Please feel free to leave your comments below.

But if you want to interact with what you’re watching, if you want to make decisions and have the training content respond to your decisions, then you need interactive training content.

If you’re not sure what that means, watch the demo below and get back to me with your questions.

1. Public websites that don’t reach customers
2. Intranets (internal content management systems) that serve up content almost no one uses
3. ‘Groupware’ tools (like SharePoint) designed to improve internal collaboration, that actually discourages collaboration

Sharepoint is a particular crime that I would like to see prosecuted more efficiently. It is heinously over-engineered with proprietary features. Only a rocket scientist could understand it all. It require full-time IT support. It creates bottlenecks by requiringcomplex “authorizations” to put anything up in the system. So in the end, only a tiny fraction of people ever use it — and even fewer people understand it.

IMHO, a good content management system should not only make it easy to find stuff but also make it easy to share stuff. The fact that Sharepoint actually has the chutzpah to put the word “share” in it’s name is a cruel joke on buyers and users.

But I digress. Back to Pollard:

What’s the best model for a corporate website? If it’s for customers, that depends on what the segment of your customers who actually research or shop online need and want. If you make the effort to identify this segment, and go out and talk with them, I think you’ll be surprised at what you learn.

You might discover that the best thing you can provide is a directory of names and direct line phone numbers of real individual people in your company that your customers can talk to, without having to go through your god-awful automated switchboard (“if you know the extension number of the person you’re calling…”).

[...]

And if you want to…index your products and services so that people can browse online (if in fact they tell you they want to), design the taxonomy around the problem the product or service solves, the job it does, not by its industrial category.

[...]

And remember, your website is about them, not about you.

Amen, brother.

Read Pollard’s article, especially if you are in the process of designing your corporate website, intranet or [shudder] if you are considering shelling out the dough for Sharepoint.

This 7-minute video is going to show you how to create a Google Map that can be easily updated, easily shared, is completely interactive and can be used in evacuation planning.

For example, let’s say you are working at the local city, county, or state Emergency Operations Center (EOC). You are tasked with documenting all the emergency shelters in your area. With Google Maps, you have a tool to create your detailed inventory and share it with anyone in order to speed emergency evacuation should the need arise.

This tool is free and uses the industry-standard format for geographic information systems (GIS) called Keyhole Markup Language (KML). This standard format makes it very easy for you to store, analyze, manage, and present any kind of map data that is linked to a location.

It also means that you have a quick and accurate way to create KML files that can then be used in more sophisticated GIS tools.

Click the “full-screen” button in the lower right corner of the player and watch. It’ll blow you away!

Recently, within a couple of hours, the following three bits of info reached me.

First, a friend of mine posted this on his blog:

I am socially networked to capacity. I have my blog comments go to my email, my Twitter feed updating my Facebook, all accessible on my current phone…I am like that famous evolution poster of a fish crawling out of a lake, then on four legs, then stooped on two, then walking upright, with an additional image of a man whose posture is slumping back toward the simian, peering into his phone. I might have a problem.

If so, he’s not alone.

A couple of hours later, I read that a 2008 study predicts that there will be nearly two billion mobile Internet users by 2013 — a number that will rival the total number of PC Internet users. And in certain parts of the world, mobile Internet users will far outnumber conventional PC Internet users.

That same day, I read the section of FEMA’s newly published National Disaster Housing Strategy that talks about “Future Directions” (pg. 42). It contains seven initiatives and — without going into great and bloody detail — initiative #3 (pg. 44-46) goes like this:

Deliver consistent, accurate, accessible, and timely shelter information during disasters…Plans should take advantage of current technology, such as text messaging…

So there it is: the future is in mobile text messaging, which is fine. But Twitter takes it a step further by being universal and it’s free.

So it occurs to me that disaster management professionals should be thinking about integrating some sort of micro-blogging technology  into our planning protocols.

[Note: Yes, I'm aware that Nielsen reported that more than 60 percent of Twitter users abandon it after a single month. But that's a reflection of how fickle Ashton Kutcher's fan base is, not a reflection of Twitter's inherent utility. If, for example, Amazon should buy Twitter and use it for a payment platform to rival PayPal, watch how quickly Twitter's retention rate skyrockets.]

