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Travel, Change, and Our Brains on Conferences

July 6, 2011 By

Attending a professional conference with colleagues has always struck me as a highly productive and mind-expanding experience—a learning experience that produces positive and long-lasting results far beyond anything I would have expected. And returning from the American Library Association (ALA) 2011 Annual Conference in New Orleans last week, then diving into Norman Doidge’s book The Brain That Changes Itself, may have finally helped me understand the physiology behind that feeling.

Doidge, in exploring the physiological plasticity of brains—the brain’s ability to rewire itself in response to new situations and challenges—documents how much we do to strengthen our brains when we “engage in tasks in which we must focus our attention as closely as we did when we were younger, trying to learn a new vocabulary or master new skills…That’s why learning a new language in old age is so good for improving the maintain the memory generally. Because it requires intense focus, studying a new language turns on the control system for plasticity and keeps it in good shape for laying down sharp memories of all kinds.”

Any of us who have traveled to places where our native tongue is not spoken can attest to the sense of revitalization that comes from immersion in those unfamiliar settings. It’s as if we are, once again, children, with that child’s sense of wonder and curiosity that so often leads to intellectual growth and creative endeavors. Which is exactly what happens for those of us lucky enough to even temporarily be in an unfamiliar setting like New Orleans, or Chicago, or Washington, DC, or any of the other conference sites in which I’ve been immersed over the past few years.

There is that palpable sense of excitement and stimulation that comes from having to be much more aware of everything around us—temporarily learning a new public transit system, quickly learning the layout of some of the immense conference centers we have to learn to navigate in extremely short periods of time, even something as simple as figuring out where we can find a comfortable place to dine and have conversations with our colleagues. It reawakens the sense of plasticity that comes from something as complex as learning a new language or something as simple as finding our way around in unfamiliar settings. And if we spend a little time afterward reflecting on what we have encountered and acquired—particularly by writing about it—we seem to increase the possibility of rewiring our brains in ways that produce changes no classroom or online learning experience can possibly hope to match.

It’s not as if there’s any one thing to which we can point to document this process. My own experiences in New Orleans were tremendously varied, stimulating, and rewarding. The chance encounter with a colleague over lunch that turned into a two-hour exchange of ideas about marketing and training in a way that left us both eager to build upon the thoughts that lovely conversation produced. The opportunity to help orient and work with conference volunteers and paid staff who were providing information to their 20,000 colleagues who were attending the conference. The spur of the moment opportunity to turn a routine book-signing into a memorable event for all involved. The inspiration provided by hearing colleagues discuss how they were matching technology with library users in innovative ways to produce notable results. The chance to explore something as dynamic as social learning centers through a joint presentation with a couple of cherished colleagues and a receptive and enthusiastic audience under the auspices of the ALA Learning Round Table. And the ongoing stimulation provided by reading, absorbing, and reacting to reports that came to my attention while I was onsite in New Orleans and continuing to reflect on the experience a week after returning home.

It doesn’t take a brain scan or a careful reading of Doidge’s book to provide an understanding of  the value of seeing and treating conferences and all that they produce as part of our essential ongoing learning process. As Doidge says toward the end of The Brain That Changes, the brain needs oxygen…and stimulation…and exercise. And full engagement in continual learning certainly goes a long way in filling those needs.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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E-learning Through the Alphabet

April 25, 2011 By

E-learning and e-learners, as ALA Learning colleague Mary Beth Faccioli noted in her own article late last week, are taking a variety of interesting directions.

We are seeing new models explored by those providing as well as engaging in what is variously referred to as e-learning, distance learning, online learning, computer-based learning, and other variations that could probably create a blog-length list. When we drill down a bit into specific variations on the theme, we’re also seeing forms of online learning for almost every letter of the alphabet: m-learning (learning via mobile devices) as well as what are only half-jokingly being referred to as t-learning (learning delivered via Twitter) and s-learning (learning delivered via Skype), for example.

