Jane Hart's journey to social business

Jane Hart has shared her journey from elearning to social business in this blog post. Her journey has similarities to my own... and perhaps to yours.

Jane is probably one of the best known advocates of the use of social media for business performance. She and the other members of the Internet Time Alliance (Jay Cross, Clark Quinn, Harold Jarche and Charles Jennings) are running a workshop in London next week. If you're an L&D professional (other than a consultant to whom the invitation is not extended), you might want to find out if there are any spaces open.

This could change your professional practice.

Seriously.

Slowly cutting off the flow of knowledge

As regular readers of this blog will know, I work for a large corporate organisation in the UK. In the pursuit of excellence in my profession, I have made extensive use of social media and have learnt an enormous amount in the process.

A few days ago, I was trying to jog my memory on a specific point. I knew that the "blogfriends" feed on my Facebook page had displayed a link to a post that could help me. It was then that I discovered that Facebook had been blocked within the organisation.

Today, I'm looking for inspiration in dealing with a different challenge and somewhere at the back of my mind I recall that the topic was covered in one of the discussion boards on the Internet Time Ning community. Wouldn't you just know it? Ning is now blocked, too!

The frustration is enormous. I have all this information stored out there in my "outboard brain" and I can't get at it! I feel as if the lights are slowly going out all around me.

Anne McCaffrey wrote a book called "The Ship who Sang" (it's one of my favourite of her books, and it seems I am in good company - if Wikipedia is accurate, it's one of her own favourites, too). Anyone who has read it will remember the scene where Helva gets unplugged from her ship by fanatics who regard her as an aberration (apologies if you haven't read it). I'm started to gain additional insight into how she might have felt!

As it happens, today I came across this post from Luis Suarez. Sadly, it doesn't help for me to be reading it - I'm already convinced - and the people who make these decisions in the first place aren't likely to read it at all.

Aargh!