I’ve had experience in writing Hurricane Planning documentation for the Gulf Coast. Part of our planning involves mass care shelters for southern Louisiana residents fleeing an oncoming hurricane. There is always a network of public shelters that are made available via public transport. It takes a lot of coordination to and communication to get people from their neighborhoods into those shelters. Twitter could help in that communications effort.

For example, officials at a “parish pickup point” should be able to “tweet” about conditions on the ground, simultaneously reaching bus drivers and shelter officials who follow their texts. This provides several other benefits as well:

• Because mobile phone networks are somewhat more robust than regional Internet access points, you have a better emergency communications network.
• Plus all tweets are logged automatically and can be transcribed easily at a later date.
• Twitter’s search capabilities can help emergency managers stay on top of breaking conditions.
• The use of hashtags can filter incoming information easily.
• Search and hashtagging can also help with after-action reports.

And so forth and so on.

UPDATE: There was a fourth bit of information that came to me after I wrote this post — Craig Fugate, Pres. Obama’s choice to head FEMA, has a Twitter account.

During the course of that time, my colleagues and I compiled a comprehensive timeline of activities that each Emergency Support Function (ESF) must accomplish as the clock ticks down to hurricane landfall. As a necessary part of completing the plan, we found ourselves working with stakeholders by detaching, distributing, and re-attaching parts of the timeline for the purpose of getting their input and buy-in for the final edition.

It sounds fairly straightforward but in practice version control can quickly spiral into nightmare territory. My associates and I talked about compiling all the “time hacks” into a centralized database. Then we could control each published version of the plan using database controls instead of word processing and/or spreadsheet controls.

Unfortunately, with the deadlines we were working under, we didn’t really have the time to implement what would have amounted to a major paradigm shift into the JFO’s workflow pattern.

Now flash-forward to April, 2009. I came across a presentation by BookNet Canada CEO Michael Tamblyn, called 6 Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better. Number two on his list was — and I quote — “An XML publishing workflow that doesn’t suck.”

Allow me to digress briefly.

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It is somewhat similar to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTML) the markup language that makes webpages visible in a browser. Whereas HTML focuses on how data looks, XML focuses on what data is. XML was also designed to transport and store data, which makes it very attractive for sharing via the Internet. What this means is that XML can be used to share information between different kinds of computers, different operating systems, different applications, and different organizations without needing to pass through many layers of conversion.

Which brings me back to the hurricane plan. Because we needed to send and receive multiple pieces and multiple versions of some (or all) of the plan to a far-flung group of stakeholders — while on deadline — XML would seem to be a natural solution.

In simplified terms, here’s how it would work.

First, we’d create a text version of the hurricane plan and store it on a server. Then, because XML is extensible, We’d create our own XML tags to mark up the document describing which part of the text is about ESFs, which part of the text is about time-hacks, and which parts of the text is about specific activities to be undertaken. Using other XML-friendly tools (many of which are open source and free) we could extract those parts of the plan and notify the stakeholder that their review is required.

Using a simple web browser, the stakeholder can transport the document to their location for their review. The stakeholders will find that editing the plan is easy because it is simple text. Once editing is complete, the stakeholder would store the finished document on the same server, notifying the editors of its completion. The editors can then pull down the document, re-compile it and format it using other XML-friendly tools. Storing, describing, formatting and transporting made easy.

In his talk, Tamblyn showed a couple of “before-after” slides. In one, he indicaties how current publishing is a kind of hodgepodge of standards and software/hardware platforms. In the other, he shows how XML can be instrumental in streamlining the publishing workflow.

This resonated with me. I’ve worked in corporate libraries, I’ve been on document teams and I know from experience that publishing is a core part of any consulting business. Clearly, XML is not a panacea. After all, Tamblyn’s point was not simply to implement it — that’s easy. It has to be implemented in a comprehensive, cost-effective way so that (internally and externally) all corporate stakeholders and clients would benefit.

Tamblyn:

From the perfect XML workflow we really want two things: we want markup that denotes content (which is what the author and editor are concerned with) and we also want markup that denotes structure (which is what the designer and production manager are concerned with). The key that unlocks economies of scale is XML: it is the over-arching standard that allows all parties to easily share, with each other, what they know and want.

That is easier said than done. But major publishers (O’Reilly is one) are participating in an industry wide project called StartWithXML to understand spread the knowledge publishers need to move forward with XML.