The more we explore best practices and innovations in e-learning, the more we realize how much we still have to learn and absorb. And yet there is something basic that connects all of these various and varied options: delivery of learning at the moment of need combined with learners’ willingness to drive the learning process. Through synchronous and asynchronous offerings. In the form of blog pieces—like those published here at ALA Learning and imbedded with enough links to provide the equivalent of an entire well-planned lesson. Through online bibliographies which in themselves lead learners to a variety of resources on e-learning itself so they can explore those resources when they are ready to explore, not when someone else tells them they should. Through the formal online courses and workshops such as those provided through ALA TechSource and many other ecourse publishers and providers, as well as through podcasts such as Maurice Coleman’s continuing T is for Training series—the sort of offerings that can be enjoyed when they are first offered or revisited by individuals and groups accessing those lessons through online archives.

I’m not among those who believes e-learning will or even should replace face-to-face learning; I’m far more sympathetic to the many great trainer-teacher-learners who insist that e-learning is simply part of the much larger field in which we play—learning—and that the sort of either-or options foisted upon us by those who insist that any one sort of learning will replace all others are creating rather than removing barriers to our ability to offer and engage in effective learning options.

Much has been written about Personal Learning Environments—we’ve seen great pieces here on ALA Learning, and I still return to Michele Martin’s pieces on The Bamboo Project blog when I’m in need of a refresher course on the topic—and I believe the recognition of the importance of these personal learning environments is an important part of our e-learning toolkit.

For those who are trying to wrap their hands and minds around the entire concept, there’s a lot of comfort in the idea that e-learning is an expansive and fairly flexible learning medium. And it’s even more comforting to discover that through our colleagues, the postings at ALA Learning, and the numerous other resources we and our colleagues discover and share on an almost daily basis, we will never be short of resources. As long as we are willing to explore.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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When Communities Grieve: Pat Carterette

January 12, 2011 By

It’s obvious that we can never adequately be prepared for the loss of friends and colleagues. Communities thrive on cohesion, and the loss of any member of a community—peripheral or central—takes our breath and light and joy away.

Pat Carterette was not peripheral. As a recent ALA (American Library Association) Learning Round Table president and a long-term mover and shaker in the organization, she touched every one of us with her enthusiasm, commitment, and optimism. So when we learned a few all-too-brief months ago that she had been diagnosed with cancer, we felt the ground below our feet had suddenly turned to Jell-O.

Those of us attending and attempting to conduct business at Learning Round Table gatherings over the past several days in San Diego at the 2011 American Library Association (ALA) midwinter meeting never felt that Pat was very far away even though the news from home left no doubt that she was in her final days. Those setting the agenda for meetings knew that if we didn’t openly discuss and acknowledge what Pat had meant to us, there was no hope of accomplishing anything else, so one of the first items of business on the agenda last Saturday morning was time for those present to recall what Pat meant to us at a personal and professional level.

She meant a lot.

She was a friend and mentor to other members of the Learning Round Table Board, and she helped make the organization more accessible in an onsite-online world. She was a trainer and educator with wide reach and a warm heart through a variety of positions including her work as Continuing Education Director for the Georgia Public Library Service. She was a colleague who was tremendously generous with her time whenever someone needed help: an hour for an interview about e-learning, endless hours contributing to the success of training-teaching-learning opportunities that helped people who would never even know the role she played in helping them in their professional development efforts, and through many other acts of generosity. She was someone who opened the doors of her home to colleagues needing a place to stay while visiting from out of town. She was the one who picked people up from airports and made sure they arrived where they needed to be. She was someone who seemed to have so many wonderful ideas blasting through that lovely mind of hers that we were lucky to glimpse even a fraction of them and even luckier to grab and hold and cherish the smallest portion of that never-ending blast of energy before it went away.

Which, as we knew, was going to happen one day soon. And today, as you may already have seen elsewhere on the ALA Learning blog, was that day.

