Our (brief) Tampa Experience

Pardon the bad blues esque poetry, but this was a recap of our musky expereince at the Tampa/Ybor City Days Inn.

One bad night in Tampa,
Right Outside of Ybor
One moldy night in Tampa
With sirens outside our door
No Hot water for hours
and towels with someone else’s hair
On the floor.

One bad night in Tampa,
Right Outside of Ybor
One moldy night in Tampa
With sirens outside our door
Stuck with No internet access
And no working phone to call.

One bad night in Tampa,
Right Outside of Ybor
One moldy night in Tampa
With sirens outside our door
It took one and half hours to
check into a room that was too small

One bad night in Tampa,
Right Outside of Ybor
One moldy night in Tampa
With sirens outside our door
Now we are so much happier
saying a quick goodbye to Tampa

Good times.  Good times.

Oh and Wyndam Rewards is on the poo list.

Learning 2008- The End…

Yes, it was great.  I have at least two pages of notes from each of the sessions, including the different non-plenary session stuff.

I will blog after my mini-vaction to Western Florida about the conference.   It was fantastic to share learning ideas with both my Maryland colleagues and with folks from Fortune 100 companies.   And we are all in the same learning boat.

I hope that some of the people I invited to join me on T is for Training next Friday at 2 pm will come.  If you want to look at some of the content from the conference, check out the conference website Learning2008.

Learning 2008 Keynote Short Post

Please also follow me on twitter for up to date posts.

Doug Lynch of UPenn and discussed issues that converged economics and learning.

Some quotes from his fascinating talk:
“You have an economic and moral mandate to demonstrate the impact of training on your organization.”

To do that is a matter of “collecting evidence that is both material and competient.”

“Learning is the best strategy to get us out of whatever problems we are in.”

His five keys to being a learning executive:
a) Business Accumen;
b) able to apply techninogy logically;
c) consummate consumer of evidence;
d) experiential learner; and
e) a background in learning

In an “actor studio” section he recommended a book to read related to our current economic situation called “Short History of Financial Euphoria” by John Kenneth Galbraith.

Thanks to Jennifer of ERSL and Trina P. of Frederick County for using great research and finding the name of the book.

Learning 2008: Meet Them Where They Play Short Post

Florida’s Virtual School is creating a game that teaches US history to 10-11 graders. They had a long development cycle of over 2 years with most of that being concurrent subject writing and game engine development.

This process was costly with develop costs in the millions. They designed their game engine from scratch and wrote it to meet education standards nationwide for future distribution.

This design stream does not work for public libraries from a cost perspective
.
Written via IPod so pardon any typos

Learning 2008 – Social Learners Group Short Report

The Learning 2k8 Social Learners group was lead by David Sanderson of General Mills.

Key discussion points:

• A goal of Social Networking should be  to focus, moderate, build and direct social networks into knowledge management.
• discussed the 1-9-90   As a learning leader,  you are looking to identify the one as a future leader and focus on how to reach the 90.
• We should be using naturally developed network hierarchy to identify and delelop internal and external talent and skills.

More detailed post about this to come.

Learning 2008 update LIVE via IPod

In Learning 2008 afternoon session. Just got out of Gaming Design 101. Best session so far!

Follow Me on Twitter at Learning 2008

I am tweeting the Learning 2008 Conference.  Follow my tweets at twitter and keep up with what I am doing at the conference.  You can also follow the hashtag #learning2008 at hashtags.org for other twitter folks tweeting the conference.

Starter Observations from the Learning 2008 conference

This week I am attending the Learning 2008 conference at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort and Conference Center.  Yes a conference at Disney.  More on that later.

I actually met the Maise center head honcho himself Elliott Maise while choosing buttons for my bag and my badge. All participants also receive a handheld instant feedback device which gives each person the power to connect, collaborate and give instant feedback to the organizers.

The brochure contains a dizzying array of learning professional workshop opportunities, and I look forward to spending a little time by the pool tomorrow looking over some choices.  While doing my homework, of course.

Now back to Disney.   While I love the attention to detail that Disney does well, along with the friendliness of every single cast member we have met, I would change two things so far about my trip.

1)  Disney Magic Express — Great and free system to get you from Terminal B of the Orlando Airport to Disney’s Theme Parks.  Now if you landed in Terminal A, I think there was one person and no “destination desk” to direct you to the long (after traveling and with all of your bags) walk to the other terminal to reach your Disney Magic Express bus depot.   A shuttle or a small depot in the A terminal would have made our lives a bit easier.

