Ken Allan tagged me to a rather unique meme, the 4 R’s Meme: Favorite Posts. He asks those tagged to select 4 of their favourite posts from their own blog, one from each of the categories: Rants, Resources, Reflections and Revelations.
The posts are then listed with a brief summary on each describing:
* why it was important,
* why it had lasting value or impact,
* how you would update it for today.
The intrepid bloggers are to tag all of their selected posts with the label postsofthepast and then select five (or so) other bloggers to tap with this meme.
Rant: Now that I look back, my first post was actually a rant about job sites encouraging attrition. Those were the heady days of jobs available dime a dozen, competition undercutting each other offering ridiculous salaries to jump jobs. There was some interesting discussion in the comments on this post. Today the situation is a little different. At this time jobs are not so easily available and salaries offered are more realistic. Well, at least until the economy booms again and we fall into the same trap of head hunting.
Resources: I have tried hard to induct some of my team members to blog about their learning. It proved harder than I thought. I looked around to see if there were other learning professionals in India blogging. My first list of top 10 had 4 blogs that weren’t really updated in a while. I did however over a period of time manage to identify more blogs by learning professionals in India. So my recent post listing the blogs by learning professionals in India is a useful resource post. I will continue to update this list.
Reflections: Instructional design is about creating learning experiences and not ‘writing content’. This was a valuable comment in my post Death of the Instructional Designer. I also reflected on what I believe are the Instructional Designers competencies.
Revelations: I have been experimenting with Blogger and Wordpress and use both, well actually all three (Blogger, self hosted Wordpress and Wordpress.com). I wrote a post comparing different these blogging platforms. While writing this post it dawned on me that the platform doesn’t matter. It’s the CONTENT that matters.
I tag following people to continue this meme.
Viplav Baxi
Sumeet Moghe
Rupa Rajagopalan
Dave Ferguson
Jeff Cobb
Catherine Lombardozzi
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.
Individual blogs:
Company blogs:
If you are an Indian learning/training/education professional and have a blog that is not included here, please post a comment.
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!!!
I have been fascinated by the recent advertisements of job sites. All bosses are shown as being really mean. Remember Hari Sadu? Or the bosses in ‘Guess whose heard from us lately’ ad. It’s really funny watching these ads. Remind me of old bollywood films (actually true for many new ones too) where characters are shown with exaggerated stereotypical characteristics.
And then there is the Happy Kumar ad. It reminds me of a conversation I had with someone who came to me to discuss this ‘fantastic’ offer she had and wanted my advice. In conversation with her, she mentioned that this offer would require her to relocate to a city where she did not want to go. And that she was actually very happy doing what she was and she was happy with the money she was getting currently. And the new job wasn’t something she wanted to do. I was very puzzled and wondered why she wanted my advice. She said, but hey this is a great offer. I wondered if Happy Kumar syndrome had caught up with her. Being happy and satisfied with your job is not such a good thing after all.
The most recent ad is about your pay packet making you feel small. This ad propagates that money is the only yardstick of how companies can show appreciation of talent. I wonder what this job site’s attrition rate is and what they pay to their people. And would money compensate for Hari Sadu? Surely no one will leave Hari Sadu if he paid more money. And we already know Happy Kumar is a really bad boy, being satisfied with what he is doing and all that.
Times have changed. Our parents spent most of their careers with one organization. This of course does not mean that we should spend our careers with only one organization. The fact is that there are indeed a lot more opportunities available now. ‘India Shining’ screams at us in the face. However I think we have gone to the other extreme now. It is now fashionable to change jobs at regular intervals. Does this regular change of jobs impact the individual or is it actually good? Will we really getting better at what we do if we keep changing jobs so frequently? Are we building a foundation or eroding our base?
