Learn and Lead

"I have to do everything and I have get everything done” to “I have to enable people to do their jobs"

“You are an expert because you know something” to “You are an expert because you share what you know” and “You are also an expert because you know who knows”. 

“Longevity in an organization” to “Will the person stay in the organization for about 2 years”

I am sure you’ve heard this before, what with 54% companies banning social media sites. Of course, Twitter and Facebook are complete waste of time. Reading and writing blogs is a complete waste of time too. I also hear some executives say email is a waste of time too. And phone? What does everyone talk about anyway? They should get off the phones and just work (and I have had managers complain that personal calls were affecting productivity of some people). I think books are a waste of time too. After all what good could possibly come out of reading anything.

Social media is a tool, a medium. What you do with it constitutes the value you extract from it. Twitter can be a very useful productivity enhancer tool. However if you use it only to catch up with friends, chat about what you are having or review movies (and there is a lot of that going on on Twitter), then yes companies will see it as a productivity sapper. Facebook is a great way to connect with people. But are you spending too much time playing Farmville or answering who is the best looking friend, then yes Facebook is not exactly going to be popular with your boss. Blogs are a great tool to reflect what you have learned, great way to connect with other thinkers and great way to learn. But if you are overactive on your blog about movies, your landlord, or your blue umbrella (yes I have seen this posts with more than 50 comments on how someone got wet because they forgot the blue umbrella or something like that), then companies aren’t necessarily going to be thrilled by it. You can spend all your time reading John Girsham or Harry Potter, but companies would prefer if you read Good to Great, Built to Last or Wikinomics or something like that and implement your learning in your work.

So if you don’t want companies to ban Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites, then show your boss the value you are getting from them and how the company can benefit from it.

I have made commenting easier on my blog. Simply select the post you want to comment on by clicking the title of the post. Scroll to the bottom of the post and write your comment in the comment field. Select one of the profiles as your identity and post your comment. Simple!

I don’t have a defined and documented comment policy but will stay with common sense. No spam, no trolls, no hurting sentiments, etc. Anonymous comments are fine, though I personally would encourage you to at least leave your name.

You can do this on your Blogger. Select your blog from the dashboard and go to Settings. In the Comments tab, select the Comment form placement as Embedded below post.

Last December I posted top 10 blogs by learning professionals in India. Since then I have come across many other blogs by learning professionals and companies in India. Here are the blogs by learning professionals and companies in India that I read.

It’s time to update my top 10 learning tools and techniques list. This time I’ll try to focus more on tools and services. You can view my previous lists of Aug 08 and Jan 08.

My top 10 learning tools in April 2009:

1. Google Reader – I read blogs via RSS feeds. I have tried Google Reader, NetVibes, Bloglines and Feedly, and I have stuck to Google Reader. It also allows me to share interesting articles from my feeds. In case you are interested, you can view my shared items here. I still find many people who don’t really know or use feeds. I don’t lose any opportunity to educate them to the merits of feeds and using a feed reader.
2. Twitter – I will complete one year of Twittering next month. It’s been a great learning tool. I read somewhere that Twitter lowers the barriers of communication. Completely agree with this. Have made more connections on Twitter than on any other network. Connect with me on Twitter @manishmo.
3. TweetDeck - can’t just complete this list without talking about some of the Twitter tools I use. TweetDesk desktop app helps me organize twitter contacts in groups and helps me manage tweets easily.
4. Google Chrome – IE feels extremely slow and archaic after I started using Google Chrome. I love the simplicity of the interface. And the best feature is ability to type anything in the address bar to search for it. No need to actually go to the search engine website.
5. Google search engine – Googling is now a verb. This is my most used search engine.
6. Compfight, a flickr search engine – Love this as it allows me to quickly search Creative Commons images that I can use on my blog.
7. LinkedIn – Okay, perhaps it is not a tool but definitely a network that I have found invaluable. I have made some great connections through the eCube forum.
8. Blogging – Blogging continues to help me reflect on my thoughts and crystallize my learning. I prefer self hosted Wordpress platform more. I still use Blogger for my personal blog and have moved to hosted Wordpress for my team blog.
9. Bubbl.us – Love this collaborative mind mapping service. Simple interface and great collaborative features. I have been using this to collaborate with my connections.
10. Mr. Tweet – this Twitter service has helped me identify new folks to follow based on my network’s network. I have found it quite useful in identifying new folks to connect with.

Image: Imagination by tjtrewin

Here are the top 5 post on this blog in the first three months of 2009.

1. Getting Started with Instructional Design
   
2. What’s your Web 2.0 Quotient?
   
3. Results of Unofficial Salary Survey 2008
   
4. Instructional Designer Competencies
   
5. Top 10 Blogs by Learning Professionals in India
   

When I first started this blog I wasn’t sure specifically what I would write about but I knew it would be about my area of work. And so I named the blog to cover almost everything: ‘Life, the Universe and Everything about eLearning and Content Development’.

