You know, it’s pretty simple, so I can’t understand why some people can’t seem to get it. For example, it’s probably no secret that I’m fond of my Treo, and try to protect it. I previously wrote about my dissatisfaction with Seidio. Well, I subsequently purchased a Speck Products holster for my skinned Treo. It too finally snapped at the latch (honest, it’s not me; and it’d lasted a good long time). When I called, wanting to purchase a replacement, they offered to send a new one. Since I was going right by (they just happen to be here in the Bay Area), I offered to stop in and pick it up, saving the cost of shipping. I went there and they promptly gave me two new ones, in case one broke again! Now THAT is customer service!

Guess what; I’ll start with them next time I’m looking for a solution. I still give Seidio bad comments on product design and customer service every time I see anyone reviewing one of their holsters, and I used to mention Speck’s alternate solution. Now I’ll also mention their great customer service. You gotta reckon that’d be worth a lot more than it would’ve taken to at least respond to my request. It’s not like this is rocket science! I suppose I ought to offer the opportunity to help Seidio with their customer service processes…they sure seem like they could use it.

Ok, this is a gripe and somewhat political; fair warning.

My son has a VSD, a ventricular septal defect. It’s a tiny hole in his heart wall, not growing, so the doctors say “don’t operate”, and he’s perfectly (almost obnoxiously :) healthy. Our insurance provider, however, says that unless we cut into his healthy body, they won’t cover him. They have to, actually, because of HIPAA (thankfully). BUT, they won’t cover him under our family plan (which has gone up 400% in the past 4 years), and we have to have a second, separate, and much less coverage policy for him.

This makes him, effectively, a second class citizen.

As an independent consultant, I can’t get small business insurance where a plan would have to cover the whole family (and can’t just employ my wife to qualify). So let me be clear that I’m for the US to move to a one not-for-profit medical insurance system, nationally. Don’t tell me it doesn’t work, because I lived in Australia for seven years where they have it and it works. It’s not perfect, but it’s bloody well better than our system here in terms of coverage for everyone. And of course you should’ve seen the results that show the US system is worst and most expensive of the major countries. Scandalous.

I’m a bit dismayed that the major candidates’ plans aren’t willing to go this far. And, by and large, their plans won’t help my health care costs. Given that the forecasts are for more independent workers, this should be of more concern.

The alternative would be a regular job, but so far no one’s come through with an offer that affords me the level of contribution I can and want to make. So, anyone want an ‘on call’ elearning expert for the cost of health, disability, and retirement benefits for me and my family?

As a consequence of my past few days in Colombia and Denmark, I’ve seen again that there are some benefits to having a strong culture. In Colombia, the countryside was quite clean. There’s a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and they self-describe as being resourceful. I can believe it! They find a way to get things done. They also self-describe as tough negotiators. I see some real benefits to their ‘can do’ attitude in turning around some of the perceptions they’re quite aware of.

In Denmark, on the other hand, I see a different factor that I very much admire. They seem committed to ‘doing it right’. By and large not only is the place clean, but it’s efficient. There seems to be very little waste, people follow the traffic rules, everything is just so. And they’re not too rushed. They want to enjoy life. I think there’s a strong concern to make sure that everyone’s getting a fair opportunity to be taken care of, and they do what so many countries do pretty well: providing national health care. Of course, their government is pushing more privatization, as the US is going the other way. Sorry, health care is my personal hot button and major impediment to financial peace of mind (400% increase in 4.5 years!). I’ve lived in Australia where they had national health care and it worked. It may not be perfect, but everyone was covered to some extent, unlike the situation people can be in in the US.

Let me add that it was delightful to spend time with Lisa Gjedde and Helle Meldgaard again; we had a great conversation about games and mobile learning over dinner with their partner-in-crime Robin after I talked about those two things in a seminar. They’re doing some very interesting stuff with it. I found some colleagues from the Narrative in Interactive Learning Environment conference (NILE), including Lisa, Paul Brna, and Judy Robertson are writing a book on narrative in learning, and writing it as a narrative. I look forward to seeing it.

I also found out about an initiative going beyond what I knew the iPod can do, having branching available through hot links on notes. I’ll point you to David Seume’s Video iPod project and you can look up his blog as well. Not all the bugs are out, but it opens up some really interesting new opportunities.

I really enjoy the way the culture in academia is so oriented towards sharing in many ways. So, having brought the conversation full circle, I’ll stop here!

