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2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 10,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Activate Learning Solutions is Moving!

Well the time has come for me to have my own domain name and I will transfer this WordPress site to a WordPress.Org site (let’s see how that goes) on www.activatelearning.com.au over the coming days.

Please feel free to follow me there.  Thank you for reading my blog!

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How To Pitch The Value of Personal Learning Networks to a CEO – Wise or Folly?

After four weeks of participating in the Exploring Personal Learning Networks cMOOC, it has come to this.

Our pitch to the CEO on the value of personal learning networks.  In fact, through the various readings, discussion and activities of the previous three weeks, we have been building up to this point to undertake the following activity:

Your CEO (or equivalent organizational leader) just heard about PLNs at a cocktail party and is excited about gaining a competitive advantage (or improving impact on mission) by leveraging PLNs for the organization’s success. But, she/he knows little about PLNs or what to do with them to support organizational success and strategy. Is the organization set up to benefit from and support PLNs, so it is more than just an individual thing? She/he is going away on vacation for one week, and upon return wants you to explain what PLNs are and to provide guidance for what to do. You have a one-hour meeting to facilitate a conversation.

First Thoughts

My first thoughts when I read this paragraph was that this is going to be a simple task. When you believe in something, it’s not hard to influence others to see what you’re seeing. Or is it? My second thought was that we have a full hour with the CEO.  Usually it takes a long time to get into their diary and set up a meeting so with a full hour with them, it indicates that they’ve taken this topic seriously and really want to hear what you have to say.

My Worlds Collide

While participating in this cMOOC, there were things happening in my real life at work that linked the theory of what we were learning to the real life practicalities of working in a corporate environment.  For example, I was invited to be a part of a working group to inspire more users of our division onto Yammer (I think mainly inspired because of what I did at the People Day event) and secondly, every day I would have requests from people to “ask your networks what I knew about x and y” or “what do your networks say about a, b and c“.

That is, word was getting out there that I was someone who was connected.  I can get answers for the questions they were asking quickly.

Something didn’t sit right with me with that.

All of a sudden what was my PERSONAL learning network, the network that I built, created, maintained, nurtured and trusted could be up for exploitation by others who don’t have any.

So this assignment wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. If PLNs were going to be used in the organisation like this, why would I want to share mine with others?

Now I was considering doing a runner.

Go on. You knew there would have been a BitStrips cartoon in my blog post somewhere.

A Supportive PLN and G+ Community Understood The Dilemma

We discussed this concept with a small group of participants on the Explorer Personal Learning Networks MOOC. You can see it here.

The group debated the following questions:

  • Why does the CEO in our problem want to leverage PLNs?
  • Why does he/she think PLNs will help with company success?
  • Why do we think we need to place a structure on PLNs?
  • Why are some organizations successful with internal PLNs?
  • Why do other organizations fail?

What transpired was robust conversation to structure our thinking and make a logical case (whether for or against) on the value of personal learning networks.

So What Did I Do?

I came to the conclusion that I had to look at the organisation and its leaders and see how ready it was for social learning.  That is, it was obvious that the CEO may have thought that this was either going to be another fad or simply, a technological solution that needed to be implemented to get people to be social.

My aim was to dispel these myths and tackle the organisational culture first.

So in effect, I’m not presenting a case either FOR or AGAINST personal learning networks, simply pointing to the current organisational culture and inspiring a dialogue so that they can see for themselves whether they are ready or not for this cultural shift.

I saw my role as someone who presented the facts that got them thinking and reflecting. I wanted them to see what they had to do for themselves.

Maybe I could guide them through the process but they had to make the hard decisions for themselves because I wanted them to see that they had a major role to play.

This was not something that they could mandate.

I created a fictional corporation called Personal Banking Corporation (and no, it’s nothing like the organisation I’m working for) and decided present slides to the CEO and the Leadership Team with the themes:

  • Where we are today
  • Where we want to be tomorrow
  • Define Peer Networks
  • View a Personal Learning Networks video
  • View a personal story of how a peer network helped colleagues in their lines of work
  • Use an example of a business problem and how we could solve it if we used a peer network and without (and present data and findings). This is where I used my recent example of how I asked my PLN to provide me with any sources on onboarding and induction programs for my job.
  • Talk them through Harold Jarche’s post on the Knowledge Sharing Paradox and Seek, Sense, Share Model
  • Spend some time looking at why peer networks will have its challenges with the current organisational structure – note how my first dot point is that “knowledge sharing is explicitly stated as a core enterprise behaviour” (I wanted to call this slide: “Why Peer Networks Will Fail at PBC” but thought it was too hard-hitting as it was self evident from these points that they’d have other things to address first)
  • Open discussion on slides presented so that CEO and leadership team can see for themselves that it’s not as simple as they thought.

What Are The Tactics I Used?

First of all, I decided to call them “Peer Networks” – I removed the word “learning” as my intention was to remove any preconceived ideas about learning.  I wanted to create a sense that it was just “part of the way we do business – in the workflow”.

Calling it out may have put negative connotations into their minds.  I also didn’t want it to have any connection with the Learning & Development department for fear of them having the concept packaged into a programmed event, formalised, structured, implemented, measured and evaluated.

Also, my assumption was that I was speaking to a CEO and a Leadership Team who were “Cautious Testers”, people who are “pessimistic but understand the need to collaborate because they can see the benefits of involving a greater circle of people.  These people don’t have much hands-on experience with social technologies, but they have some – enough to see the advantages of open leadership, but not quite enough to abandon their command-and-control practices” (1)

Secondly, I decided to use personal stories of people in my PLN.  I asked both Jasmine Malki (@JMalki) and Costas Sotidis (@LearnKotch) to video their personal experiences of how a PLN helped them in their respective role.  I thought personal stories of people outside the organisation would be believable and make them see that this is happening everywhere.

Costas, in particular focusses on the need to nurture, respect and share in order to maintain and retain a personal learning network because in doing so, we help with different ideas and alternative options in our new roles as knowledge workers.  He makes it clear that PLNs are something that we all have – not just the few.

How PLN has helped your role by Jasmine Malki (@JMalki)

How PLN has helped your role by Con Sotidis (@LearnKotch

Thirdly I decided to use a real business problem to explain how peer networks may help in solving them.  In particularly, I used my current role as a developer of Induction programs.  I am in the process of designing a new Induction Program for Store Managers and I asked the question to my PLN on whether they had an good sources of on-boarding and induction programs.  I wrote about it in my blog post Exploring Personal Learning Networks To Help Me in My Job.

I wanted to demonstrate two methods of gaining responses and information.  In the traditional way, we may have generated a survey, collated responses, measured the data and written reports that may have been costly and taken time to develop.  However with social media, we get instant feedback, personal stories, real life examples, people offering other connections, resources and networks – the interaction is richer and provides dialogue and conversations to occur that generate new and alternative ideas that we may not have considered for our induction problem.

In effect, as Maureen Crawford said in her blog, “the strength of a PLN is that nonlinear interactions and engagement results in emergent competence that is distributed across the network”. (2)

Fourthly, I wanted to add the current organisational cultural challenges into the mix so that they could see that there was a disconnect between a networked organisation and an organisation that did not value sharing and collaboration and provided examples such as:

  • Knowledge sharing isn’t explicitly stated as an enterprise behaviour
  • Senior leaders don’t use Yammer
  • Technology does not allow access to external social media sites
  • High turnover of staff in many areas raises questions of why would anyone want to share when they know they’ll be leaving?

The aim of these challenges is to get the CEO to think that there’s a disconnect and that he/she needs to address organisational culture first before becoming a networked organisation.

And it starts with the CEO.

Lastly, I added the last slide because I envisaged that the hour would have bamboozled the CEO and the Leadership Team with a quiet realisation like the one I had at the start of this assignment, “it’s not as easy as I thought”.

The intention was to generate discussion and come up with some ideas to work on the organisational culture first, to discuss what they themselves were prepared to give up or not – and to question their role in the entire process.

Where To From Here?

Although this MOOC has still one week to go before it finishes, I have found it to be valuable and worthwhile in my learning because I could directly apply it to my daily work. Connectivist MOOCs have been one the most instrumental and critical personal development activities I’ve ever completed but I think it’s because I’m a self-directed and willing learner.

If people in organisations could be more like this, we wouldn’t be answering the question, “what’s the value of personal learning networks.”

Recently, it seems my online and real life worlds are colliding.

I sit in a role of “Design Consultant Induction Programs” but I’m being called upon to use my other skills in the social learning space to teach others in the organisation how to use the technology to create and build learning networks.

Many of these requests are coming from outside my own Learning and Development function because I’m active on Yammer.

Last week, I applied for an internal role in our organisation called “Future Skills Strategy Capability”.  I saw it as an opportunity to be in a role that could shape the skills and capabilities needed for a workforce to face the future.

I guess in the new world of organisational change, I’m trying to see where I ‘best fit’ – maybe there is no fit anymore?

The problem is I don’t have experience in this nor have I shaped strategy in previous organisations.  All I had to go by is my own application, experience and actions I have done in the last few years around performance consultancy.

So I needed to make an impact.  I needed to get creative.

I used our company’s recent More Give and Less Take Marketing Campaign to structure an animated video with voice over using photos from our campaign to create “What Do We Need More and Less Of”  and included that in my job application using the application Shadow Puppet to create it.

