in no particular order:

I wonder who will be number 100?

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Interview with Brandon Conrad from Matchware Inc.

I had the opportunity last week to interview Brandon Conrad, Sales Manager for Matchware the developers of MindView 3 Business Edition to get his insights about their new release and the visual mapping field. It was great having the opportunity to speak with Brandon to find out about Mindview 3 Business Edition and how it is positioned in the visual mapping marketplace.

Brian S. Friedlander: Tell us about the Matchware organization and the products?

Brandon Conrad:MatchWare is a leading provider of multimedia, screen recording and visual thinking software that enhances individuals' ability to create, visualize, manage and distribute information. MatchWare's easy-to-use professional software empowers business, education and government worldwide to produce and deliver dynamic multimedia content that will engage and inspire. A fast growing, highly profitable, and self-financed company, MatchWare has its headquarters in Denmark with subsidiaries in the USA, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and France.

BSF: Please share with us about the latest release of MindView 3

BC: While retaining the user friendliness of previous editions, MindView 3 Business Edition has introduced several new and innovative features that make it more powerful and flexible than ever. Firstly, MindView 3 Business offers the industry’s most intuitive Office 2007 interface. The new Office templates ensure seamless integration with MS Office, increasing productivity and making the use of Mind Mapping more efficient than ever.

Secondly, to complete its integration with the MS Office suite of tools, MindView 3 Business now offers integration with MS Excel using impressive new Excel import and export functions.

Thirdly, MindView 3 Business includes a new calculation module. This module allows users to associate numbers with each mind map branch and to instantly perform complex calculations. The data can then be exported to an Excel spreadsheet with the simple click of a mouse. Conversely, users can also import numbers from Excel to MindView. This new calculation module makes budgeting, forecasting and calculating costs faster and easier than ever!

Other features include an advanced filter, a numbering scheme, and “focus” mode, which allow you to optimize your work, boost your productivity, and communicate more effectively than ever before. Read on to find out why MindView 3 is the only mind mapping tool you need!

BSF: How do you differentiate MindView 3 from the other leading visual mapping tools?

BC: Simplify put, we classify ourselves as an overall business tool and not just a mind mapping software. We substantiate this claim by referencing out multiple views and our full integration with the MS Office suite. When I say full integration, we can import/export to the entire MS Office suite. We cater not only to the right brain thinkers (organic) but also to the left brain thinkers (linear) too. We do this by adding different views such as the Gantt, Outline, WBS, Org. Chart, Timeline etc. So are we a mind mapping software, project managemnt software, Timeline software etc? We are both none of those and all of those. We have successfully developed the complete business tool to increase efficiency and maximize productivity.

BSF: What do you see as the benefits of users using MindView 3?

BC: It's pretty simple, this tool is optimized for planning brainstorming and project management which initially captures our customer base. As our customers become more involved with the tool they see it as an overall productivity tool and efficiency tool because of the multiple views

and superior MS Office integration. This tool has endless capabilities across multiple business departments. That being said, the tool is extremely successful in all environments too, from middle school children to top CEO's. Everyone has the need to communicate more effectively and we all look for ways to make our work more efficient and productive. MindView 3 Business satisfies these needs.

BSF: What do you see in the field of visual mapping as trends going forward?

BC: To stay on top of the software industry you have to listen to your customers and produce software that captures the majority of the market. Our customers have been wanting a more collaborative tool which can be a tricky venture when referencing a desktop application. Also, customers define collaboration many different ways. For instance, web based tool which have their pitfalls of refreshing and internet speed. As a trend, collaboration is the road most desktop applications will be traveling down if customers keep requesting these features. It's very difficult to predict long term technology trends because it moves and changes too quickly. We listen to our clients which drives out product development.

