Jay Cross

MARCH 12, 2010

Teach a man to fish… PKM: Figuring out what’s important to you, how to find it, how to keep up with it, how to make sense of it, how to recall it when you need it anew, and how to share it with others — this is ground zero for mining the riches of the web. Bookstore shelves overflow with books on blogging , but I’ve yet to see one on PKM.

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Knowledge Management PKM Personal Personalization 56

Jay Cross

AUGUST 30, 2010

Steve Bordley emailed me this morning to point out that… A new study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience has shown that walking will in fact enhance connectivity within brain circuits. Additionally, the study found that walking also improves cognition and combats the decline in brain function normally associated with aging. Walking, in effect, keeps the brain younger and functioning at a higher level than those of sedentary individuals.

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Cognitive Brain Network Study 55

Jay Cross

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Baba Ram Dass wrote Be Here Now at Lama Foundation outside of Taos, New Mexico. My brother later lived in the trailer in which he wrote it. In fact, my brother now leads the Lama Foundation. My sister in law Jan just emailed me… Now, 40 years later Ram Dass (with Rameshwar Das) has published a new book titled Be Love Now. I wanted to share the following email about this exciting event with you.

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PDF Streaming iPad Lecture 55

Jay Cross

JULY 13, 2010

Bob Morris pointed me toward this article that appeared in Strategy+Business last November: What’s So Special about Special Ops? by Andrew Sobel. The article describes how Green Berets, SEALs, and Air Force Special Tactics units learn to do their extraordinary jobs. The story contains invaluable lessons for corporations. The training that SOF personnel go through is a key to their success in real missions.

Simulations 54

Simulations Classroom PowerPoint Tagging 54

Jay Cross

JUNE 17, 2010

The ‘Learning Knights’ of Bell Telephone in the Op/Ed section of today’s New York Time is a case study of Push learning vs Pull learning. In 1955, Bell Telephone was concerned about leadership development: “A well-trained man knows how to answer questions, they reasoned; an educated man knows what questions are worth asking.” Bell, then one of the largest industrial concerns in the country, needed more employees capable of guiding the company rather than simply following instructions

Case Study 53

Case Study Streaming Compliance Training Specialist 53

Jay Cross

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Participants at Educa are enthusiastic: You can watch a longer version of the party video here. When did you last see this enthusiastic a group of learning professionals? Six of the Business Educa track sessions in Berlin were streamed and recorded: The Opening Conversation. Social Media & Mobile Learning. Learning from Experience. Games: Should you be doing this at work?

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Skype Online Mac Social Media 52

Jay Cross

AUGUST 28, 2010

I find silent PowerPoint presentations (except for those that only use words) about as useful as a Rorschach ink blot. Heaven only knows how many silent PowerPoints decks have screwed things up because people read their own meaning into them to fill the void. For example, that’s a real psych-test blog above. See any weird stuff? It’s all in your head.

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Slideshare PowerPoint Embed Sound 51

Jay Cross

AUGUST 28, 2010

Last week I received a nice surprise in the mail, Changing Cultures in Higher Education (Ulf Daniel Ehlers and Dirk Schneckberg eds.) Springer. Congratulations, guys. 610 pages for a mere $126. It’s good to see that Springer is maintaining its sense of humor. Don’t get me wrong. The message is cool: More and more educational scenarios and learning landscapes are developed using blogs, wikis, podcasts and e-portfolios.

Culture 51

Culture Change Education Wiki 51

Jay Cross

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

DevLearn is my favorite U.S. learning conference. I have learned so much in the last three days. JSB and Jay. Wow. DevLearn ended on a high note: Richard Culatta, Cammy Bean, Aaron Silvers, Ellen Wagner, and Gina Schreck in serial Pecha Kucha. Richard : games, not courses. Fun comes from mastery. No more nextsters. Jane : don’t let the boss loose with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and a Smart Phone.

