This weekend I visited the Lockport, IL museum to see the work of sculpture artist Brent Kington.
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/brentkington/

The exhibit, featuring objects borrowed from private and museum collections, revisits Kington’s early cast silver and bronze toys he made for his children in the 1960s, his pivotal pieces of forged iron and steel from the 1970s that transition into blacksmithing, and ultimately to his larger, contemporary abstract sculptures presenting us with crosiers, spires and crescents. Spanning four decades, the selection demonstrates the breadth of his work in scale, materials, and subject. Decorative toys of silver and bronze just two inches in height are shown with intuitively-balanced kinetic weathervanes forged from iron and steel and alongside towering crosiers and spires—some almost 8 feet—which incorporate metal, stone, wood, and paint. As a whole, the objects illustrate the logical progression from the playful to the ritual, inviting the viewer to define the nature of that duality on an individual basis. (from http://www.museum.state.il.us/pressroom/index.html?NPR=697)

I found the exhibit very inspiring in that he started out as a cartoonist and then became a blacksmith artist. I myself have been taking life drawing classes for the past month and have found it very beneficial to my work. Often as a graphic designer you spend your time in front of the computer and limit the time you spend with your fine art skills. I have been balancing learning new Motion graphics programs, such as Motion, while revitalizing my drawing skills. This class has been able to force me to make sure I keep up those skills and not loose them along the way.

A Baby So Ugly, Even A Mother Couldn’t Love It: Web Standards. AKA: Just Keep Swimming

I may be one of the most conflicted web designers on the planet. Seriously. I write Flash/Flex code about as often as I work in HTML/CSS. I love ‘em both. I hate ‘em both. Each tool has their own pluses and minuses. I speak often about my love for Flash here, so let’s change gears for a second. Let’s get provocative even… It’s got to be said. What the fuck is the deal with these standards writers, working groups and developers these days?

Why do I ask this… Well, you all have Flash/Silverlight on the ropes, but you are giving them a free pass. How so? With the release of HTML 5’s video tag, canvas, yummy semantic tags and other advanced markup goodies… pretty much any major site, (eg, Facebook, YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, etc), could just about up and walk away from Flash with the next major revision of Internet Explorer (hopefully 9 will come around). You see, Safari 4, Firefox 3.5 are out and they like to party. They’re out playing video all night long and swinging from the rafters. The biggest draw on the web today, video, is by and large delivered via Flash. Now, I wouldn’t be so brash as to say that Flash’s days are numbered by any stretch by this developing situation. There are a lot of things that Flash can do that simply can’t be replicated, even with JQuery (my fave JS framework), Processing.js or the new Scripty 2. However, these new browsers really take care of a ton of things that Flash is needed for right now like video playback and basic RIA implementations.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the standards group, W3C, etc, but with the competing standard, arguably, an anti-standard, Flash, on the ropes, why are you not focusing and assisting the devs in the trenches, the browser and tool developers and the web designers in the cube farms at MS, Adobe, etc? It seems as though there is a fracturing, rather than a coalescing of resources and forces in the standards arena. Don’t believe me? Check this out. And this. And then for a laugh, this. It’s a bit liek the wild west again. I’m getting flashbacks to 1999-2000, when tables and spacer.gifs were clutched in the dying grips of every SimpleText coder and every GifBuilder jockey.

Sound audacious? I know, right. But look at the evidence. Twitter is abuzz with the recent additions to HTML5, with new hot samples being posted in playgrounds daily, what it means for Flash devs and on and on (simply run a search there and see). Beyond that, a number of high profile standards focused designers are on the warpath right now, speaking out and writing with a virulence not seen since the height of the browser wars (yes, I’m that old). For example, Zeldman has had a series of fantastic posts lately laying it out on the line talking about the demise of the XHTML standards group, defending the use of standards in the face of adversity and Eric Meyer has recently started giving a talk on “how Javascript will save us all”, in which he recommends using Javscript (favoring no specific framework, really) to do things that CSS3 and HTML5 do quite well. There are a number of other examples out there just like this. – Full disclosure, I use both Meyer’s and Zeldman’s books in my classes.