My gut tells me I won’t get the job but that’s okay because I’m seeing signs that we’re on the right track.

Because we are not like the fictitious company in my MOOC assignment.

If you haven’t already seen the RSA Animate Video on The Power of Networks:

Thank you to my PLN:

Thank you to both Jasmine and Con for their support and assistance when I asked them to do these videos for me. It’s hard to believe that over a year ago, our paths had not crossed but with Twitter and by sharing our learning, showing our work and talking about our passion for what we do and how we can inspire others, what started as being part of our own PLN, I can count them as my friends now.  Thank you.

Thank you also to the Google+ community, in particularly our small group in the Explorer Personal Learning Networks cMOOC who bantered, discussed and deliberated ideas for how we would approach our respective CEOs.

(1)   Christensen, Karen (2012): Open Leadership: A New Paradigm Emerges and Interview with Charlene Li Available at http://hbr.org/product/open-leadership-a-new-paradigm-emerges/an/ROT156-PDF-ENG

(2)  Crawford, Maureen:  Non-Ownership, Outcomes and Competencies Available at http://xplrpln.blogspot.ca/2013/10/non-ownership-outcomes-and-competencies.html

(3)    “Online Jam Spreads Information Mix”, Financial Business Review, 17 April 2013 Available at: http://www.afr.com/p/national/work_space/online_jam_spreads_information_mix_7lcYBbjvqZlH6W8Zydj22I

(4) Kamerer, Eric: Introducing Personal Knowledge Management to a Corporate Audience Learning Solutions Magazine, 30 October 2013.  Available At https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1296/introducing-personal-knowledge-management-pkm-to-a-corporate-audience

(5) Hart, Jane: How Do We Deal with Unwilling Corporate Learners? Available at: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2013/09/22/how-do-we-deal-with-unwilling-corporate-learners/

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Community Learning Programs in Melbourne

Two nights ago after work,  I wandered over to the State Library of Victoria, a place I hadn’t visited for some years.  It was looking a bit worse for wear in my opinion or maybe I was just becoming a grumpy old woman for noticing the dirt and rubbish that side of town.

It was early evening and Melbourne workers were scrambling to get home while students sat on the steps outside the library munching on fast food before they went back in to continue their studies.

A lone seagull desperately flew around the head of one of the statues trying to land on its head.

I was here to attend a Melbourne Knowledge Week panel of people who created start-ups around community learning events called Learning In the City.

photo 1

In its fourth year, Melbourne Knowledge Week has various programs and events around the city.  Our city is home to infrastructure and key organisations which are thought to characterise a knowledge city.  You can find out more about it on the website here.

The panel consisted of community learning providers who were all start ups and have been providing learning in some form or another.

photo 2

We Teach Me

I have had the pleasure of connecting with We Teach Me through my work to see if their product can have some corporate application for peer-to-peer learning programs.  The platform allows anyone who has a subject matter expertise to plan, co-ordinate and conduct courses on any topic.  Teachers can use this product to easily create, manage and promote courses.  Similarly, learners can enrol, connect and create their own curriculum of learning based on their own personal needs.

In fact, last night, I did my first We Teach Me Course on Evernote 101 run by Megan Ilema (@Megsamanda) so I guess I not only learned about Evernote but I got to trial We Teach Me dashboard on a real event.

At the Evernote 101 Workshop playing with Skitch

The Creative Performance eXchange

Peter Spence talked about the events they offer at the Creative Performance eXchange. It’s an inter-generational forum where people talk and share ideas.  Although I hadn’t been to any of these forums, I understood these to be a gathering of people from all walks of life, of all experiences, from a wide industry and background who get together to talk and in so doing, learn from each other.  On the panel, Peter talked about how left brain we all are nowadays and how we have a lot to learn from children, women and the arts.  My understanding of his message that in today’s society we are simply too busy, too structured and focused and as a result we have lost our humanness, creativity and connections.

Laneway Learning

I chatted with Mark who was one of the founders of Laneway Learning and found that we had a connection over organic chemistry.  We regaled stories of white lab coats, beakers and morphine derivative compounds (Please, no Breaking Bad jokes).  Studying towards a PhD and doing this on top of their studies, they founded this group that runs short after-work classes in Melbourne that are cheap, accessible and by the looks of it, fun.

Although I haven’t done a workshop yet, it’s on my list to do one of these – or even bring along a group of work colleagues one night.  Rather than go for a drink after work at a bar, why not go and do a fun class together?

I complained that I couldn’t get on a 3D printing class online on Twitter and thankfully, they offered another suggestion with The Robots Are Coming.

I was sold on the name. What a brilliant name for the business AND they have a night where you can print Dr Who themed artwork!   I quickly shot an email to my brother, the left brained electrical engineer as something like this would appeal to his nature so now we’re talking about doing a class together!

(The last time we were in school together would have been in primary and high school but I reckon these classes would be a lot more fun than our childhood school days).

School of Life

School of Life “Good Ideas for Everyday Life” is based on Alain de Bottom’s School of Life where you learn how to deal with the hard hitting questions in life.  This scared me admittedly but I know it’s something I will need to face.

Questions like, “How to Have a Better Conversations”, “How to Be Confident”,  “How to Face Death”…yeichs.

School of Life reminds me of the conversations that we have around our family dinner table. They say that one must never talk about sex, politics or religion at the dinner table but it seems that for Greeks this is certainly not the case. Everything is up for grabs and it makes for exciting dinner conversation where people yell, complain, cajole, argue, laugh, cry, moan about these topics over a moussaka and plenty of retsina.  However, somehow I don’t think the School of Life presents their information in such as robust and loud way as I have been accustomed to.  Regardless, they provide a place where people can be comfortable discussing these heavy subjects.

Overall, my main take on this panel and my experience of community learning events is that they provide a great way for people from all backgrounds to get together and learn something new and from each other.  Courses aren’t long, expensive or convoluted. There is no accreditation, certification or qualification.   The factors that made these events popular was that people were learning from each other, they were actually ‘doing something’ and the teachers were passionate.

Stephen Heppell had written about what makes the Best Learning Moments and it seems that community learning events follow these.

Last of all, another start up was mentioned  and they were Smiling Mind . As someone who loves to meditate (simply as a way to calm my mind), we chatted about their product and service which provides mindfulness meditation.

I went home, downloaded their app,  listened to their meditation and promptly fell asleep. Clearly, a real winner for me.

Just so you know, I’m not being paid to mention these products and services – just like to share because they may be of interest to you.

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One Small Step for Us, One Large Step for our Team

This week we had our People Day. Over 400 people across Australia in the Human Resource function travelled to Melbourne to gather and hear our Leadership Team talk about the challenges of the future and how we can work together to face them.  Although I will not go into detail here about what was covered, suffice to say that the key messages were all related to what we read about on the internet everyday.  That is, the impact and speed of which technology has changed the way we work and how we can work with it.  The underlying theme was that change is the new norm and that we don’t have a hefty manual to tell us what and how to do things anymore.

While sitting in the big plenary room, I glanced around me and saw that no one had their devices out. No iPads, no phones, no tablets.  Sure we had paper and pens and some people were scribbling notes but I felt awkward to have my tablet out sketch noting presentations and taking photos.  People looked at me with curiosity wondering why I was bothering taking photos.

Some time ago, I had written a note on Yammer, our organisation’s social networking site on the power of the backchannel and how we could use groups and hashtags to capture internal events and conferences and share these out across our organisation.  Of course, it’s one thing to write about it and another to do it.

I had been thinking about using the hashtag #PeopleDay and sharing my notes on Yammer but as no one was doing the same, an awkwardness overcame me as the ‘odd person out’ and had thoughts such as, “Maybe this isn’t the done thing? Maybe they don’t want this to be shared? Maybe I’m doing the wrong thing by sharing to Yammer? Maybe there are different rules for internal conferences and external conferences?”

During the morning break, my colleague Paul came to me and asked me if I was going to share my notes on Yammer.  When I told him my concerns, he was feeling the same way. He was the only one on his table, like me, taking notes on his tablet and having strange looks come his way.

I’m sure people thought that we were being rude with our heads down madly tapping at our tablets.

We decided at that point to just ‘do it’. Just post our notes, photos, sketchnotes on Yammer to our team group with the hashtag #PeopleDay and see what transpired.

What did we have to lose?

Besides, the leadership team was espousing knowledge sharing and collaboration.  This was our go ahead to try something different and apply it immediately.

So we started uploading our photos, notes and sketch notes and over the course of the day, we saw that a few others had seen the posts and started commenting on it.  Then, we saw photos being uploaded and amazingly, all tagged with the hashtag!

I was chuffed.  This was a real win for us because it immediately broadened the scope of how Yammer was being used in our division.

Paul and I demonstrated the power of the backchannel by being the first two to start the ‘movement’ and the rest followed.

The next day, we had our Capability Day (our department’s team day) which was much more hands-on, interactive and a lot of fun.  By this stage, people were accepting of us using our tablets to capture what was going on around in the room.  Some people had asked what we were doing and when we told them, they too, contributed their own posts and photos.

However the power of what we had done didn’t reach us until the next day when we were back at our desks.

The head of our department had heard what Paul and I were doing and asked me to send her an email about it as she was keen to learn more.  I wrote the email and explained what a back channel was, how a hashtag is used and how Yammer has helped create a storyline of events, information and posts that would be beneficial for those people who were absent on the day.  I explained the value comes when people contribute their thoughts and reflections past the event and that it is ‘kept alive’ as people are talking about it online.