Everyone knows that a community has a tremendous void when a member leaves us. We’re poorer—devastatingly poorer—for that loss. Yet better off for having had that member of the community with us. Even though the time we have together never is—and never can be—enough.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Learning 2010: The Continuing Power of Collaboration

December 31, 2010 By

Looking back at what we learned this year produces some interesting conclusions—not the least of which is that it wasn’t so much a year of trying to create something entirely new, but, rather, a time to step back long enough to survey what surrounded us and learn more effectively how to use the collaborative resources we’ve been given: wikis. Shared document tools including Google Docs and Dropbox that are helping us incorporate cloud computing into our training-teaching-learning efforts. Web-conferencing tools ranging from WebEx, Dimdim, and TalkShoe to Google Talk and Skype for the delivery of just-in-time learning. And LinkedIn discussion groups and Twitter as a way of seeking and exchanging information that contributed to more effective learning for everyone involved rather than as a way to simply tell others where we were sitting and drinking coffee or waiting for a bus to arrive.

What remains at the heart of this learning process is the power of collaboration face to face as well as online, and what made 2010 so fruitful for so many of us was the way we managed to work together in a variety of often overlapping settings to the benefit of learners and our learning colleagues. If you haven’t yet hopped on the train, let’s take a ride together to see how these tools and how collaboration have been serving us and may well end up serving us even more effectively in the months and years to come.

The ALA Learning Round Table provides a natural starting point. In addition to providing an ongoing collaborative forum for face-to-face exchanges at American Library Association conferences to promote and support effective learning opportunities for members and prospective members, it has been developing a wiki where trainers can post as well as seek resources developed by their colleagues. The Round Table’s monthly online meetings further advance its mission of helping trainer-teacher-learners collaborate to produce resources and results that we would otherwise not enjoy. And ALA Learning—the blog where this piece is being posted—not only provides us impetus to collaborate through sharing articles but also contributes to the larger goal of drawing together trainers who are working within or working side by side with libraries rather than leaving all those one-person training offices and libraries without formal training programs in a frustrated state of isolation.

Another productive community of learners where collaboration is the order of the day is Maurice Coleman’s biweekly online T is for Training discussions. Interested regulars—the “usual suspects”—and guests frequently interact during these online hour-long free-ranging conversations via Talkshoe on a variety of topics of interest and importance to those involved in workplace learning and performance, and those discussions helped open doors this year to routes of exploration such as the possibility of helping promote the development of libraries as social learning centers. They also led to additional collaborations including the webinar Maurice and I designed and delivered in October 2010 to more than 400 participants for WebJunction—another great collaborative forum for trainer-teacher-learners in libraries. All of these tools and resources are easy to access and/or use, and they are well worth considering for workplace learning and performance programs.

The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) remains yet another gathering place at the local, regional, and national levels face to face as well as online for many of us. Opportunities for productive collaborations abound at many levels: through membership on Chapter boards and collaboration at national conferences, through learning opportunities provided via webinars, through postings on LinkedIn discussion groups, and through groups including the National Advisors for Chapters which meet face to face and use a variety of online tools and posted online documents to do business throughout the year.

My own familiarity and comfort with collaboration via wikis took a quantum leap this fall when I was accepted onto the New Media Consortium’s 2011 Horizon Report Advisory Board; all 40 of us from countries all over the world did all our work asynchronously, online, via the wiki which leads to completion of the report; among the pleasant surprises, given the small number of people involved in this worldwide project, was the discovery that ALA Learning colleague Lauren Pressley was part of the group.

If anyone remains unsold on the powerful benefits provided by collaboration and the use of the social networking tools we’ve been exploring, Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner’s new release, The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media, may prove to be the tipping point. As James Surowiecki notes in The Wisdom of Crowds, those who engage in collaborations are often the most prolific and successful at what they do (pp. 162-163). And that, of course, remains a lesson well worth absorbing anytime—not solely in the year just ending.
N.B.: Those interested in exploring the theme of collaboration through a variety of tools and other resources will find plenty of options in “Community and Collaboration in an Onsite-Online World: An Annotated Bibliography.”

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Libraries, Trainers, and Communities of Learning: When Fourth Place Is a Winner

September 8, 2010 By

Fourth place may be a lousy position in a marathon, but looks to be a winning place for trainers, libraries, and all they serve.

Let’s recap the initial places, as defined by Ray Oldenburg in his influential book, The Great Good Place: our first place is our home; our second place is where we work, and our third place is the treasured community meeting place where we, our friends, and colleagues come and go.

