December's BIG QUESTION!!! Part I

What will you remember most about 2006?

I've been planning my year in review post and just noticed THE BIG QUESTION.  Cool!

2006 has been a GREAT year!  I have several events to be remembered but most importantly 2006 will be remembered as the year of The Learning Triad:  blogs, wikis, and RSS.  Since starting the Corporate eLearning Development blog in August '05 (post #1), I've discovered so many of fabulous, passionate, Learning Professionals from across the globe.  It truly is a much flatter world to me personally.  Sure I started the blog in '05, but '06 was when I discovered that people were actually reading it thanks to technorati and Google analytics.  The blog grew from about 300 to 3000 avg monthly views in '06.  Extra special thanks to the e-learningguru Kevin Kruse for posting me as his new FAVORITE blog.  Truly an honor to be read by many of the people that I have admired for years.
Many new and simple feed readers became available for loading my RSS feeds, and open source wikis simply blew the doors of possibility wide open.  Tiddlywiki is just so darn cool.  So is bloglines, Sage for Firefox, and so many others.

'06 was also the year of Games, Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs), and the metaverse. 

After meeting Mark Oehlert at Learning2005 we partnered up to present at the Serious Games conference in SanFrancisco as part of the Game Developers Conference.  Awesome good time!  Mark knew everyone there and so I just followed like a lost puppy.  Although I did beat him up pretty good boxing on the 360 ;-)  We hung out with some of the legends of Serious Games at the Second Life party and got a preview of some genius games recently created by Raph Koster.  One of my top 10 books on learning is definitely A Theory of Fun by Raph.  If you are still reading your old text books on elearning methods...burn 'em.  Read this and step into the 21st century. (Part II will add another book to the list)

Mark also got me to read SnowCrash...well...listened actually.  I love iTunes.  What a great introduction to what the metaverse "could" be.  SecondLife certainly seems to be headed in that direction.  What a GREAT virtual environment.  The learning posibilities are truly endless.  Projects like SLOODLE (Moodle linked with SecondLife) are going to be very interesting to watch. 

BusinessWeek also quoted me for part of their series on SecondLife in an article called My Virtual Life.  That's always fun!

"A consortium of corporate training folks from Wal-Mart Stores, American Express, Intel, and more than 200 other companies, organized by learning and technology think tank The MASIE Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is experimenting inside Second Life with ways for companies to foster more collaborative learning methods. Says Intel Corp. learning consultant Brent T. Schlenker: "We're trying to get in on the front end of this new workforce that will be coming."
- My Virtual Life, Businessweek -

Also in 2006 Learning2.0 got some traction as more and more people were talking about what it is and what it might be, and if it should be anything at all.  The debate will continue but I still wave the banner.  (At least until next year...but you'll have to read the next post to see what's coming in '07.)
Podcasting, videocasting, Corporate YouTube, Tagging, folksonomies vs. taxonomies,  social networking, are a few of the elements that make up the new ecosystem we called Learning2.0.

eLearnDevCon2006, DevCon2006, and Learning2006 all will be remembered for offering me a chance to spread the word of Learning2.0 this year.  Those opportunities have introduced me to many great people.  I am thankful for having met all of you.

And last but not least 2006 was the year of closing old chapters in my life.  10 years of corporate life is closed.  The morning before my day of presentations at DevCon2006 I rcv the call from management.  Never a better day for me.  I love change.  It  feels like the there are so many opportunities to choose from.  I feel like a kid in candy store.  (Part II will go into "New Beginnings" in 07)

Oops did you mean what will I remember about the LEARNING industry......never mind.

Perhaps the Google and Yahoo shopping sprees, and of course the Blackboard thingy, make the cut in my book.  But more importantly, the new iMacs...with Core 2 Duos.

YES!  I LOVE my iMac.  Even after the pleasure of playing with a Dell XPS, the iMac simply ROCKS!

Stay tuned for my response to Part II and III of THE BIG QUESTION