At the same time, I was glancing at the Yammer page and watching the traffic of people viewing documents and photos in our Group, the stream was too quick. It showed me that people were on Yammer interacting and engaging with the content that was uploaded.

I shot a quick message to Paul to check the traffic in Yammer.  Both of us were like excited little kids because this was a real win for us.

Although we didn’t have the volume of people participating and contributing to the online conversation, we did see that many people viewed the content.  There is a level of ‘fear’ of the use of Yammer and as many people have an online profile, many of them also don’t post anything related to their thoughts or their own work.  We still have a way to go in this sense but at least we have made a step in the right direction.  Once we have our senior leaders also contributing and responding in this tool, then I believe things will change.

In the meantime, I’m still counting this as a win.

We received congratulations from our head of department and our team members….

And now we can say that people know what a back channel is and how it can be used to capture and share information….

As a result of this action, yesterday afternoon, I was approached by the Culture team to work with them and look at how we can use Yammer in sharing our work and yes, the word ‘networks’ was mentioned.

YES! Score! Fist pump!

It looks like people in our team are now curious and want to know more.

Curiosity leads to questioning why we do the things we do.

Questions lead to experimenting with a new way.

Experimentation leads to learning something new.

Learning is then shared.

Networks are created.

We’re on the right path.

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Week 2 of Exploring Personal Learning Networks To Help Me in My Job

This second week of the Exploring Personal Learning Networks cMOOC was about defining Personal Learning Networks – and let me just say, there were LOTS of definitions.  So much so that in all honesty, it confused me because I was getting bogged down in the details trying to grapple with everyone’s definitions, explanations and reflections.  Luckily, however Jeff Merrell then asked us:

“How will you define Personal Learning Networks to your mother?”

Phew. That’s what I needed. Someone to take my hand and pull me out of the murky depths and make it simple enough for me to understand.

Then I had some anxieties.

Crikey, I’d have to explain it in Greek for her to understand.

But then, maybe that’s a positive for me as my Greek isn’t so good.  I’d have to really take it to the basic level of definition.

This is how I think my definition would have transpired…

All mirth aside I decided to use my PLE to solve a little problem that I came across this week at work.

The intention was two fold:

  • I wanted to get some ideas for the actual project (more creative ideas I would never have thought of myself; and lack of time to develop anything new from scratch – besides I don’t like to do work work on weekends and I had to have my brief to my manager in by 0830 Monday morning)
  • I wanted to use this as an example of a “real life organisational problem and how the PLN added value” for the MOOC assignment where we have to pitch to the CEO.  (I needed real life examples, hard data, testimonials, figures, results…you know ‘tangibles’ )

I was tasked to provide some recommendations around an induction (onboarding) program at our work.  I was not involved in the original brief and the team who had created the induction program were not subject matter experts in learning design or development.  In fact, I got handed the whole induction pack and program and was told to “finish it off and get it out there as quickly as possible” by the client.

The hairs on my arms stood on end when clients tell me this.

I don’t like taking orders.

Luckily my manager supported my view of that we critically review and assess their program and provide recommendations for how it could be improved. We could then seek their support and approval to redesign and develop it in the way that we saw best for the organisation and for the new employee.

When the client describes their working environment and current induction as, “survival of the fittest” I don’t know about you but for me, alarm bells start to ring. She was desperate for this to change – why wouldn’t she be!

But this got me thinking about induction stories and whether there were people in our organisation who had experienced a great onboarding program somewhere. What made their induction memorable? Why?

So I posted the question on Twitter and got a few responses with some links and leads to companies who do it well.  (Thanks to Joyce Seitzinger for mentioning about iPads in induction as I threw an offhand remark about this idea in the meeting about this and they stopped short – you could see their minds thinking about it).

I did a search on Google + and found the same question was asked by Harold Jarche in his post New Hire Practices back in 2011 and there were some great resources there that I could use.  Finally, I put the same question up on Yammer, our internal social networking tool expecting little or no response, but I got 11 responses within the first two days.

One person helped me out even further (and he’s a member of my PLN no less) also did a Yammer tag search on #induction and come up with another 38 different responses when the question was asked two years ago by Simon Terry and posted it up on Yammer for me to see.  So within the space of 2 days, I had an abundance of personal stories, links to companies who do it well and some wonderful ideas to include in the induction program!

Now if that’s not proof of a PLN working to solve a small issue or answer a question, I don’t know what is. There would be no way I could have got the same amount of responses any other way without doing some formal survey and taking a lot longer to design, develop, roll out and collate responses…and not as personal.

This week I also asked a few members of my PLN to create short videos (less than 2 minutes) on how their Personal Learning Network helped them in their role and provide specific organisational examples.  I’ll collate these responses as part of the final assignment pitch and put it up on the blog at a later date.  They form part of the ‘testimonial’ side of the pitch to the CEO because let’s face it – I want to make it personal and social because it’s not always about the numbers and hard data anymore.

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Our First Meet Up with Third Place

All products mentioned in this post are not endorsements, nor are they paying me to say so!

I was looking forward to last Thursday night.  It was going to be the first meet up for a new Meetup group for Melbourne learning professionals.

As an introvert, organising something like this is a big deal for me.  There’s butterflies in my stomach and an unsettling feeling when you just want this to work out.  I’ve planned and managed many different events in the past and the feelings are always the same.  You want to create a relaxing, informal social environment where people feel comfortable to talk and conversation flows.

For a first event, I was happy with the venue at the Royal Melbourne Hotel which has a colourful history. They had cordoned off an area for us with a mix of tables to sit down or stand with your drink. I had envisaged that people were going to mingle but instead, even better, we sat around a table with our drinks and made introductions as everyone came along.  We made our friendly introductions as everyone came over with their drink, made some room for them and started chatting.  I made sure that everyone was involved or involved in the conversations as I didn’t want anyone feeling like they missed out.

It’s funny how you think things will turn out and how they really do.

I introduced the concept of Third Place to everyone initially but then I let the conversation flow because really, I too, just wanted to chat socially and learn about other people. Where are they from? What are they doing? How did they get to where they are today?

The conversation ended up being around the table, that is, with the 9 people there, it was a group discussion.  People found each other’s stories and work lives fascinating because they would be people we would normally not meet in our every day line of work.

It also made us think about how we would have approached the learning solutions if we were in their industry.  So what we propose as a performance solution for one company may not be the right one for another one simply because of the many varying factors – and this was evident that even though we were in the same field of work, our applications were totally different.

There were a couple of freelancers, a couple from universities, other private companies and public sector.  The range of roles was fabulous – from facilitators, eLearning Designers, freelancers, coaches, and a vendor!

We sat enthralled as one guy (who was humorous to boot) as he told the line of work he’s in. He trains employees in the software that is used for anti-corruption, fraud and security.  We listened intently with our jaws agape as he told us the intricate nature of how they scour hard drives and USBs for data in criminal cases and how people don’t realise that imprints are left in our technological devices. You could hear a penny drop.  I’m sure everyone’s minds were ticking over with what personal or secure information is sitting on our devices and how easily it would be to access.

“And no, simply deleting them won’t get rid of it”, he added much to our surprise.

There was a collective “Awww, oh well…” around the table.

There were other stories too but the other thing that connected us were that we were all recently affected by some organisational restructure or a redundancy. This was the norm.

Discussions were varied but I got to talking to the vendor who I was surprised to be there. It’s a start up company called Coffee Who.  Originally when I checked out their website, I couldn’t see the value in its service offering.  How was it different to something like Meetup or simply connecting with someone through Yammer or setting up an appointment in Outlook calendar?

He explained that his software connects people across the organisation.  Say for example, one business unit knows that they don’t have networks or relationships in another part of the business (in the same company).  This software can automatically send coffee meeting notifications out connecting people of those two businesses.  They can then accept the meeting and go for a coffee.  Usually what happens is that they start conversing – a bit about themselves, their work, their business and voila, a connection is made.  After the coffee meeting, the tool generates a few post event questions about the value of that connection.  You can set up as many coffee meetings as you want.  It then provides a visualisation map of the networks created within the organisation – and who has the most networks made.  It can be used for identifying those individuals who have extensive networks and relationships in the business – the “connectors”.

It’s like “business online dating” (My words, not his).

Frankly, I thought the idea was brilliant because sometimes we need a ‘push’ and as an introvert, I wouldn’t know who I need to speak to in the organisation and how to make the connection.  If the tool can support me to do this, I can do the rest simply by face-to-face connection and from there, it gets easier and confidence builds.

I also learned about a couple community learning initiatives.  The first was SkillShare and the second was Melbourne’s Laneway Learning.  This latter initiative is a great idea where if you have something to teach, you share it with others – in a short class that is cheap and fun.  Have a look at what they do…

Why can’t organisational learning be like this?

MOOCs was a big part of the conversation.

Many around the table had heard of them but didn’t know what they were.  The concept seemed nebulous to them. Some people had completed them and had their own stories to tell about how effective they found them to be. Luckily we had Jeevan Joshi from The Learning Cafe Australia there who provided heaps of information and tips. You can listen to his recent webinar on MOOCs for Employee Learning: A Practitioners View below.

It’s funny how sometimes you imagine the meetup to be and how it transpires.  One of the things I noticed is that no one took out and used their mobile device throughout the meetup.  Instead, people seemed to be deep in conversation that didn’t necessitate breaking the focus with using their phone.  As such, I felt awkward to be the first so the phone stayed in my bag throughout the event.

