I’ve moved HERE! I have upgraded from a WordPress hosted blog to this one. I love it. I’ve been learning lots more about WordPress and how to utilize it more. I’ve moved my personal blog and my recipe box to WordPress too. I’m also working with a non-profit to help them update their site. They were looking for something they could edits and update easily. They thought it had to be something like Dreamweaver… I thought differently, WordPress. With all the customization and things you can do it’s possible to make a WordPress blog look like a WordPress website. It’s been so fun working on it. In fact, I’m heading to WordCamp PDX the 27th of September. How cool is that? I’ll be able to hook up with fellow WordPressers and learn more. I can’t wait.

In other news, I’ve been working on writing several courses related to Joint Commission training and hospital accredidation. That topic is so huge and so important that it kept me pretty busy. Two weeks ago it was so nuts I think I worked more than I slept because the wave of work all came at once. In addition to my usual instructional design stuff I’ve been working with my boss and a few people in my group to develop a wiki for internal purposes. We’ve been working using MediaWiki…. adding extensions… customizing it a bit so it’s already for my boss to share with his bosses to get buy off so we can pilot and implement the wiki for our use and to add it as a service we can offer to our clients. I’m pretty excited because if all goes well with the project, I’ll be working on the pilot, training, implementation plan and everything to get it ready for go live in 2009. How cool is that!!!

Looking forward to blogging more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about knowledge management and the challenges that it brings.  I mean how do you create that “virtual” file cabinet in such a way that it makes sense to everyone without a ton of naming conventions that to help make finding what you’re looking for.  As I was thinking about it today, I came upon this post and thought it really rang true.

Facebook and the Enterprise: Part 5: Knowledge Management

The piece of this post that really spoke to me was this;

“Knowledge management is not really about the content, it is about creating an environment where learning takes place. Maybe we spend too much time trying to create an environment where teaching takes place, rather than focus on the learning.”

I thought the sentence was very thought provoking.  I think about the opportunities I’ve had to work on projects where the team is trying to embrace knowledge management and we’re ALWAYS asking questions like; “how would I find that?”. “does it make sense to have that material there?”, “do we really need naming conventions?”….You get the picture.  Although those comments could be thought of as jogging ideas on how to help people learn from the knowledge, they’ve been mostly about how do we house things so people can find the content.  Honestly, I haven’t challenged myself and my thinking to think that a KM site should focus on the learning.  Hello, isn’t that really the purpose?  I think we get hung up trying to figure out the environment and what it’s going to look like and it’s functionality rather than the content found within the tool.

Thinking about this, you could really apply this to most things in training. Think about the instances when you’ve got a department developing a tool and thinking about it’s use, rather than the content within it.  All those projects or activities where the functionality of the tool works extremely well but the content wasn’t helpful.

So there it is…… When it comes to KM, focus on the learning rather than functionality.

Today was another great day! I got a lot done today around the house and errands. The best though was that I went to my training appointment and then did cardio again. I’ve been really trying to work out like crazy 4 days a week for sure. Today I ran for I don’t know how many miles and then walked fast. I was sweaty like crazy but you know, it’s funny, I used to hate to sweat and get all stinky. Now, I’m like ” I haven’t worked out if I haven’t had a good sweat.” Crazy!!

On another note, I’m not having a lot of luck finding a job right now. I’ve applied for a lot before Christmas and they seem to still be posted online but I haven’t heard from anyone about an interview or something. This being home is nuts.

In other news… today I mailed in my papers and filed for my business license. WOO HOO!!

Today was supposed to be an easy day. Kyle and I figured we’d burned the day Saturday and were both hoping to have an easy Sunday. We went to Vermont. It was only two hours from us and it would be another state crossed off my list, besides the fact that I had a couple requests for some authentic Vermont Maple syrup so we went. We went to this farm I found on the Internet, Adams farm to see what Vermont was all about. It was cold there, even snowing. Here’s a picture of me freezing outside the little store at Adams farm. We ended up getting syrup there and a few other things. Upstairs they had the whole floor full of quilts and fibers. I couldn’t help thinking that my mother, Julie and Hollie would have loved the upstairs. It was so cool and felt like a little old store and farm house.

After the farm we decided to head back since it was snowing and neither of us knew how bad the snow could get there. On the way back we stopped and took a picture of the valley we were in.

The last place we stopped was at an operating sugar house. We had seen many sugar houses along the way but none of them were running because it was too cold so the maple sap wasn’t flowing. This sugar house was super cool. the guy was so nice and told us all about how they got syrup. I had no idea that it take anywhere from 30-60 gallons of maple tree sap to get one gallon of maple syrup. When we got out of the sugar house we noticed all the trees with the sap collectors. We hadn’t even seen them before. The whole trip was very neat and educational.

Kyle and I delivered training in the morning today and had a couple of meetings and were fried by late afternoon. By the time we got done with things we didn’t even get lunch until almost two in the afternoon. We originally had planned to go back to the hotel and work the rest of the afternoon from there but when we got to the hotel they were just starting to clean our rooms. We had a choice of sitting down in the lobby with no access for about 30-45 minutes and wait until they were done with our rooms, drive the 20 minutes back to the site to work, or blow it all off and head somewhere fun. Of course we chose the last one.

We decided to head to Newport, Rhode Island. Neither of us had been there and we thought it could be fun. it was only an hour away, after all. So we jumped in the car, threw our laptops in the trunk and headed on the highway with the trusty Neverlost in the car. Newport was WAY cool. We got there pretty late and with the “winter” they didn’t have a lot of the tourist things open but we were able to drive to all the different fancy houses and check them out.

We saw the Vanderbilt’s “summer cottage”, below, and a whole bunch more. I so can’t even believe that these houses are still standing and then to think of all the money it cost to build them, it’s nuts…

Once we saw all the houses on Bellevue street we took the ocean drive. We came up on the house in this picture and I had to take a shot because I thought it was beautiful with the light and everything.

After we finished in Newport we realized we were only a hour outside of Connecticut so of course we had ti drive there so I could cross off another state on my list. We made it to Norwich and decided to have dinner and head back home. Once again we tried using the Neverlost system to find something. the first restaurant it took us too was a residential area with no building. We we out in the middle of no where and it was dark. i was worried about the boogie man coming to get us. We finally ended up eating Chinese at a pretty good restaurant and then headed home.

I think after this trip I’ll only have a handful of states I haven’t been to. Let’s see…. Florida….New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Alaska and Hawaii. That’s pretty good.