The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need

Recently, Dan called out that I was posting video, so I figured I better get to it. I pinged Aaron Silvers about how he converted his Spring time “Bunko Breakfast” Chicago session videos. Armed with his tips, I then went off and learned a bit about Vimeo as a nice hosting alternative, with some constraints (500MB/week upload limit).

The full video came off my flip Ultra video camera as a single 1 hour, 1.44GB file. (By the way, the camera is cheap, fast, easy and wonderfully effective for things like this— much better than the $400 Cannon ZR850 video camera I deliberately left at home. One might compare the flip to manga, as the clips will illuminate.)

I’m learning as I go, but it seems that 5 minute chunks might be the best way to post this. Here is the first segment, where Dan provides some of the backstory on the genesis of the book.

Dan Pink: Johnny Bunko Breakfast in Seattle Clip 1 from Tom King on Vimeo.

Over the next few days, I’ll upload more segments of about 5 minutes. Once I have 2-3 more uploaded, I’ll post again with a link to the Vimeo site where I will have the videos with titles and bullet point highlights for each clip.

UPDATE:I uploaded another video, perhaps with the quality setting too high. Apologies if the high bitrate makes the video hiccup for you. I’ll fall-back to the tighter encoding for future clips.

Both of the current clips and the remaining clips will be posted to the Vimeo Channel “SeattleBunko” found at:  http://www.vimeo.com/seattlebunko

I’m always ready to throw a few stones at learning and training, yet also ready to come to the aid of an industry that has comfortably paid the bills for me. [I'm a bit conflicted myself, but it is an industry that has provided cost-effective, mission critical training to sales associates, fighter pilots, jet mechanics, commercial aviation mechanics, construction managers, accountants, law enforcement personnel, healthcare professionals, and even software developers.]

PONG- So I wrote a comment to Brooks’ post, feebly defending the industry that is my patron. [Dang, I want to drive a Boxster again.] Seriously though, if the point is to raise awareness to improve things– I am all for it. Allow me a brief aside on criticism.

People have found fault with elearning, computer-based training and its precursors since the days of TICCIT and PLATO. It might just be endemic to any form of compulsory knowledge transfer; few text books or training films ever become a NY Times Bestseller or a box office smash.

All along the way the criticism has generally raised the capabilities, quality and effectiveness while lowering the costs. Expectations rise too. Things change. Cutting edge and high quality always has a price, but those expectations are a moving target. The green screen training that had text-based role plays, probably took as many development hours as a similar Flash-based piece with a digital avatar today. BUT it only played on the corporate or campus mainframe, and you were quite lucky if it did more than show text and beep.

So, Hail to the critics, they have challenged the industry and industry has responded. Likewise, Condemnation to shameful designers, they besmirch our trade with discouraging and unimaginative content. While I’ve been bored during presentations anchored with snazzy multimedia PowerPoint, I’ve been wrapt with fascination by compelling speakers with simple Kodachrome slides.

Thus my point, great content transcends technology. Great technology enables. Clever designers focus on the content first, and make good use what the technology enables. Was Shakespeare held back by the lack of Microsoft Office for Windows Vista or empowered by a simple quill? [Personally I think he would have used a Mac though.]

As I heard Dr. Michael Allen say earlier this year, “It is a poor craftsman who blames his tool.” And I might add, it is a poor industry that never improves its tools.

PING- Brooks posts again, Why Elearning Is Dead. And I respond here, to the problems he cites. With a veritable volley to each point. Hang on.

PONG- First point from Brooks.

• Reusable content, the raison d’être of SCORM / AICCC [sic]…

PING- Actually, the AICC exists to…

• Promote the economic and effective implementation of computer-based training (CBT) media.
• Develop guidelines to enable interoperability.
• Provide an open forum for the discussion of CBT (and other) training technologies

Quoted from the AICC FAQ page. As I recall, driving factors TWENTY YEARS AGO when the AICC formed, were economics and interoperability issues. Issues were things like the fact that there wasn’t a widely adopted digital audio file format (WAV didn’t exist). The CMI (Computer Managed Instruction, aka Learning Management System) specification work started a few years later, and focused on interoperability. At that time the desired level of re-use was the LMS itself. Believe me, it was NOT better when each set of training materials came with its own proprietary LMS silo capable only of running the corresponding proprietary content developed in that vendor’s proprietary authoring tool.

