What the heck? I’m posting more than once a year to this blog? Yeah I know… whacky eh? Well after leaving the ivory tower, and spending time in the snake oil sales environment of private industry (at least for what I was doing), I’m back developing content, delivering that content and reflecting. The biggest difference that I see is that outside the ivory tower, things are not about “what if” or “we can”, the things that get done are those that connect right now. So while these may be years or decades behind what is being suggested by the towers, they are making big impacts. Case in point? One of the things that I’m doing with my new position is developing a set of practice tools/scripted simulations. It’s done in Excel and is something that I would have taught students back in the early naughties. But regardless it’s being received as revolutionary. Granted, this is a very limited audience, but I don’t know if this is something that I would have appreciated had I not been cut from the tower.
But regardless of the technology element, the one thing that seems constant is the struggle for engagement. The content that I’m working with now is dry. But in order to get it across, I need to make it entertaining. So I do that between my personal presentation and the resources that I develop. The entertainment is not over the top, but as much a stand up show as anything else, and the resources are “just enough” and “just in time”. But the entertainment is what is making the biggest difference – think about it this way. My content is a pine tree, my show and dance is that makes it a Christmas tree. The value comes from the trimmings.
So if you are still with me, you might be lamenting the lack of details here. Well that is one of the down sides of where I am now. I can’t talk about what I do, but I think I can reflect on my practices.
Hopefully I’ll be able to post more as time goes on… but in the mean time, it’s nice to be back.
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