Thanks so much to Brandon Conrad, Sales Manager for Matchware. For more information please visit the Matchware website. If you are interested in purchasing MindView 3 you will be glad to know that I have become an Affiliate Partner and would be happy to support you should you decide to invest in MindView 3.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Alternative Views of Blog Content

A great comment from Ken Allan on my post Free:

My family listen to NZ Radio a lot. Current affairs progs are now all available, free, as podcasts (bits) on their site. When someone misses a broadcast they wanted to hear, their dismay is ameliorated with, "I can always access the podcast".

Of course, this event rarely actually happens. So not only has bits reduced the value of some things, it also shelves the possibility of their use.

I'd already realised this was happening last century when people would stock up on videoed TV programs that they would never have the time to watch because they were watching the broadcasts - a time debt that was not able to be paid.

The same (actually) applies to reading blogs. As Sue Waters pointed out to me about indexing blogs, "people don't use blogs that way".

I completely agree with Ken that content seems to stream by and if you miss the stream, it somewhat gets lost later as there's the continuous flood. I believe that things will eventually circle back to it, especially if it is important.

But it concerns me that Ken may be giving up on our mutual quest to figure out alternative views of blog content. This is something I discussed in my post - Index Page where I describe the core challenge as:

How do we create resources on our blogs that will help a new reader or a search visitor understand what's on a blog and orient themselves?

Sue Waters responded previously:

Most of the time they are a lot of work for minimal return so you really do need to consider whether the time spent is good R.O.I.

Think about it. How often do you go to another person's blog to find specific information? Guaranteed either never or seldom. And the main people who you would return to are those that you know provide informative posts.

Reality of a blogger is we are only as good as our last post :) .

With good use of search, categories and tags on posts combined with making each post count is probably time better spent than creating index pages (however they can be useful for the blogger themselves).

In terms of the ROI of spending time making other views, I have a slight advantage in that I can get automated views of my blog via eLearning Learning and have it do interesting things. My goal is still to figure out what the views are of a blog that can help make it more accessible. Get that into eLearning Learning. And then make that available to other bloggers. Thus, the ROI becomes high because the Investment is small (zero).

In looking back at Sue's comments, I actually go quite a bit to blogs as sources of specific information. That's a big part of the value of eLearning Learning.

I do think that use of categories/tags is part of the answer, but I'm hopeless when it comes to that. And I'm not willing to go back and tag older posts.

I'm hoping there's still some interest and thoughts on what should emerge as alternative views of blog content.

Some specific questions:

1. Would it be helpful to have a tag cloud view instead of the long list view of a blog content as shown in my sidebar that is auto-generated by eLearning Learning?

2. Are there a set of views that are combinations of recent, best of, organized by keywords, essentially the information we have via eLearning Learning that would be compelling to first timers, or for going back through a topic, etc.?

Monday, August 17, 2009

Current time? Really?!

"Let S be an <SQL procedure statement> that is not generally contained in a <triggered action>. All <datetime
value function>>s that are contained in <value expression>s that are generally contained, without an intervening
<routine invocation> whose subject routines do not include an SQL function, either in S without
an intervening <SQL procedure statement> or in an <SQL procedure statement> contained in the <triggered
action> of a trigger activated as a consequence of executing S, are effectively evaluated simultaneously.
The time of evaluation of a <datetime value function> during the execution of S and its activated triggers
is implementation-dependent."

The above is a citation of SQL Standard 2008/2003/1999 (part 2 - SQL/Foundation). It's a little nightmare to read, follow and understand, but it's the cause of one behavior generally considered an annoyance in Informix: Inside a stored procedure, all CURRENT references will show the same value.

Let's check the Informix SQL Syntax guide to see how the above ANSI rule is explained in the fine manual:

"SQL is not a procedural language, and CURRENT might not execute in the lexical order of its position in a statement.
You should not use CURRENT to mark the start, the end, nor a specific point in the execution of an SQL statement.

If you use the CURRENT operator in more than once in a single statement,
identical values might be returned by each instance of CURRENT. You cannot rely
on CURRENT to return distinct values each time it executes.

