Thursday, March 6, 2008

Welcome to my first blog post!

After reading many industry blogs and commenting on them, I decided that I wanted to do more to join the community. Janet Clarey at Brandon-Hall said we should all blog naked (don't freak out - I am wearing sweats). She blogs about things in my industry, training, and she is alway saying people should give it a go. And Penelope Trunk thinks everyone needs to be blogging for their careers, right? (Well I have to confess, I thought she was crazy at first - actually I only agree with her about half the time but I find her really interesting.) And then there is this Learning Circuits post with so many, many links to so many, many thoughtful and creative people about whether to blog or not.

And I have had months to plan, because right now I am gainfully unemployed. And I have been for over six months. Man, that stings. I am pretty close to getting a job though, so I will post all the cool things I will be doing once everything is all finalized.

With almost 20 years of experience, I am hoping to bring another perspective to the conversations happening in our field. Here are the things I am interested in and the areas I would like to blog about. (But of course, this is all subject to change as life goes on.) I plan to focus on subjects that interest me in the Learning space such as:
  • Learning 2.0
  • Where our field is going
  • Where it should be going (IMHO)
  • How we stay relevant
I am interested exploring areas such as ensuring learning experiences are meaningful, using new tools like discussion lists, wikis, blogs, etc. to enhance formal learning and begin to build on informal learning, learning about new areas of our field, and synthesizing these ideas into corporate environments (which is where I am heading back to).

I know the name of my blog is pretty boring, but I searched a lot of the ideas I had and they were already taken and I didn't want to delay putting up my blog to come up with some mind-blowingly creative name. Besides I am probably way to practical to come with a mind-blowingly creative name. I can't believe I just used "mind-blowingly." I hate it when people make up words. So, this should be interesting - maybe just for me - but we'll see.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

See, the water's not too cold. A little shocking when you hit that publish button, no? Welcome! I look forward to learning with you.

Anonymous said...

Great job on your blog...you should be very proud.

Maria Hlas said...

Thanks Janet - it was a little scary to hit publish! And thanks for the support!