Learning, Technology & Change

There appears to be a growing revolt against the boilerplate approach to software maintenance pricing(see zdnet ). As a vendor, I appreciate how much revenue this draws in. At the same time from a customer standpoint it can be a challenge in today's cost-cutting environment. The idea of declining fees or a customer-specific agreement are an interesting and at the same time troubling idea. Successful software companies are often judged on their maintenance revenue. A company relying on just implementation dollars could be considered a consulting company. This will change the way software companies are valued, and force them to create new Is the customer actively applying updates? Is the customer constantly calling for support or new enhancements? Perhaps the fee would be based on some level of activity metric. Do you have new users entering the system? Rolling out a new phase? Maybe some sort of rolling average factoring support calls, implementations and active users. This seems to...

There's a report today about how the Chinatown Business Improvement Area has hired private security to get rid of panhandlers. The toronto council is being called out for not meeting the needs of the city. "City council should be putting more cops on the streets to address this!" I don't know if that's the answer. Maybe I'm too far down the left-wing but using cops / security to remove panhandlers is a response to a symptom without any regard for the cause. Adding cops is just a nimby attitude. One response was to highlight how McDs & Timmy's are actively recruiting (TV & Radio spots) for employees thus people must be Choosing to panhandle. When you're of no fixed address I suppose it's difficult to receive a call for an interview. I also wonder how open managers are to the idea of hiring people down on their luck, since homeless are normally treated as criminals. To me the idea that panhandlers make more money than a legitimate job seems ...

It's an increasing trend for myself (and others) to move data online. My bookmarks? Del.icio.us . My Documents? Google Docs . Other lists are now a part of my NetVibes page. Last night I wanted to a look up a book I had heard about the other day. No sweat I'll just check my notes page on my homepage with a special note on books but - Netvibes was down....this is bull$hit i'm paying how much a month for this flaky service?? oh Yeah. i'm paying nothing. So why am I putting so much faith and giving up so much control? It's all about the convenience I suppose. Bookmarks available whenever notes available wherever. Am I putting way too much trust in the cloud?

Rapid eLearning tools are becoming a standard. The ability to quickly create content develop interactions without web developer skills is a necessity. The reduction in the cost of instruction is amazing. The great thing with these tools are that anyone can create learning content. The problem is - anyone can create content. The argument being made is that unqualified people are creating bad content (powerpoint, word documents, Email...). Providing tools to improve the quality of the content can't hurt. I think a larger benefit can be had by automating how we build content. Can we create a tool to help the author analyze the information? Is it declarative knowledge (perhaps more user-friendly questions)? If so then these are the ways you should present the information. Is it procedural knowledge, then try this. Maybe in some sort of wizard format. You create the learning objectives and determine the knowledge type. From there you could drill down and get more detailed. Perhaps som...

Your LMS will not cause cardiovascular disease. Each time you use your LMS is will not shorten your life by 11 minutes. Still, I believe a traditional LMS is similar to cigarette. A Learning Management System is supposed to be about tracking a user’s learning. What progress have they made, what courses have they taken what are their scores? In reality I think this is not quite true. An LMS is about pushing information. Let me elaborate. Cigarettes are a means of delivering nicotine. Big Tobacco has fought this, but that’s the truth of it. There’s a certain image perpetuated, but that’s just the sales pitch. Cigarettes deliver nicotine and all of its “benefits” to your body. It’s a somewhat acceptable means to get a fix (versus chewing tobacco). Learning Management Systems deliver content to users. What about all the other new functionality? Those are how vendors stay relevant and sell new versions. It’s similar to how Microsoft has to keep “improving” the word processor (read: extra f...

There is a significant amount of noise these days. Much of Knowledge Management is about helping people cope with the massive amounts of information available to them. George Siemens had a nice little post that got me thinking. Knowledge workers are bombarded with email, IM, twitter etc. New media is becoming more centred on commercial-size chunks. YouTube videos and micro-blogs are a perfect example. Finding the time to listen to a 20 minute podcast feels daunting at times. I really feel my ability to focus has been compromised by too much time multi-tasking. In the moments where I have important tasks to complete I find difficulty focusing on it to just "git'er done". I'm far too used to just clicking a link and going down the rabbit hole. Related Posts Shut UP already Multi-tasking?

When searching on obscure topics I'm bound to get results from questionable sources. When I see a more modern layout, it lends creedence to the source. The article in question could be out of date or a complete fallacy but the layout validates it. I noticed today a newer form of validation. When a site has social media buttons ( submit to Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us) Since that site is "more hip" I'm more inclined to dig deeper. What other cues do you find when you encounter new sites?