David Kelly’s Curated Content for the Week of 11/07/16

I read through a number of articles and blog posts each day, and every Monday I curate a few of my favorites for members of the eLearning Guild Community, and for the learning and performance field as a whole. Each shared resource includes a brief introduction explaining why I find the link to be of value and recommend you read it.

Here’s the content for this week:

What Do People — Not Techies, Not Companies — Think About Artificial Intelligence? by Leslie Gaines-Ross
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to radically transform almost every aspect of our daily lives – including how we learn and educate. But change is a funny thing. While some people race towards a change with excitement and anticipation, many others approach change with pause and caution. This is only magnified when the implications are as vast as those applied to AI. As such, it’s important to keep an eye on how the masses are responding to the prospects of AI, and that’s exactly what this post explores.

Inside Magic Leap, The Secretive $4.5 Billion Startup Changing Computing Forever by David M. Ewalt
While virtual and augmented reality are getting a lot of attention recently – and with good reason – there’s another “reality” that may be even more powerful: mixed reality. There are few technologies more intriguing in this space than Magic Leap. It’s a technology that, as the title of this article suggests, could change the way we look at computing forever. This article provides a sneak peak into the world of Magic Leap and the potential it has to reinvent computing.

Introducing Microsoft Teams—the chat-based workspace in Office 365 by Kirk Koenigsbauer
Over the last few years we’ve seen a number of social tools emerge that enhance communication, collaboration, and other business needs, including learning. Yammer is commonly used and Slack has emerged as a popular tool in the last year. One of the challenges these tools face is that they are often still tools that are separate from common workflows. That’s what makes Microsoft Teams so intriguing – the power of a cutting edge social tool embedded into the existing workflows many organizations use with Microsoft Office 365. This article announces the tool and its features. It will be interesting to follow how this tool catches on in the next year.

Using 3D printing to help blind people ‘see’ art by Nikolay Nikolov
How do you teach someone who is blind about art they have never seen? As this video shows, cutting edge 3D printing may be the answer. While this specific problem may not be something you will ever encounter in your work, the innovation and applications associated with the design used to address this problem can inspire us all.

In a knowledge economy corporate learning is necessary to survive by Karl Mehta
The business world has changed a great deal in the last decade or two, and it continues to change at a rapid pace. Supporting the workforce of tomorrow will require organizations to prioritize employee learning. The challenge, as this article explores, is that that learning may look very different than the corporate training we are accustomed to today. 

Harry Caray calls Cubs Game 7 World Series win in new Budweiser ad via Associated Press
Last week, history was made as the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series after waiting over a century for a title. Mixed in with all of the celebrations was a commercial from Budweiser that was just outstanding in message, emotion, and more. It’s a joy to watch, but I share it here for the origins behind it’s design – mixing existing assets to create something entirely new. 

What are you reading?

If you recently read an article, blog post, or other resource from someone else 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.