About year into blogging, I realized that I was writing about more than just eLearning. And so I dropped the ‘e’ and renamed my blog to ‘Life, the Universe and Everything about Learning and Content Development’.

A few months ago I created a Wordle of titles of the posts on this blog. I wrote mostly about Learning. However I didn’t write often about content development. I do write about blogging, design, networking, innovation, workplace, leadership, change, corporate, salary, web, trust, performance and tools amongst other things. This coupled with the fact that the blog name was just too long, not really lending itself to a meaningful acronym, I am rechristening my blog once more. My blog will now be “Learn and Lead”. For one, the name is shorter and hopefully easier to remember. I believe it also lends itself better to the topics I write about. So wish the new name good luck.

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Here's a 'Wordle' of titles of blog posts in year 2008.

Jul 2009 Update: You can find an updates list of blogs by Learning professionals and companies in India here.

Continuing with the thread I started in my previous post Do you trust corporate blogs, and picking up from posts on Trust by Ken Allen and Tony Karrer, I came across Chris Brogan’s post Advertising and Trust. Chris wrote in response to Jeremiah Owyang raising questions about Chris’s sponsored post for Kmart. Chris does a great job at analysing and responding. In this process I discovered many posts that talk about trust and integrity of bloggers. Two posts that caught my eye were Lucretia M. Pruitt: What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time? and Barbara Gibson: What is your integrity worth? I don’t follow blogs of Jeremiah, Lucretia or Barbara, but I had no reason not to trust them. They have an opinion that they are sharing.

According to a recent Forrester Research report, people trust emails from who they know most and they trust corporate blogs the least. According to the report, only 16% people trust corporate blogs. I had written about CEO and corporate blogging sometime back and this report presents some interesting perspectives.

You can read posts that comment on this report at RWW and Rohit Bhargava’s blog.

What do you think? Do you trust corporate blogs? Which ones do you read regularly and why? It would interesting to get some views of corporate bloggers too.

This month’s Learning Circuits Big Question asks where is the best place to ask if you need input from people, what works and doesn’t work, what did you consider using, what was the outcome, ...

Continuing with my experiences with social networking, I have tried to use blogging to connect with people and get answers. However I haven’t been very successful in generating a dialog through my blogs. Perhaps my blog has very small readership, or perhaps people aren’t comfortable commenting.

As part of my journey in social networking I also started two communities – on Facebook and LinkedIn. Somehow it seemed harder to get a dialog on Facebook community but LinkedIn community got the dialog going quicker initially.

I recently sought inputs on a presentation I had to make.  I posed the question on my LinkedIn community and didn’t get any response. I also sent a message to my Facebook community inbox instead of posting it to the group site. I got most response using this method. It makes me wonder if email is still the best form of social networking.

I am relatively new to social networking and social media. I remember my first encounter with social media was on a new Indian social networking site about 17-18 months ago. The social networking site’s interface was a combination of Orkut and Facebook-style networking (which I figured later after I started using Orkut and Facebook). So here I was on this social networking site but I couldn’t see anyone to network with (it didn’t let you see anyone’s profile unless you were their ‘friend’). On their open chat room, I asked what the point of this site was. I was told by someone that I could invite the ‘real’ friends I knew and grow my network. I felt a little silly. But I already know all my ‘real’ friends. What’s to network with them? I thought the whole point of these social networking sites was to expand and build new networks. I gave up first attempt at social networking within an hour of trying, turn my nose up, wondering what all the fuss was all about when I couldn’t really connect with people I didn’t know.

Thankfully I progressed on to using the social networking sites and even started my own communities, figuring things along the way. Blogging definitely helped my journey in using the many social networking sites. I primarily started building my social networking on Facebook. Initially I found Orkut a lot more ‘social’ and Facebook a lot more ‘professional’. However I now figure it just depends on which communities you connect to on each of these sites. I have since figures that LinkedIn perhaps truly ‘professional’ networking site while Facebook and Orkut have a much more ‘social’ side to them. I have also felt that Orkut seems to have a much larger Indian community than on Facebook before finding some statistics recently that validate this.

The social networking sites have also made it easier for me to remember birthdays by transferring the responsibility to the person whose birthday I should remember J. And like mobile phones ruined my ability to remember phone numbers, social networking sites are making remembering email addresses a futile exercise.

As my online presence grew (though still miniscule compared to many other bloggers I follow), I started getting ‘invites’ to be ‘friends’ on Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn. Many old colleagues were connecting with me. I get scraps on Orkut seeking my inputs on career and education. I have also started reaching out to people I don’t know. I always try to provide a brief intro/background/intent of my connecting with them. I am petrified of connecting with an old acquaintance with no introduction or an introduction like “Hi, remember me?” What if they don’t? So I play it safe and provide some introduction. It is also better to receive introductions that have some background.

