[best] Who's the sun? People or content?

Spring is in the air, and so is my energy beyond the regular work activities. I had planned to write more reflections beyond the one on LMS (on experience, on impact, on the lottery model, etc). They will come, one day :-) .
I did manage to weed out my feeder list for February posts, so I'm ready to share what I found the most inspiring article on my reading list last month.

It's a tie between George Siemens' article on inspiring presentations he found on slideshare (particularly for the first one by Terry Anderson that nicely updates you on 3 generations of pedagogies), and Luis Suarez' article on a session he attended on Lotusphere. Ultimately, my vote goes to the latter one because it made me realize something. Just as last month's 'best' made me aware of a blind spot I have when it comes to prompting, this month's 'best' made me realize that I too overly focus on content. Even after reading all these blog posts for all these years.

In the article Luis describes a session delivered by Louis Richardson at Lotusphere. As a disclaimer I need to mention I work for the same company that organizes this event. That actually played against its selection as most inspiring post for this month, as I don't want this blog to become corporate advertisement. But you have to admit  that the presentation is not only very well delivered, it also strikes a note. None of it feels like rocket science, or even something I never heard before. On the contrary. It did confront me with my own focus on content. As an excuse I can say that most of my work involves making learning content that ends up in the good ol' LMS, the Valhalla of properly designed content (and where some content still remains after its usefulness has died). Learning and development are much more in the flow, in the connections, in the context. To put it in the metaphor of the session: content revolves around people, not the other way around. My recent experience with a MOOC just confirms that.
What I also particularly liked about the presentation are the drawings people made of their business issues (with regards to social software). Just watch it, you'll recognize some...
And now I have a breakfast scheduled...



People-Centric vs. Content-Centric: A Copernican revolution needed to become a social business from louis richardson on Vimeo.

Note to self: Keep an eye on

• microformats and what they might do for learning (via post of Hans de Zwart)
• value networks and how they might be used for impact evidence of learning/development (via post of Harold Jarche)