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1st SIG Webinar - Intro to Social Learning
By Kevin Jones | January 25, 2008
We had our first webinar today and BOY did I learn a lot!
Thankfully I happened to read Michele Martin’s post on her first webinar. (Make sure you listen to the ASTD Cascadia podcast coming out shortly featuring Michele.) There are some useful tips in there that helped. Overall, I think it went well, minus the audio problems we had. Having to keep on keep’n on while there is distracting noises and other things made it quite challenging. But thankfully having Rob and Loren in the background to take care of the technical stuff helped a bunch.
Although not perfect (it was our first live one), it come off pretty well. Here is a link to the recording of the webinar.
One question that came up was about how to get management to buy in to Social Learning when they will naturally be against it. In the answer I mentioned the project management tool Backpack. Well, I was off on the name. It is Basecamp. Hey, it is all camping related!
When I first introduced this to our management team they hated the idea and it was worse than a flop. But, picking up my ego off the floor, I gathered my composure and tried again. This time, much smaller. I was putting together a conference and started using Basecamp. It has a lot of Social Learning tools in there. It is cheap, it is easy and it caught on. We started with that one project. In a matter of a couple months, we had to upgrade our account to allow us to use more projects. As employees started using it, they loved it. They started coming asking for more projects, to get our customers on it, etc…
The best part about it? Well, really two things. 1) IT had NOTHING to do with this. 2) The employees created the demand. So when it was time, I went back to our management group and said (in so many words), “We are using it already. They love it and want more. How about unifying this in to something we can make our own.” They were still skeptical, but went for it.
Now that it is up - I went from being the devil himself to being a hero. Department goals for this year were set. No small number involved their use of the environment. They are realizing that we can all learn from each other and share the information. No longer is it kept between two people or in one person’s head. It is time to share!
We have the next three month’s worth of webinars identified, but not all the dates. When I get those dates I will pass them on. The presenters are fabulous. You will really enjoy them and learn a ton from them.
And, hey, those audio issues - I am sure they will be a thing of the past…
Other posts on similar topics- Webinar #2 - Using Wikis in Social Learning
- Employee Learning Week - more thoughts
- Webinar #2 - Social Learning & Knowledge Management with Cindy Rockwell
- 31 Day Comment Challenge
- How Technology Transformed My Professional Development
Topics: - Social Learning SIG |
January 26th, 2008 at 4:02 am
Hi Kevin–I’m glad the webinar tips helped! It was part of my commitment to myself to learn from new activities by forcing myself to really reflect on what happened and what I learned from it. Having a blog makes me much more aware of that need and the added benefit is that other people can learn from my mistakes!
Sounds like overall, things went well with the first go-around. Congratulations!
January 28th, 2008 at 4:53 am
[...] 1st SIG Webinar - Intro to Social Learning | [...]
March 4th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
[...] area has a recording of their first “live” webinar (topic: Social Learning) on this blog page which will give you a flavor of what they are like. (I could have linked directly to the recorded [...]