In listening to the comments made by a student who loves libraries, a group of us participating in one of Maurice Coleman’s recent biweekly T is for Training podcasts realized that libraries are poised to help define, create, and nurture a new concept for a fourth place: a community gathering place for social learning—a place onsite and online where communities of learning are developed and nurtured.

It makes so much sense, and speaks so well of the present and future of libraries, that a couple of us (including Jill Hurst-Wahl) immediately described the idea on two separate blogs within a few days of each other. And it didn’t stop there: after all, we’re trainers—we’re supposed to know how to get an idea across when we’re excited about it.

We have continued to think of all that this sort of fourth place means and could mean to libraries and library users. It builds off the existing pattern of library as third place—a community meeting place that is at the heart of communities and community. It acknowledges the library as a center of learning at a time when those who do not engage in learning are quickly left behind. It combines the wonderful information and entertainment resources libraries continue to provide with the growing dedication all members of library staff have to helping others learn to utilize the resources available to them. And best of all, it gives libraries a chance to be at the head of the pack in meeting onsite and online community members’ needs for first-rate lifelong learning rather than making the mistake we made years ago in not taking the leadership role which Google, bookstores, and others took while we were asleep at the wheel.

The idea of fourth places as gathering places for social learning seems to appeal to everyone who hears the concept. A colleague who runs a learning center here in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, immediately expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the concept and plans to write about it for the thousands of colleagues she has across the country. Which is both a tribute to the idea and a warning to those of us who hope that libraries will remain at the center of the concept. If we don’t grab and run with this concept which sprang out of a conversation among a small group of workplace learning and performance practitioners who happen to be affiliated with libraries across the country, we’ll only have ourselves to blame when the Google of social learning centers basks in the success of the vision we helped create.

Our choice here remains obvious: use it or lose it. I’m betting we can use it to help build community partnerships in ways we’re only starting to imagine.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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ALA Conference 2010: Trainers Talking and Acting as Leaders

July 7, 2010 By

You can’t, as a few of us suggested during a presentation on trainers as leaders sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) Learning Round Table at the Association’s 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. last week, be in that city without thinking about leadership. The monuments, the government buildings, the sense of history that surrounds you makes it an undeniable presence—something that permeates your entire being as deeply as the hot and humid weather which greeted us.

So it was natural that a few of us—Maurice Coleman, Technical Trainer for Harford County (MD) Public Library and host of the biweekly T is for Training podcasts; Sandra Smith, Learning and Development Manager at the Denver Public Library system; and Louise Whitaker, Training Coordinator from Oklahoma’s Pioneer Library System—chose leadership as the topic for a 90-minute conference session that was part formal presentation, part panel discussion, and lots of interaction with approximately 50 colleagues who joined us for that Sunday morning gathering.

Drawing from interviews Lori Reed and I have been doing with Maurice, Sandra, Louise, and several others for Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers (to be published by ALA Editions in May 2011) to document the leadership roles that workplace learning and performance professionals are assuming in libraries and other organizations across the country, we began with the idea that leadership is positively explosive. When it is effective, it lights up skies. Draws people together. Creates collaborative opportunities and results which are not achieved in any other way.

Leadership, for most of us, doesn’t mean we have to be bombastic. It’s the day to day incremental efforts we make that lead to long-term and sustainable changes within our organizations. And that’s what our colleagues seem to appreciate most from us.

Lori and I, in our interviews and our own experiences, are not finding a one-size-fits-all model of leadership, nor is that what we expected.  Interviewing colleagues from the ALA Learning Roundtable and from other organizations throughout the United States, we are, instead, finding a group of very passionate, creative, and dedicated people doing what they believe is right. And even though Lori couldn’t be with us in Washington, D.C. last week, we were lucky to have a few of the people who have been guiding us so they could share a little of what we’ll be dealing with in the book.

Maurice, for example, discussed how the T is for Training podcasts draw colleagues from a geographical cross section of the country together every other week to discuss workplace learning and performance issues and solutions. Those live shows provide a first-rate forum for the exchange of ideas and have been instrumental in further developing a community of learners among those responsible for fostering organization-wide communities of learning.