DevLearn 51

DevLearn Social Networks Pedagogy Social Network 51

Jay Cross

JULY 7, 2010

FOR SALE: Professional Library of Jay Cross. Buy them all. I will throw in an afternoon on my back deck in Berkeley going over what I thought were the major messages of as many volumes as you wish. Shelves of inspiring books. Strong on instructional design, management, learning, eLearning, marketing & sales, and psychology. Some travel, humor, web 2.0, last 25 issues of Harvard Business Review.

Library 51

Library Sales ROI Brain 51

Jay Cross

DECEMBER 11, 2010

John Chambers was beamed in to chat with the Public Services Summit in Stockholm yesterday afternoon. My notes follow. The economy? Parts of Asia doing very well. Europe okay but fragile. ?With government leaders, share, don’t tell. Future depends on education system and the broadband infrastructure. Key to innovate, keep labor costs down. Used to think the less government, the better.

Social Networks 50

Social Networks Services Stock Social Network 50

Jay Cross

DECEMBER 25, 2010

My work is what I want to do in life. I have no work/life balance. I have work/life equality. I just designed a two-sided business card to communicate that Jay Cross the person and my work with Internet Time Alliance are two sides of the same thing. Please note the new phone number for 2011. The old ones still work, but this Google Phone number has a better chance of finding me and emails me your messages: +1.415.763.8529.

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Google Internet Communication Personal 50

Jay Cross

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

Too much great stuff happening to capture in print after a long, long day. (It’s 1:30 am here.). Fantastic presentation by Marcia Conner. The social learning revolution started on stage at DevLearn this afternoon. The train is leaving the station. Marcia blew the conductor’s whistle. All aboard! Otherwise, stay where you are. It was nice knowing you.

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DevLearn Photo Tagging Social Learning 50

Jay Cross

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Several friends have told me they aren’t coming to Online Educa in Berlin because it’s too academic. They’re not up with the news. Emphasizing learning and development in the business sector is precisely the reason that Charles Jennings, Laura Overton, and I have been working with the Online Educa staff to develop a comprehensive roster of business-oriented sessions.

Business 50

Business Forum Corporate eLearning News 50

Jay Cross

OCTOBER 9, 2010

Upon graduation from college with a degree in sociology, I became a mainframe computer salesman for NCR. This was so patently ludicrous that I was panicked into reading computer magazines and computer books into the wee hours every morning. I feared that I would be found out, exposed as a non-technical guy putting on as a senior systems analyst. One book that made no sense at all to me was The Human Use of Human Beings, Cybernetics and Society, by Norbert Wiener.

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Engineering Tagging Video System 50

Jay Cross

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

I’m going to be debating the merits of informal learning with some downright scary competition: Nancy Lewis, who’s probably best known as the champion of IBM’s formidable sales training, and Allison Rossett, who has developed more can-do instructional designers than anyone else on the planet. We’ll duking it out at Oxford Union in early October.

Informal Learning 50

Informal Learning Informal IBM Instructional Design 50

Jay Cross

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

When a company sends me an invoice with no return address or way to reply, I consider it invalid. And unprofessional. For example, I just received an invoice from no-reply@ning.com for $24.95. That’s the fee for withholding advertising on the group lukeshosp.ning.com. I’ve tried to close this account but could not figure out how to do so.

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Ning Network Site Offline 50

Jay Cross

AUGUST 27, 2010

Ivan Illich. Forty years ago, Illich wrote about the need for learning networks, peer-to-peer webs, and learning objects. We have yet to catch up with his vision. In preparing a presentation I’ll be delivering with Paul Pangaro in Brazil next month, I’ve just re-read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. Deschooling Society (1971) is a book that brought Ivan Illich to public attention.

