MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

Revolution warning for Florida: Traveling to Suncoast Regional User Conference

Next Thursday, May 8th, is the MindLeaders Suncoast Regional User Conference in St. Leo, Florida. I'm going to be one of the presenters: I'll be speaking about ROI ("Evaluation is the horse, the training program is the cart"), employee development ("This presentation is yet to be named"), and running a fun interactive discussion about training helps and hindrances called "Force Fields."

We also have some great discussions planned about training best practices, marketing your training program, and some old-fashioned networking and hobnobbing with fellow learning professionals. There's no charge for the conference. If you're in the Florida area (or even if you're not) and would like to join the conference, it's not too late to sign up. Drop a line to me (BGriese at mindleaders.com) or your MindLeaders account manager/contact.

Strengthening Your Human Infrastructure

The 4-day GTC West 2008- The Conference on California's Future convenes May 12-16 at the Sacramento Convention Center. GTC West is the largest technology expo for government professionals in California. It exposes the government sector to the thousands of offerings of hundreds of vendors in key-concern areas including; health & human services, public safety, transportation, 'Green' California initiatives and education.

MindLeaders has served local and state governments for 27 years with e-Learning and organizational development programs that yield measurable savings and returns-on-investment. We help government clients administer and promote their learning and training agendas with the same centralized, turnkey administration platform, marketing support and up-to-date courseware library that our private sector clients enjoy.

We'll be in attendance in the exhibit hall along the 'Education Place' aisle, Booth #505. The theme of our booth presentation is, "Strengthening Your Human Infrastructure". Stop by and visit us! Conference details may be seen at www.cal-future.com or email Joe Moscato or Eben Beierle at MindLeaders.

The effect of web standards and Internet Explorer on e-Learning

Does your online training follow web standards, or Internet Explorer standards? Currently, if you're building something for the web, you have to make that choice. Internet Explorer does not follow the same web standards that Firefox, Macintosh Safari, and other browsers use.

Internet Explorer, by most current counts, holds somewhere around 75-83% of the browser market. That number is probably even higher among corporations, which tend to frown on their people wandering to other software packages on their systems.

At MindLeaders, we know these numbers and watch them closely. Our courses are built in such a way that can't use both the open web standards and the Internet Explorer-specific standards. With as much market share as Internet Explorer holds, we choose to build our courses for IE. We sure feel for - and do hear from! - that 17-25% of people who prefer other browsers.

Microsoft made a big announcement this month: Internet Explorer 8, which released its first beta on March 5, will conform to the same web standards that almost everybody else is using. I'm posting about it for two reasons:

• MindLeaders' courses will continue to work in IE8 when it's released. There are some codes we can use so that Internet Explorer 8 will display our courses using the old IE standards. In the bigger picture, this means that we can begin (we're in the figuring-it-all-out stage now) to build our courses in web standards that will be accessible from all standards-compliant browsers. It won't happen right away, but it will be a cool day when it does!

• This Internet Explorer change means that everyone will need to take the same hard look at any online web materials they've built to see if it's currently Internet Explorer-specific. Are there any changes you'll need to consider for your web-based learning?

No release date has been announced for IE 8 yet, but a second, wider beta is expected in the summer.

It's course release day at MindLeaders!

MindLeaders has released a whopping 186 new courses today! We're in the midst of a big push for the first half of 2008 to cover a huge number of certifications. And that's in addition to our Office 2007 coverage and our latest business skills series on Communicating with Power and Project Management from a People Perspective.

Our development department is looking a little shell-shocked, but they sure have the goods to show for it!

• Cisco Related Series by MindLeaders CCDA 640-863
• Cisco Related Series by MindLeaders CCNA 640-802
• Cisco Related Series by MindLeaders ICND1 640-822
• Cisco Related Series by MindLeaders ICND2 640-816
• Communicating with Power
• CompTIA A+ Depot Technician 220-604
• CompTIA A+ Essentials 220-601
• CompTIA A+ IT Technician 220-602
• CompTIA A+ Remote Support Technician 220-603
• ITIL Version 2 Foundation Certificate EX0-100
• Java 2 5.0 Programmer Certification 310-055
• Microsoft .NET 2.0 Distributed Apps MCTS 70-529
• Microsoft .NET 2.0 Web Development MCTS 70-528
• Microsoft .NET 2.0 Windows Development MCTS 70-526
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 MCTS 70-236
• Microsoft Office Project 2007 MCTS 70-632
• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 MCTS 70-630
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Admin MCITP 70-444
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Data Access MCITP 70-442
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Design MCITP 70-443
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Solutions MCITP 70-441
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade MCITP 70-447
• Oracle 10g Database Administration II 1Z0-043
• Oracle9i Database Fundamentals II 1Z0-032
• Oracle9i Database Performance Tuning 1Z0-033
• Outlook 2007
• PowerPoint 2007
• Project Management from a People Perspective
• SharePoint 2007
• Windows Vista Configuration MCTS 70-620

To see what else is on the horizon, drop by our development schedule. And as always, we love to hear any suggestions and requests for your top training needs; drop a line to your account executive, in a course evaluation, or in a comment on this blog.