As for SCORM, a few of us remember when the “R” stood for Repository. I don’t know the back-story of why it was changed or by who. I like to speculate that it was partially a marketing maneuver to secure political support and funding.

PONG- Later in that point, he continues.

…reuse just falls flat on its face. I’ve found it to be near impossible to achieve reuse across departments within a single organization

PING- I’ll generally agree. I recall having conversations with Phillip Dodds about my desire for a disposable content object model. Meaning content object wrappers so cheap and easy, they became to consistent quality learning what the disposable cup is to the Starbucks latte.

PONG- Next point.

• Testing (SCORM + LMS) has been a failure. Despite all the fancy API features you still can’t reliably certify results. Physical environments and instructors are still required for anything needing mission critical result certification. We might as well be using simple survey tools rather than bloated standards.

PING- At first, I thought he meant the LMS certification test. I’d consider this point a “FOL” as I’ve seen in called some bug bases– a Fact Of Life, not a criticism of SCORM or AICC. Unattended remote testing for high stakes certifications (lives or livelihoods at risk) generally doesn’t make sense. If you must do medium or high stakes testing to do electronically there is just one way to go in my opinion, Questionmark. A great product, a company filled with people of great integrity, and they can more than manage low stakes testing, assessments and surveys too.

PONG- Next point on costs [or salesmanship].

• The cost of developing lean forward elearning experiences is at least an order of magnitude greater than its pitched at. In fact elearning is pitched as a cost saver when in reality its usually a net loss. Most elearning is PPT based because the cost of creating a compelling experience from an SME’s physical course is so high (at least that’s been my experience).

PING- Almost too easy to rebute. We’ve all seen things oversold, maybe even been reluctant participants in some way. As a developer/consultant, I had to backpedal on sales promises made at more than one previous employer.

I’d feel sad and try to avoid projects where my work is (un)recognized as a net loss. As for PPT versus costs– not every piece of elearning replaces a SME’s course. And in many cases a great blended design might shorten the overall length of a classroom course, and allow the instructor to convey better/richer material. In such cases the elearning serves the role of individualized instructor allowing each student to slow down only when they need to do so. This as opposed to an instructor slowing down a whole class of 25 for the one student challenged at the current moment. This works great for classes where students may speak different languages. Likewise, a shorter footprint for classes can be real savings when you have high volumes of students to train or training must span the globe. Sending students or instructors across oceans isn’t cheap, and you’ll need classrooms and hotel rooms too.

PONG- Next point on failures [or bad situations].

• Every LMS / LCMS vendor I’ve worked with gets a FAIL. They’re bloated, difficult to administer and use, and often require organizations to wrap their infrastructure around them (which just doesn’t happen too much). Again these tools are pitched as cost savers, but typically require full-time administrators and the large vendors have notoriously bad service track records.

PING- Sigh. More sadness. I know it happens. I guess I’ve been fortunate, working with some wonderful customers and vendors. I’ve been tremendously impressed with Accenture, American Airlines, Boeing, Herman Miller and others. They all faced challenges with partners and vendors, and both sides dealt with it well.

PONG- On to more failures, such as discoverability.

• Distributed content / repositories reign supreme whether on the Web or across organizations. Again the LMS / LCMS get a FAIL and SCORM SCOs have had little tangible value.

PING- Remember when the “R” stood for repository. Now I sigh for myself. I thought CORDRA was supposed to move things forward on this. It has not. Time for some good thoughts to be shared and popularized to solve this. [See original call for LETSI white papers]

As far as SCO’s having little tangible value, I think a few million Korean parents might disagree regarding the SCORM-based elearning their children receive. I believe Chrysler also has some hard numbers on savings they achieved with SCO’s, you can find it via this Google search.

PONG- Home stretch now, second last point is on community and standards.

