Curated Industry Content for the week of August 17th

Every Monday we curate a number of articles and blog posts that have relevance to members of the eLearning Guild Community, and to the learning and performance field as a whole. Each piece of content that we share includes a brief introduction from the member of the Guild Community sharing why they think the content is important.

Here’s the content for this week:

Boost Your E-Learning Career by Building Your Personal Brand by Trina Rimmer
Professional development for learning professionals is about more than just building design and development skills. It’s also about building, and managing, your personal brand. This post by Trina Rimmer explains the idea of a personal brand and why cultivating your brand is so important.  – David Kelly

Networks and the Nature of the Firm by Tim O’Reilly
Beyond the employment debate, this thoughtful piece looks at what the Internet is not only doing for customers and businesses but how it is changing them both forever. Business has always been about networks (think supply chains) but now business is driven by networks; quickly, quietly connecting people to people and people to resources. How will technology change the internal structures, roles and needs when Managers are apps? – Mark Britz

We took a tour of the abandoned college campuses of Second Life by Patrick Hogan
Technology is evolving at an ever-increasing pace. It’s difficult to tell which new technologies will stick and change the future, and which are just shiny objects that will quickly fade. This article take a humorous approach to explore a case study of investing in a passing fad: Second Life. – David Kelly

Sense of Obligation Leads to Trusting Strangers by American Psychological Association
Markets depend on trust. Exchanges of products and services for other products of services (barter) or for money has happened for centuries but why we trust without full knowledge of ones intentions was explored in this study. The finding expose more of the human condition and possibly the innate societal need of fulfilling an obligation. Interesting to consider this in online interactions and networking. – Mark Britz

32 Productivity Tips From The World’s Top Designers by John Brownlee
Creativity and productivity are often at odds with one another. Instructional designers have long been challenged with the desire to be creative despite the pressure to be productive. In this article from Fast Company, 32 of the world’s top designers share tips on how designers can remain productive. – David Kelly

A Summer Reading List for Geeks by Keith Blanchard
I love to read articles and books about our industry. But what I *really* love is when I find books that might exist just outside the borders of our industry that can expand our body of knowledge. That’s what I see in the three books mentioned in this article. – David Kelly

How Much Do We Need to Know? – Peter Evans-Greenwood
“Today we invest our time exploring the problem we’re trying to solve, and the context we’re solving it in, rather pouring most of our effort into finding the information we need.” So says Peter Evans-Greenwood which is the crux of his piece. We all know seek knowledge and information for immediate use more today than spending hours internalizing and “owning” it but haven’t though of the changing nature of our relationship then with knowledge and what it means today vs. our past. – Mark Britz

Does User Experience Design Exist? by Adriaan Fenwick
There’s been growing talk in our industry about user experiences, and as such, increased emphasis on experience design. But does experience design even exist? Regardless of how you answer, exploring the question provides some interesting thoughts in itself. – David Kelly

What are you reading?

If you have an article, blog post, or other resource that you think we should consider sharing in a future Curated Industry Content post, please feel free to send a link to the resource to David Kelly along with a few sentences describing why you think the resource is valuable.

Until next week!