We Came, We Saw, We Co-Learned

Last Friday, Feb 22nd I organized a co-learning event, graciously hosted by Business Casual Coworking, in Bristol, PA. If you aren't quite sure what I mean by co-learning, I introduced the concept in a previous blog post.

We all got together to watch Day 1 of Ryan Holiday's creativeLive course Smart PR for Artists, Entrepreneurs, and Small Business. The event went really well, it was a small crowd but I think that we all agreed that there was a benefit in coming together vs watching the course solo at home. Having assembled a group I really wanted to try out Gamestorming, so we did the Lo-Tech Social Network on our first break. During subsequent breaks we were able to chat about the course content and general social media strategies for business. Though interacting with people face to face was great, I don't think we got the full effect of being connected with the global audience since we didn't interact much through chat. I will say though on the creativeLive end, this particular course on this particular day didn't seem to integrate as many questions/comments from the net as I've seen in previous courses. So to that end it was good that we had each other to bounce ideas off of and get clarification on things. For future events, I'll have to figure out if there is a better way to balance the two.

Because I like to combine high touch and high tech (and love Web 2.0 tools) we wrapped up by using polleverywhere to gather feedback.



Here are some shots from the event, uploaded from my phone. I was also taking visual notes during portions of the class and I've included those here too.

Overall I think it was a good event, and I look forward to doing it again!

Meet the Curator...

According to Dictionary.com to Curate is to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation.

Lately, this word curate keeps coming up for me both in terms of what I see as my role as a visual practitioner and my overall philosophy on social media. Let me explain, 

As I've been mulling over business taglines, messaging and such, one line that keeps sticking with me involves the word curate. Why? As a graphic recorder one has to listen intently to a conversation and try to sift through it for the important "nuggets" and then find a way to translate that information into a visual presentation. Thus as a museum curator would sift through information and then develop a display that conveys meaning and value, so to does a graphic recorder. 

Now onto my social media philosophy. If you've ever read ANY article on how to use Twitter for business (which it is clear that many people haven't). Social Media 101 says, DO NOT use Twitter or other social sites for that matter only to toot your own horn. Unless your line of business is reality TV or some other form of entertainment, people really don't follow you to find out about the minutia of your day (sorry if I'm the first one to break it to you). People DO follow you because you should be adding value to their lives, you know something that they don't, you share the same interests, you are a thought leader or carry some type of social capital in a given field.

We come across soooo much information that it's quite impossible to filter it all. So we look for curators who we can relate to in some way that  essentially say hey, there were 100 million articles published in the time it took you to log into Twitter, but here are the one's that you might find interesting. However, since information does come a mile a minute by the time you log into your Twitter or FB feed an article/slidedeck/video/etc. that you might have found amazing is buried somewhere on your Timeline that will never see the light of day. 

Sooo I say all that to say that in order for these awesome things not to get lost in the sauce, I'd like to on a somewhat regular basis (perhaps weekly), compile a list of some of the things I've come across on the web (perhaps 5), that I think would be of interest to my followers. 

While most of these things will likely be in the realm of visual communication, I'll also probably include things related to creativity/innovation/design thinking; small business and entrepreneurship, and instructional design/e-learning. So if you're interested go ahead and subscribe via RSS so you don't miss out!

So to kick this off, I'll share some pretty awesome things I've come across recently on the web:

1) Hot off the Presses (we'll ok e-books don't use presses but I couldn't resist) is Jeannel King's e-book What You Draw Is Good Enough is available for FREE 

2) ImageThink has put together a great slide presentation on how to get the most out of your graphics

Got Visuals? How to Use Graphic Recording to Make Your Event Unforgettable from ImageThink

3) Great TED talk by Todd Henry...seriously where can I get my "Die Empty" T-shirt
 

4) Who doesn't love a good infographic, Here's one to point you to social media success (it's what us instructional designers would call a job aid) be prepared to scroll... 
via: Manage Social Media the Easy Way in 2013 [INFOGRAPHIC]

Wow, you stuck around and made it all the way down here. I hope you enjoyed, and you'll be visiting again soon.  

A Co-Learning Event

I've only recently become hip to the co-working scene and so far, I've found it to be a really vibrant community based on an awesome premise. If you aren't familiar with co-working the idea essentially is to address the need for solopreneurs/freelancers, and other work from home types to socialize, and be in an environment that fosters productivity. I can attest to the fact that sitting at home, in comfy PJs waiting to switch the next load of laundry, isn't really the best way to foster productivity and get work done. People used to address this by working from a local coffee house or library which gets you out of the house, but essentially still alone. One of the best things about going to a traditional workplace are the other people you work with (usually, ok maybe not all of them but a chosen few) the quintessential gatherings around the junk food vending machine water cooler, and the ability to pop your head into a colleagues office/cubicle to run an idea by them, get some help, or just chat. This is where coworking spaces, or informal coworking meetups (called jelly) come in. A group of people get together to do their own individual work, network, motivate each other, provide a sense of community, etc.

Another really popular trend these days are MOOCs (massive open online courses), and other opportunities to learn new things online, for free, with a global audience. Fortunately, there is some really great content out there, being given away for FREE by people who actually know what they're talking about. Some of these forums even include an interactive component that allow learners to chat with fellow learners, build upon the content, and even interact with the lecturer. A great example of such a platform is  creativeLive, (which I spoke of in my last blog post). These courses are also generally accessed on an individual basis.

I thought wouldn't it be grand if the two ideas were combined. What if a group of people got together in order to learn things that would benefit them in their respective businesses. Coming from an education background, I could see how this could be a powerful idea, allowing people to expand on their learning by having real-time face-to-face conversations about the content. Thus the idea for co-learning was born. Now I know I'm not the first to think, hey let's get together and watch this class. BUT I may be the first to give it a hashtag (the specific tag I'm still working on).

All that being said, I'm organizing a co-Learning event, at an awesome new coworking space in Bristol, PA on February 22nd. I used Smore, a new Web 2.0 tool to make this online flyer check it out and feel free to share!