Share and Grow: A Book and Resource Exchange Final Audio

1:10PM Feb 6, 2025

Speakers:

Shannon Tipton

Katrina

Douglas

Maureen

Loretta

Camille

Dave

Keywords:

Learning resources

goal setting

resource sharing

productivity tools

instructional design

social media content

digital notebooks

Amazon Polly

liberating structures

continuous learning

learning strategies

business goals

AI tips

podcast recommendations

community engagement.

Music, Hello everyone, and welcome to another learning rebels, Coffee Chat, where all the cool L and D peeps hang out here. We discuss ideas, experiences and share stories about L and D specific topics. I'm Shannon Tipton, owner of learning rebels, where we strategically fix training that's broken and develop workplace learning that delivers desired business results. Today, the cool kids are sharing resources, books, blogs and videos, all the things, all the time. And it all started with the big question on the table, if only I had the resource to be able to dot, dot, dot. And in this coffee chat, your peers are going to answer that question for you. Now get ready. Grab your pen, grab your notebook, or whatever tool it is that you use to take your notes, because last week, we discussed setting goals, and one of the ways to meet your goals is to understand all of the resources available to you, and learning rebels has your back. Therefore, without further ado, let's get to it. Well, welcome everyone to another learning rebels, Coffee Chat. I am Shannon Tipton, the owner of learning rebels, and I am thrilled to have you all with me today as we continue our journey this quarter about focusing on you, and that started last month when we went through your big, hairy, audacious goals. So I'm really curious. I'd love to know if any of you took the work that you did in our last Coffee Chat and did any movement with a goal that you set for yourself, or if you tried to really work at thinking about goals in a different way. Because, remember, a big part of our conversation was, you know, putting a more positive lens on our goals, rather than making them so, you know, like, I'm going to lose 20 pounds. Instead of focusing on that, it was the idea of, how can I be more healthier every day? You know, rather than trying to be more commanding and negative in our goal setting process. So I'm really curious anybody, anybody take any action and it's okay if, if you're like, Well, I blew that goal as soon as I hung up. That's all right, Maureen, one of your goals is to have a peaceful oasis in your bedroom. Can you transfer that over to my bedroom? Because my bedroom is far from a peaceful oasis, but I love that goal. And I think was it last year, Maureen? Was it you talking about the Swedish death cleaning? Is that right? Did I get that right?

I had said this is a couple years ago. It was clutter free in 23 but it continues to be an ongoing issue. I have too much inventory for the space so but my sister is and she volunteered. She's like, Hey, you still want help decluttering. She's like, I have time on February 1. You know, from this time to time, I'm like, Yeah, book it. So book it with an accountability partner right there in the room. So

there you go, yeah, there you go. And I think that that's a another big takeaways when we think about the resources that we share and the help that we give each other, I think having somebody to help you in that journey becomes really important, especially when we think about setting our goals. So the goals that you planned or thought about the last time we were together, so now the resources that we're going to share today, hopefully you'll find something that compliments that you know. So maybe you'll find a new podcast or an article or a YouTube channel or something that's going to help you, you know, meet the goals that you want to see for yourself in you know what? And it could be short term in the next month or six months or year, you know? So wherever you see yourself, right? Heather, I watched a video that talked about the floor robe laundry that ends up on the floor or in random piles. Yeah, yeah. That's me. Drives drives the boyfriend crazy, but that's me. I'm a pile person. That's just how it's going to be alright. So now today, all about sharing those resources. So pull out your list people, or if your list is a list of one, that's fine. Your you know, what book do you want to share? If you've got a website? That you'd like to share, podcasts, articles, research papers. Now's the time to pull up those lists so that we can start talking about them. Now here's what I here's the question that I'm going to start off with. Is there a question out there that is, if only I had a resource for so let's complete that sentence, if only I had a resource for, a resource for keeping all my resources. Yeah, that's that whole curation thing, isn't it? Yeah,

I right. You save this, and you pulled it and you got the next thing you know, this list of resources is just, it's like your target receipt,

right, right, or CVS Right, right where

85 coupons later that I'll never use, yeah. Okay, so

we can start there. So I wish I had a resource for all my resources. So let's talk about that. So one of the suggestions that you all had was pocket. How many of you are pocket users? Yeah, I personally don't use pocket. I'm trying. I'm trying to get into notion. So I'm trying to learn that notion is new to me. It's something it does have a thank you, Katrina, I thought it was me. I'm like, am I not getting this? But it seems really helpful and handy, if I could get over the learning curve. Yeah. Okay, so raindrop, is it? Loretta, I want to be sure I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Yes, it is. Okay. So Loretta, tell me about raindrop. That's due I've never heard that.