Tamblyn again:

Whether we’re talking about editor-friendly XML, or less torturous production workflows, the organization that takes this on and cracks the code is not only going to be a hero but is probably going to make out like a bandit because everyone is struggling with this now.

So I started again.

The picture you see here is my second attempt. I’m going to have to look at it everyday. I still think it makes me look like one of those guys who wins a gurning contest.

Executive: “Why should I train my people — just to have them get better and then leave?”

Training Professional: “Would you rather have them know nothing and hang around?”

Everyone agrees that the development of skilled employees is good for the organization. But that’s easier said than done. Employees, managers and executives often have differing (and perhaps competing) ideas about what skills need to be developed, how skill development will be implemented and managed and how to measure the effects of the program once it begins.

Many organizations have opted for automating the administration of learning development through the application of Learning Management Systems (LMS) aka Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). These are software systems designed to support teaching and learning in an educational setting, usually over an intranet or extranet. The LMS/VLE provides tools for grading/evaluating a student’s work, sending and receiving email, putting courses online, administering student groups, collecting and organizing student grades, tracking tools, etc. An open-source example of an LMS would be Moodle which is currently being used by LSU and thousands of other schools around the world.

However, an LMS alone will not (cannot) address the greater issue: executive management needs a way to integrate learning with performance in a measurable way. This is where Performance Management Systems come in.

The ultimate goal isn’t simply to develop the skills of the employee or achieve greater employee engagement. Achievement of those goals must be aligned with a larger goal: the need for management to improve business performance. And if that isn’t enough, there also has to be a way to measure the value of these training and development initiatives.

The key is in management and evaluation of the training initiatives which is linked to the evaluation of the employee’s overall performance, before and after they engage with the training program. A good performance management system can do this.

For example, perhaps your organization has already implemented an employee performance evaluation system. During performance evaluation time, an employee and their manager agree on a goal for upgrading the employee’s skills in a particular area. The suggested method of achieving this upgrade would be to complete a particular training course – which can be taken and/or tracked via the LMS. Management would give the employee access to the coursework and once the employee has completed the coursework, the manager can reassess the employee’s progress at the next evaluation. In this way, management can get a measurement of an employee’s improvement in that area.

Performance management systems offer a lot of benefits.

• Easily identify individual and organizational skill development needs and provide the right training and development activities that improve business performance.
• Ensure individual and group training programs are aligned with development plans, performance gaps, succession needs and, most importantly, corporate goals.
• Make a training catalog easily accessible to managers and employees, when and where they need it.
• Measure the effectiveness of employee skills development programs by tracking employee performance improvements over time.
• Empower employees to manage their own skills, performance and development plans, all from one place – building employee engagement.

What is attractive about these systems is that you can link learning with performance in a practical, measurable way, thereby providing an evaluation mechanism that helps to measure return on the organization’s investment in training and learning.

Dear ___________,

I would love to explore some of the possibilities we spoke about because nothing is more exciting to me than connecting a hungry audience with the content they crave.

My experience in content management systems goes back to days in the early 90′s when we used to use Windows Notepad to create web pages. Moving on from there, I started a series of electronic newsletters in 1995 on different niche topics. I sold ads for each issue which was a pretty bold move in those days. When blogs took off in 2002, I transferred my output to Blogger, Movable Type and finally WordPress.

Currently, I manage a network of over a dozen advertiser-supported blogs in various niche topics. I have written nearly 100 original articles for the niche-blogs in my network.

Since the days when we began to sell ads, I have used the following promotional methods successfully to grow traffic for my network:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising
• Adsense optimization
• Social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Press releases

I should also tell you that I subscribe to nearly 200 RSS feeds via Google Feedreader in order to stay on top of fast changing trends in this business.

I am socially networked to the max. Comments to my blogs are delivered to my email. I often tweet blogposts directly from my cellphone. I even met my wife on eHarmony!

In my spare time, I create Internet videos (you can see some of them on my site). A couple of years ago I got a real thrill when one of my videos got airtime on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report!

Lastly, I’ve been told that I am one of the rare techy geeks who have terrific social skills and good, common sense.

Hopefully all of this fits in with what you’re looking for and might be a big plus for you.

(Click here if my resume does not load within a few seconds)

Ara Rubyan, Communications Specialist – Get more Business Documents