Coming soon…

I am working on designing my new blog (in all my free time) and I am very excited about it.

Site: TravisThoughts.com

 

GoToTips: Difference between GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar

GoToMeeting can be somewhat difficult to understand. First, GoToMeeting is the name of the web-conferencing software that has its own limitations: 15 people, collaborative, etc. However, GoToMeeting is the shortened name for GoToMeeting Corporate, which contains GoToMeeting (upto 25 people) and GoToWebinar. Why did they not call it GoToSuite (which would have allowed for the expansion of GoToTraining, @GoToTraining) or something like that? However, since GoToTraining has not yet arrived on the scene (preview in early October), we will discuss the difference between GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar.

GoToMeeting: Collaborative Sessions

• Up to 25 attendees (15 in non-Corporate version)
• Interactive and Collaborative
• Encourage Participation

GoToWebinar: Structured Sessions

• 1-1,000 attendees (however, this number should increase soon; however, there is a work-around to this to expand it, I believe, to 2,000)
• Pre- and Post-session analysis
• Encourage Interaction

GTM & GTW

Now beyond these differences there are some other differences include the following:

• GoToWebinar has the ability to do live pre-planned polls & post results.
• Both GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar display arrival/departure times.
• GoToWebinar’s post-webinar analysis displays the following: Attendee Interest Ratings, Registration Q/A, Poll Questions, Post Session Survey Questions, Registration Date.

It is obvious that GoToWebinar is much more robust than GoToMeeting, and some of the features of GoToWebinar should be included in GoToMeeting (e.g., polling that doesn’t require preparation). So what do you do if you want the tools of GoToWebinar in GoToMeeting? While a GoToMeeting cannot be converted into a GoToWebinar (because of the registration, polls, and planning stage), a GoToWebinar can be converted into a GoToMeeting by simply turning on everyone’s voices (only up to 25 participants though).

 

Sound Editing Softwares?

Currently, I have been looking at a variety of sound softwares. I have become utterly dissatisfied with Audacity because every time I do a noise reduction, I can hear what I like to call computer noise or talk. It’s those high level sweaking sounds that no one else in my department can hear. However, it is very disturbing to me.

Now our department wants to begin doing podcasting, so I have come to the conclusion that Audacity can no longer suffice. Since I cannot use GarageBand (because I am on a PC using Adobe Flash CS4, Articulate, Captivate, etc.), I would love to see opinions on the following:

1. WavePad Sound ($76, free trial)
2. Adobe’s Soundbooth CS4 ($199, free trial)
3. Sony’s Sound Forge Pro 10 ($274.95, free trial)
4. Sony’s Sound Forge Audio Studio ($54.95, free trial)

If yours is not listed here please give me some suggestions. What do you use? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What do you wish it could do?

 

7 Reasons Why We Should Attend Conferences

Personally, I love conferences. I would call myself as a conference junkie; however, in practice I don’t attend very many conferences mainly because my company doesn’t send me places (though I believe they would get more bang for their buck if they did in most cases) though I am working on that (any good conferences for 2010?). Here are a 7 reasons why we all should attend conferences:

#1: It breaks the normal, everyday routine.
For some people this can be very stressful; however, for most, this will be a relief. My personality is such that if I do the same thing a few days in a row, then I am about to pull my hair out or do something exciting just for kicks or do it even slower because of procrastination, etc.

#2: It gives me a fresh perspective.
Because it breaks the normal, everyday routine, it changes my perspective. It allows me to immerse myself in something else (even if it is what I do every day). There is a change of people, place, and pace of normal everyday life.

#3: It is personal (and/or leadership) development and education.
Whether this is development in soft skills or technical skills or competencies, conferences provide a phenomenal way to invest in myself. Furthermore, most conferences do focus on the new, next big thing, the cutting edge, or any other new ideas available.

#4: It helps develop my personal network.
More and more I realize the importance of a professional, personal network outside of my company. This does a lot of things. First, it gives you insight to the customer (whether internal or external). Second, it provides you an avenue to explore and discuss ideas. Third, it also gives you a “backup plan”  (i.e., a way of finding a new job if necessary?).

#5: It’s fun!
What’s better than a “paid working vacation” where I go somewhere for the sole purpose of attending a conference. Yes, some conferences are not as exciting as others; however, everything is what we make of it. So there’s tweeting at a conference, tweetups, “free” lunches, etc.

#6: It is inspirational.
Most conferences I’ve been to have always inspired me to do at least one new thing, or it has re-ignited my passion for something that I am already doing, whether it is something that I have slowed down or stopped working, or gotten bummed about, etc. Regardless, general sessions, breakout sessions, workshops, and seminars all can prove to be rather inspiring. For me, the breakout and smaller sessions are much more valuable than the general sessions.

