Brilliant Conference Lunch Idea

This is brilliant from TEDX Edmonton. Green. Social. Creative. I’m going to steal- um- borrow this idea! Thanks for blogging about it, Mack Male!

Lunch was next on the schedule and as with the rest of TEDxEdmonton it was anything but ordinary. Instead of individual lunches, groups of five or six people were given a wooden box filled with sandwiches, salads, drinks, and treats and were encouraged to eat together. Most groups ended up outside where the sun was shining and the streets were packed for the Edmonton Pride Parade. It was great to see discussions happening all over the place. Kudos to Elm Café andDuchess Bake Shop for the delicious food and the creative presentation!

via Recap: TEDxEdmonton 2011 – MasterMaq’s Blog.

Photos from MasterMaq on Flickr.

7 Minute Segments & Experts

CC Some rights reserved by Mundoo on Flickr

I’m not a big fan of “training” — it feels like something we do “unto” others. But something from this Fast Company article on training at Google caught my eye. I’ve highlighted the bit…

Once a quarter, the company tosses a larger training at the staff, called SalesPro, which takes a deep dive into one particular strategic issue, like display advertising or the mobile business. The soup-to-nuts program takes about six hours, but rather than delivering it all in one fell swoop, or even through a series of hour-long, do-it-yourself modules, Google breaks the information into bite-sized chunks lasting no more than seven minutes each, so agents can download and peruse them at their desks, on their commutes, even on their cell phones while watching Little League or waiting in line at airport security.Online games help agents dial in their knowledge. Leaderboards foster friendly competition. And quizzes following each training make sure the agents are absorbing the new information.“This is a new, complicated, and very fast-moving market,” Dennis Woodside, who took over as President, Americas, in 2009 when Tim Armstrong jumped ship to become CEO of AOL, tells Fast Company. “The challenge is: How do you get a comprehensive overview in a short period of time?”Google’s new tack is a far cry from the traditional methods of corporate training, that of corralling staffers into classrooms or having them click through tedious online modules.

via Training Secrets From Inside The Googleplex | Fast Company.

I’ve been doing a lot of online events and I’ve been trying to break things down more or less in seven minute segments to try and alternate information delivery with more intentional group interaction (shared whiteboarding, polls, chat, etc) If nothing else, it is a good reminder for me to shut up for a bit! It seems to help quite a bit in my experience.

Now here is another interesting segment on the Google efforts that resonates

“People learn best from experts,” Newhouse says, “but they learn best from experts who are not droning on and on.” The secret to the Product Spotlights, she says, is that rather than relying on product managers to dream up a course, the moderator simply guides them to the aspects of the product most relevant to the sales staff. Woodside says the new training method probably costs about the same as the old approach. Its more investment, he says, than cost.

I’d replace the word “expert” with “practitioners.” And really work hard to help those practitioners know/see/feel/hear how important their knowledge is to others. One of the things that always amazes me is how often people think what they know isn’t valuable to others. Most often it is. (Funny, there are also a few who think they are the center of the universe. And they probably aren’t!)

eRealities Online Presentation – Magic Moments

It is hard to say “no” to friends. It is harder yet to predict what will happen when you say “yes.” When you will stumble upon a magic moment.  Months ago I agreed to do an online session for one of my Australian pals, Frankie Forsythe, who I’ve known online for years since she took my (now dormant) online facilitation class.

The event was the Australian Flexible Learning Frameworks’ eRealities online conference. I was to kick of the second day.

Frankie and her colleagues asked me to do a session that wove together a ton of things and I was worried about a total fragmented mess. So after a few back and forths, we came to this description which you can see, could get one into trouble!

It’s a story with three hearts. It has a scaffold with three legs. It is a story told for the ears, the eyes and the heart. Join me as we explore how we got to this crazy time of “social media” and what it means for our learning with and from each other, how we can do it the best we are able to in a rapidly changing and often tension-filled context, and consider together what kind of future we want to build going forward.

At the end of the session participants were able to:
• understand how the intersection of technology and group forms impact our learning together online
• identify ways to work generatively with the tension of many opportunities and a scarcity of time (hey, what can we STOP doing?)
• identify steps to prepare to move forward positively in a time of rapid change

I had not overprepared for this session. I went in with 7 images and some thoughts, which is risky when you are in a “keynote” position. But my instinct was right. I was able to be really present. To listen. To follow and respond to/incorporate the chat stream into the conversation. We paused three times for full group input and people jumped in with head, heart and hand. You know those moments when you FEEL something. I was feeling it and I think at least some of the people in the online space were feeling it too.

Dancing Into the Future with Head, Heart and Hands

View more presentations from Nancy White

So what was resonating? We were telling stories and using hand drawn images to reduce our electronic distance and barriers? We were talking about experiences that resonated for people in their work of teaching and learning online? I’m not sure. But it worked for me. I was grateful for the opportunity. When I was asked to send my invoice I said “contribute my honorarium to some local good cause. You gave me a gift.”

You can watch all the recorded sessions – you’ll have to register (free) but once you are in, you can find them all. Here is the information:

For those who couldn’t make it to the live conference, or didn’t get to attend all the sessions they were interested in, session recordings and resources are now available.

Just follow these steps:

  • Log into the conference site – http://flexiblelearning.net.au/networksevents – if you have not previously registered you will need to do so to access the recordings
  • Click on the Program tab
  • Select the Title of the Session you would like to review
  • Click on the blue “Enter’ button to open the recording of the session.

    • Here are some of the event artifacts:

    Dancing Into the Future with Head, Heart and Hands

    View more presentations from Nancy White

    Chat text from ere11 session

    Unpresenting With Heather Gold in Seattle

    You may notice the uptick in blogging. I have such a queue of draft blog posts that I resolved to start getting them out. In April, the amazing, wonderful and talented Heather Gold came to Seattle and ran one of her “unpresenting” workshops for us. While I was still raw from the death of my dad, I was still able to absorb some of her wonderful advice, mostly captured with some sketchnotes. What was most significant for me was that the advice she gave resonated with my best experiences. Being fully present. Don’t focus on content, focus on people, connection and conversation. Be fearless and fully yourself. Own it. Unpresenting with Heather Gold …a few visual notes by @NancyWhite :: bookr ::pimpampum.