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It’s our combined thoughts that bring us great things.

What a great quote, eh?

This came straight from my wife after a couple years of explaining to her what I do for a living.  After all the talk of wikis, social networking, collective intelligence, blogs, knowledge management, Web 2.0, etc. it was her that boiled it down to that statement.

Being so mired in the world of next-generation learning and development I am accustomed to, and comfortable with, the buzzwords of the trade but it’s sometimes difficult to translate the purpose and benefit of all of these funny sounding things to someone that has little insight into this world.

And her statement summed up quite a bit of it.  So much so that when she said it I sat up straight and wrote it down on a bar napkin [a relic of pre-Web 2.0 for any Gen Nexters that may be reading].

The more I thought about it this really encompasses the theory driving this revolution in how people learn, collaborate, innovate, communicate, etc. and the buzzwords are really just the ‘how.’  Communities of practice, social network analysis, rapid elearning, knowledge management and many others are just methods to accomplish the purpose of my wife’s synopsis - harnessing the power of people connected.

As with many other examples, it takes an outsider’s lens to shed a light of clarity on a topic that can become quite complex when left to the experts.

Web 2.0 Expo

I recently spent a weekend in Washington D.C. to make a vacation out of the inaugural CLO Academy that was being held in Lansdowne, VA.

It was a quick trip in D.C. so we were rushed to see the major sites. We started at the National Archives building where they have on display the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence along with access to countless other historical documents.

While up close and personal with these very elaborate and elegant documents, I wondered what the process would have been had our country been formed when the Founding Fathers had access to some of today’s Web 2.0 tools that we’re now using for learning and collaboration.

Imagine Benjamin Franklin and John Adams developing their ideas for the Constitution on a wiki, Thomas Paine keeping citizens informed about the American Revolution via his blog rather than the pamphlet ‘Common Sense’ or all of the Founding Fathers forming a community of practice that keeps in touch about their progress via an online portal.

What they would have gained in efficiencies back then is perhaps what we would have lost in enjoyment today. It’s tough to imagine throngs of people gathered around and craning their necks to sneak a peek of the final wiki page of the Constitution. Would John Hancock’s digital signature have the same impact as the pen and ink version does?  Probably not.

Don’t mistake my tone, though.  I’m all for these Web 2.0 tools and enjoy the efficiency they bring to offices and homes each day.  It just seems that the more efficient we get, the less that opportunity for nostalgia exists. 

On the other hand, perhaps these advacements will serve to make the historic documents all the more rare as times go by so that in several decades our societies will just appreciate the fact that they’re on paper - let alone written by hand.  If this serves to create more awareness and interest in our history, I say that’s one more benefit of the progress we’re making.

A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.

This is the basic underpinning to the concept of Net Present Value (NPV) in finance.  Given the option, businesses are going to want their money in their own hands until the last possible second.  The more time a company can hold on to their money, the more of a return the money can generate for the company. 

This is the reason for some magazines offering subcriptions that steadily reduce as the years go on if you pay for them today.  They want that money now!  Even if it’s less than the full subscription you would have paid in three years, they would rather have it today to improve cashflow, invest, etc.

We discussed NPV in the Level 6: Beyond ROI class while I was at the CLO Institute in January.  Ever since then I’ve been playing with the idea of NPV and how it relates to methods of learning that don’t fall under the category of ‘traditional.’ 

I decided to write after reading the July edition of Education Signals.  One section of the report was about the ’Top 20 Companies in the Training Outsourcing Industry’ that is compiled by TrainingOutsourcing.com.  In it, the authors share the following data points:

“The largest percentage of revenue from the leading players came from content development (35%) and training delivery (30%) services.”

Content design/development obviously comes at or near the beginning of a training outsourcing initiative.  That means that over 1/3 of the money of contracts is in the hands of the training supplier soon after the project begins.    

If I were in a position to be hiring a training outsourcing firm, I would look for a deal where the fees weren’t so front-loaded.  I would want to keep my money as long as I could and let it make more money for me. 

Enter informal learning (i.e. communities of practice, blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.).  As illustrated in this post from Jay Cross, and as others have been preaching, much of learning doesn’t come from ‘content.’  It comes through the informal and unscheduled channels of an organization.

Informal learning may have an additional advantage.  Since there isn’t near the level of design/development required for informal methods as there is for more formal events such as workshops and e-learning modules, a company that was buying these services from an outsourcing company would pay less up front.  This allows them to keep their money longer and let it make more money for them.

Although I’ve only cited one report that I’m basing this post on, I came from the instructional design world.  We charged crazy fees (usually way more than 35% of the total contract) for design/development at my old firm and that was the first thing the client paid for.  I also realize that there is a need for some structured content in a company’s learning and development plans - I just think it should be provided in minimal chunks.

I’m suggesting services that would be a double win for companies purchasing training outsourcing.  With more informal elements in the mix to create a more diverse learning portfolio the client would not only receive more effective learning and development, they would pay less up front and get to make money from the money that they would have spent on instructional design and development fees.

Note:  I’m consciously not addressing the area where training outsourcing firms make the second most amount of money - the 30% from delivery of training services.  Informal learning, by nature, requires less delivery than its traditional counterpart.  For this post, though, I wanted to emphasize the benefits of not paying design/development fees up front.