Reflecting on this though, I saw it as a good thing as it was a measure of engagement in the conversation with real people there in the moment.

Our next event will be another after work drinks at Platform 28 in the Docklands on Thursday 14 November from 5:30pm-7:00pm.

Hope to see you there!

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Random Thoughts on a Wednesday Night – Passion And The Workplace

For those who know me, know I don’t sit still. My mind is always ticking over with something, making plans, organising something or experimenting with some new app or software.

Even quiet times at work you’ll find me reading articles, commenting in blogs, participating in tweet chats, doing MOOCs, listening to TED talks, podcasts or webinars. Anything to keep my mind active.

For me, the uncertain and anxious times in-between organisational restructures are perfect opportunities for professional development. But I’ve been noticing a trend over the recent years.  I seem to be having lots of professional development.

Why let all this wasted time make me unproductive? I may as well put it to good use and tackle my to do list of self-education.

We are in week 2 of the Exploring Personal Learning Networks cMOOC and I’m loving it because it’s making me think creatively and giving me the freedom to apply it directly to my work.

It’s my new pet project and already I’m thinking of how I can complete the assignment of coming up with a pitch for a CEO on the value of personal learning networks to an organisation.

I can see that I’ll probably have to use the assignment in ‘real life’ soon when this scenario arises in our organisation. It will happen. It’s only a matter of time.

So I decided to crowd source it.  Ask my PLN to solve an organisational issue around on boarding to demonstrate how effective networks are in solving a business issue. [Hence why you may have seen my Tweets and Google + posts asking for any onboarding examples.  I’m killing two birds in the one stone here.  The responses will form my pitch for the cMOOC but also, I’ve been asked to develop an Induction program  at work and I’m using my PLN’s stories, links and references to create a starting point for my plan].  Luckily, with 41 responses in Yammer, it seemed that everyone had an onboarding story they wanted to share about what worked and what didn’t.

But I digress…. let’s go back to talking about productivity.

Believe it or not, I enjoy going into work every morning to follow through my routine of grabbing a coffee, finding a desk, setting up my gear, logging on and then checking into the Google+ community to see what others are up to, what they’re writing about, what they’ve learned, check out their photos and blog posts.

I’ve gotten myself into a morning routine where I revel in the silence of the office…just me alone with all my PLN.

I read somewhere this week that getting feedback on social media equates to getting a dopamine hit – a high – and there’s something addictive to it.  I believe that. I’m living proof.

This week I’ve been reading various reports of the high levels of disengaged people at work and frankly, it’s depressing. Despite adding the reports on Yammer hopeful for some replies and robust debate, they may as well have tumbleweeds flowing through them.

No replies.

Obviously disengagement in the workplace is not as exciting as onboarding stories.

And I’m left asking the question incredulously, “doesn’t anyone else find this stuff important enough to comment on why they think this or do they just not care?”

Maybe they don’t.

Maybe I shouldn’t take things so seriously?

Maybe I should just lighten up – go with the flow.  Whatever.

No I don’t work that way.

I need to be inspired. I need a good news story.

It’s either that, or I’m writing to David Walliams and Matt Lucas to consider creating a comedy show like “Come Fly With Me” but on corporate life because I don’t know whether I need to laugh….or to cry anymore.

But what did I say about not being able to sit still?  Patience is not a virtue of mine.

Today, a fellow colleague came up to ask me about something but we got to talking about his passion.  It’s opera. He’s a tenor and travels around Australia singing to audiences.  He has a manager who co-ordinates his performances and manages his profile.  He’s well known in the opera circles.

Do you know it was one of the best conversations I had in the workplace for a while? Why?  Because I saw someone fired up for something that he believed in.  His passion came out with his words, his actions, his eyes and smile.

He was inspirational, magnetic and alive.

I missed this in our workplace.

After a long time of change and turbulence, I needed to see someone passionate again.  I needed to know that there were people who openly expressed their love for their art, their craft, their work, their hobbies and interests.

I needed to be inspired in my workplace.

Even my previous boss who left the organisation today turned to me at her goodbye lunch  and said, “I’m going to the Elliot Masie Learning 2013 Conference in the US because I need to be re-inspired for Learning and Development again”.

Even she was looking for it.

Workplaces are missing the passion and inspiration but we’re thirsty for it. We need it.

If organisations could bottle up that passion, they can achieve anything.

[Photo: Fire In Your Eye by J. Durham]

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Exploring Our Personal Learning Networks

I think I found my new cMOOC hit.

After Educational Technology MOOC #etmooc, I searched high and low for a connectivist MOOC that could give me the same ‘highs’ as I had experienced with this one.  I was looking for a MOOC where I could apply what I learned to my work immediately, but also one where I looked forward to checking in the Google + community to see what everyone else is talking about and doing – and make a new friend or three.

The MOOC is called Exploring Personal Learning Networks and it was created by the team @JeffMerrell and @KGS_Scott Kimberly Scott who are also part of Masters Program Learning & Organisational Change at North Western University.

When I first saw the cMOOC advertised in Jeff’s tweet, I immediately registered in the Google+ Community as this was a topic of great interest for me in particularly, how organisations could encourage their staff to broaden their own enterprise learning networks or external learning networks for their own professional and personal development.

I saw an opportunity for me to bring the concept to life within our own organisation using the social networking tools we have available.  I saw it part of our future strategy for Learning and Development professionals to have their own networks and then to promote, encourage and support others within the organisation to find their own in their line of work.

I don’t have the answer for how I can do this practically, but my instincts tell me that if I’ve had such a wonderful experience connecting, networking and learning from my own global network through social media  – and with some of them, actually collaborating on projects – then Personal and Enterprise Learning Networks have merit and worthy to explore further.

Maybe it’s an untapped area of opportunity for organisations?

I just need to be able to define the benefit and value in hard tangible financial terms to my senior managers who may see this as just an excuse to socialise online.  But lucky for me, one of the tasks we have to do is to come up with a pitch to sell the concept of PLNs to our organisation.

In the first week, we were encouraged to do two things:

  1. Set goals that we wanted to achieve with our PLN
  2. Try something new

What are my goals?

A survey was uploaded onto the Google community and we were encouraged to submit our goals into this survey which collated the data.  The results are quite interesting – and you can see it here.

What really piqued my curiosity is that in the question “Which competencies are you focussed on developing” many of the responses were on confronting direct reports and conflict management.  My instant reaction was huh?

Lucky this result was balanced out by personal learning and innovation management as I was beginning to think that everyone was going to have the same issue I was having – namely, how do we explain and demonstrate the value of PLNs to our managers and stakeholders without being ready for some robust debate, discussion and maybe an argument?

My goals were mainly related to the following:

  • Continue to broaden and increase my personal learning network
  • Develop professionally and personally
  • Establish a freelance consulting business in the long term

A short term goal that had been brewing in my mind recently and which I wrote a recent blog post titled, Third Place in Company and Conversation: A Place Where My PLN Gathers was to establish a Meet Up group of Melbourne based Learning and Development professionals in all industries who are on Twitter or social media.  I established Third Place and we will have our first after-work social introductory drinks next Thursday night at the Royal Melbourne Hotel (if anyone is interested in coming along – see the website to join and and get details!)

I’m excited with Third Place because not only will I meet my extended Melbourne based PLN in person, but I will also create ‘assets’ or responses to weekly activities for the Exploring Personal Learning Networks MOOC using these people too (if they want to get involved).

Although it’s still an idea mulling around in my head, I’m thinking about creating a video montage of real people talking about how a PLN helped them in their role to state the case for PLN and advocate their role in an organisation.

Real people, real stories…that’s the pitch.

Try Something New

@AlisonSeaman tweeted a question asking if anyone had used the application Shadow Puppet.

Naturally, as a sucker for a new app, I downloaded it and played with it and immediately saw that I could have so many uses for it.  It’s a simple app that you record your voice to your photos and create an instant slideshow that you can share across Facebook, Twitter or email.

I loved it so much that I decided that I created an introduction for the PLN and here it is…

The feedback for this was quite positive and I think it inspired others to download the app and try it out for themselves.

(Just between you and me, I have used this app to create a slideshow for an internal job I’m applying for.  I’ll have more details in this blog soon but I put the finishing touches to it this morning).

Finally, I knew that this MOOC was the right one for me with regards to the buzz and excitement around a group of people who were meeting again in other parts of the internet in other chats….

Looking forward to Week 2!

Read the Story & See the Conversations:

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Third Place in Company & Conversation – A Place Where the PLN Gathers

This year will go down in my professional life as “The Year I Met my Online Personal Learning Network and Lived to Tell the Tale (Ad Nauseum)”.

On average, every month I have met at least two people from my wider personal learning network whose connections I made through Twitter, LinkedIn or Yammer.  I would get an email, direct message or a request to ‘have a coffee and chat’ with someone because they have a great experience to share, a story to tell or simply, they are want to learn what’s happening in our industry.

Of course, the most unforgettable experience was meeting my wider network in London in August this year which escalated our Twitter relationship to a whole new different level.

Usually these meetings are over a cup of coffee or lunch, away from our respective workplaces and in a social or informal environment.  In the case of the London tweet up it was a lunch at a brewery followed by drinks at a nearby bar.