2)  If I can travel to Minnesota and stay in a range of hotels and not pay for internet access, why do I have to pay 10 a day while attending a conference for access?????   It boggles my mind that the more expensive the hotel – Crystal City Hyatt or The Coronado Resort of the 2.50 bottle of diet coke – the greater the chance you will pay for internet access in your room.  Completely and utterly ridiculous.  And a deal breaker.

Rutabee and Road Work: My Minnesota Training Adventure

My trip by the numbers to the land of 10k (10,000) lakes.  There is a bunch of photographic evidence on my flickr.  The training photo SlideShow.

998.2  miles - I logged almost 1,000 miles in my wonderful rental. I started with a Jeep Liberty from Hertz.   I drove it around the loop at Duluth International and was reminded of my old Toyota Camry’s front seat.  Small. And without the requisite room for all of the stuff I would need to carry.    So I tried to exchange it for another car.  I casually mentioned that I would be returning the car to Minneapolis not Duluth and the clerk reached for “the book.” It was going to cost another $700 more to return my car to MSP.  Ouch.  Since Duluth’s airport is “cozy, ” I went to the other rental agencies to see who could help me out.  Alamo/Nationwide stepped up and I ended up with a wonderful Toyota Highlander.  And it cost pretty much what the person in Duluth said it would.  Nice.

120 (or so) participants. Great workshop participants who did not mind getting their hands dirty installing software, playing rock band, capturing the event and having a little fun while learning a lot.   They were the key to the whole thing.

61 I passed through some small, and yes I mean under pop 500 small, towns on my travels through MN but the town of Cobden, MN was the smallest with a pop 61 sign announcing the town as you passed at 65 mph.  Too small to have a speed trap.

30 – Number of Coke Zeros and Arizona Diet Green Tea consumed to keep me going those almost 1000 miles and five workshops. 

16 things each region is getting.   Yes, each region in MN, all 13 of them, got Wii’s,  Flip and Digital Cameras, GPS Unit, IPod Touch, MP3 player and boom box, and assorted things.

15 minutes My cart ride through the Lindbergh Terminal from my 45 minute late plane from Chicago to my small tube to Duluth.  Yes, I said 15 minute cart ride from my arriving gate to my departure gate.  And I had 14 minutes to get there.   Having your name announced as the door is being closed is NOT the way to travel.  And a special thanks to the NorthWest gate attendant who would not call ahead letting them know I was on my way.  And told me oh..that is a long way away.  And you don’t have much time to get there.  Thanks for that bit of info.  I was thinking about that when we were circling the airport for 45 minutes.   I hope you get stranded someday on a desert island sweetie.

10 Minnesota regional systems represented by participants at the training locations.

5 Great Hosting Regions and Libraries and Meeting Rooms: Arrowhead, East Central, SELCO, Plum Creek and Traverse Sioux Library Systems.  And their hosts: Rebecca, Nick and Andy, Molly and Aurora, Chris and Lori, and Patty and the staff of Traverse Sioux.  All five of the libraries had fantastic meeting room spaces.  I was a lucky trainer in that regard.

Five Hours: The longest someone had to travel to get to one of the workshops.  In Minnesota, “just around the corner”  is an hour.  Or more.

Two - Seasons in Minnesota.  Winter and Road Work.  And there was no snow on the ground. And they take road work very, very seriously.

One order of Chicken Pastie.  Created by combining rutabee, chicken, beef, onions, celery and gravy in a whole wheat pastry.  A taste treat.

One lost bag that did not make it on my smaller than a Greyhound bus plane to Duluth.  Got it delivered much later that day to my hotel.   Glad I had back up clothes on my carry on.

And finally  ONE BIG THANKS to everyone who made my time in Minnesota a rocking good time training and teaching folks about technology.

I hope to get back there to see folks and train once again.

Minnesota Trip and Workshop Photographs

I have uploaded some pictures to Flickr of my trip so far and the Learning New Technologies Class I delivered yesterday to folks from the Arrowhead Regional Library System.

Enjoy!

Guess who is a guide for the Learning 2.1 project?

That would be me.

Just call me Mr. October 2008 Learning 2.1 guide.

Learning 2.1 Explore   Discover   Play

Checking In

“I MUST CLONE SELF”

that is all.

See you in Minnesota Monday or on T is for Training tomorrow….

Prince George’s County (MD) Staff Day Presentation

Yesterday, Annette and I recreated out Creating A Technology Petting Zoo presentation for the staff of the Prince George’s County (MD) Memorial Library System.

We had a great time talking to over 40 enthuisastic staff about the program.  And lunch was pretty good too.

I am looking forward to helping this great system put on their own Technology Petting Zoo in the Spring of 2009.