• A real infrastructure and community never really developed, at least not on the scale we should reasonably expect. Actually you could say the Web raced ahead and that search (GOOGLE), Wikipedia, Creative Commons, etc. form the backbone of real elearning. Adding community features doesn’t mean your going to build a great community and standardization here might hurt more than it helps.

PING- I’m personally amazed that the little presentations I saw in 1996 and 1997 led to something the size, diversity and adoption level of SCORM. I don’t know what scale Brooks was expecting. It’s bigger than I ever expected when I helped form a tiny company to build an early standards-based CMI/LMS in 1993. Back then we had to explain what learning management was, it was all just content. The typical training management decision was build-versus-buy. The tools skills an CBT/elearning designer, developer or consultant had with one system had very little applicability to another

PING- Last point, on a failure to change the classroom paradigm (I’ll add, that is something that I never thought AICC or SCORM set out to do).

• The elearning industry failed to fundamentally improve the old classroom led paradigm. Big institutions still employ SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) as course developers and instructors. The elearning movement as we know it has largely failed to create tools that can effectively allow SMEs to create elearning courseware. This meant the introduction of a new class employees–IDs (Instructional Designers) and Courseware Developers. In most cases we’re talking about new hires under different managers and even departments. There’s a huge level of distrust between these groups based on paranoia, ego and organizational allegiance. All of this results in increased operational overhead (financial and development).

PING- In my experiences, when big institutions change it is either almost imperceptible slowly or relatively quickly due to major disruption or catastrophe. The good news is that for big institutions, elearning has not been a major disruption or catastrophe. Lots of big organizations get lots of content out quick, almost too quick. I’d now argue for more filters, and shorter content, and less content, as much as better content (which I think such filters would also bring).

Even better, for small and medium institutions, elearning been a huge improvement. It allows them to time-shift training with self-paced e-learning, span geography with virtual classrooms, and keep training far more current than classroom approaches and scheduling would ever allow. It makes it worthwhile to send out 5, 10 or 30 minutes of training. Far below the threshold of the duration we might expect for a class (hours or days) to take.

We shake hands after a game well played. Finally, the denouement.

All this said, there are some really fantastic people in the elearning world–maybe they’re going to kick some ass and surprise me with SCORM 2.0. :-P

I hope so Brooks. I hope you’re surprised, and I hope you’re one of those fantastic people.

Feed readers make your blog reading more productive. Yes, I know about Bloglines and Google Reader (and other web-based readers), but these desktop readers are my preference for a few reasons. Those who live in the browser or bounce between machines may prefer web-hosted solutions. However, putting me in front of a browser, leaves me itching to hit a few favorite bookmarks, check AdSense, frequent flyer miles and other BBADD ideas (Browser-based Attention Deficit Disorder). Plus, lately I’ve been getting paranoid about having ALL my data at Google, so I spread the data to make the harvesting a little harder, even if that expands the password/identity hassles/risks.

The “fog of surfing” quickly crushes my plans for focused RSS raids in Firefox (apologies to Carl von Clausewitz). In contrast, I find that FeedDemon gives a comforting and quick “customized newspaper” my favorite feeds. NetNewsWire has a little different interface paradigm, but I can still sail through feed faster than plain surfing, Firefox Sage extension surfing or using Bloglines and succumbing to BBADD temptations.

UPDATE 1/11/07: Nick Bradbury himself discusses, Why Use a Desktop RSS Reader? (Note he does NOT make it a all-or-nothing argument like some).

Windows RSS Reader: FeedDemon now $0
FeedDemon comes from the genius of Nick Bradbury, who also developed the original HomeSite HTML editor. I bought FeedDemon years ago when he sold it directly. I’ve always loved the newspaper view and the innovative blog-search-results-feed. The search lets you create a “feed” that is the dynamic results of searching across blogs– VERY handy when you want to stay on top of emerging news on a few related topics of interest.

Mac RSS Reader: NetNewsWire now $0
This one is a little newer to me, but I’m liking it a lot after 2 days of heavy use. NetNewsWire has the features you’d expect and a nice capability to open posts in either your preferred browser or the built-in browser. Opening things in the built-in browser reduces the clutter, while still letting you easily read the full-featured verison of the posts. Besides an nice Outlook-eque 3 panel view, the NetNewsWire browser pane also includes sharp, useful thumbnail views of each open “tab” of blog posts content.