A highlight of my recent trip to the UK was meeting Colin Steed, Lesley Price and Jane Hart in person (who I was in awe with to say the least).

If it’s a chance to get out of the office, get some fresh air and meet someone new in your line of work, what’s not to like?

But this got me thinking what have we actually achieved from meeting face-to-face after our online connection?

If I had to explain the benefit to my boss, how would I explain the value of a network?

Before this year, I did not know @LearnKotch however, after meeting on Twitter, we realised that we had much to share and learn from each other.  Coming from similar backgrounds, we connected in not only our work but culturally.  From this meetup, we organised tours of our respective workplaces and got to meet each other’s work teams.  Our online learning content development team met his team and together, in a warm boardroom on a Friday morning in July, we shared our success, stories and frustrations with our respective work.  We shared tips and techniques of online courseware design and development and learned the challenges that go with working in different organisations and business clients.

This meeting culminated with an arrangement to share particular online course content that would have saved our organisation time, money and resources rather than designing from scratch.

Secondly, I met Jasmine Mahlki through Twitter.  She explained that her organisation was considering implementing Yammer and wondered if I had any networks whom she could speak to.  Our organisation has used this social networking tool for some years already and I had the perfect person in mind.  With a quick phone call to him, he was only to happy to help out and provide any advice for Jasmine.

These are just two of my stories on the value of learning networks that directly impacted my role – and they follow a pattern.

The first was the online connection itself through social media.  The second was the follow-up with a face-to-face conversation and then a third was an actual collaboration or shared project, task or action that resulted in some benefit and support.

The result of these three actions changed the relationship to one of mutual respect, trust, equality and collaboration.

A true peer-to-peer learning network.

So with these in mind since my return from the UK, I had been thinking about creating a ‘space’ where people who meet online can meet face-to-face in a social, informal setting away from work where they can freely converse on things that are important to them – much like what I did with my PLN when I met with them in person.

A ‘space’ where there were no formalities, no structure or agendas (because frankly, let’s face it, we get this at work and it does our head in) but just conversations because the actions and the stories will naturally evolve out of these dependent on the people taking part.

Last week I participated in two tweet chats.  The first one was the Educational Technology MOOC #etmooc which was a catch-up for those who had completed this cMOOC. The chat revolved around questions of what people were doing in their lives post ETMOOC and how they have implemented the educational technology tools they learned into their work.   The second chat was the weekly Learn Chat #lrnchat on Friday morning.  The topic of this chat was related to communities.

Paul Signorelli (@trainersleaders) had been in both of these discussions and he posted a link to the Wikipedia article on Third Places, a concept by Ray Oldeburg from his book, The Great Good Place.

Wikipedia says, “Oldenburg calls one’s “first place” the home and those that one lives with. The “second place” is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are “anchors” of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. All societies already have informal meeting places; what is new in modern times is the intentionality of seeking them out as vital to current societal needs.”

This is when the jigsaw puzzle fell into place.  I had my ‘space’ and I had my name.  It was exactly what I was trying to define in my own head and it came from someone who was in my Personal Learning Network from San Francisco.  He also wrote about it in his blog post, When Communities of Learning Discuss Community – and Produce Results.

The results were immediate.  I knew exactly what I had to do and how to do it because Paul had given me that piece of the puzzle that was missing from my jigsaw puzzle carton. He may as well have been in the same room and handed me the piece and said, “Helen, I do believe that THIS is what you’re looking for”.

In the next hour, I set up a Meet Up group called Third Place – a place for Melbourne based learning professionals in all industries to converse and network in a social, informal environment such as cafes, library, pubs or restaurants.

In the first week of going live, we had 27 people sign up many of whom I hadn’t connected previously but who may have read my blog or Twitter posts. Others had an interest in learning and wanted to connect with others in the field for networking.

Our first event will be held in a couple of weeks at the atrium in the Royal Melbourne Hotel for after work drinks. It will be an opportunity to meet some new faces in the one place and establish new networks and friendships with people in our line of work.  From there, we’ll play it by ear but the intention is to spread the events with morning, afternoon meetups in cafes as well as breakfasts and lunches.

Whoever rocks up will be warmly welcomed and the beginning of a wonderful network and friendships will unfold.

I can’t wait. Care to join me?

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Spring in My Step

I am in desperate need of some new shoes. Here are a few I’m eyeing:

– I am a huge fan of Loeffler Randall and these Luella Mignon sandals in electric purple are at the top of my wish list. Would go just perfect with my favorite white shirt/blue jean combo, don’t you think?

– One of my go-to spring/summer shoes has always been a pair of espadrille’s and this pair from Calypso are spot on.

– All winter I was searching for the perfect black booties and lucky for me I finally found them just in-time for spring. These Rag & Bone are on their way to me now and I can’t wait to pair them with my black shorts and Joie lace top. A little edgy for this island girl!

– The ballet flat is a staple in my closet and these little beauties from Aerin Lauder’s new line are a welcome addition indeed. Will pair perfectly with my sundress collection.

– One for one… yes, please! The classic Tom’s slip-on in festive pink… will live in these this spring!

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A Little Love

Valentine’s Day. Whatever your relationship status may be or feelings on this “hallmark” holiday, I think it’s important to show a little love, no matter the month. If you are in need of some inspiration, look no further. I have highlighted my favorite gifts that say I like you/I love you below.

– I don’t know about you, but I love to get a little something for the single ladies in my life on Valentine’s Day. I think this rain African heart soap from Terrain is just perfect.

– As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have a thing for sleepwear. My sweet pick and my sexy pick for your Valentine’s Day night.

– Why not write your love a letter. This little kit includes everything you need to create a gift that will last the test of time. The best gifts really are those that come right from the heart.

Love to Love You print… a great addition to any gallery wall in my humble opinion.

– What is it about women and jewelry? We somehow can never get enough. This sweet necklace from Sundance is a simple piece that could easily go from day to night and also won’t break the bank.

– As is custom with most good things, Clare Vivier began making bags in response to a need and that need was a lack of a functional yet fashionable laptop case. Since then, Claire has created a handbag line that has an almost cult following. Simple, chic, and oh-so French, Clare’s bags are sure to please your lady. And lucky for us, she has launched a love shop. The sweetheart clutch in red is my personal favorite.

Love potion. Why the heck not! An aromatic blend of ten of the world’s most potent aphrodisiac essential oils to stimulate the senses, heighten sensuality and immediately inspire an inner sense of beauty and confidence. I think I would use this everyday.

– Oh and how could I not include chocolate. The way to this lady’s heart is certainly through food.

And please do remember, I am always sending a little love and light to you!

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Wedding Details
The first weekend of May I had the honor of celebrating the union of one of the greatest girls I know and her very lucky husband. Truth be told, Kristen and I will be celebrating our anniversary this week. 8 years. We fondly call each other wifey as we have found in each other what everyone hopes to find in a soul mate. And let me tell you, her wedding made me fall for her that much more. Every detail, from the save-the-date to the dessert buffet, was perfection. I thought I would share a few of my favorite.

The Venue
Kristen knew she wanted to have an intimate wedding, no more than 40 guests. To be included in this group was such a privilege. The location, a barn, just added to the closeness of this affair. Everyone invited shaped these two people as individuals and as a couple. A room full of great friends and many happy memories. And the best part, many were able to stay in the adjoining house so it almost felt like we were at someone’s home. Hardy Farm, 3 hours from Boston. What a place!

I have been to my quite a few weddings… as a guest, as a bridesmaid and even as a worker (yes the glamorous life of catering) and I have never seen such a creative and thoughtful placesetting. A photo of the bride or groom (depending on which side you are on) and you along your journey as friends. And the cool thing, after you found your seat, you were asked to hang the photo on the garland featured in the photo above. Beautiful. And the dinner plates were vintage. I thought they may have been from a family collection, but Kristen told me her resource was Etsy.

The Getaway Car
I love old cars. Like love them. And when I heard that Kristen’s father was bringing one of his, I couldn’t wait to see it. And what a beauty. Just look at this thing? And you know what, it traveled all the way from Ohio for this special occasion.
The car

There was cornhole, customized red silo cups, sparklers by the fire pit, a serenade to the lovely bride from her groom. A magical night. We danced well into the evening. I was most happy to find a “hangover kit” in my welcome bag the next morning. The 5 hour energy, aleve and breathemints certainly helped prior to my arrival at the morning after brunch.

So here is to one of the greatest couples I know on the beginning of their journey together. I was beyond honored to be included in this celebration of love, family and friends. Certainly a strong foundation for a lifetime together. Much love to you both!

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Interview: Noisekraft about his forthcoming album The Neverending Nothing

Previously you might listen to Riverbanks [IDM, Future Garage, Bass music mix] By NoiseKraft. Today Add2Base (A) blog asked Noisekraft (N) some questions about his forthcoming album The Neverending Nothing, which is going to be released on April 12th. It was very inspirational talk with philosophical mood.

A: Describe in 2-3 sentences who is Noisekraft?

N: Well, that’s a hard question. Before than a musician, I can say that Noisekraft is the inner side of myself, the deepest and most obscure part inside me that expresses feelings and emotions that we all normally experience every day. Using a bizarre metaphor Noisekraft is just like a translator of the messages that the ‘sensitive world’ sends us everyday, something that makes them audible trough music and sounds.

A: Tell about your earliest influences.