#7: It is exciting to see and meet certain people, like speakers, bloggers, etc.
In this digital age, I know a variety of people through writing whether it is blogging, tweeting, or whatever. However, there is a missing component to each of these people. It’s the way the sound, the way they talk, the way they hold themselves, the way they interact, etc. While I am not the best at reading people, I know a few people that read people like books in 5 minutes. For example, the other day I was talking with someone (who is really excellent at reading people) about a blog/blogger, and they said something interesting to me, “I’ve read XYZ Blog for a while now [she went on to tell me about her favorite parts of the blog], and so I had an idea about who [he/she] was, how [he/she] acted, and what [he/she] sounded like. However, I recently saw a video of [him/her], and I did not picture [him/her] that way! But now that I’ve seen him/her, his/her blog makes a lot of sense to me.” So going to a conference, we get a more real picture of the people we interact with electronically.

So do you like going to conferences? Why or why not?

 

Update on Twitter for Learning Professionals m

This is a re-posting from:

Follow all of these learning professionals here:

http://blog.elementk.com/element_k_blog/2009/09/update-on-twitter-for-learning-professionals-.html

Did you know that Element K is now on Twitter? We started using Twitter as an organization in late June, and you can follow us via the account “Element_K,” which can be found at http://www.twitter.com/Element_K. Through this account we are sharing links to interesting industry articles, blog postings, resources and more, as well as announcements about Element K webinars and other happenings.

Beyond that news, back in February I wrote a posting here at Element K Blog—“Twitter, Twitter, Tweet, Tweet”—intended to help people in the L&D industry get started with Twitter. Since then, of course, Twitter has exploded in popularity, brought on in part by celebrity and media attention, but also by very legitimate uses of Twitter, ranging from its role in political events, to its corporate use for marketing, customer service, and even sales, to its use by everyday working professionals as a powerful information gathering tool. It’s this last use-case that I still think is important for learning and development professionals to take seriously.

With that in mind, and because it comes up at every industry event I participate in, I wanted to provide another posting on this topic. Refer back to my earlier posting for a basic introduction and valuable links for more information—there are many more I could share that have come along since, but you only need so many “Twitter for newbies” articles to get you started.

More importantly, I wanted to provide an updated list of leaders in the L&D field that you might consider “following” on Twitter (most, but not all of whom, use Twitter regularly). For each, simply visit http://www.twitter.com/username, such as http://www.twitter.com/Element_K:

* Element_K
* Thomas Stone of Element K
* Anders Gronstedt
* Allison Rosset
* Bill Brandon
* B.J. Schone
* Brent Schlenker
* Cammy Bean
* Jane Hart
* Clive Shepherd
* Cushing Anderson
* Dave Ferguson
* David Mallon
* David Metcalf
* Stephen Downes
* David Wilkins
* Ellen Wagner
* Elliott Masie
* George Siemens
* Grant Ricketts
* David Holcombe
* Gary Woodill
* Heidi Fisk
* Harold Jarche
* Jane Bozarth
* Jay Cross
* Janet Clarey
* Jeanne Meister
* Josh Bersin
* Judy Brown
* Kevin D. Jones
* Karl Kapp
* Koreen Olbrish
* Lance Dublin
* Margaret Martinez
* Mike Cooke
* Tom King
* Mark Oehlert
* Clark Quinn
* Ray Jimenez
* Steve Howard
* Tony Karrer
* Tom Werner
* Will Thalheimer
* Michelle Lentz
* Travis Smith (<-ME, my addition)

No doubt I am missing several key people, but this is a good list to get you started (Not seeing someone you are looking for? Try the much larger directory of people in the L&D field who are using Twitter provided by Jane Hart’s excellent Connexions Directory.)

Consider also the following industry organizations and magazines that are on Twitter, as many provide valuable links and news as well:

* ASTD’s primary account
* ASTD Communications
* Bersin and Associates
* Brandon Hall Research
* Chief Learning Officer magazine
* TrainingIndustry.com
* Talent Management magazine

 

Understanding Social Media & People

I have a wide variety of videos and explanations that I have been using for some time now to explain what Social Media is. In a previous blog post, I wrote about some Common Craft videos that explain Social Media, Social Networking, Blogs, Twitter, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, Podcasting, Photo-Sharing, and RSS. However, I did not explain the rationale behind these tools. I want to thank Dave Wilkins and Kevin Jones, who were the first to show these to me.

Any time someone asks me, “What is so important about social media?” or “Why should we bother with social media?” or “Could you explain social media to me?” I always give them these videos to watch, and depending on whether they watch them or not, I give them more or less of my time. Here are the videos that I ask them to watch (in this specific order).