I also figured (again) that humour or something said in lighter vein can easily be misinterpreted. I should know this but still have learning experiences. And no, a smiley in my message does not necessarily mean that the intent will be transmitted and interpreted correctly by the other person. So humour is highly avoidable with professional contacts with who I have not yet established some sort of communication rapport.

 

It must be the technology bug in me or just the man in me wanting to play with new toys. In my quest to explore different blogging platforms, I have tried my hand at Blogger, Wordpress.com and self hosted Wordpress. Typepad required me to provide credit card information to sign-up and other platforms just didn’t seem popular enough. I searched and researched the comparisons between Blogger and Wordpress. Most comparison posts compare Blogger and self hosted Wordpress. However I found this really useful post that compares Blogger and Wordpress.com, which in my mind is the true comparison.

My personal preference is now with Blogger as compared to Wordpres.com, if you want to get started quickly and without any expense. In addition to the comparison in the link above, some additional comparisons are:

• Blogger allows Javascript code in widgets. This allows you to add more variety of widgets on your blog. Wordpress.com doesn’t allow Javascript widgets.
• Blogger is Adsense ready (read 'it allows Javascript code'). Wordpress.com doesn’t allow advertising. Now rest assured, getting your first $100 from Google is going to take you a few years, but still no harm is trying. You need to earn minimum $100 before you get any cash from Google.
• Blogger allows you to add new templates which Wordpress.com doesn’t allow. You are limited to the themes provided by Wordpress.com.
  
• Blogger provides email alerts for comments (and posts too). Wordpress.com (and self hosted Wordpress too actually) doesn’t provide any email alerts for new comments.
• Blogger has an in-built poll widget. Wordpress.com doesn't have a poll widget.
  

So there you are. In my view, get started with Blogger. The other criteria for choosing between the two could also be the availability of the blog name. You might need a blog name that may be available on a platform not of your choice.

However, notwithstanding the technology debate about the blogging platform, I finally figured that it is the CONTENT that matters most. Do I have the content on my blog that will pull readers or which is personally satisfying to me? That is far more important than the blogging platform!!!

It’s been more than 6 months since I last posted my top 10 tools for learning. I thank Jane Hart for making me think to update the list for Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies’ compilation of top 10 tools for learning of as many as 184 learning professionals. There are some changes since I last wrote, though many of the tools and techniques still remain in my top 10 list.

Here are my top 10 tools for learning in Aug 2008.

1. Search engines – though Google is still my most used generic search engine, I have discovered and used few other more specific search engines. I frequently use Flickr and LinkedIn search add ons installed on my Firefox. I also use Summize (which has since been acquired by Twitter) to search Twitter tweets.
2. Blogging – blogging continues to help me reflect on my thoughts and crystallize my learning. I still use Blogger for my personal blog and have moved to hosted Wordpress for my team blog.
3. Blog Feeds – I read blogs via RSS feeds. Have been on Google Reader so far and recently discovered Feedly. Feedly integrates very well with Google Reader and presents a very nice magazine-like interface. I just love reading my RSS feeds on Feedly now.
4. Social Networks – I use Facebook as my main social networking environment and it’s been great. It has been a great source for getting help from my social network. I am also beginning to utilize LinkedIn Answer, though the usage is still low.
5. Social Bookmarking – I had del.icio.us on my list the last time, however I hardly use visit it to view other people’s bookmarks. What have really helped is the bookmarks I receive in various feeds (RSS or Facebook feeds) of my network. So social bookmarking is still on my list but the usage is different now.
6. Right click-Open in New Window/Tab – Still on my list. So you may argue this is not exactly a learning tool. But I find hyperlinks very distracting and if I click on a hyperlink I lose the flow of what I am reading. So I always right click and open the hyperlink in a new tab or window. This enables me to continue reading and if I do view a hyperlink, this allows me to return to my original document easily.
7. Web-enabled mobile phone (iPhone) – Continues to be on my list.
8. In-sighting and de-layering – A technique I learned in one of the leadership workshops. Now in every interaction I listen more carefully and ask more questions, with an attempt to get an insight into the subject of our discussion.
9. Online conferencing – continues to be on my list. We now use Office Communication Server (OCS) at work and that is used a lot more frequently now than other paid services.
10. Wikipedia – Continues on my list. Great place to find almost anything here.

In continuation of my earlier post on CEO and corporate blogs, I found this video on Mark Oehlert's blog.

eCube now has a new look and feel. I wanted something bright and refreshing. I used the WP-Polaroid for Blogger template that I downloaded from eblog templates. It took more time than I expected but in the process I created a blog template upgrade checklist. I realized that there is too much code (analytics, tracking, label customization etc.) that is embedded that needs to be ported to the new template code. And the widgets got all messed up in the new template so I had to create many widgets all over again. Getting the author name was a challenge and I still don’t have the post date (only post time is visible).