Talk about cutting off your nose and all of that rot. I love standards just as much as anyone, but when the big boys are changing their tunes about what constitutes good standards implementation (separate content – HTML from presentation – CSS and behavior – JS) in order to remain within the toolset and bowing down to the same boards they fought against a decade ago to get CSS2 adopted, I start to get a bit squeamish. You see, I have to teach this stuff to students. Teaching standards based design was before a lot like teaching a foreign language. A language a bit like Japanese in that it had rules that are reasonable cut and dry and work well with each other because agreement on how they work was decided upon and then used! Now, it’s like a mish-mash of bad drunken Engrish. Too many exceptions, IMHO. It’s like “i before e”, but with end tags and doctypes. *Blech*

Am I abandoning web standards? Nope. Though, I’ll probably be a little more likely to make an exception to the rule in what constitutes a good use case for it vs a plug-in, though. After all, we have until 2022, right? Thoughts? What are you doing to keep your standards based design skills sharp? My advice, just keep swimming.

Welcome to my blog. My name is John Feser and I am one of the partners and owners of a creative communications company called The Iona Group. We work with Fortune 100 companies, small and medium sized business and non-profit organizations to help them creatively and effectively communicate their messages. If this sounds too much like a marketing message and more abstract, I apologize. It is always interesting when I describe Iona because what we produce is so diverse (corporate websites, HD video, eLearning, computer interactives), yet how we go about producing these various forms of communication is so incredibly similar. If you would like to learn more, check out our website at www.ionagroup.com.

I am fascinated by how we as humans communicate with each other and how our communication affects how we work and interact. I am interested in everything from our use of technology, to the written and spoken word as well as the impact it has on our relationships, our society and our culture. Obviously, communication is pervasive in every aspect of our lives; so much so that we tend to take it for granted.

My goal with this blog is to share my observations and experiences with communication and how they relate specifically to learning and human performance, especially in the workplace. I’ll explore what makes good communication work and why along with examples of ineffective communication. I welcome your comments and feedback on all my posts and sincerely hope that I learn as much from those who follow this blog as they learn from me.

I was helping one of my daughters with her homework and the inevitable question came up, “When am I ever going to use this?” While maybe a little frustrating as a parent, it’s really a fair question if you think about it. And it is one that is just as germane to adult learners as it is to my ten year-old daughter.

In corporate learning it is easy to get caught up focusing on the content of the course. Countless hours are spent making sure all the key points are thoroughly covered, that the material is presented in an engaging manner and that there is an adequate way to assess whether the learner has mastered the material. This is all well and good, and very important. But does the learner really know why they are taking the course? If the answer is, “Because my boss told me to,” or “Corporate requires it,” then don’t expect your learners to be too motivated.

If you really want to motivate people so they learn and retain the material you are trying to teach, you must first answer one important question, “What’s in it for me?” The answer to this question will be very different depending on your course content. However, it should always be personal and specific.

First, it must be personal. If you are trying to roll out sales training to your sales force and you tell everyone that the purpose of this training is to, “Improve sales so that the company can achieve a 10% growth in revenue,” people may lose interest almost immediately. But tell them that this training will make them better salespeople and that it will help them reach or exceed their monthly sales quota, and you will get their attention.

Second, be specific. Explain how the training will benefit them. For example, “This training will introduce you to various types of customer resistance and will show you some ways of handling that resistance so that you will be more comfortable and confident when you encounter objections.” There are many ways to make the learning specific. If you have information or statistics on how the training has benefited others who have taken the course, share it. If there are specific situations when your material is particularly useful, be sure to let people know that also.

Answering the question “What’s in it for me,” also provides another benefit besides increasing interest and motivation. It also provides a context for learning. If people understand the answers to When, Where, How and Why they will be using the course material, then they will be able to relate the learning to their own real-life situations. This helps greatly with comprehension and retention of the material.