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Attitudes Alternatives Learning Objects Wikipedia 50

Jay Cross

JULY 30, 2010

I’ve been a tremendous fan of Flipcams, the $150 pocket-sized video cameras with an interface even a first grader can figure out. The one downside was sound. Audio is more important than picture when shooting video. Flipcams have no jack for an external microphone. Charles Jennings showed me an awesome Kodak mini-cam that solves the problem. Check the specs of the $180 KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera : Capture HD quality 1080p video with 16:9 aspect ratio.

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Microphone Camera Ratio Picture 50

Jay Cross

JULY 9, 2010

Two weeks hence, I’ll be enjoying the west coast of Ireland, just me and my iPad for the better part of a week at the Dolphin Beach House on the Lower Sky Road, Clifden. The iPad aspect will be interesting. I have many ideas and doodles I want to capture. Will the iPad help or hinder? Will it free me or hold me back? Kevin Kelly’s Lifestream had this to say today: Books were good at developing a contemplative mind.

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iPad Movie Pattern Alternatives 50

Jay Cross

MARCH 10, 2010

The web and social networks are evolving their own conventions of appropriate behavior. People have learned to avoid cluttering mailboxes with broad cc’s. Flames are far fewer than in the old days. Most bloggers no longer feel they must blog every day. Most people know that it’s worthwhile to lurk when joining a new community to identify its standards before jumping into the fray.

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Social Networks Social Network Stock Site 50

Jay Cross

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Nielsen Business Media is shutting down Training magazine and its companion Web site, trainingmag.com. The March issue will be the publication’s last. The move includes the elimination of 11 positions, a spokesperson said. I first saw Training magazine in 1977. At the time I didn’t know the training business from a hole in the ground. “You mean there’s really a magazine about this stuff?

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Training Train Tagging Forum 49

Jay Cross

NOVEMBER 13, 2010

I’m going on the road again. Let’s meet up when I’m in your town! Brussels, November 27-30. Berlin, December 1-5. Business Educa. Qatar, December 6-8. Stockholm, December 9-10. Oslo, December 11. Maastricht, December 12-15. Dinner, December 13 , Full-day public event, December 14. London, December 16. ? One-day retreat. Berkeley, December 17 -.

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Tagging Business 48

Jay Cross

OCTOBER 18, 2010

by Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Clark Quinn, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings. Buy it | Read Excerpts | $24 | 390 pages. These ideas will set your hair on fire! Who should read this book? This is a book for business managers who want to build workforces that improve performance naturally, without prodding. It’s a fresh look at how people become competent in their work and fulfilled in their professional lives.

Social Networks 48

Social Networks Social Network iPad Upgrade 48

Jay Cross

SEPTEMBER 5, 2010

Video is to photographs as photographs are to text. Cheap pocket videocams will change the way we look at the world. If you’re introducing a new product at British Telecom, instead of developing and distributing an introductory course, you take a brief video of someone explaining it with your pocket videocam and upload it to a server for all to see.

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Video IBM Microphone PENS 48

Jay Cross

JULY 2, 2010

The performance of workers used to have bounds. The fastest bricklayer was maybe 20% faster than the average bricklayer. In conceptual work, the sky’s the limit. A superstar may generate $50 million in value while the average employee brings in a meager $50 thousand. Several things are going on here. For one, rates of production are no longer limited by physical factors.

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Sound Engineering Google Tagging 48

Jay Cross

JUNE 26, 2010

I am moving the My Documents folders from all of my computers to one Dropbox. Dropbox is the equivalent of a hard drive in the cloud. I’ve been using the free version (2 GB) for months without any hassles. Dropbox lets me work on files offline; it syncs when I’m back on the net. It provides a shareable folder to make files available to others.

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Wiki iPhone iPad Offline 48

Jay Cross

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

Working Smarter , the 2010 Edition, regularly sells for $19.98 (hardcopy) and $12.00 (download). This week the hardcopy version is marked down to $16, the download to $10. Here’s an excerpt. I’m investigating the price-sensitivity of demand. The price will probably go up again next week. Tags: Just Jay.