Both readers really shine if you use the feature to clean-out infrequently read feeds (literally NetNewsWire “dinosaurs”). For further blog-reading productivity boosts, you can become a FeedDemon speed demon by applying the Inbox Zero techniques from the 43 Folders organizational site to RSS reading. I’ve tried it and it works great!

Speaking of BBADD behavior, have you seen the Gizmodo CES horseplay? I’m not sure I’d be proud of that.

Using RAGE Google Sitemap Automator has been all the rage with me during the holiday break, but I kept learning from Google Webmaster Tools that I was getting pages with weird links ending with %3C$BlogBacklinkURL$%3E. It turns out that Backlinks have been broken here since forever. However they are now fixed, thanks to the informative (but 2 year old) post I found at A Consuming Experience, Display links to your posts via Blogger Backlinks, Icerocket Link Tracker etc. If you’re having a problem like this, you probably have a customized Blogger template, so you should see the section titled Blogger: backlinks for custom templates.

Watch for some real content to appear here soon.

After repeated postponements Navisite still messed up royally on the relocation that was supposed to happen from 10pm Friday night to noon Saturday (Eastern time), instead starting late, encountering challenges, messing up on communication and taking from 10pm Friday until 2:30pm Sunday mid-morning Monday.

What was scheduled as 14 hours expanded to 41.5 60+ hours including the shift-off of Daylight Savings. Adding insult to injury Navsite was ill-prepared with IT security systems with a claimed DDoS attack happened early Sunday too. Oops. [In hindsight, reading the playback, I wonder if this 'attack' was actually just lots of traffic their own servers generated due to configuration issues]. Recurring missed deadlines, calls after-the-fact, and weak assurances after trust was lost didn’t help anyone. Read the saga at 5dollarbackup.com/blog if you like.

It’s an old lesson, and a good reminder for me- Trust is important. Be prepared. Make commitments you can keep. Communication is critical; stay in contact with your customers.

I am going to give 5dollarhosting a chance to treat customers like me better than the poor way that Navisite has treated them. That said, I do have calls in to AN Hosting, BlueHost, DreamHost and Host Gator. Maybe this will be an opportunity to switch off of Blogger to another blogging system, and maybe even try out Joomla or Ruby on Rails.

Let me know if you have feedback on hosting services, blogging systems (not clients though, I use ecto 3 and LOVE it), or Joomla and lightweight content-management systems. I think Mobilemind is due for an upgrade in late 2007 or early 2008.

UPDATE: Monday, 8am Pacific time– Internet technology resilience proved itself again yesterday. My blog was only online briefly Sunday, but feed readers picked up the RSS. Servers were online and offline sporadically for hours at a time. Even with the server down I was contacted via LinkedIN and twitter messages from friends and colleagues. Thanks to Aaron and others for their empathy and advice. I just got an email from a reporter in Boston who wants to talk to me. It is a very connected world.

UPDATE 3: Thursday, November 9– (Yes, that is update #3, update #2 got lost due to Blogger being unable to reach downed Navisite servers on Monday.) It is 6 days later and 16,000+ web sites are still down. Go Navisite. I’m just not saying where they can go. :-)

But first, a little background. In February of 2007 I posted some information on machinima when I was fortunate enough to snag Tom Crawford as a guest speaker for an Adobe eLuminary web seminar titled Machinima: When Video isn’t Video [description at bottom of page here, direct link to recording here (free registration req'd)]. By the way, Tom did the best job I have ever seen of formatting/encoding machinima clips for use inside Adobe Connect, but that may be a whole other seminar topic.

Since then I have been openly wondering about using imagery and recorded screen captures of Flight Simulator X and other tools for training. Hopefully, Microsoft and other vendors will make their IP policies clearer regarding this use case. It seems the use case for the elearning developer is not to use game storyline, but to co-opt it as a graphics or animation generator. I’m really not sure how this plays into their IP policies.