Shifting gears a bit, Louise talked about how she revamped the entire way in which evaluations were conducted at Pioneer to determine whether the learning opportunities she was designing and offering to staff were actually producing results of benefit to the library, its staff, and its users.

During the final segment of our discussion, we moved to the heart of library trainers as leaders within their own organizations: Sandra provided examples of how she works from a position at the library management table to help shape and implement workplace learning and performance programs. By consistently working to be part of the decision-making process in terms of designing and offering learning opportunities for staff at Denver Public, she shapes as much as implements what her colleagues need and appreciate in a workplace learning and performance program.

Exchanges between presenters and audience members were as lively and creative as the topic we addressed; in briefly discussing ways to create something sustainable from our initial 90 minutes together rather than having that session be an isolated learning experience, one member of the Learning Round Table offered to collect business cards and set up an online discussion group for those who wanted to continue the conversation.

If that’s not creative leadership in action, I need to go out and do more interviews.

N.B. – For a different view of leadership on display at the 2010 ALA Annual conference, please see Paul’s Leaders Emerging article.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Paul Signorelli’s “Getting To Know Me” Post

January 19, 2010 By

1.   Your One Sentence Bio
I was born; have been deeply immersed in writing, training-teaching-learning, and working with libraries and nonprofit organizations for many years; am honored to sometimes be mistaken for ALA Learning colleague Peter Bromberg when the two of us are lucky enough to be on Maurice Coleman’s T is for Training podcasts at the same; and plan to die someday—which, I believe, covers all bases.

2.   Do you blog? If yes, how did you come up with your blog name?
You’ll find me blogging here at ALA Learning and at Building Creative Bridges. I came up with the name because “Librarian In Black,” “Library Trainer,” and “(almost) Bald Trainer” were already taken by writers better than I’ll ever be, and Building Creative Bridges seemed like a good way to describe what I hoped to accomplish through the blog and everything else I’m doing.

3.   What is your professional background?
As far as I can tell, I’ve worked for newspapers, magazines, a couple of schools in Japan, the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the San Francisco Public Library system, and with a variety of other groups and organizations, but if you’ve heard differently, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

4.   What training do you do? staff? patrons? types of classes?
My position as Director, Volunteer Services & Staff Training for the San Francisco Public Library system had me providing orientations, software introductions and updates, and other learning opportunities for staff and volunteers; current training-teaching-learning efforts include writing e-learning courses for Infopeople and LE@D (Lifelong Education @ Desktop)–http://www.leadonline.info/–and conducting workshops at professional conferences.
 
5. What training do you think is most important to libraries right now?
We need to be combining sessions on practical matters (software upgrades, customer service, leadership and collaboration skills, conflict resolution, health and safety issues) with inspirational/visionary/long-term matters (how to continue serving library members and guests on site and online, maintaining libraries as on-site and online community centers, becoming collaborators with members of the communities we serve rather than one-way providers of information and services).
 
6.   Where do you get your training?
For training-learning, I try everything I can think of, including conversations with colleagues; on-site and online workshops and courses; blogs/RSS feeds; books; journals, magazines, and newspapers; webinars; conferences; speakers at ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) and ALA (American Library Association) meetings and conferences—and I’m sure that’s only about half the list.

7.   How do you keep up?
Keep up?

8.  What do you think are the biggest challenges libraries are facing
right now?
One of the many large challenges is to recognize and respond to their increasingly huge role in being learning centers for their local and online communities while not abandoning any of the important and life-changing roles their members and guests still expect them to fulfill. 

9.   What are biggest challenges for trainers?
All too often, we have training-teaching-learning as part of our job rather than as the entire focus of our job, which leads to lots of half-finished projects, lots of stress for everyone, and less than optimum learning opportunities; focusing on our own continuing education and our primary roles as workplace learning and performance providers might be the best lesson-by-example that we can provide to colleagues whose workplace focus is equally divided to their own detriment and the detriment of those they serve. 