So, as you are writing the outline for your next course or training piece, be sure to think about providing your learners some personal and specific reasons for how this course will benefit the learner. You’ll end up with people who are more motivated to learn and are able to better comprehend and retain the material.

An appropriate title for my first blog post, don’t you think? My primary focus at The Iona Group is in our Learn practice area. This practice area focuses on helping our clients develop and deliver effective learning programs. Our work is primarily in the area of eLearning, although we work hard to recommend the right solutions for our clients and eLearning is not always the right approach.

In any case, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about what makes good learning and what makes it successful. When you think about it, learning in a corporate setting ultimately has one purpose and one purpose only: to change behavior. To achieve positive business results we need the right behaviors to change, but that is a different topic. What I want to focus on here is how to get people to do things differently from what they are currently doing.

There are three things that affect behaviors: beliefs, attitudes and knowledge. Often, corporate learning only focuses on one of the three: knowledge. This can be problematic because knowing what do to and doing it are often two different things. For instance, think about smoking. There is overwhelming evidence to support the negative health effects of this activity and this information is widely available. And yet, according to a 2006 study by the US Department of Health and Human Services, every day 1,300 children between the ages of 12 and 17 try their first cigarette and go on to become regular smokers. So information alone is not always enough to change people’s behavior.

When I sit down to work on a project with a client I always ask three questions: Who is the audience? What is the message and what do you want people to do differently as a result of your message? What I find is that in general, people have thought a lot about the message and only a little about the audience and what they want the audience to do differently after receiving the message.

A great example of this is safety training. Safety training can be some of the most important learning companies offer their employees. But simply providing people with safe practices and procedures does not necessarily mean they will be followed. The key is to affect people’s attitudes about safety – that it is important and change their belief that following safe practices and procedures – whatever they are – will make a difference. In a recent series of safety training and messages we worked on for one of our clients, we did this by tying our messages to the idea of people returning safely home to their families every day. By connecting safety at work to its impact on loved ones at home, we aimed to produce a more lasting and effective message that would result in people taking safety to heart.

By beginning with the end in mind, and focusing on how to impact peoples’ knowledge, attitude and beliefs, training will become more relevant, more interesting and more personal, resulting in learning that will change behavior and achieve the desired results.

links for 2009-07-14

• Silverlight vs Flash: Throwing Object
  An interesting code repository site. Comparing SL samples vs. Flash samples. They share the source code, too!
  (tags: silverlight flash)

links for 2009-07-15

• Playing Building Views with Fivestar and VotingAPI | Lullabot
  A highly useful toutorial on how to tie your FiveStar rating content for nodes to views. Wa Pow! Instant community content rating.
  (tags: drupal tutorial rating)

Puppet Fun!

Puppet Fun!

Originally uploaded by RocketSeason

We’ve got stuff cooking. More info coming. Can’t wait to unveil this one.

he Iona Group is pleased to announce that it is working with Campus Vena, a division of Veolia Environnement, to develop an eLearning orientation module as part of their Veolia Induction Program for new managers. The module will be developed using Iona’s Doctum® Learning Development system. In order to meet the learning objectives of the course and to effectively influence this particular audience, additional functionality is being developed in Doctum. The additional functionality will provide a user interface that reinforces the key message and provides real-time feedback to the learner. “This eLearning module must do more than just educate our new managers. We want it to influence their attitudes and their sense of pride about Veolia and the people they will lead,” says Gina Gardner, Training Manager for Campus Veolia.

Campus Veolia is a new division of VENAO LLC (Veolia Environment North America Organization) established in April 2008 in Lombard, Illinois. It forms part of the VE Campus network which is present in 14 different countries, the largest of which is in France. Campus VENA is headed by Ronnie Bennett who successfully set up and ran the Campus in the United Kingdom for 7 years.

Tron Legacy (2010) Trailer

Wow… brace yourself.

One of the earliest memories I have of going to a movie theater was to see the amazing effects and innovative story of the Disney classic, Tron. I had a poster in my room for years. I bought the movie twice on VHS. I own a DVD of it.

You can bet I’m going to see this on opening weekend. Cannot wait.