I did try to use pocket a few years ago, but somehow it didn't really stick. But with brain drop, you can do it on the web. There's also an app, like a desktop app, I guess, you can download pretty much once you have it added to your like extensions or whatever, any page that you're on if you want to save that page. If you want to save an article, you can save it. And then the thing, I think, for me, is that it allows you to categorize things as you save them. So it's a very quick like, add it and then write whatever category you want to save it as, and every other tag or whatever. So it's easy to find the next time that you needed not a steep learning call, very quick and very easy. I would say so for me, because I'm more of those people, has like, 100 tabs open all the time. So, oh my god

yes, you and I, we're sisters. Yeah, I feel you on that. And I think I'd love to be able to generate that list. But also, remember, not our next copy chat, but the coffee chat after in two coffee chats time, we're talking about productivity tools. So this is a good conversation that that hooks along really nicely with that. So one one tab, I don't think I've ever heard of that. In 67 sleeps, yes, in 67 sleeps, we're going to be talking about productivity, yeah, because, you know what, I'm just haven't quite I have a couple of tools that I use. Evernote used to be one of them, but I still use good notes. Good notes is great for my iPad. I use good notes all the, all of the time, you know, to help me with sorting through lists and notes and things like that. But I still find, and I'll get off of this topic here in a second, so I can save it for our next for in 67 sleeps, that I still find that when I am dealing with a complicated project, it's still a notebook, and I have collections. I'm sure I'm not the only one with collections of notebooks from all the different conferences. I don't have to buy a new notebook for like, the next 10 years. But yeah, yes, Katrina, that's me, absolutely. And so we'll talk about notebooks, and maybe that's a great part of our topic, when we talk about productivity tools, is, you know, if you use paper notebooks, how do you keep that information organized? So I think that that would be a great follow up conversation. Okay, so now let's ask it. Let me ask it again, if only I had a resource for somebody put that into the chat for me, fill in the blank, if only I had a resource for a manual for aligning learning strategy with business strategy. Ooh, okay. Oh, look at that. Oh, Andrew, I got for you. Yes. Christopher newbar, I actually have a friend who works for him this line instructional design with business goals. I heard about it on this call, and a call with Alina schlotska, and I was like, Okay, well, I have to buy the book, and it really has informed a lot of things that I want to change. Awesome Erica. What was it? Did you just tell that ATD released the organizational. Development handbook. It's od related, but clearly OD is definitely getting into the business goals. I think the thing that would be missing the Andrews books looks like it's a little bit better, is maybe the direct tie between, you know, your learning strategy with your business strategy. But if you are looking to dig a little bit more into business strategy so that you're understanding what you're doing with your your learning girl goals and strategies. I do think that this still could be a complimentary book. Yes, yes, you're right. And I think you know, any of the ATD handbooks out there are going to help you and give you guidance with that so and yes, thank you. To Victoria, you mentioned that if you're an ATD member, you save 10% on their publications. Yes. Camille, the irony is that instructional design books couldn't come up with an instructional design covers. Oh my god, I I just wrote the TV at work for drip learning and learning reinforcement. And the cover is horrendous. It's the worst cover. And I'm like, I could have clip art a better cover here. Take this one and there. And I actually gave them a suggestion. Here's a better cover that you can use that more. You know, shows what's inside the pages of this. And they said, well, our design team came up with this one, so we think it's better. And I'm like, Okay, what are you going to do? Also, the CEO's guide to training. Yes, that's a good Yeah. Will follower? Yeah. There's also a book out there stories of a CEO, what your CEOs will never tell you it's something it's something like that. Somebody would be kind enough to do a search and see if they can't find what I what gibberish I'm trying to talk about. I got a remarkable reason. What is what's a remarkable what is that so remarkable is a, it's literally a digital notebook, like, it's a really, really expensive digital notebook, so, but like a rocket book, more digital. It's not like paper, like you're writing digitally, but I think it's pretty responsive. The challenge that I was really wrestling with was, I'm a paper note person, and so I have a pretty large team, and I felt like I was losing track of, like, where had we been going, and one on one. So that was problem number one that I wanted to solve for and I it absolutely has helped me tackle that. And I am not somebody who's going to take my my paper and, like, type it somewhere, okay, right? And I don't like taking notes. I like to write, but I wasn't going to like move to digital note taking. I'm just not going to, I feel like this is been a pretty good meet in the middle for me. I love that I can still write. There's a convert to text. So I just used, I did a certification for a couple of my folks this week. I took all my notes on paper like I normally would, and instead of spending two or three hours on the airplane on my way home, typing those from paper into a doc so I could share it with them, I did a convert to text, and I've had to do just a little bit of formatting. But, I mean, it's probably saved me at least two hours, and I still got to kind of do things the way I wanted to. The one cool thing I'll say, if anybody's on the fence and what made me pull the trigger is remarkable. Has 100 day return policy. Oh, and I guess they're like, really great about honoring it. So if you're on the fence and you have enough disposable income to purchase a really expensive note taking tool, pull the trigger, and if you hate it, you can return it. Oh, but I I'm gonna keep mine like I'm over 100 days. I'm I'm committed at this point. You're in. You're in. Now, one of the other things that I saw pop up here when I said, If only I had a resource for it flew by me real quick, and it was I would love a book on writing for social media. So that was Camille. So Camille, I'm really curious as to what do you mean by that. Do you mean by how to write social posts for your business, or how to just write shorter digital content? Was there? Was there an idea that you had in mind? What was it you're looking for? Or