10.   What exciting things are you doing training wise?
Trying to be creative face-to-face and online in the way I respond to learners’ needs: delivering a synchronous online learning opportunity through live Google Chat, for example, was a fun distance-learning experiment with a University of Nevada, Las Vegas colleague and his class in October 2009.

11.   What do you wish you were doing?
Writing; oh, wait, I am writing.

12.   What would you do with a badger?
Teach it to use Google Chat so it could more effectively participate in synchronous online learning opportunities.

13.   What’s your favorite food?
Pizza.  Purchased somewhere in NY, NJ or the Philly area.  If you’re not buying pizza in one of these geographic areas it’s not really pizza.  Sorry, it’s not.  (OK, an exception for Chicago deep-dish.  As long as you qualify it.)

14.   If you were stranded on an island, what one thing would you want
to have with you?
A confirmed flight back to the mainland.

15.   Do you know what happens when a grasshopper kicks all the seeds
out of a pickle?
I live in San Francisco; can someone tell me what a grasshopper is?

16.   Post it notes or the back of your hand?
No, thanks.

17.    Windows or Mac?
OK, but definitely not on the first date.

18.   Talk about one training moment you’d like to forget?
Can’t remember; must be an occupational hazzard since at least one other ALA Learning colleague has responded similarly.

19.   What’s your take on handshakes?
A handshake is certainly a pleasant way to avoid open warfare in a learning environment.

20.   Global warming: yes or no?
Best response I’ve seen is Jill Sobule’s “happy song about global warming”; who am I to argue?

21.   How did you get into this line of work?
My supervisor at the time told me I had to take over the organization’s staff training program if I was going to keep my job; I found that to be tremendously motivating.

22.   What is the best part of your job?
Being part of what ASTD refers to as the effort to “create a world that works better.”

23.   Why should someone else follow in your shoes?
This question reminds me of a story from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidism, which I will now paraphrase to the best of my recollection. The gist of it: Samuel, a very devout man who is struggling to be good in the eyes of the Lord, approaches the Rabbi and asks, “Rabbi, should I try to be more like Moses or more like Abraham?”  The Rabbi replies, “Rather than trying to be more like Moses, or more like Abraham, the Lord would be pleased if you tried to be more like Samuel.” And that’s all I have to say about that.

24.   Sushi or hamburger?
Depends on who is asking.

N.B.: Special thanks to Peter Bromberg for allowing me to insert, verbatim, his answers to questions #13 and #23 here. I figured if I couldn’t match his responses for cleverness, I might as well just outright steal them and see if I could further confuse colleagues about which of us is speaking (please see response to question #1, above).

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Working With and For Each Other

December 14, 2009 By

ALA Learning Round Table friend and blogger Maurice Coleman was right on target, as usual, with the first of two online discussions about what we’ve gained through workplace learning and performance offerings this year. (The second of the two discussions, under the auspices of Coleman’s ongoing T Is For Training biweekly sessions for those interested and/or involved in library training programs, is scheduled for Friday, December 18, 2009 at 2 p.m. EST/11 a.m. PST and will remain archived online for those who cannot attend.)

Coleman, like many who contribute to the ALA Learning Round Table and make it a first-rate resource for trainer-teacher-learners, offers an antidote to the isolation trainers sometimes experience. Through T Is For Training sessions, he provides a chance for trainers to talk with, listen to, and become familiar with colleagues from library training programs all over the country; share best practices and discuss why some practices are far from the best; contribute to a growing repository of training materials maintained on Delicious by T IS for Training participants; and have some fun while engaged in all the previously listed endeavors—all while becoming familiar, through practice, with how online communities develop and interact effectively.

The payoff is significant. Struggling with a training problem? So are others, and they can offer suggestions as well as useful resources so you don’t have to solve the problem yourself. Wishing you were feeling a bit more creative in resolving workplace learning and performance issues screaming for your attention? T Is For Training participants have been there, too, and can, with the sense of humor they deeply cherish, rekindle the creative sparks you thought had vanished. Looking for colleagues willing and able to commiserate, collaborate, and show you how they have already done what you are trying to do? They’re available, willing, and able because they understand that in giving, they also are receiving in ways they often can’t anticipate.

