November 20, 2008
Dear Everyone:
Charlton Heston once wrote in his memoirs, "When
the director comes to you at 2:00 in the afternoon, and asks, 'Can you
go on as
Brutus tonight?' there's only one possible answer:
'You bet!'"
So when our manager asked me if I would consider
becoming a trainer for our new Collaboration Software, naturally, I
said, "I'd love to." It had
the advantage of being true.
I actually do enjoy teaching.
Thus I, and a co-worker, took the "Foundations"
class near the end of September, had a few practice sessions, then
started teaching in October.
"Foundations" really means "Basics" or "Beginners", but no one wants to
be called a "Beginner", so they chose "Foundations" instead.
The next level up is "Power Users", which is a misnomer since you
can be considered a Power User if you know a lot of things you can do
with the application, but you can't do them if you don't have the access
permissions. All of these
courses are part of something called "IM Academy."
There is a part of our Information Technology
Company (ITC) that offers courses in how to manage projects.
It's called "
In addition to the Collaboration Software
"Foundations" and "Power Users", the Academy also offers something
called "IM Fundamentals."
You may recall the year before last when I was on a GIL 3 Project Team
called "IM Fundamentals".
This is something else entirely.
It's basically a one-day training session around
Information
Management as it is practiced at Company.
I don't know exactly what is covered because I've never taken the
course. As a
Certified
Records Manager, I was told that I didn't need the training.
True. But it would be
helpful to know what they are telling people in the training so I don't
accidentally contradict something.
As for the "Foundations" training, my co-worker and
I trade off on which does the actual training and which is the "backup".
So far, we've only had two sessions in an actual training room with
actual people in the room with us.
This is called a Physical Session.
We had scheduled Physical Sessions for nearly every Friday from
October through December, but what with so many individuals having
Fridays off (Alternate Work Schedule) and the Holidays coming up, the
response to the Physical Sessions was underwhelming; so we cancelled all
but two of them, with the plan to have more after the beginning of the
year.
That leaves the Virtual Sessions, so called because
people aren't there physically.
For the most part, they dial into a "phone bridge" and we use
something called
NetMeeting to connect via computers.
This presents a challenge since the instructor can't see the
students and thus can't judge body language or see when someone throws
their hands up completely during a practice session.
But the biggest challenge is the training materials
themselves, developed by the GIL 3 Training Team before GIL 3 and the
Collaboration Software were severed in the infamous "Decoupling".
(One reason the GIL 3 Training Team is so enthusiastic about
turning the training over to IM Consulting is because it isn't
considered part of GIL 3 anymore.)
They put together a
PowerPoint presentation, complete with a
script. The only problem is:
It doesn't show anyone how to use the Collaboration Software.
That's covered in the practice exercises, which are completely
separate from the PowerPoint slides.
And as for the script, here's an example:
Course Introduction:
(SAY) Good
morning/afternoon.
(SAY)
Introduce self and any other member of the team present at the session.
(SAY)
We are going to spend the next four hours together learning about the
Collaboration Software Core Fundamentals.
This training is intended to help increase your confidence and
build skills around using the Collaboration Software to facilitate
information management, productivity, and team collaboration.
(That's all well a good, but consider the
following.)
(SAY)
So navigating in the Collaboration Software is like driving a car.
You can take the street route.
For example, click on a tab, then a quick link or two in the
Quick Launch Bar, and then a link in the workspace.
Or you can take the freeway by
clicking the breadcrumb trail.
Or you may choose to fly using the
My co-worker and I were rolling on the floor with
this one, adlibbing that, since Company Policy forbids using a
cell
phone while driving a car, don't try to use your phone while in the
Collaboration Software, or you could get pulled over!
In the meantime, the Training Team has negotiated a
deal with a professional training company to license their (more
professional) training materials and customize them to fit in with the
company’s use of the software.
So we expect to be issued a completely new script by the
beginning of next year.
Programming Note:
I’ll be off all next week.
It’s simply a matter of taking three vacation days, added to the
two company-observed holidays for
Thanksgiving, and you get the whole
week off. So no Letter next
week. After that, I have
exactly three weeks left in the year.
And I’ll have to squeeze a couple more vacation days into those
weeks before I’m on vacation until 2009.
In the meantime, everybody please pray for rain and
lots of snow in the mountains.
And have a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving.
Love, as always,
Pete
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