1. Socialnomics09, Social Media Revolution
2. Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, at Zeitgeist ’08
3. Information Re-volution
4. Malcolm Gladwell at PopTech! (2004) on Human Nature
5. Dell’s IdeaStorm

Each video have one or more principles and ideas in them that carry the rationale behind Social Media. To name a few of the more important ideas that drive the importance of Social Media based on each of the videos are:

Socialnomics Video: Social Media Revolution

Brad Anderson’s Video:

1. The Benefits of SM
2. Corporate Communication
3. The Ability to See & Use Employee’s Socialization (Community)
4. Collaboration (WE are smarter than ME)
5. Changing of Roles (to Facilitators)

Information Re-volution

• The Changing Nature of Information

Malcolm Gladwell’s PopTech! Video on Human Nature
(sorry, WP.com won’t let me embed this one)

1. Changing Preferences by Changing Variables: Coke or Pepsi?
2. Story-Telling Problem from Unconscious Cues: People have a fundamental inability to explain their actions/performance/feelings.
3. Perils of Introspection: Asking people to think about what they want causes them to change their opinion what they want & messes up their ability to understand/recognize what they want.
4. So can we trust people?

Dell’s IdeaStorm from Idea to Reality

• External Collaboration via Customers! (WE are smarter than ME)

 

GoToTips: Ad Hoc Meetings

Probably one of the best, simpliest and easiest things to use on GoToMeeting is the ability to meet ad hoc (or impromptu). One of the coolest features about GTM is that the invitations can be sent via email (automatic), via chat message (MSN), or via Twitter (shorten url).

Ad Hoc Meetings

 

Connect Twitter and LinkedIn

So for the longest time I have not used LinkedIn. Simply, it is because LinkedIn seems to be behind Facebook and Twitter in so many respects. One post by Chris Richman, I guess a representative of LinkedIn, said (in 2008) in regards to an API Twitter Application, “I like the idea of Twitter integration. I’ll look into how much work it would take. Only a small % of our users twitter, but I can see how it would be great for those that do.” Against this, he received many remarks. Even up until September 9th, 2009, Chris was receiving comments and votes for a Twitter Sync Application. While I am not sure whether they created such an App, here’s one way to connect your Twitter stream with your LinkedIn Status.

 

My GoToMeeting Idea: GoToTips

When I first took over the Social Media of my company, which was only 1 application, GoToMeeting, I made it my personal endeavor to try to get more social media in my company. However, in the meantime, I wanted GoToMeeting to be a huge success. While it has not been huge in my opinion (because I see a lot of low hanging fruit that could easily be taken for the benefit of our company), the people at my company do believe that GoToMeeting has saved us a ton of money and has been successful.

I was not here when GoToMeeting was selected; however, I was here for the initial training and roll-out through the entire company. In that roll-out I learned tons about piloting and rolling changes out to the field (I came from the field from another company). So one of the first things I did was create something I called GoToTips. While I told my account manager, and she claimed that she would tell someone. However, soon thereafter she was no longer with Citrix Online (holder/creator of GoToMeeting). So I thought I’d begin a series of my GoToTips.

Topic: Forgot Password (GoToMeeting)

Tip: What do you do if you forgot your password? Simply go to GoToMeeting and click on “Log In” on the left side panel under the GoToMeeting Logo. Click on “Forgot Your Password?” under the Password box. Enter your email address and you will receive an email with instructions to change your password.

Login

Forgot Your Password?

Enter Email & Submit

 

Follow Learning and eLearning Professionals on Twitter

In light of Steve Boese HR Twitter List on TweepML, I thought I would make a learning/elearning twitter list that people can easily follow. Just as Steve said about HR Professionals, “Now to get any value at all from Twitter you need to find and follow ‘real’ HR professionals, recruiters, companies, bloggers, the kind of people you can learn from, engage with, and share your expertise with,” it is true with eLearning/Learning professionals.

Most, if not all eLearning professionals know about Jane’s Pick of the Day. Upon checking out her site for Twitter usernames, I discovered Jane’s 100 Featured Learning Professionals on Twitter (too bad I didn’t make that list!), but she had over 1,000 eLearning professionals on the rest of her website. So then I thought I would make my own Top eLearning/Learning Professionals. However, I also wanted to make her entire list available alphabetically below. How would you have liked to have approximately 250 people right off the bat when you started with Twitter?

My Top 250-ish eLearning/Learning Professionals

Since I am limited to only 100 people per list, I had to create 3 lists. Therefore, they are:

List A

List B

List C

Jane’s Learning Professionals

A	B: List 1	List 2	C
D	E	F	G
H	I	J	K
L	M List 1	List 2	N
O	P	Q-R	S
T	U-V	W	X-Z