The returned value is based on the system clock and is fixed when the SQL
statement that specifies CURRENT starts execution. For example, any call to
CURRENT from inside the SPL function that an EXECUTE FUNCTION (or
EXECUTE PROCEDURE) statement invokes returns the value of the system clock
when the SPL function starts."

This looks like a more friendly explanation. But it doesn't point out the reason why this is implemented as is, and that reason is mainly for ANSI compliance. In practice, what I usually hear from customers is that this is inconvenient. Many times they are trying to use CURRENT YEAR TO SECOND/FRACTION to find out the time spent on a procedure or parts of it. And it simply doesn't work, because all the values they get are the same. Is there a solution? Yes, if you just need precision up to second:


SELECT
    DBINFO('utc_to_datetime', sh_curtime)
INTO
    current_time
FROM
    sysmaster:sysshmvals;

The sh_curtime field of sysmaster:sysshmvals contains the current unix time (number of seconds since January 1 1970). The DBINFO function with the 'utc_to_datetime' converts it into a DATETIME YEAR TO SECOND value.

Social Media Revolution

Great video similar to Did You Know?

Here are some of the stats from the video:

By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media

Always love to see this. And I like to add that the marriages that came from eHarmony (roughly 1% in US) will be better than those that came through other means.

2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum

80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?

Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands

25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone

According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available

24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.

Pretty amazing stuff.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

IDS 11.50.xC5

It's been too long and I have a lot of catch up to do... Let's start with the latest version of IBM Informix Dynamic Server. It's 11.50.xC5, the latest fixpack in the 11.50 family, available since the end of July 2009.

Keeping up with what can now be considered as usual, this fixpack brings important features. Let's list them:

High availability

Configuring RS Secondary Server Latency for Disaster Recovery
This allows the system administrator to configure a delay of time between the primary server and a RSS (remote secondary server). This means that the secondary server will lag behind the primary server for the specified amount of time.
Associated to this we have the ability to stop and restart the roll forward of the logical logs on the secondary server.
Note that for integrity purposes the primary will still send the logical logs as soon as possible. It's up to the secondary to hold the logs without applying them. This means that if your primary server disappears you're still able to recover up to the most current image of the primary server.
The configuration of this feature involves three new parameters: DELAY_APPLY, STOP_APPLY and LOG_STAGING_DIR.
DELAY_APPLY can be used to configure a delay between primary and secondary.
STOP_APPLY can be used to specify a specific time to stop applying logs
LOG_STAGING_DIR is a secondary locally writable directory where the server will keep the logs before applying them.
All this can be dinamically changed with onmode -wf/-wm command

Administration

Forcing the Database Server to Shut Down
Two new utilities were made available to handle situations where things went wrong... If for example your IDS server is hang, or when it was not shutdwon properly, you may have trouble to stop it and/or restart it (it can leave shared memory segments behind for example).
The new utilities are onclean and onshutdown. Onclean can be used to force the IDS server down (it can kill the engine processes) and it will try to clean all the shared memory segments that were left behind. Without options it's use is to remove the sahred memory segments of a server that was already stopped. With "-k" it will kill the server and then make sure the shared memory is freed.
Onshutdown is used to attempt to kill the server using the normal "onmode -ky", but if it fails it calls onclean.
This is not a big feature, but it can be handy for scripting and for new users.
Enhanced Support for Multibyte Character Strings
By using a new environment variable, SQL_LOGICAL_CHAR, the server will interpret the size of character fields in terms of characters instead of bytes as usual
New default for the INFORMIXTERM environment variable for terminal set up on UNIX
Simply a new default for INFORMIXTERM variable
onconfig Portal: Configuration Parameters Listed by Functional Categories
onstat Portal: onstat Commands Listed by Functional Categories
These two are important documentation enhancements available at IDS Infocenter
Enhancements to the Enterprise Replication plug-in for the OpenAdmin Tool for IDS
Open Admin Tool keeps being expanded and improved. And free...