in the vein of short, digital content that is going to get clicks, and it's going to get views, but it's not click baity? Oh, right. It's relevant, it's helpful. I'm just looking for more like guidance around tone, length, graphics, just everything to do with creating sort of bite sized social media content that's not corporate, right?

Oh, okay, the book that I'm looking at for you is a book called Digital Marketing 2025, And that talks about digital marketing from a social media perspective, also an SEO perspective. So if you're looking like for a business, so then it's so not your business, so just strictly writing,

yeah, if they sell anything, it's going to be ideal.

There was another one that I read that was really good ideas about social media content. Let me see if I can find it for you, and maybe somebody else has an idea for that. Okay, Isabelle Stern, thank you, Katrina, and she's got the link. Dave burst, I don't think I've ever heard of him.

I watch him for AI tips especially, and I find him really interesting, and in the way he makes things approachable. And I remember specifically one of his videos, and I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly which one, but he was talking about social media plan, and he's like, and do this and do this and do this and drop it in. And so it might not be exactly what what you're looking for, but it might be a an angle of something to consider, Oh,

for sure, because you can use chat, GBT or Gemini or whatever tool that you are familiar with, and ask it for social content as well. So if you've got so a concept that you're probably familiar with, which is called Content batching, and what you do with that, for example, is I could take the transcript from here, throw that transcript into chat, GPT, ask it, to condense it, summarize it, or what have you. And from that, I can say, now generate for me, three. LinkedIn posts, three Facebook posts, three tweets, etc. And then from there, you can customize it so that it's in your own voice. I could also ask it to say in from this coffee chat transcript, generate three short video scripts, and then it'll do that as well. So there is synergy behind learning from people who are really good at AI, and then also combining that with some subject matter expertise around social media in general, right? No lack for ideas. You love writing, but guidance, right? Not to get cancels doctor, completely ignored. Yeah. Yeah, and I wish I had the answer to that too, but I'll tell you, I'll be perfectly honest. So for those of you who might have your own business or are just trying to build your online reputation, LinkedIn has done something funny with its algorithm lately. I don't know what it is, but people that normally see me aren't seeing me, you know. So I've gotten a few messages about, Where did you disappear to? And I have to say, well, in all honesty, I haven't posted anything recently, but they're not seeing anything older, either. So there might be something funky happening in the algorithm. What else? Let me ask you this, while you guys are typing that in, give me your favorite podcast right now. So for those of you who are podcast listeners, it doesn't have to be L, D related, just what's your favorite podcast right now? Learning geeks, armchair expert. That's a good one. Learning geeks is good coaching for leaders. I don't think I've heard of that. All right, not gonna lie, I like the curious brain. Oh, learning a cut. Of course, you got it right. Learning uncut. That's gotta get Michelle in there, of course. Now, who is this Douglas? Who's Who's Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty, on purpose with Jay Shetty, the former monk. Oh, okay, and so what is he talking

about? For me, it helps just keep him grounded, right? It's about relationships and things to that nature, and he's amusing.