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Version Tagging 48

Jay Cross

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Carpe mañana. It’s 9:35 am. We were scheduled to kick off at 9:00 am. The locals explain we’re not behind schedule. Rather, we’re on Brazilian time. The expectation here is that nothing happens on schedule. Security guards. Private homes here are guarded by security forces. Everywhere one sees men in uniforms with ominous expressions and tiny receivers in their ears.

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Learning Objects Security Photo Internationalization 47

Jay Cross

SEPTEMBER 5, 2010

Informal Learning begins with these words: “THIS IS A BOOK about knowledge workers, twenty-first-century business, and informal learning. I first heard the term informal Learning from the late Peter Henschel, then director of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL), who told me: People are learning all the time, in varied settings and often most effectively in the context of work itself. “Training&# ?

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Informal Learning Informal Knowledge Worker Communities of Practice 47

Jay Cross

AUGUST 12, 2010

Once upon a time, the world was predictable. Isaac Newton had convinced us that every action resulted in an opposite and equal reaction. Rene Descartes thought and therefore, was. People made long-term plans. Logic ruled. Then we realized that everything is connected. Outcomes result from the interplay of complex adaptive systems. Butterfly effects, asymmetry, and self organization abound.

Innovation 47

Innovation Predictions Emergent Internet 47

Jay Cross

AUGUST 10, 2010

One of the joys of publishing an unbook instead of going the traditional route is putting together your own marketing campaign. We released The Working Smarter Fieldbook at the Irish Learning Showcase in Dublin. This being Ireland, Guinness played a major role. Several people who had read the 2009 and earlier 2010 editions of Work Smarter asked if they should read the new version.

Music 47

Music Hosting Version Internet 47

Jay Cross

JANUARY 31, 2010

The January 2010 Edition of Working Smarter was released today. Subtitled Informal Learning in the Cloud , this edition focuses on social learning and implementing web 2.0 technology. The hardcopy version of Working Smarter costs $19.98. Believe me, I’m not trying to fool you with trick pricing. My publisher’s algorithm won’t let me charge $20 even.

Informal Learning 47

Informal Learning Informal Social Pattern 47

Jay Cross

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

Brent Schlenker opens DevLearn 10. Slideshow. The only disappointment with DevLearn 10 so far is that wi-fi is totally inadequate. I have been unable to blog any sessions. Tomorrow morning, the Internet Time Alliance will be taking the helm at Social Learning Camp starting at 10:00 and continuing on for most of the day. If you’re here somewhere, drop by.

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DevLearn Internet Tagging Social Learning 46

Jay Cross

APRIL 20, 2010

T oday CLO magazine’s Deanne Hartley interviewed me for an upcoming story about micro-learning. Is it a fad? No. Is it new? No. People naturally learn in small chunks. The only thing new is the label. On the way home from the Swiss eLearning Conference, my mind was racing after three days of talking with interesting people and spreading the informal learning gospel.

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Micro-Learning Knowledge Worker Attitudes CLO 46

Jay Cross

DECEMBER 27, 2010

Never heard of these guys, but if I’m ever in the market for a Taiwanese milking machine, I’ll keep them in mind. Email: subject Hong Guan Machinery Wish You a Happy New Year. Dear Sir, Thanks very much for your great support, we are a company with 52 years experience in dairy, drinks equipment production. As the holiday season approaches, we here at Hong Guan Machinery would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year and thank you for your continued partnership.

Market 46

Market Association Job Companies 46

Jay Cross

DECEMBER 7, 2010

A night flight brought me from Berlin to Qatar this morning. I’m attending a learning symposium named WISE, an extravaganza funded by Exxon-Mobil and the Qatari Foundation. I’ve never seen a more diverse crowd. I sat in the first non-VIP row with a professor from Tripoli. I ate lunch with a fellow from Sudan who is an American citizen working at Education City here in Doha.

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Juice Microphone Stock Classroom 46