Learning Conversations

It's been a long time since my last post (although it looks like I must do that more often, given the number of times it's been read!)

Life has been a little busy around here. Buying a house and changing jobs at the same time!

Yes, that's right... after nearly 12 years working for Capita, in various guises, I'm at last making the jump to something new...

Before I get onto what I'll be doing, I thought it would be useful to make a note of a few of the many things I've learnt over the last twelve years, since leaving the world of teaching.

1. Learning how to do my job is no-one's responsibility but mine. If I can't do the job, then it's up to me to find out how to improve.
2. My worldwide network of peers (some known, some unknown) is one of the best sources of knowledge available - especially when you're working in an area which has no in-house expertise.
3. A management culture that is based on trust and accountability works.
4. Online groups only work well when either a) everyone in the group is totally committed to it or b) there is a critical mass of people with enough in the core to keep feeding the group.
5. The usability of corporate IT systems will almost always fall behind consumer-grade systems because the people doing the buying are not the people using the systems.
6. An open approach to marketing software is a key driver towards greater usability - as the end-users can have more impact on the buying process.
7. My blog has become (to me) an increasingly valuable repository of information and thinking. Far more useful than the scrattly bits of paper that I make notes on...

And so, to the future...

I will be working within the Xyleme team, as a Customer Account Manager, helping their UK clients to get the most value from their Xyleme platform. It'll be exciting, as some of the time I'll be working with big name corporations. At other times I'll be back in the education world - helping large learning providers with lots of content to deploy.

Xyleme is one of the world's leading learning content management system suppliers, and at the forefront of enabling XML-based, single-source publishing, to multiple platforms, in multiple contexts.

I'll be delivering this contract from within my own learning technology consultancy company (Wyver Solutions Ltd). As work on this, and other contracts grows I'll be looking for associates to work with me. If that's you, please get in touch.

There's already one downside that I've noticed to the move... Speaking engagements, which conference organisers were quite happy to give me when I worked at Capita L&D (a supplier), have now, for some inexplicable reason, been withdrawn now that I'll be working for Xyleme. I'm still the same person, with the same ideas. For some reason, people seem to think that I'm now going to be in all-out sales mode... Not my style at all...

Some things will stay the same though. This blog is going to remain my main thinking space. And I'll still be around on Twitter et al - possibly even more so now.

Stay tuned for the next chapter...