Well, see, I like a good, funny person. That's why I show up. That's why you show up. That is, let me Oh, I was looking for Gary Gary Vander Chuck, because he has some good information about business in general, ideas in general. Seth Godin also. But Gary seems to be really attuned to that online world, you know, things that might give us better ideas about how to do things differently, how to do them better, you know. So I usually pay attention when he's talking, yeah, the curious brain, yes, Justine, they really dive deep into a whole different set of topics. And I like that because, you know, curiosity, I think, is something really important in what we do generally, and anything that's going to provoke. I think is a real benefit and is a real great resource for us. You know, because we spend a lot of time immersed in the world that we're in as far as learning and development goes, and that's great, because we should be curious about what we do. But to to really build those curiosity muscles, I think that it's important to learn more about why things just do the things they do, right? And it helps us to ask more why questions. And I think if I had a wish for the industry, it would be to ask more why questions. Why aren't we doing more of that? You know? Why? Why this? Why that any podcast or any YouTube channel that's going to help you get there from here is a benefit? Oh, well, here's one that was recommended for me, the curious advantage. So there you go. I love these little ones that pop up. Oh, I'm sorry, I did. I got two podcasts conflated. So the first one is called unmistakable creative. So we were talking about Kathy Moore map it, and I was just recently going through my book list as I was on the airplane out here, and I was looking for a book that was inspirational for me. And one of those books was the one. It's called The One Thing by Gary Keller. And the reason why I think this is a great resource for people is because it really does help you think about the one thing that's important. It helps you focus. It gives you tips for focus, and it's really encouraging to remind you of there are all of these peripheral things around us, things that grab our attention, all the shiny things, but sometimes it's really important just to focus on the one thing, and the importance of focusing on the one thing. And so that was a book that I thought was inspirational to me, but also still a good resource to bring into your learning library, to really help you make things better for others. You know. So if you can remember the focus on the one thing when you're in learning design, if you when you're in E Learning Development, or when you're trying to plan your next strategy move, then I think that words like that really do help. As a trainer, I still rely on the tried and true resource, Sharon Bowmans, yeah, how do how to give it so they get it? That is an oldie, but goodie. You're right. That's That's excellent. What else would you guys like to share? So what's on? Let's talk about resources that can help us be better at what we do, be better instructional designers, or what have you. Yes, Katrina,

I have another oldie, but goodie. But telling ain't training. I think every other instructional design book is just like from this book, from Gilbert's model looking at performance to everything like it's kind of my Bible, if you will,

me too, and and you know that it's true because I don't know how many times telling ain't training has found its way into the lexicon. We just say it now, telling isn't training. Telling isn't training. Telling isn't training and it all comes from that book. So that's almost the Google of L and D books. Yeah, I love that they used eight in the title, right? Me too, because it's so true. It's so true. Excellent. And then another one is so JDS book, of course. So JD Dillon, learning in the ecosystem, right? Oh, no, modern learning ecosystem. There it is. Thank you, Victoria. So if you're trying to work out how all of these seemingly unconnected things can be connected in your workplace, then that's the book to read, for sure. The Coaching Habit, that's a good book as well. Oh. Devlin Peck, okay, for articulate, actually, that's a good question too. How many of you need a good resource for using articulate or Captivate or electoral? Anyone still using electoral Tim Slade's website, yeah. How about the articulate e learning hero site that their their web page. So for those of you not in the know and who are e learning developers, the articulate e learning heroes, what they do is when, if you join in, they send challenges, and then they post those challenges. And I think that this is a great way for E Learning developers to stay on top of their skills, how to how to do new things, how to experiment with new techniques, and some of their. Challenges are really simple, like create an easy button, something that seems simple on the surface, but can really stretch the limits of creativity sometimes. What is that I'm reading Camille's I learned last week that Amazon Web Services will let you create 5 million characters worth of text to speech. Mp three is for free, and it uploads into Captivate. No way

they even have a counter. You can, like, put a plug in for a counter and it'll count how many characters you've used up, so that before you get to 5 million, you can close your free trial and use a new email address. Perhaps it doesn't work really well. It works great. It works way better than the Captivate AI voice sounds like it sounds much more natural. And you can choose from, I think, three or four different male and then three or four different female voices. It works. And you can just cut and paste, and you can preview it. And then if you like it, you download it. It goes into your downloads folder. And then you can just in captivate you can just upload straight from your downloads folder, and Bob's your uncle. You've got audio on your on your Captivate slide. It's fantastic. Wow.

