I’m closing the chapter on 2008 and gearing up for 2009 and beyond. Looking back, I see lots of smoke but little fire. Next year, I intend to start making the world a better place, and that’s going to take more oomph, focus, and work with others.
Note: this post documents my journey through the past 12 months. Be forewarned: it’s me, me, me.
Winter
Submitted my DNA to 23 and Me for decoding. I relearned the importance of environment, for the heredity-based predictions are largely wrong.
Staying Alive appears in Link&Learn eNewsletter. Brains are replacing machines. We are in the midst of a great transition to an era of networks and service. Einstein’s relativity has replaced Newton’s clockwork universe, not just in physics, but in the way we regard the world. Reality emerges from the interaction of complex adaptive systems; the future is unpredictable; nothing is certain. As in nature, everything is connected to everything else. Nothing is ever finished: the world is in perpetual beta, always evolving.
Forever Beta appears in CLO magazine. Peter Drucker said the purpose of business is to create and maintain a customer. A developer who says, “Here’s what we’ve got now, but something better is on the way,” forms a relationship of mutual self-interest with the customer. The developer who says, “This product is final. We won’t be doing anything more with it. This is as good as it gets,” gives the buyer no incentive to participate in a continuing relationship. Beta empowers the customer to decide what’s good enough. Nothing’s set in stone. Nothing is absolute.
Time to Change Centuries appears in Inside Learning Technologies. Hierarchies are like the children’s game of telephone, where a message is whispered from one person to the next, becoming unintelligible in the process. Networks enable direct, static-free, one-to-one communication.
Attended the Seventh Annual Conference on Neuroaesthetics, this year on the Many Faces of a Face.
Keynoted Learning Technologies 2008 in London. Topic: Learning — All Change.
February trip to Burgundy for eats, wine, comraderie
Spring
Marc Rosenberg, Allison Rossett, Barbara Pellow, and I led Up to Speed, an event in NYC for Mimeo. Publish first un-book for the event.
Attend Jerry’s Retreat at Marconi.
Reviewed Hamel’s The Future of Management. Everyone has a voice. It’s easy and cheap to experiment. Authority is fluid and contingent on value-added. Just about everything is decentralized.
I announced the Informal Learning 2.0 Fieldbook, which morphed into Learnscape Architecture and then Learnscaping.
Opening presentation at CLO Symposium in Orlando.
Spent several uncomfortable nights in a sleep lab. $10,000 later, decide it’s easier to simply sleep on my side or tummy.
A job like mine, E.Learning Age
Community Tips for New Leaders (blog)
Lead workshop: Innovation University at Eaton
In What’s wrong with this picture?, I recognize that learner-centric is the wrong term. It should be learners-centric. Trios Trump Singletons appears in CLO.
Adaptation appears in CLO magazine. Organizations are more like living organisms than machines. Knowledge workers have replaced factory workers. Ideas and relationships are more valuable than tangible assets. Shareholders owned the factories, but workers own their minds. Information spreading through network connections empowers workers to make decisions and take responsibility for them.
Introduced book Bioteams. The biggest challenge businesses today face is unlearning what was successful in the industrial age and learning how to prosper in the network era. You plant a seed and expect nature to do the rest. Give workers the resources and challenge them to do what’s required. Rather than give them an extra push, enable them to achieve accountability through transparency not permission.
Learnscapes: where informal learning and knowledge work converge
Time is all we have (CLO mag). A businessperson with a watch knows what time it is, but a businessperson with two watches does not. Most managers tell time with Industrial Age watches, acting as if Internet time does not exist and missing the prospects it offers. The hands of future watches will spin so fast they will appear to be a blur.
Web 2.0, collective intelligence and the future of learning. Podcast from Web 2.0 Expo. Also, What is cloud computing?
Summer
Family trip to Zurich, Andeer, Soglio, Como, Salzburg, Prague, Dresden, Berlin.