Enterprise Replication

Enterprise Replication Stops if Memory Allocation Fails
Better handling of low memory conditions. Replication will stop and raise an alarm. After solving the memory issues just run cdr start
Notification of an Incorrect Log Position When Enterprise Replication Restarts
A new alarm is fired if the replay position is invalid (too old or later than current log position)
Workaround: Reclaiming Space from Enterprise Replication Paging Smart Large Objects
Later versions could allocate space for replication of SLOBs that was not necessary. This space can now be reclaim.
Improving the Performance of Consistency Checking with an Index
A new shadow column can be added to replicated tables. This column (ifx_replcheck) can be used in a composite index with the primary key in order to speed up the checking of replicates.
Specifying the Range of Data Sync Threads to Apply Replicated Transactions
An ONCONFIG parameter can control the number of replication threads

Warehousing
These features are presented in the Warehousing category, but I personally think they can be used in any kind of environment

Loading Data into a Warehouse with the MERGE Statement
This IDS version introduces support for the MERGE sql statement. We specify a destination table, a source table/query and a match condition. If the match condition is true than the row in the destination table is UPDATEd with the data from the source table/query. If the match condition is false a new row is inserted in the destination table
Retrieving Data by Using Hierarchical Queries
Introduces support for the CONNECT BY sql construct. This allows the use of the so called hierarchical queries. Please note that the most efficient way to handle this would be using the node datablade. But for compatibility reasons IBM decided to introduce this feature. It's a nice feature for application portability

So, that's all for xC5. Let's use the new features and keep an eye on xC6 that should appear before the end of the year.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Going it Alone with my Blackberry Curve

I just got back from a short vacation in Las Vegas with my family and I decided to leave my laptop at home and fly solo with my Blackberry Curve on the Verizon Network. As much as I like to always travel with my laptop, I would only be away for a short period of time and wanted to see what it would be like to rely on my Blackberry for accessing my email and the web in case I had to get in touch with clients. With the fall right around the corner, I needed to be in reach and be able to email my clients if they contacted me. As we all know Blackberry's are great for emailing and I was able to stay in touch and respond to several key email requests while I was away. While in Las Vegas I was able to look up some of the attractions using the web browser on my Blackebrry without a problem-with fairly quick response times on the Verizon network. Using Twitter on the Blackberry to keep up with things was fairly straight forward but on occasion the application did freeze my phone. Now that my Blackberry Curve is about 1 1/2 old you can sense that the processor in the Curve is under-powered, which at times causes the phone to crash. About the only thing that I wasn't able to do on my Blackberry Curve was to complete a PDF form that I needed to email to a colleague of mine. All in all, the Blackberry Curve really performed well and makes you question at times if you really need to carry your laptop when traveling. I knew that I would not have the need to do word processing or edit a spreadsheet on my vacation so going it alone with my Blackberry Curve proved to be the way to go. I would be interested in your experiences using your smartphone in lieu of toting your laptop or netbook with you.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Free

I've been slowly going through Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. There's a lot he gives you to think about and definitely a lot that relates to the Business of Learning.

There's quite a bit in the book that really resonates with me:

We can't help it: We value atoms more than bits.

Bits want to be free.

A common theme throughout the book is that people naturally understand the differences between bits and atoms. We somewhat intuitively understand that near-zero marginal cost is true for bits. Thus, they treat content delivered as bits as having less value than the equivalent atoms version.

Chris tells us:

It's time to stop treating bits like atoms and assuming the same limitations hold.

