If this is the present then what could be the future?

A lot of events happen over spaces like Facebook, Twitter. Events such as our reunion with our schoolmates after long years, knowing about them and their work and life in just few minutes and so on. Imagine this in a traditional offline meet up, where we would exchange number of questions and answers just to get some basic information like contacts, photos, other memories. On the other hand you might even come to know information which you may or may not want to know. I guess I will stop here on this.

If we look at other events around us, social media is providing us with the opportunity to speak our minds, be communicative, and allow us to express our mind, feelings and emotions. In short it has made us all conversationalist, whether we are debating our views on various topics or sharing ideas and of course having fun by playing games, watching videos etc.

I feel that earlier we were not connected this way with various mediums like email, mobile etc or maybe routine life, busy work schedule may have limited us to do what we wanted to do.

My point or rather a question to you is that do you think that social media platforms have created various opportunities and flexibilities for people to connect, express and socialize in a better, open ended, interactive way to share moments of life?

Is social media playing a significant role in evolving our mindsets and behaviors ?  If this is the present then what could be the future ?

Please do share your thoughts on what do you think about this ?

The article was originally posted on Futurechat

Opportunities vs Quotas

I came across two interesting articles the first one is from Vineet Nayar titled “Creating Equality: The Female Leadership Factor” and the second one from Semira Soraya-Kandan titled “Women’s Quota – Paving a Path to Power and Diversity?” There have been some interesting comments and conversations around this topic.

My view is that the concept and initiation of quota depends on culture/traditional values/circumstances a society or a country has and this works as a lead or a foundation to what organizations are following. For example in some parts of India, like Goa the number of women in business and workplace are growing at a fast pace. In Goa you will find women working in shops, driving taxis, and as smart business executives and entrepreneurs. If we compare Goa to some other regions in India it’s a completely different scenario where quotas are the path for women to work.

Similarly, Germany has quotas, while in Poland it’s a Goa kind of scenario.

Whether its government or organisational management the challenge is to understand these drivers of culture/priorities/traditions and devise a customized framework for quotas and opportunities by region, country, society. This is the key aspect which needs to be focused before we implement a standard gender diversity/quota framework which might turn out to be ineffective.

In your opinion do we need to create opportunities, provide quotas or a combination of both  ?  I would love to hear your views on this ?

Gen X or Gen Y – Deliver Value

Let’s just for a moment keep aside the Gen Y and X terminology. Why don’t we see this from a more human aspect? whether its Gen Y or Gen X every generation have their own unique generic characteristics, skill sets and talent depending on the era/age they were born and are living in. Their approaches and thinking to achieve the same thing is and will always be different. While Gen X might complete one task at a time, Gen Y might complete the same task while doing other tasks simultaneously. If we all as individuals thought or approached same way then there would not be any innovation or creativity. I would like mention a quote of Mr. Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL technologies. He says in his video post:

“God has given birth to so many people in this world and none of them look alike, none of them behave alike, none of them feel alike and every single individual among these billions and billions of people is different,. So the world was not meant to be evaluated on a relative scale, it was meant to be enjoyed in all its glorious beauty, in its individual beautiful way. Every rose is different, every animal is different and every man and woman is different. Therefore, the concept of relative evaluation and making people feel good or bad on relative evaluation is something which organizations have discovered so that they can manage their jobs of running organizations.”
You can watch the full video over here http://www.vineetnayar.com/think-positive/

In case of so-called Gen Y all what one needs to do is to adapt and understand their approach and views to work and collaborate better to gain great results.
I think terming the entire Gen Y as lazy, loss souls etc is not fair. If there are huge numbers of people today who are young and confused, it’s also due to the environment they are in. The numbers of choices and options they have to choose from, whether it’s a choosing a course or planning career. When there is so much opportunity and choices its basic human nature to get distracted and sometimes end up doing mistakes or taking wrong decisions irrespective of from which generation you are. You will find people of varied characteristics in every generation like Good, Bad, Ugly, or Poor, Average, Excellent.

The situations and thought process of Gen Y differs a lot due to the countries, cultures, traditions and trend differences.

There is a lot of innovation and creativity done by Gen X in the field of Science, Technology, Art, Literature, Business, Management. They had laid the foundation and I believe the Gen Y is and still striving to take that innovation, creativity and foundation to the next level.  In fact the Gen Y members have went on to make great contributions and innovations to the mankind with the help of advance technology which is being embraced, appreciated by all generations.
The generational categorization is fine as long as it does not go beyond the nature of its purpose. No matter which generation are you in the focus and aim should be to perform and deliver value.