Keynoted Self-Organised Learning in the Interactive Web, Learning Culture at a Turning Point in Salzburg. An article I prepared for the event kicks off the book of proceedings: „Selbstorganisiertes Lernen mit E-Learning. Einblick in die Landschaft der webbasierten Bildungsinnovation. Sammlung von ausgewählten Fach- und Praxisbeiträgen zu interaktiven Lehr- und Lernszenarien.“
Internet Time Group LLC celebrates 10th birthday.
Wrote 200+ pages of Learnscape Architecture, the un-book nobody reads.
Keynoted LearnX in Melborne. Led workshops on informal learning in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Loved Australia. First reports from my learning practices survey. Inspired by Aboriginal painting of social networks.
Attended Future of Media Summit, interviewed Scoble
Attended motorcycle concours
Posted my first video mash-up to YouTube
Keynoted conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil
Facilitated NextNow Collaboratory session on The Future of the Book.
Visited Austin in Fairbanks and drove home (took several weeks). Upon return, my Thinkpad’s hard disk is spaghetti. I throw it away and buy a MacBook, MacPro, and MacBook Air. Screw Windows; life’s too short.
Enterprise Twitter (blog)
Fall
Sessions with Intel in Portland
Attended Gnomedex 8 in Seattle.
eLearn magazine publishes Learnscape Architecture. Corporate learning is a continuous, never-ending process. People learn to do their work in small chunks: a tip from a pal, an “ah-ha moment” after trying something new, a factoid from Wikipedia or Google, a glimpse of someone doing something well, or a story told over lunch. But training departments rely on offering workshops and courses, and CLOs fixate on “learning management systems.” These event-driven things are necessary, but they are a small part of improving organizational learning and performance. Rather than investing in new content and control systems, learning leaders will get a higher return from nurturing the natural pathways to learning that already exist in their organizations.
I treat myself to a new car: BMW 128i.
Discussed ROI of Learning at CLO Symposium in San Diego
Led learning track on Future of Talent retreat in Tiburon. The Golden Gate Bridge as metaphor and outing.
Participated in Hero Camp in Houston. The world needs more everyday heroes.
Internet Inside appears in CLO magazine. Most important of all, the Web software provides a social layer that connects people with one another and with information. CGI employees are geographically dispersed, but their collective intelligence system connects the dots.
Podcast with Kineo on implementing eLearning. My interview with Training Zone caused a ruckus.
Built studio on lower floor of the house in Berkley for thinking big thoughts.
Online sessions on eLearning with Diageo
Co-sponsored Corporate Learning Trends and Innovation 2008, a week-long, all-online event.
Unable to attend in person, I prepared a video to the closing conference of “Establishing a Collective Understanding and Raising Awareness on Informal Learning in Turkey in the Context of Lifelong Learning” in Ankara, Turkey.
Jane Hart, Clark Quinn, Harold Jarche, and I announce the formation of togetherLearn.
Led sessions at DevLearn in San Jose on dealing with a down economy and learnscaping
Disowned inventing term eLearning.
Visit Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Winter
Online Educa Berlin: one-day workshop on social network learning, led session on mobile learning, on closing blogger panel
Hosted an invitation-only meeting in the board room of Thomson Reuters in London on the Future of Learning.
Participated in international panel on engineering excellence at a castle outside of Aachen
Learning for the 21st Century appears in Learning Technologies. Learning is the process of figuring out how the world works. Neurons in the minds of learners forge pathways and form patterns that convert the booming, buzzing cacophony bombarding our senses into the simple vista we call reality. Learning develops new capacities, skills, values, understanding, and preferences. Organisms only stop learning when they die. Learning is not one activity. It’s a dog’s breakfast of acquiring skills, information, knowledge, savoir faire, and more. Its dimensions are emotional, cognitive, physical, sensory, and social. The common denominator is that learning enables the learner to function better in his or her environment. The measure of learning is performance at one’s calling and fulfillment in life. Most organisational learning is built on nineteenth-century principles, and these days that’s a formula for disaster.
Learned to piece together video clips into presentations, uploaded 2,000 photos to Flickr.
Shot collection of conceptual photos of cobblestones in Australia, Brazil, the U.S., and Europe.
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