The trigger is pulled...

In my last post I mentioned the changes that have taken place within Microsoft Learning and what that means for me and my focus, as well as the topics of this blog.  I spent some time thinking about what the new tag-line for it should be, and I recalled a short chat I had with author Jeff Howe several weeks back.

Jeff is a contributing editor for Wired magazine and the author of the book Crowdsourcing.  He had come to speak at Microsoft Research about his new book and I mentioned that Microsoft Learning was creating a place for the community of authors for creating learning content, and he said, "Oh, that would be a crowd of experts." So, thanks Jeff!

We have discovered something we knew, but didn't pay close attention to - there is a vibrant, passionate, smart and a little obsessed community of technical and training experts who write, revise, devise, deliver and critique learning content on Microsoft technologies.  This community exists all over the world, inside and outside of Microsoft, many of whom make their living training or creating training (of any kind), and many of whom just plain love learning and being/becoming experts and helping others become experts. This is the community of experts. Who you are, what you're doing and how we work together is a lot of what this blog will be about.

I will be posting about challenges and questions I come across as our community grows, changes, has its successes and flops, and we get to know each other better.  I'm also going to be traveling a bit more in this role, so I will have more opportunities to meet some of you face-to-face.  In fact, with the 2009 MCT Summits on the horizon in January, I plan on meeting a segment of you in Redmond (January 21-23) and, if all goes well, in Prague (January  7-9), too!  If you're an MCT and still wondering about whether to go or not, check the site and make your reservation.  Aside from the usual great technical and trainer sessions, my Community compatriot, Mark Shea, is going to be presenting several sessions on the Microsoft Learning Courseware Library and how to become an author.  We're going to have 'office hours', a booth, etc. so you shouldn't have a hard time finding one or the other of us.

That's all for this week.  Post a comment or drop a line.