In August of 2007, Mark Methenitis of The Vernon Law Group posted some informative discussion and commentary on Microsoft and machinima on his blog Law of the Game. from the original post, Microsoft’s New Content Usage Rules: A Small Step for Machinima –

Microsoft has set forth an interesting new content policy, found here, that seems to be giving the non-profit machinimist a break. In fact, I would go as far as to say this is really what needed to be done, but only addresses half of the issue.

The rules boil down to this: You can use the following games:

• Age of Empires (all versions)
• Flight Simulator (all versions)
• Forza Motorsport (all versions)
• Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 (when released)
• Kameo
• Perfect Dark Zero
• Project Gotham Racing (all versions)
• Rise of Nations (all versions)
• Shadowrun
• Viva Piñata

to make machinima, provided you put the following disclaimer on it:

[The title of your Item] was created under Microsoft’s “Game Content Usage Rules” using assets from GAMENAME, © Microsoft Corporation.

The blog entry goes on to list the rules Microsoft requires (which you really should read from the Microsoft Xbox.com page), but I prefer Mark’s witty Carlin-esque summary.

Consider these the 7 Deadly Sins of Microsoft Machinima. In short, they are:

1. Hacking
2. Obscenity
3. Profit
4. Audio
5. Other IP
6. Fanfiction
7. Piggybacking

When using machinima techniques, I doubt that corporate trainers will ever intend to hack, cuss, directly profit, pirate audio, abuse IP, craft fan fiction or support derivative works (piggybacking), BUT even the best of intents doesn’t mean that use for corporate training is legally acceptable to the IP owners. I hope that Microsoft will clarify the IP issues regarding use of game-generated images or image sequences for non-game corporate training purposes at the upcoming Microsoft DevCon 2007 or the related/co-located AvSim 2007 conference & exhibition.

In an interesting and relevant turn, the AvSim 2007 conference features guest speakers including both Capt. Mark Feuerstein, the Project Pilot for Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ 747-8 program and commercial pilot and flight instructor, Erik Lindbergh– grandson of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I wonder what their thoughts on training “fair use” might be.

I apologize to my mother, my beloved late-night term-paper typist, but NOT to you dear reader. This book is pretty good. I am going to apply a little gamer style that I learned from the book and mix it up with a little of my own Yuppie Yippie geezer pre-gamer culture jamming of my own. (Whew, too much social anthropology to parse there, no wonder one of the reviewers/contributors has a background in Anthropology.)

Learning Designer/Developer Cheating Tips for Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning: Tools and Techniques for Transferring Know-How from Boomers to Gamers

1. Use the Corporate Card to buy it. It’s expensive, but you’ll come-off like a super-genius. Plus you’ll want to share this book with co-workers and clients. Boomers will be able to throw down some gaming terms, and understand what makes gamers tick. Gamers will even gain some insight into Boomers.
   Bonus tip: Independent consultant like me? Buy it anyway and "Stick it to the man." It’s fun, even if you are "the man."
2. Read Chapter 1 first, and read it all. Well, duh. It’s like doing the tutorial at the start of a game, you’ll get further faster. This chapter has a lot of the background and research references that helped shape the book.
3. Jump to Chapter 5, it’s about cheats Why? ‘Cause one man’s cheats is another man’s job-aid (or performance support tool). Besides this whole post is a cheat, right. Don’t hate the playa, learn to game the gamers.
4. Now skip to Chapter to Chapter 10, it’s about the coin You’re going to need budget or at least time to do some interesting games, get some gizmos, design networked social learning and generally do other cool stuff. Chapter 10 gets right to the new math of explaining that not just playing, but designing games is critical and worthwhile. You’ll need to justify this stuff.
   Bonus tip: Now go back and read the "Workplace Implications" from Chapters 2-4 and 6-8– they’ll have some good fodder for the Exec Summary of that budgeting proposal.
5. Refine and Polish Go back and skip around, read more in any order… don’t be so linear dude. Refresh some basic ISD in Chapters 2-3 and re-orient it to games and gamers. Think about recruiting them in Chapter 9. Think about how you obtain, train and retain across the board for boomer and gamers alike.