What do you think of this ? I would love to hear your thoughts ?

Encouragement and taking charge

I recently came across two videos,

Vineet Nayar talking about taking charge of one’s life …

Anne Marie talking about Encouragement – More Than A Feeling

So while i like both views.. my initial thought was

Encouragement by peers or friends is very important and i agree with your thoughts.
While these two themes are related, How does a company balance encouragement and taking charge of one’s life. The problem is does the manager who takes the decision also get the encouragement they require. So what comes first?

Story Telling in eLearning

Storytelling is relatively new in eLearning but very important. Earlier, most eLearning modules were all about images, content structure, and lots of text jargon at different levels. These modules were all about information dissemination but not necessarily learning, which is the key requirement. The purpose is for the learner to understand what is being described either by visuals or other media.

The concept of story telling has been an age old tradition. In our childhood, we heard fairy tale stories and were amused and also understood the moral or they key message of the story. We watch movies and soaps which have stories to engage, they create sense and emotion in us conveying a message at every scene or on the end. Story telling, In other words a simple, interactive and engaging way of communication .

This concept might not be applicable to each and every training content categories, but in my experience it works well with complex or completely new content. You might want to explain a product launch or its features through a story or inform standard operating procedures etc. I have worked around the story concept with couple of complex training content for our client, and the response from the trainer and learner has been positive and encouraging…

So what story are you thinking about ?

I will add few more posts on this soon. Do share your comment.

Thanks for Reading

Using Autoshapes

This is my continuation of my earlier post on ‘Creating innovative templates’. In this post I would like to share with you about one of the basic features of PowerPoint.

While this feature maybe very basic and common, but it really holds great potential to make a designer style template, once again it depends on your ability on how you utilize this feature. Autoshapes is the feature what I’m writing about, many of us use this feature only to make customized charts  or to represent geometrical signs. But have you ever thought of using this shapes to create innovative designer templates ? If not then you must really read this post…

I have been experimenting many shapes by twisting and turning their original size and dimensions and merging them with other objects or shapes. I have outlined some of the important aspects which will help you to create unique designs out of these basic shapes.

1. Shapes – You need to identify what kind of shape you need for your purpose, you could use a shape to create a  template or design a logo or use it as a icon. The purpose and aspects are unlimited, and so are the thoughts.  So identify the right shape and challenge the creative within you.

2. Dimensions – Every object in the Auto shape has a option of changing its dimensions from its original shape, usually its visible as a dot in green color on every shape, click and move it to your left or right and see the shape changing to different shapes.
 
3. Colour & Effects – This aspect plays an important role in making your template or logo look very stylish and appealing. Try out the dashing colors like violet, pink, orange, blue,  brown with effects of transparency option. The transparency and texture options enhance the look and feel of the object.

 The outcomes of this shapes based on the above aspects might be different and unusual, but they turn out to be very attractive and interesting. So you don’t have to copy or follow someone else’s design when you can create your own unique design and styles.

In my next post I will share with your the benefits of another feature from PowerPoint, known as ‘Character Map’

Creating innovative templates

If you think that I’m going to share or introduce you to a new tool which creates innovative and jazzy templates for your eLearning modules, then you should not miss reading this post.

This tool we all use on a daily basis, its a integral part of our eLearning modules. Some of us use it as a platform for publishing elearning course and many of us use it for content and visual presentation…ok any guesses ? yes I know its enough of suspense now, so I’m unfolding the mystery.

The tool what I’m talking about is widely used and famous and its known as “Microsoft PowerPoint”, yes you read it right, I can imagine that right now you have a surprised or astonished feeling, but yes you can create great visually stunning templates just like “Keynote”. And if you want to spice and jazz up you template more, then you can opt for Adobe Photo shop to add some more magic to your template.

Creating designs and styles in templates depends on your thought and ideation process that want you want create, I know when we think of PowerPoint templates you get a picture of boring, dull and flat colored templates, but believe me its got nothing to do with PowerPoint, but it depends more on our skillets and how we utilize PowerPoint features. Its how we use built in features from Auto shapes to Colour Box and from Character map to Font styles to create templates which catch your user attention.

Recently I have been creating many templates for our client’s eLearning modules, every template is different from each other based on the scope and nature of training content. In all these templates I have used various elements from “Character map” Font styles, Color combination and Auto shape.

My next series of posts will talk about the above features in detail.

Please share your comments and queries if any and please follow my posts for more ideas and examples, I’m sure you wont be disappointed !

Thanks for reading.