N: Speaking from a composition side my influences definitely derive from authors like Rachmaninov, Stravinskij, Richard Strauss, with my favorite being Debussy, but since I make primarily electric music I have to mention important bands that shaped my sounds such as Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Have a Nice Life, My Bloody Valentine, Björk, Mogwai and a lot more. Also since I come from a nation that has a great tradition of ‘cantautori’ (folk singers) I always felt a strong connection with american symbols like the Williams Family, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen or more modern acts like Damien Rice and Elliot Smith. However I have to say that my main influences come from other types of art, poetry in particular, or cultural aspects of life like philosophy. If you’re good interpreters you may note in The Neverending Nothing strong connections to T.S. Eliot and even Bergson.

A: How long has this album been in the making?

N: The whole processes of composition, recording, mixing and mastering took six months, and that’s pretty quick for me. I’m an hateful perfectionist when it comes to music. I also work alone, without engineers or other people touching my music, not because I’m jealous or selfish but simply because every record that I release is like a son to me, with its nice and terrible anecdotes. All the albums I made were personal but this is probably the most one. Another important fact to consider it’s that this is my first work coming out for a label since a lot; they’re a little Italian reality called Genesi57 that helped me a lot with everything, they made me change my ideas about labels.

A: What is your future plans? Making a music – is it a hobby or career?

N: I have to admit that lately my personal life has been pretty busy. There has been tough moments and even those times when you think ‘screw everything, why do I have to do all this?’

But after all, life is not supposed to be only easy parts I guess. My first collection of poems called “Agosto” (like my month of birth) was published in February and at the same time I was recording the album, so my schedule was pretty filled. Now I have to handle the post-publication of the LP, and who knows? Maybe I’ll return to live action after a two years of hiatus. Music has been my primary job since I was 16 but I never really asked for it. I don’t want to be an hypocrite or sound ungrateful but I always thought about music primarily as a form of expression and art. Being extremely sincere, I don’t see Noisekraft playing on a stage at the age of 40, I always found those cases pretty ridiculous to be honest. Sooner or later, Noisekraft will cease its existence.

Noisekraft - The Neverending Nothing

Noisekraft – The Neverending Nothing

A: What inspires you in daily life?

N: Feelings, emotions, the daily things that happen everyday. You see, I don’t really think that inspirations are what carry someone’s life, I consider every individual philosophy to be the main pivot and foundation that hold each one of us standing and conscious of being alive. Once someone has understood his own singularity, he can start to really seek happiness, his own Nirvana. I’m really attached to existentialism, Heidegger, Sartre and Kierkegaard and the more shrewds might have already recognized it.  My ‘catharsis’, my sources of purification are at the moment music and writing and they’ll probably be forever.

A: Which release impressed you the most? And which one you could recommend for listening?

N: Every single release that shows pure emotions and transmits something to the listeners, it doesn’t care when it was released or how much copies it sold. I don’t even consider the most part of ‘pop’ or ‘commercial’ genres to deserve the appellative of -music, they’re a shame to all the ancestors that conquered honor for this form of art. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to earn money because I’m the first to do so, but when it becomes the main goal of a song music turn into mere business. Try to listen to a few works by artists like Steve Roden, Loop and all the bands that I mentioned before, you’ll probably understand what I mean.

A: What  encouraged you to make music?

N: That’s the best part of the deal, nobody or nothing really encouraged me to make music, it was like a fire beneath my hearth, a need that I had to satisfy. The alternative was to burn inside and slowly fade into dust. Of course I have to thank all my fans that were like my family for almost two years of touring and today continue to show me their appreciation for my works. And last but not least my girlfriend; I don’t want to be cheesy but she has been the pilar to hold on when everything seemed to fall apart, everyday and everywhere.

A: Did you think about to make a video?

N:Probably my biggest passion aside from music, literature and philosophy has to be cinema, the directors in particular. I’m currently discussing with the guys of Genesi57 about that possibility but we’ll surely do something in the nearest future.

A: What would you recommend people who want to start  making music?

Do what you want, don’t let anybody tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Take an instrument (no matter if it’s a guitar or your computer, screw everybody who says that electronic music is not a real thing), grab a piece of paper, a pen and then start to write everything you feel. Oh, before you start, disconnect your brain. In art there’s no place for the reason, only for pure emotions.

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Investigating git

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Sam Ruby: Whenever I find myself updating a script I wrote months or even years ago, these days my first step is to do a git init.

Well-formed mark-up?

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Therea€™s an interesting debate going on in the W3C HTML working group about whether well-formed HTML is important in the specification process for HTML5. It...

Installing Vista unattended

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Ia€™ve been spending some time on a side project to create a Vista boot image that installs unattended and configures a development machine with all the tool...

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National Trust Devon Rangers visit Lower Ash Moor

I am the General Manager link for the senior Devon Rangers group and yesterday we met at Lower Ash Farm near Rose Ash in the Culm Measures in North Devon for a meeting. We spent the morning indoors discussing various matters of common interest and sharing best practice. In the afternoon we were treated to a visit to Lower Ash Moor and shown around by the farmer there Cyril Cole. Cyril is a brilliant farmer who not only runs a commercial livestock farm but he also looks after 40 acres of fantastic Culm grassland. Culm grasslands are wet peaty places rich in a huge variety of wild flowers and animals. Culm grasslands have declined dramatically over the last 50 years or so having been drained and ploughed up.

Cyril has looked after his and clearly loves the place. I don’t think I have ever met a farmer before who was so knowledgable about wildlife. A real pleasure to be in the company of such a man.

Lower Ash Moor 1
Cyril Cole in Lower Ash Moor with bog asphodel at his feet

Lower Ash Moor 4Devil’s bit scabious – still flowering with the Moor behind

Sericomya silentisThe hoverfly Sericomya silentis – a classic species of the Culm measures

Lower Ash Moor 5Marsh ragwort – a speciality of Culm grassland

Longwinged coneheadThe grassland also contained a colony of long winged coneheads

Lower Ash Moor 6
The Devon Rangers on the farm – by Cyril’s feet is a cage which protects a colony of Greater Butterfly Orchid

Species rich hay has been cut from Lower Ash Moor and taken to Knightshayes and spread on areas there to encourage a much more species rich area of grassland.

A great visit with a great character and conservationist.

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A Letter to the Editor: Taking issue

I read [Uche Ogbuji's] article [ "Objects. Encapsulation. XML?," ADT, Dec. 2003, p. 20] with some interest -- I've been an OO programmer for years (C++ and Java, with some Python) and also use XML (so I never have to write another parser in my life).

I take issue with polymorphism as the main tool for the matching of semantics. Polymorphism is probably the least important of the three main traits of OO languages; polymorphism causes decreases in reuse due to undesired side-effects and the lack of "componentization" of the result.

Your cheap shot about Java not being an OO language is interesting. Do you think Eiffel is object oriented? The only thing Java has going against it in OO-land is the availability of primitives -- and those are included for performance reasons.

XML is much more object oriented than relational; mapping XML to relational databases requires careful thought or specialized software (for example JDO and the J2EE's container-managed persistence). The first XML databases were OO databases that had an XML front end grafted on. XML is designed for "has-a" relationships and less for "is-a" relationships -- this actually makes it a better meta-language for building reusable data components.

The right question to ask around programming models is, "What will allow me to understand and build the biggest, best systems for the least cost?" That is where the value is in programming today, and that's why OO style efforts are still leading the way, with aspect-oriented tools coming alongside to provide breadth vs. depth programming styles and problems; that's also why there will always be other paradigms for solving problems in the software industry.
--Bob Hays

Uche Ogbuji's reply:
I have also been an OO programmer for years -- C++ since 1992, Java since 1997. I've also worked with Smalltalk, Python, Objective C, CLOS and a touch of Eiffel. OO is my background.

Polymorphism does not have any implicit proclivity to side-effects. It's the implementation in C++ (and similarly implemented in Java and C#) that causes this. Polymorphism is implicitly declarative, and so the idea itself is actually somewhat antithetical to side-effects.

I make the claim I do because I believe that practical adaptation of static, strongly typed code requires late binding, and the limited polymorphism based on double indirection of function pointers is really the only available mechanism in C++ and like languages. If you break down to plain old C, you actually gain a great deal of power in implementing late binding, which is one of the reasons I've come to believe the C++ generation of languages took the high road straight off a cliff.

I said: "Most languages that we think of as OO these days are just procedural languages with some OO scaffolding on top. (Yes, even Java and C#, which were supposedly designed to be fresh, clean and OO to the core.)"

I'm not sure why you consider this a cheap shot. The OO mechanism in all these languages is very high level. The languages follow the imperative model of control flow and really only recognize the nature of objects and methods during function dispatch. Even during compile-time checking they are just marshalling abstract data types.

You ask whether I think Eiffel is object oriented. I'd say that Smalltalk and CLOS are better examples. Objective C, Eiffel and even my favorite Python are more OO than the C++ generation, but also mostly imperative languages at the core. The nice thing about Python is that its dynamicism provides for richer OO expression than Objective C, Eiffel, C++, Java or C#. As an example, you can pretty easily arrange for polymorphism to operate without side-effects in Python.

As for the split between primitive data typers (such as int in Java) and their polymorphic equivalents (such as Integer), this sort of thing should have been taken care of through a smart optimizer, not through the ugly contortions Java perpetrated. The Squeak implementation of Smalltalk might have been a decent model; many aspects of its handling of primitives are very clever and powerful. As another example, C++ has undergone titanic struggles to try to balance the fundamental concept of the character pointer/reference with the need for an OO String class. But I think the results in both C++ and Java cause more violence to tidiness and simplicity than to basic OO principles.