There's definitely a lot of questions raised by the book that will undoubtedly add to my thoughts around New Learning Solutions:

What are the versions of offerings that can have different prices?
Because of downward price pressure on anything that is bits and relatively undifferentiated, what are the ways that offerings can include other differentiating aspects?
Where can users add value back into the system?
What are network effects that we can leverage for greater value?
Where do network effects outside a single organization instance help drive value?
How do we effectively compete in the Attention Economy? (see Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Economy)

This will be fun to explore. Likely through my Free Blog and Free Webinars.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Camtasia for Macintosh to Be Released - August 25th

I know it has been a long time coming and I am glad to announce that Techsmith will be releasing Camtasia for the Macintosh on August 25th for a special promotional price of $99 dollars until the end of the year. After that Camtasia for the Mac will be priced at $149. I know I have been waiting for this awhile now and I am sure this will become an important part of your instructional toolkit once it is released. I will be talking more about Camtasia for the Mac in future posts.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Ginger Software Updated

I have been following the development of Ginger Software for the past couple of months and wanted to let you know that a new version is available at their web site. Ginger Software is a very innovative spelling correction tool that works with Microsoft Word and well as with Outlook. Students can do their writing in Microsoft Word and with a click of the F2 key bring up the Ginger Software application.

The Ginger Software interface has changed significantly since the last version and I trust that once you try it you will find it even easier to use. Once you invoke the F2 key the Ginger Software interface drops down from the top of your

Word document and provides you with the suggestions for your misspelled words. If you click on the suggested word which is underlined, you will have some alternative words to select from. I think that you will agree that the new interface is much more intuitive and easier to use. You will note on their website that built-in text to speech support is coming to Ginger Software. So if you have not had a chance to experience using Ginger Software give it a try and let me know what you think. Click on the word demo to see Ginger Software in action. The algorithms that are used are fantastic for students with dyslexia. I would be interested in your feedback and how your students have found using Ginger Software.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Case Studies of Informal or Social Learning

I'm looking to find lots of examples of where informal or social learning has been used successfully in the workplace and where it was led by the L&D organization. This can either be already written up, or it can be the name of a person and organization where it was done.

Can you provide me pointers?

If you would be more comfortable, feel free to send me information via an email: akarrer@techempower.com.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Marginalized

In the T+D article Learning Gets Social, Tony Bingham paraphrases something I said:

In the May issue of T+D, Tony Karrer, an e-learning technologist and CEO of TechEmpower, encouraged companies to start adapting to the current trend in informal learning because otherwise, they will find themselves marginalized in the business.

I thought it would be good for me to put some context around what I meant by this. Especially given that there's been some push-back on the term "marginalized."

In the Business of Learning, I pointed out that there were some pretty significant questions facing the training industry. Budgets have been hammered this year, and there's a question as to what spending levels will look like going forward. During the Free Online Conference – Future of Learning we heard different perspectives.

Skill Building Still in Demand. There was definitely the belief that there are continued need for skills development. If anything, there is increased need.
Catalogs / Courses Commoditization. At the same time, the business of selling a catalog of courses is seen as being tough going forward. Unless you do something to differentiate yourself in a real way, you will be more and more of a commodity.
Many Ways to Differentiate. We heard several people talking about focus on performance. We heard about use of assessments. There was discussion about a lot of the things that need to happen outside the training event.

While there are great content vendors out there, I really didn't hear anyone who was claiming that being a content vendor was a great business right now. Instead, they talked about other kinds of things that would differentiate them in the marketplace.

I believe the same thing is true for internal learning and development organizations. If you are seen as being the place you go for training / content production, there will still be need for your work, but it will be under greater pressure, just like external training suppliers.

There are some other big picture trends going on that have impact on this:

Faster pace
Greater focus and value on high end concept work
Job fragmentation – fewer people in any single job role
Shorter job tenure

These pressures suggest that there are greatly increased learning needs within organizations. However, less of these learning needs will be successfully met by traditional methods. If you look at what makes a good situation for formal learning:

Large Audience
Similar Level / Needs
Known, Stable Content
Few Out of Bounds Cases

Of course, these are almost the opposite of the trends I mentioned. So, while formal learning solutions will make a portion of how learning will occur, the increased demand for learning will be met through other forms.

This leaves us with the questions:

What the role of learning and development relative to all of this?
If L&D leadership chooses to focus primarily on traditional methods and less so on informal learning opportunities, will they be marginalized in the business.