New Office, AJAX, A+, communication, and project management courses available

It's course release day here at MindLeaders! We've released new courses in the following topics:

• Access 2007 Advanced
• AJAX
• Communicating with Power
• CompTIA A+ Essentials 220-601
• European Computer Driving Licence Version 4.5
• PowerPoint 2007
• Project Management from a People Perspective
• SharePoint 2007

We're continuing with lots more information on Office 2007, Vista, web technologies and marketing, and a whole lot of technical and certification titles to come. Our development schedule is always available at http://www.mindleaders.com/products/schedule.asp.

What topics are you most interested in seeing MindLeaders produce in the coming months? Please drop us a comment with your thoughts.

Pictures from Mindleaders International Users Conference 2007

We now have pictures online from the Mindleaders International Users Conference! Please drop on by if you'd like to browse the photos from the festivities.

MindLeaders is on the YouTubes

The trailers/teaser videos for the MindLeaders Training & Development Toolbox are now on the MindLeaders YouTube channel. I particularly recommend the ROI of Learning Programs video, just because of what happens to my boss (Philip Payne, the director of marketing) at the end of it. Just goes to show what can happen when you volunteer to "help in any way I can."

The other Toolbox teaser trailers are:

• Best Practices for Managers
• Best Practices for Students
• Fixing a Struggling Learning Program
• Great Titles
• Incorporating Employee Development into Performance Reviews
• Integrating Your Learning Program
• Marketing Your Learning Program
• ROI of Learning Programs
• Selling Your Managers on Employee Development

These videos are intended to be (sometimes silly) small appetite-whetters that administrators can pass around to stir interest in their training programs or in the MindLeaders courses or Toolbox in general. Feel free to poke around, and please let us know what you think!

Conference Sessions, Networking, and the Rat Pack

The 2007 MindLeaders International Users Conference is now in the history books! The energy and excitement at the conference blew me away; thanks to everyone attending for showing so much enthusiasm in the conference sessions and at every opportunity to network with us at MindLeaders and with each other. (Including performing kick lines and getting kisses from the Rat Pack at the awards dinner!)

We have a ton of follow-up information to share with you and will be updating the IUC web site with pictures, PDFs, and everything else we can put together to stay in touch and keep this enthusiasm going.

And for everyone who missed the excitement this year, we hope you'll be able to join us for the next conference. We're already making plans to make the next one even more informative and inspiring!

More resources to help training administrators build their learning programs

We love to talk with trainers about their biggest challenges and the things that could put rocket fuel into their training programs' gas tanks. And we hear some common themes: that trainers have a hard time getting buy-in from managers and executives. That they want to make learning part of the corporate culture, but aren't sure exactly how they're going to do that. That they'd like to have more information and tools at their fingertips to help them do more with their training programs in less time.

We've just released a pair of products to help: the Training and Development Toolbox and the Resource Center.

The Training and Development Toolbox is a set of 18 video segments of tips and best practices to address topics like building and marketing learning programs, calculating ROI, selling managers on employee development, and fixing a struggling learning program. Each video also features a treasury of downloadable tools that trainers can use in their own organizations, including checklists, PowerPoint presentations, and quick reference sheets.

The Resource Center is the home for the Toolbox and even more resources for maximizing your training program - over 130 items total, including product walkthroughs, technical support FAQs, information to give to students, and promotional tools.

We're proud new parents over here! Check out our PDFs about the Resource Center and Training and Development Toolbox for more information.

• Resource Center
• Training and Development Toolbox
• Resource Center fact sheet
• Training and Development Toolbox fact sheet

If you're a MindLeaders training administrator, log into your MindLeaders account and click the new "Resource Center" tab to start exploring these new tools.

And please, keep telling us what you think!

New course features: Notes and matching game

MindLeaders has released two spiffy new features in their courses:

All courses now have a "Notes" button that allows you to copy text from the course pages or to type your own summations, thoughts, or reminders. Those notes can then be printed or saved to allow you to make your own handy-dandy reference sheets.

And activities that use matching exercises (like matching terms to definitions) now have a choice to "Play against the computer," which launches the activity in a memory game which you play like a concentration game against the computer opponent.

And we're not done here - stay tunes for more announcements coming soon!