I've worked on XML bindings to OODBMS and RDBMS, and I don't see that mapping XML to RDBMS requires any more care than mapping to objects. Java data bindings, for example, are pretty unsightly things and I don't think they are any more elegant than, say, SQLX (which is, unfortunately, not very elegant in the first place).

One of the pioneering "native" XML DBMSs, Excelon, was indeed little more than wrappering of an OODBMS (ObjectStore), but I don't think that has given it any particular technical or marketing edge. Other non-relational DBMSs that morphed into XML DBMSs were often from pre-OO roots: Adabas became Tamino, Pick became Raining Data and so on. But relational juggernauts such as Oracle and IBM/DB2 have never been slouches in XML either, and are showing no signs whatsoever of falling behind in the stakes; in fact, quite the contrary. I don't think there is a good technical argument that it makes any particularly good sense to create an XML DBMS by tweaking an OODBMS, and I have been badly burned in the past by trying to import too much of an OO mindset into XML technology.

XML does not fundamentally recognize any of the classic OO relationships. The data model of XML is labeled Unicode strings. Even when elaborated into the fancy Infoset it is still effectively just strings with simple string properties. You can drape on the idea of has-a relationships (nested elements), but you can just as easily drape on is-a (element type extension through parameter entities is strikingly similar to the implementation of C++ inheritance in the pioneering AT&T Cfront compiler) or "object" reference (id/idref).

Finally, I do agree that Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is perhaps the best hope there is of reforming the current mainstream in OO languages. AOP mixes in a much-needed declarative bent to the imperative OO mainstream, and I hope AOP folks find success broadening programmers' vision as to how to bind behaviors to objects. I can't resist pointing out that the very idea of AOP is intuitive in languages such as Python, and requires very little additional scaffolding.

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Tag Archives: surveying and documentation

Hecht’s Warehouse

21 Sep

Hecht’s Warehouse c1950 (www.loc.gov)

Aeon is working with Douglas Development and Shalom Baranes Architects to aid in the preservation and adaptive reuse of this iconic mid-Century Modern masterpiece. This wonderful Art Deco structure retains much of its original architectural integrity and beauty. Aeon is assisting in these efforts by providing condition assessment and materials conservation expertise.

Aeon Documents Conditions at the US Capitol Dome

10 Aug

This summer Aeon was invited by the Christman Company and the Gilbane Company to assist them during renovations to the U.S. Capitol Dome. Hidden beneath the cast iron ‘skirt’ at the base of the dome is the original Aquia Creek sandstone dome base designed by Charles Bullfinch. Aeon was tasked with performing a stone by stone condition assessment of the original ornamental stonework following removal of paint coatings and prior to stone restoration. Aeon conservators climbed the myriad levels of scaffolding erected inside to photograph and record all of the conditions observed on the stone blocks. Using hand-held iPads and a mobile version of AutoCAD WS, Aeon recorded these conditions in realtime going straight to CAD format in the field.

National Gallery of Art West

5 Jul

Aeon is excited to announce that Dan Lepore & Sons (DLS) and Aeon have been awarded the National Gallery of Art – West Building Stone Repairs project. Aeon will provide testing, quality control, and project management services. Work is to begin in late summer. Image

Silver Gull Beach Club and the Breezy Point Beach Club

17 Feb

Aeon is pleased to announce that their client and teaming partner, Ortega Family Enterprises, has won the concessions for Silver Gull Beach Club and the Breezy Point Beach Clubs at Gateway National Recreational Area in NYC. Aeon helped Ortega (doing business as JBAY, LLC) perform a detailed site evaluation to support their winning bid for these mid-Century modern recreational facilities owned by the National Park Service. The beach clubs are both located on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, N.Y. Each beach club offers private cabanas, food service, recreation, and both pool and ocean swimming. Visitors can gain access to the facilities with seasonal and day-use passes. The clubs, which were formed in the 1930s to 1960s before Gateway was created by Congress in 1972, are now run as concessions.

Façade assessment of the Miami Freedom Tower completed

30 Aug

Aeon has just finished up their part in the exterior restoration of the Miami Freedom Tower, which was  funded by a Save America’s Treasures grant. Designed by the renowned hotel architects Schulze & Weaver in 1924, the Freedom Tower was originally built to serve as the headquarters of the Miami News. Later it was used by the Federal Government and became well known for serving as South Florida’s equivalent to Ellis Island for refugee Cuban immigrants entering the US. Now owned by Miami Dade College, this distinctive building has undergone a huge restoration project and will become a museum.

General contractors Kaufman Lynn went on a national search to find experienced conservators to work with them on a tough schedule to document the condition and repair strategies for the Baroque Neoclassical facades. The expertise of Aeon’s principal conservators and familiarity with working with cast stone and stucco made them ideal for the task.

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New Headquarters Building for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)

30 Jun

Aeon Preservation is working with Shalom Baranes Associates to aid in incorporating four historic buildings that will be incorporated in the new Headquarters Building located at Mount Vernon Triangle site in Northwest D.C.

The historic buildings on K Street will be first stabilized, and the front 20 to 30 feet of the structures relocated off site. Once the historic buildings have been relocated off site, the excavation and site work will begin.  Once the site has been prepared and new pads constructed the historic buildings will be brought back and collected in a continuous historic grouping at the east end of the site on K Street.


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Who is Ready For Season 3 of ‘The Flash’?

Every Flash fan is waiting for the premiere of season 3 of The Flash. There have been many things waiting to be blogged about before the premiere though. Warning: Season 2 spoilers ahead!

  1. A New Speedster
  2. He’s Back! Wait what?
  3. Cisco the medahuman
  4. Wally West
  5. The secrets of Harrison Wells

1- A New Speedster

A new speedster, Zoom, is introduced as the main antagonist in season 2. He is like the Reverse Flash except he is from Earth 2. He is said to have taken Jay Garrick’s speed to become faster. He seems to have no reason to do this. He is just plain evil I guess.

2- He’s Back! Wait what?

The Earth 2 version of Harrison Wells, last season’s major antagonist, was entroduced fairly early in season 2. He claims that he is nothing like Earth 1 Harrison Wells and he wants to help them defeat Zoom. Obviously he is hiding something so you have to watch to find out.

3- Cisco the medahuman

Cisco discovers powers to see things from the future and things from Earth 2. He helps save a scientist at Mercury Labs and helps Linda attempt to trap Zoom. He also sees a vibe when he touches Kendra, a main charecter from Ledgends of Tommorrow. He also saves Kendra from Vandall Savage with the help of Barry and Oliver.

4- Wally West

Iris West finds out that she had a little brother and keeps it from Joe for a few weeks. Joe finds out that Wally is doing something bad to get money to pay for his mom’s hospital bills, but doesn’t stop until Iris gets put in the hospital because of him. He is quite an interesting new charecter.

5- The secrets of Harrison Wells

Earth 2 Wells has a daughter, Jessie, who was kidnapped by Zoom. Wells secretly tries to steal Barry’s speed and give it to Zoom so he can get his daughter back. It is also kind of his fault that Iris was put in the hospital.

There are many more surprises in season 2, but you have to watch to find out!

– Bea ⚡

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Posts filed under ‘Nokia Siemens Networks’

NSN completes 3G project for Telefonica

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has announced in a press release that it has completed the implementation of a 3G network expansion for Telefonica that increases coverage, improves service quality, and reduces costs of the operator’s Spanish network. Via the project, coverage has been improved by ‘more than 25%’ in dense urban areas, whilst other improvements have been made to energy efficiency and environmental impact. With the implementation of NSN’s 3G Flexi Base Station, Telefonica expects to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 9,500 tonnes per year. NSN also provided network and services managing, monitoring and analysing.

Wireless Industry News

February 10, 2009 at 19:17 Leave a comment

NSN launches combined 2G/3G/LTE base station

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has launched a new base station that will support GSM/EDGE, WCDMA/HSPA and LTE in a single unit. The vendor said the new multi-radio base station – part of its ‘Flexi’ range – is targeted at existing 2G and 3G operators that are looking for a simple software upgrade to next generation mobile technologies; it is also aimed at CDMA operators planning to migrate to WCDMA/HSPA or LTE. NSN claimed that running multiple radio technologies in a single base station would cut costs as it maximises the re-use of existing infrastructure, and requires fewer site visits and maintenance.

NSN also talked up the new product’s green credentials, claiming the base station has the lowest energy consumption in the market. It said that an average three sector base station site running GSM/EDGE and WCDMA/HSPA simultaneously would consume as little as 790W. The new base stations will start being deployed at the beginning of 2010.

Wireless Industry News

February 10, 2009 at 13:57 Leave a comment

Africell chooses NSN to modernise core networks in Sierra Leone and Gambia

West African cellco Africell has contracted Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) to deploy a mobile softswitching solution in its GSM networks in Gambia and Sierra Leone. The implementation is aimed at increasing efficiency by reducing operating expenses, while meeting subscribers’ growing demands and accelerating the deployment of new services. ‘The development of our core network is crucial to Africell’s future success as our call traffic continues to increase. Implementing NSN’s 3GPP Release 4 architecture will improve our overall network capacity in order to optimise the network resources providing state-of-the-art services to our customers,’ said Ziad Dalloul, CEO for Lintel Group, Africell’s holding company. The contract follows on from NSN’s expansion of radio and core mobile networks for the Gambian and Sierra Leone units.