Even more significant is the reminder that one great resource often leads to another. The list of regular participants—“The Usual Suspects” on the left-hand side of the T Is For Training page— serves as a reminder that there is a tremendous amount of overlap between the T Is For Training group and those of us who are also involved in the ALA Learning Round Table. If you want to see what others are writing, you’ll find articles from those usual suspects on individual blogs as well as on a variety of engaging group blogs.

The more we explore, the more we discover—including the revelation that colleagues who at one time appeared beyond our reach are actually quite accessible. Participate in T If For Training or become engaged in the ALA Learning Round Table, and you’ll discover that first-rate samples of organizational learning plans are just an e-mail or phone call away from Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Learning & Development Coordinator Lori Reed. Or that an E-Learning Preparedness Checklist is available from Gwinnett County Public Library Training Manager Jay Turner. Or that Huntsville-Madison County Public Library Staff Training and Development Coordinator Marianne Lenox has produced the equivalent of a semester-long course on learning theory and resources in a single article here on the Learning Round Table blog. Or that WebJunction Learning & Curriculum Developer Betha Gutsche has edited the highly detailed Competency Index for the Library Field.

We have, as the recent T Is For Training episode reminded us, learned a lot in 2009. And one of the most important lessons is that by participating in online discussions, or responding to a blog posting, or engaging in a Google Chat or Google Talk or Skype interaction, or simply making the time to pick up the phone and call a colleague for assistance, we are working with and for each other on behalf of all we serve.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Training, Planning, and Collaborating to Build the Future

October 11, 2009 By

Trainer-teacher-learners are by nature forward-thinking and collaborative. There is no reason, after all, to invest time, money, energy, and other precious resources into helping others learn if we don’t believe there will be a payoff for everyone involved.

It’s no surprise, therefore, to see that local, regional, and national groups of trainers are providing replicable examples of how to produce magnificent results with a modicum of effort even during the challenging times we’re facing. Members of the American Library Association (ALA) Learning Round Table, for example produced two sell-out training workshops at the 2009 ALA Conference in Chicago this summer while other groups were struggling to attract minimal audiences; we also once again presented a first-rate “training showcase” open free of charge to our colleagues throughout ALA.

Training and other professional groups around the world, undaunted by the difficulty of attracting participants, are producing “future of library” conferences and panel discussions to inspire like-minded colleagues.  ALA itself, this summer, had a standing-room-only panel discussion on the topic.  The University of Arizona has sponsored conferences for several years. The Colorado Association of Libraries, Queensland (Australia) Department of Education and Training, and Southeast Florida Library Information Network have all recently been involved in future of library conference planning, and a “Future of Libraries within the Framework of Sustainable Development” was held on the island of Guadeloupe in June 2009.

An earlier article for this blog detailed the successes achieved by trainers in the Mt. Diablo Chapter of the American Society for Training & Development in attracting and retaining new members; at the heart of the success were the collaborative efforts of a few of us who improved the Chapter’s speaker series so it provided effective training for the trainers it is meant to serve.

Similar successes have come from another informal group of trainers meeting in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Pacific Library Partnership Staff Development Committee (formerly the Library Staff Development Committee of the Greater Bay Area). Seeing how this group operates suggests that we are far from living in a protracted dark age for training in spite of training-budget cutbacks.

The 10 to 12 core members of the group, in planning our fifth annual future of libraries conference this year, recognized early in our planning process that attracting attendees would be a challenge, so we made some key decisions. We would continue to rely on the individual skills of our planning group to use available resources—attracting an enthusiastic speaker whom we knew we could afford, enticing local presenters who were willing to volunteer their time to be part of what we were developing, relying on a combination of a first-rate publicist on our committee and additional well coordinated marketing efforts undertaken by other members of the committees to do much more than we have done before in reaching prospective paid attendees—without letting any part of the process become overwhelming for any individual member of the planning group.