There is still some fine tuning to be done over the next few days. I still don’t know how to automatically archive the Blogger poll widgets (so bear with them on the side bars). And the Outbrain rating stars still don’t appear on the posts. And post contributors will need to log on to their Blogger Dashboard to be able to create a new post on the blog till I figure out how to get back the top Blogger navigation bar.

Like it, hate it, have suggestions for improvement? Do post your comments on the new interface. There is also a new poll about the interface. Do drop by and provide your feedback.

Update: eCube has moved to Worpress platform on an independent domain: http://e3cube.co.in.

I attended two sessions of the Blogging and New Media Workshop organized by Indian Blog and New Media Society. I was actually surprised to see a relatively large turnout. There would have been approximately 100 people. That’s not bad for a Sunday evening session and a working day Monday evening session. The audience was very varied in terms of their experience as a blogger and I commend how the presenters, Ajay Jain and Abhishek Kant, handled the audience questions with patience. There were also a significant number of women in the audience so it’s not just the men who are blogging in India.

Quite honestly I thought the audience would be really interested in blogging, learning through blogging and exploring new avenues. Most were interesting in knowing how to make money through blogs. No harm but whatever happened to learning and personal growth through blogging...

The sessions I attended were on Marketing your blog, Benefits of Blogging for Executives, Business and Professionals, and How to Make Money as a Blogger. I found congruence in many of the tips in the sessions and in one of my previous posts on blogging. A part of the session was dedicated to corporate blogs and how companies can benefit through blogging. Companies should not only use blogs but also other social media sites to manage their brand and monitor what’s being said about their brand. Some important tips of companies were not to outsource blogging, and have people other than just CEOs and PR/Corp Communication Manager to communicate with the readers. There are some examples of corporate blogs. I had posted some examples in my earlier posts on corporate blogging and tips on running a team blog.

There was an interesting session on SEO, SEM and generally marketing your blog. I didn’t know that links to authoritative sites like Wikipedia improved your search ranking. And that broken links on you site can have an adverse effect on your search ranking. When Google search engine searches your blog, it also adds links on your blogs to its search. So having inbound links (links to your own blog pages) are better than outbound links. However out-links to relevant blogs does increase your search ranking. What statistics to measure was also discussed. I found an interesting post on a quick primer on various web metrics and how to use them.

It was good to see a large turnout for the workshop and to see the audience interacting in the workshop. With the Indian blogging scene growing exponentially, I am sure groups like IBNMS will make a significant contribution. Here’s wishing IBNMS all the very best for their future workshops.

I am moving up the Web 2.0 ladder to actually posting videos on YouTube :-). I thought it would be hard and I would need to convert mpeg file to flv before uploading. However YouTube allowed me to upload mpeg file without any problem and converted it into YouTube playable version quite seamlessly.

Here are my two videos that I shot during my vacation. These were shot with a digital camera meant for stills and not a video camera, so the quality isn't the best video quality.

1. Beetle inside a flower


2. I am not sure if this is a humming bird.

I started blogging rather accidently, responding to a post on another blog. Sometime in June 2007, I wrote my post on my blog on Microsoft Live Spaces. I subsequently dumped that and started this blog on Blogspot. In Feb 2008, I also started eCube, a team blog. In one year, I am completing 50 posts on my personal blog (with this post), and another 19 posts on eCube team blog.

I started tracking stats late September 2007. An anonymous commenter on my blog introduced me to Feedburner in Jan 2008. So far, my blog has had more than 4,000 visits and 6,400 page views. About 40% of traffic comes from referring sites, 30% from search engines and 30% direct. The blog has about 65 RSS subscribers. eCube has had more than 2,700 visits with more than 5,100 views, and has about 35 RSS subscribers.

The top 5 most viewed posts on my blog have been:

1. eLearning and Content Development Trends for 2008
2. Unofficial salary survey for elearning/content development jobs
3. iPhone – The Dumb Blonde of Phones?
4. Death of the Instructional Designer
5. Tare Zameen Par

My personal favourites over last one year:

1. Two posts inspired by recent movies in India: Chakde India Coaching in Corporate India and Tare Zameen Par. I find it hard to choose between these.
2. My post Why Workplace Learning Is Largely Learning 1.0 got the most comments. I summarized these in my subsequent post.
3. I wrote Tips for Running a Team Blog as a guest post on Michele Martin’s The Bamboo Project.
4. It was great fun hosting the second edition of the Working/Learning Blog Carnival – April 2008. This post had 15 gem posts from various bloggers.
5. I did quite some research in writing CEO and Corporate Blogging. This post has links to many sites that you might find interesting.

Thank you for reading and contributing with your valuable comments.