Not exactly a book report, but hopefully an interesting stop on this virtual book tour. I like the book for the anecdotes, data and scenarios. Those are things that resonate with me and I find memorable, repeatable and applicable. Right there at the front (p. 16-17), Karl pulled together a nice chart of the attributes of the games and gamers across 4 "generations" of gamers from Gen I Pong and Odyssey to Gen 4.0 Halo, The Sims and GTA3. I’m starting to use bits from this table like a mini Meyers-Briggs assessment for quickly sizing up and adjusting to gamers. Check out the book on Amazon, or do a little more recon and learn more about it via the current virtual book tour that is underway.

I’m also in the midst of a 30 day experiment with twitter and added that to the sidebar. So far, my twitter content is mostly an activity journal, posting point for inside jokes and somewhat needy Tamagotchi.

Let me know if the labels or twitter are useful. I like the labels, and I’ve got to believe there is some learning, elearning or social learning use for twitter. Is there?

Learning and Elearning

Donald Clark- Plan B
Well thought, well researched information and opinions on learning and education. Here’s a GREAT example that cites John Locke’s thoughts on education and references William James too- Habitual Learning (h-learning). Recently (and informally) dubbed a premiere learning "debunker", he clearly puts thought, time and research into his posts.

Karl Kapp- Kapp Notes
I’ve known Karl for almost 10 years through Dr. Tim Phillips and the Bloomsburg University Corporate Advisory Council. Karl and I bonded over our shared background with major consulting firms, and interest in instructional design. He recently published an intriguing book on gaming (Gadgets, Games & Gizmos for Learning) that puts forth the notion of certain generations or epochs of computer/console gamers, as well as ramifications and possibilities for learning and training.

Mark Oehlert- e-Clippings (Learning As Art)
Hmm, what can I say except, "Mark is out there. AND he brings it back to share with you." Tons of quick thought, deep thoughts and connections that can be applied to learning, training, development and technology. He is the first one I remember meeting who was genuinely and deeply interested and passionate about using Second Life for learning and training.

Technology

John Dowdell- JD on EP
I read John’s blog daily to keep up on relevant techmemes, trends and key Adobe news. As a community manager and corporate blogger he provides lots of interesting connection and insights on the blogosphere, journalism and techno-social trends come along the way too. Plus you’ve got to love obscure references to Donald Duck artists and terms for non-verbal acknowledgment.

Steve Makofsky- The Furrygoat Experience
I started reading Steve’s blog years ago when I got hooked on an RSS Reader he wrote for PocketPC. He’s since moved into Microsoft and then out of Seattle and into Yahoo. I like the technology themes and random relevant insights of his blog. From him I learned of Kathy Sierra’s blog (and subsequently recommended that VNU get her as a speaker for Training Directors Forum). Steve also reacquainted with Bruce Tognazzini whose book (Tog on Software Design) I had read years earlier.

I’ll collect more and pass them on in a future post.

UPDATE: Google Blogger is totally crappy about providing any feedback other than failure, so I’m breaking this into 2 posts. Validating the HTML of the posts with the W3C and Dreamweaver validator is useless; Blogger just silently fails with a blank screen.

I perceive much of my own value as being a node in a network. The connections I make and the connections that pass through are valuable. I like to share them. Here are a few of the blogs I’d like to share with you and some of my personal editorial comments that may help you.

Learning and Elearning

Clark Aldrich- Elements of Interactivity
If you want to apply simulation to professional development, then Clark IS the man. Fantastic on-going posts on the ASTD Learning Circuits Blogand his own blog are great reading, thought provoking and encouraging for those who want to use more simulation to increase training effectiveness and performance.

Jay Cross- Internet Time Blog
My summary about him? Foresight + Insight + Raconteur + ?? = Jay
Example Entry: Now What
Invited to speak about”Informal Learning Goes Mobile” at the Seriously Mobile Summit, Jay realizes they “get it” already and moves on.

The audience had already drunk the web 2.0 KoolAid. I pushed them to think about the implications several years out. As a starting point, I eliminated talk about devices. The previous week, when talking with a dozen very sophisticated learning technologists about mobile, the conversation rapidly devolved into complaints about unreadable screens and buttons too small for beefy fingers. Moore’s Law will take care of those in short order, so we started as if it already had…

more to come