Wireless Industry News

February 4, 2009 at 17:54 Leave a comment

DTAC picks Nokia Siemens Networks for 3G

Nokia Siemens Networks has been selected by Thai telecommunications service provider Total Access Communication (DTAC) as one of two vendors to supply gear for its 3G network. In the frame contract, Nokia Siemens Networks will deliver radio access network with both 2G and 3G technologies to DTAC. In the core network, DTAC’s circuit switch will be enhanced to accommodate 2G/3G, and a packet switch will be introduced for high speed packet access (HSPA).

Source- http://www.telecompaper.com

Wireless Industry News

January 19, 2009 at 16:51 Leave a comment

China issues 3G mobile phone licenses

China assigned third-generation mobile phone licenses Wednesday to three carriers in a long-awaited step that is expected to prompt $41 billion in spending on new equipment.

Licenses were granted to China Mobile Ltd., China Unicom Ltd. and China Telecom Corp., the Ministry of Indutry and Information Technology said. Third-generation, or 3G, technology supports Web surfing, wireless video and other services and the start of service is expected to spur new revenue growth.

The awarding of licenses was delayed while China’s government developed its own technology to compete with two global 3G standards.

The Chinese-developed standard, TD-SCDMA, was assigned to China Mobile, the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers. That appeared to be an effort to make sure the new system has the financial and technical backing to succeed.

The two global standards, WCDMA and CDMA-2000, were assigned to China Unicom and China Telecom, respectively.

According to AIKresearch’s databse, China has 650 million mobile phone accounts, and Chinese carriers are expected to spend 280 billion yuan ($41 billion) on new equipment.

Such sales will be important to global suppliers Motorola Inc., Alcatel-Lucent SA, Nokia-Siemens Networks and Ericsson AB as demand elsewhere slumps. But they face competition from fledgling Chinese producers.

Wireless Industry News

January 7, 2009 at 16:36 Leave a comment

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One Special Book

I've noticed that libraries seem to be a setting I use fairly often in my writing exercises and I found myself asking…”why?” The answer I came up with is that they can be ornate, beautiful, are homes to so many worlds. It’s easy to imagine that something fantastic or scary can happen in between those walls. The episode Silence in the Library, from Doctor Who, springs to mind.

It was a lovely afternoon, but Leanna preferred the dark interior of the library over the outdoors. She wandered up and down the aisles while dragging her fingers across the spines of the books waiting for one of them to get her attention. Sometimes it would take mere moments, other times it could take an hour or more, but inevitably her attention would become laser focused on one special book. Today, the book was called The Purge. She wasn’t sure how this could have happened, as she never walked down the section of the library that housed horror. Now, she had no choice but to read it and she had a bad feeling she wouldn’t survive.


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The experts in camping and caravanning

Camping les Deux Ballons

Camping les Deux Ballons

France, Lorraine, Vosges, Saint Maurice-sur-Moselle

03 29 25 17 14
06 29 43 79 04
03 29 25 27 51
Open (touring pitches):
10 April - 15 September.

Ref: FR88010

Alan Rogers Review

Run by the same family for over 50 years, les Deux Ballons is set in a narrow valley near the source of the River Moselle in the Vosges. The 150 pitches (all fully serviced, 4/10A electricity) are on level grass, some under trees and others in the open by a stream that runs through the site. Wild birds are abundant, including kingfishers. This is the perfect location from which to commence the climb of the Ballon d’Alsace, which is hugely popular with cyclists. Theatre lovers should visit Bussang (6 km) and see the large wooden People’s Theatre, built in 1895 and still performing in July and August every year; you will marvel at the raked stage and the enormous backstage areas which may be visited at any time.

The site has a special lake for children to fish (stocked by the owner), whereas the adults can visit one of three adjacent lakes just outside. The keen cyclist would enjoy the long distance track which passes the boundary. Those of a slightly different sporting bent, may like to visit the Casino at Bussang (open all year) even if only to partake of a meal and watch.

Two stylish and modern toilet blocks (all season) and two older ones (high season only). Facilities for disabled campers and babies. Laundry. Motorcaravan services. Gas supplies. Bar and takeaway (July/Aug). Large heated swimming pool with slide and paddling pool (June-Aug). Fishing. Tennis. Bicycle hire. Boules. TV. Internet point. WiFi in parts (charged).

  • Accommodation to Rent
  • American Motor Homes
  • Bicycle Hire on Site
  • Bar Nearby
  • Bar on Site
  • Childrens Play Area
  • Fishing on Site
  • Twin Axle Caravans Accepted
  • Facilities for disabled visitors
  • Riding Nearby
  • Outdoor Pool Heated
  • Outdoor Pool Nearby
  • Outdoor Pool on Site
  • Restaurant
  • Shop Nearby
  • Shop on Site
  • Takeaway Food
  • Pets allowed
  • TV on Site
  • Wifi Chargeable
  • Wifi Partial Site

Site is on main N66 Le Thillot-Bussang road on western edge of St Maurice behind Avia filling station (entrance partly obscured so keep a look out).


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New Gallery Re-Design

To go along with the slick new page theme, I decided our fun and ‘funky’ cool gallery design needed to change too. So I went to my friends Sai and Koryou for help.

 “I get by with a little help from my friends…”

Artwork was done by the lovely Sai using an amazing photo by Micaela Bensko and another one by Mike Quain (with their permission) Then I asked the wonderful Koryou at Reality’s End to design & code a layout that was cleaner, sleeker, and more organized looking.

Thanks soo much, you wonderful ladies!

Hope you enjoy it! I’ve been working hard to get the gallery up-to-date with all of Aldis’ previous TV shows and movies and am only about 6 things short of completion on screen caps for years prior to 1995-2006! All things from 2006 to current have been added (except screen caps from the last two episodes of Leverage) though so feel free to poke around!

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Flip The Script ‘what u know about Dilla’?

Flip the Script consists of Joe Bourke, Caspar Hardaker and Ben Hinchley. Earlier this year Flip the Script released their second mixtape, Crewsin’, and knocked off a load of goals in the process. So they thought what next? And looking to the past they saw J Dilla, a man who has influenced these young artists so much that they thought it’d be stupid not to recognize him. This mixtape is titled ‘what u know about Dilla?’. All the songs you will hear on this mixtape are made using J Dilla’s beats.

For those who don’t know J Dilla (kill yourselves) he was a member of Slum Village, a brilliant producer/rapper who worked with The Roots, Common, The Pharcyde, De La Soul (who inspired the mixtape cover) and so many more. But sadly he passed away February 10, 2006 from a rare blood disease known as Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. ‘what u know about dilla?’ is the groups way of trying to thank J Dilla for his music. Their intentions are to give back to J Dilla by donating the funds raised from mixtape and more to the J Dilla Foundation.

You can pick up a copy of the new tape here

What u know about dilla? Mixtape launch @ Banquet, World Bar Sydney – 21 August.


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Friday, January 2, 2015

Sword and Sorceress VIII - Ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley

This was the final book I read in 2014. I just didn't have time to get the review in before the new year began.

Sword and Sorceress VIII - Ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley
Sword And Sorceress VIII
Ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley
DAW Books
Copyright: 1991

The back cover blurb:
Spells Cast And Swords Crossed
As the forces of evil reach out to conquer new realms, claiming the lives and treasures of unprotected innocents, there are always a valiant few ready to oppose these masters of darkness and destruction. Bold women warriors, wise women, sorceresses wielding the powers of light - all are ready to aid those in need with no thought to the perils they themselves will face.

Let some of today's finest fantasy writers - Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson, Diana Paxson, and their fellow visionaries - carry you off to the enchanted lands where stalwart heroines pit their skills against such terrors as: an ancient dragon that has long held a kingom hostage to its terrible hunger... a stealer of magics who seeks to drain the power from all who cross her path... a mortal so caught in evil's thrall that not even his own family is safe from harm... and all the other enemies that only those long-trained to battle with sword and spell can hope to overcome...
Well, the back blurb is definitely over the top in its descriptions, but there are some really good stories in this volume nonetheless. My favorites have to be Wings of Fire by Mercedes Lackey and Geese by Laurell K. Hamilton.

I always forget that Laurell K. Hamilton has written fantasy outside of her Merry Gentry and Anita Blake series, but Geese serves as a good reminder of that fact, and it was an amazing story.

Wings Of Fire is a story I've read at least a couple of times now. I think I may have read some of the stories from this anthology before, aside from this one (also available in Oathblood, where Mercedes Lackey has gathered together all of the Tarma and Kethry stories she wrote for the Sword and Sorceress series of anthologies).

The one other story that seemed familiar enough to make me wonder if I read Sword and Sorceress VII a while back was Marayd's Escape. Not completely familiar - I couldn't remember the story, just some of the plot points - but familiar nonetheless.

Also neat for fans of some of the books Mercedes Lackey has co-written is that there is a story in this anthology from Eluki bes Shahar, who has written books under the name Rosemary Edghill. A name that's familiar from the more recent books in the world of the SERRAted Edge series. Unfortunately I have to admit that the titles of those books escape me for the moment.

Overall, this is a volume that's full of moments of humor - even in the various author biography notes at the beginning of the stories.
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