A key to our continuing successes—and this year’s event was another profitable endeavor even though attendance was, as anticipated, considerably lower than it has been in better times: approximately 100 people compared to the sell-out audiences of 220 we have had in previous years—is that we employ a combination of well defined roles and a willingness to step in wherever needed as our time allows.

As is the case with every successful group I work with, I see an amazing ability for my colleagues in this training group to accomplish a lot in very little time (one face-to-face meeting every other month), combine skills to attain a well establish goal (producing conferences and other training events with real value to the people who attend them), and donate a very limited number of hours of work (five to 10) between each meeting so the projects stay on track. If we see that we need to increase our marketing and other promotional endeavors, we coordinate our efforts to combine personal contact, email messages, and the use of listservs to reach our audience. If we discover that we’re not attracting the presenters whom we need, we continue sharing resources by phone, email, or face to face until we have a winning package.

The result is that we continually produce events we’re proud of offering—events which inspire our audiences with useful and easily adapted ideas they can apply when they return to work. And we have fun—which, I believe, is the real future of libraries, training groups, and everyone we touch through all the work we do. For by showing others how easy it can be to achieve significant and long-last goals, we are offering the best we have to offer as trainer-teacher-learners.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Leading and Training by Living: The Goldman Environmental Prize Winners (2009)

April 21, 2009 By

Library directors and managers, colleagues have been assuring me recently, play a critical role in the success or failure of workplace learning and performance programs in the organizations they oversee. It goes beyond supporting and approving budgets: if they show an advocate’s interest in what is happening through training programs, check with their colleagues and their staff to see what effect those programs are having, and actually participate in learning opportunities offered within their organizations, they are setting a standard which encourages effective learning and the development of communities of learners.

It was no surprise to me, then, that these comments came to mind repeatedly when I was lucky enough to attend the awards ceremony for the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize recipients here in San Francisco last night. The awards honor people who, by the act of living and acting on their beliefs in spite of significant challenges, time constraints, and, occasionally, threats of incarceration and death, train the rest of us to believe that we, too, can make a difference. The usual high profile environmental activists were there: Al Gore and Robert Redford provided opening comments which (globally) warmed up the crowd and reminded all of us that we have a role to play. Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman provided entertainment by singing one of her own songs (“Talkin’ Bout A Revolution”) and doing a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”—“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

But the real stars and trainers were those being honored, including Maria Gunnoe. From her home in the heart of Appalachia, in West Virginia, she stood up against the removal of mountaintops to expedite coal mining because the byproducts of that process are creating toxic wastes which are destroying the area where her family has lived for more than a century. Although neighbors were afraid to testify, she did, and a court ruling halted one particularly damaging mountaintop removal project which was affecting her property. The joy all of us in the audience felt as she accepted her award was tempered by the image of the tall cyclone fence which was constructed around her house and the news that she needed around-the-clock security protection to counter the threats she was receiving while she carried on her fight.

Then there were Wanze Eduards and Hugo Jabini, who successfully organized entire communities in the Saramaka lands in Suriname (within the Amazonian forests) to halt destructive logging. And Yuyun Ismawati, who helped implement community-based safe and sustainable waste management programs in Indonesian communities through her organization, Bali Fokus.And Olga Speranskaya, a Russian scientist whose community-based efforts have become a model worldwide for efforts to encourage the clean-up of toxic waste sites. And Syeda Rizwana Hasan, an environmental attorney in Bangladesh whose efforts successfully stopped toxin-laden ships from being allowed to be brought up on beaches in her country so the wrecks could be broken into scrap—a process called “ship breaking”—to be resold while the waste polluted the beaches. And, finally, Marc Ona Essangui, a wheelchair-using activist whose successful efforts to stop a massive government-approved mining project in Ivindo National Park (in west central Africa) led to his arrest and detention for several days earlier this year. Each one of them received standing ovations from those of us who were there to hear their acceptance speeches. Hundreds of us joined them at a post-event reception in their honor to shake their hands and thank them for reminding us that significant effects begin with the efforts of individuals. And at least a few of us, in thinking about what we can do in our own lives to make a difference within the communities we serve, were reminded that some of the most effective training comes from those who live the lessons the rest of us still need to learn and follow.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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