Phew, 4 conferences in three weeks! First DevLearn, then Colombia’s eLearning 07, and now the Danish Research Network’s conference, with a quick presentation over to George Siemen’s Corporate Learning (CLTI) conference via Elluminate. Some mixed thoughts about what’s happened…

I’ll give my first presentation here in Denmark in a couple of hours. I’m doing like I did in Abu Dhabi and on ITFORUM, trying to give a ‘big picture’ talk using wisdom as guidance for looking at what we do, though there’s a followup session where I delve into associated models and examples. Tomorrow I’m talking a couple of hours on game and mobile design. At DevLearn I talked about the roles of elearning tools, mobile learning, and the emotional component of elearning. In Colombia it was the corporate strategy, as well as my mobile and game design workshops. For CLTI, again it was the corporate elearning strategy.

Denmark’s lovely, by the way. OK, it’s overcast and cold, but the people are warm, and the conference center is absolutely nice. The rooms are simple (single bed) but well appointed, though with quirky internet. However, the center has great internet connection, very good food, and is well outfitted with lots of space for talking, too. I found out that English is almost an official second language here (if you immigrate, if you don’t speak good enough Danish, English is an acceptable second!), and I have no worries about talking to anyone. Thanks to Helle for her help here.

Whereas in Colombia, the odds were I couldn’t talk to anyone unless I had one of my translators along. Of course, they didn’t recommend going anywhere alone anyway! Except the mall connected to the hotel, where I spent an hour madly searching for some things to take home to the family before it closed. Colombia had good food too, but the workshops at Sena were somewhat disorganized. The conference center was nice, but the government building for the workshops had some problems.

We started late, the technology didn’t work (we even had a power outage), and the room was open onto a 10 story stairwell for some poor acoustics. Anyone talking even a bit was heard everywhere! They kept changing the plan and times for things, so it was just make it up as you go along. For the mobile workshop, I didn’t end up doing too much activity (200 people is a bit much for a workshop), but the game design workshop came off fairly well (they dropped it to 40, and it was down to 12 at the end because people had to go catch their flights home!). The simultaneous translation wasn’t as much of a barrier as I feared, though it got difficult to deal with questions. I really owe a debt of thanks to Nikolaos who made things go as smoothly as they did (and he had no power over the workshop arrangements)

And, in all fairness, I saw ways to improve the mobile workshop as it’s a bit conceptual and could use more hands-on. No worries, that I can do. And I’m always tweaking things to go better anyway.

I’m still waiting for my learning thoughts to coalesce, but I really do feel there’s a movement towards strategy out there. Hopefully!

I’ve seen that my colleagues have been running their blogs through a ‘readability‘ test. I’m not sure how reasonable it is, but I took a punt and:

I’m pleased that it’s readable (I wouldn’t want otherwise), but I admit I’ve always thought that I’m too conceptual, so I’m a little put out! ;).

On the other hand, the code they ‘recommend’ has as an alternate a ‘cash advance’ site(?!?). Given that Cammy Bean’s is ‘genius’ level, and Jay Cross’ is ‘jr. high school’, maybe it’s random? I respect both, but I don’t find that big a difference between their outputs. Caveat emptor.

Without forewarning, they let us know that we would be interviewed for Colombian TV. Well, for a special program, not mainstream news or anything. Lance Dublin, who spoke today, was in a suit. Eric Parks managed to pull out a tie from his stuff (“never without one”). I was in a leather vest and a shirt. Dario Montoya, the Director General of SENA (the national body sponsoring the conference) was generous enough to take off his coat when he talked with me.

We were primed with some questions, but Dr. Montoya took the initiative to ask a couple of other questions (he’s very knowledgeable, as you might imagine). He started off asking about trends in games and simulations, and I replied that they were hitting the mainstream, but managed to sneak in my point about how they don’t need to cost millions of dollars.

He followed up asking about whether we needed to consider a supportive environment for learning, and I opined about considering the emotional side of elearning, and moved to the notion of not expecting self-learning capability, but nurturing it.

He proceeded to challenge me about the importance of cognitive science for organizations, and I talked about how we need to design how people really perform, and really learn, not how engineers or designers believe we should. He changed topic, saying several years ago he’d have thought it would be crazy to put courses on a phone. I replied that it is crazy (though Merrill Lynch found higher success with executives for compliance on a Blackberry, but it was likely more about lack of interruptions), that mobile learning is about extending the learning experience, not replacing it, and that performance support was the real area.

It was an interesting experience. I don’t mind extemporizing, though it’s a wee bit anxiety-inducing. It’ll be on TV on Sunday morning in Colombia (translated to Spanish). Wonder how many will see it? Well, at least you can read it.