In this three-part video interview Jessie McKenna discusses their vision of becoming a community hub and services, which range from a full music practice music and art studio to hypnotherapy workshops. She also discusses how they built their online community using Ning. Much of their equipment was donated by community members, such as a Rhodes keyboard from Day Moon Press across the street.

***ROCKiTspace is also sponsoring a Beacon Rocks! live music summer concert series next to the new (beautiful) Beacon Hill Light Rail Station.

What is ROCKiTspace?

Building an Online Community with Ning

Tour of ROCKiTspace

Jeff Tillett and I will be handing these out at our presentation on using rapid video with training (session TH305TI), which will include three hands-on workshop stations with real equipment and props.

Feel free to download and print this 3”x5” Twitter sticker to write your Twitter user name.

See you at ASTD TechKnowledge 2010!

Looking forward to staying in touch with the many familiar and new peers online. See you on the cloud!

My fantastic fellow T-Mobile co-worker Jeff Tillett and I will be printing them and handing them out at our presentation on how to develop low cost mobile learning solutions on Wednesday (114).

Feel free to download and print this 3”x5” Twitter sticker to write your Twitter user name.

I am looking forward to attending the many DevLearn inspirational presentations on innovative learning (gaming, mobile and social), as well as the usual informal conversation with (in my humble opinion) the best minds in the eLearning world.
See you there!

BONUS points – Google Waves works on Android mobile devices. I repeat…Google Waves works on Android mobile devices. Check out the video below!!! I cannot wait to try out on my G1. Being a huge fan of Gmail and Google Documents, I just signed up for the alpha and am VERY, VERY interested in how a tool like this can be used to streamline business communication and collaboration. HEADS UP teammates and peers out there, get ready for the Mark Wave…coming soon!

They are not only calling it an application but also a platform and protocol. Being open source, Google is looking for the community to try out, see what works and extend it to make it better.

I like this quote about email-

“…email (aka snail mail), which was invented 40 years ago, is still today is the most popular communication tool….but lacks the experience of real-time SMS etc. ”

A. Ask a friend?
B. Go to the library?
C. Google the answer?
D. Make up an answer? (No!)
E. None of the Above

What about using ChaCha?

Learning “on demand” is a hot topic and popular way for finding information today. A peer suggested ChaCha to me yesterday. When I tried it, an answer for  “death of Napoleon” came back in less than a minute…”gastric cancer” wow that was fast!

In January of 2008, ChaCha launched its mobile answers text service at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Since that day, hundreds of thousands of people have become ChaCha fans – of both the text AND mobile answers voice service – asking ChaCha millions and millions of questions every month.

On September 17th, 2008 ChaCha announced that it now has more than a million users and has answered more than 27 million queries since it launched its revolutionary mobile answers service in January. This, combined with its quarterly growth rate in Q2, makes ChaCha the fastest growing mobile search service, surpassing both Google and Yahoo in both WAP and text-based search growth rates (according to the latest data from Nielsen Mobile).

ChaCha was the fastest growing U.S. mobile text-based search service again for the 2nd quarter in a row surpassing Yahoo and on the heels of Google growing market share from seven percent to 28 percent in only 90 days, according to Nielsen Mobile.

Here is how it works:

Try it two ways:

Call 1.800.2ChaCha (1.800.224.2242)
Text 242242 (spells ChaCha)

1. Simply ask your question from your mobile phone as if you were talking to a smart friend.
2. We’ll instantly route your question to the most knowledgeable person on that topic in our Guide community.
3. Your answer is then returned to your phone as a text message within a few minutes.

Change is constant and learning is constant, right?

In Food of the Gods, two scientists theorize that the natural rate of growth is constant with periods of rest (Figure C.), which (applied to learning) is an ideal rate for Bloom’s Taxonomy right? We start with receiving information and progressively move to knowledge and then evaluation. That is great! Although, raise your hand out there if you feel like the rate of change and new information in your day to day life is a constant stream (Figure D.)? Everyday we can expect that things will change, new information will come in, new events will happen that impact our daily work and lives.

How do we manage this constant change? How can organizations manage this? Will sporadic growth and periods of rest continue to work for us? How many organizations have learning programs to accommodate Figure C. and D? To the contrary how many organizations have programs that resemble Figure A. and B? An initial information dump without reinforcement or no change at all.

What is the answer? Here are my thoughts:

• Create learning programs that resemble Figure C. and D.
• Provide tools to enable informal learning.
• Build communities to support social learning.
• Revisit topics of frequent change.
• Use refreshers consistently to reinforce.
• Turn learning into a constant stream.
• What are you thoughts?

In closing to paraphrase Tim O’Reilly,

“…it is easier to consume small bites of information over a long period of time than to consume large bites of information in short period of time”.

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