I did not know that it's

kind of buried, and it, if you're not familiar, like, I am not familiar with anything, computer science, web development, nothing. It's, it's very wordy to get there, like the website is really intimidating, but once you get

nothing on Amazon's back end is user friendly. It's called Amazon Polly, Amazon Polly, Amazon golly, like, P, O, L, L, Y, like, poly, one, a cracker. There you go. Something to explore. Amazon Polly. So yes, websites. TD, of course. So if you are a member of ATD, I'm a member of ATD, I've always been a member of ATV. I hold their national membership, not their local one, because I find that the discounts that you get on their research papers and their books and some of their events is it's worth it. It's worth it so you get a lot of really good research and information, sometimes free. So a lot of them, if you had to pay 20 bucks for it, if you weren't a member, it's free if you are, you know. And that adds up really quickly, too. H HBr, oh, yeah, I love HBr. Love all the things HBr. I get their, I subscribe to their, like books and such, so I get all of their new things. So it's, it's really awesome. So I highly recommend that the E Learning Coach, you can't go wrong with Kelly, with Connie Malamed, you just can't. So if you are, you know, if you're a designer, once again, that's definitely the page to be, I mean, yeah, pick web page to be linked into, for sure. What? Oh, tech Smith. The techs myth. So those of you who are in the TechSmith ecosystem, and that is tools like Snagit, Camtasia, Audi ate, then what they've done with their YouTube channel, if you haven't noticed or haven't been there recently, is they broke each of their products into their into a separate YouTube channel because they realized that they were posting so much and it was just getting really confusing. So they have kind of segregated that, and it's been really it's really nice. Now you can find all sorts of good help there. So highly recommend their YouTube page and on speaking of voice to text, their audio. I don't know anybody that uses audio. I use audio eight for a lot of my speech to text or text to speech. I'll tell you what their voices on audio. It's like bada. Like bada. I'm telling you. I mean, the voices sound so good, though, highly recommend it. So I started to subscribe to McKinsey's information. If you get a little wonky and you like looking into the research and some of the stuff that's going on, sort of at a larger scale, about the things that would impact us within our industry, or data that you can pull down into your initiatives and your projects. You know, Shannon has referred us to a lot of McKinsey stuff, so I decided to go ahead and subscribe, word of caution, the way that you drill down to some of the information you're going to have to play with it. It was not necessarily intuitive, meaning you're sort of figuring out what space and so when I picked the things that I did, like, I'm getting so many email notifications from Mackenzie, it's ridiculous. So now I'm like, Okay, now I gotta figure out what to throw out. They do have an app and I download. The app, and so that might be a real nice way of being able to look at your content as well. I didn't know they had an app. Well, I should have known that, right? Everybody has an app, it seems like. But yes, I do know. I do. I love me some McKinsey research that's usually pretty on point, and you can depend on it. And I saw that Nancy placed in here, the training, mag, training mag, lots of great webinars and training mag, as I, I do webinars for training mag myself. So I'll say they've got a lot of good webinars, myself included. So I'll just do that. Yeah, and a lot of them are free. They do host workshops that aren't for free, but some of them are pretty, you know, intense. So there, there's some good stuff floating out there on training. Mag, yep. And they, yes, they do. They they record all of them, and you they're all archived. So it's a really good resource out there, for sure. So, liberating structures. Maureen, thank you, boy. You're like reading my mind. I knew that there was something in the front of my head that I wanted to get out. And it was liberating structures. Thank you for that. I

mean, liberating structures is, is just thinking about different ways of like, divergent and convergent thinking. Um, what are some things like? Don't get stuck inside of the same like, the same old, same old. It's a way to kind of break through and get people to think differently or participate or collaborate and everything else. So there's a book on liberating structures I've just found as a practitioner that Douglas Ferguson and invoke with voltage control. Where I found them was on was through, like mural when they used to have like these mural workshops, like hands on labs every other week, and they were on there a lot, and were very good about sharing resources and, you know, teaching people how to facilitate using the different tools that are out there. So anyway, it's worthwhile to check them out if you want kind of the more of the facilitation.

Yeah. And if you go to the second link that I posted there, that's their menu so liberating structures. And what you see when you go to their menu is it's seven by five. So that's 3535 different types of activities listed there to help people be more creative, in problem solving, in ideation. It's a whole host of different processes and experimentations that you can put into place, and they also have them. If you scroll down on their website, they also put it into they have this annotated menu which tells you what each one is all about, and it also gives you an idea as to the difficulty of it. So there are certainly some exercises that are more advanced than others, so it gives you kind of a good pathway as to which ones to use and which ones you know you might want to save for later. There's also an app for liberating structures. It's called Lisa. There is thank you for that. What's really cool about it is, when I was I just facilitated drawing together last week for my team, and one of the things you can do inside of the app is you can create a string, and so depending on the work that you're doing with the team or the client, you can then determine a string of liberating structures that you think you might want to utilize, whether it's in the course of a single session or multiple sessions. Yeah, I love it. So I think that's a great resource to leave you guys with, because I think we're all looking for that different activity, right? We We all have that one activity that we use over and over again, and the participants still find it fun, but maybe we find it boring, and it's I need some new, fresh ideas. Liberating structures is a great way to go, because the way that I use liberating structures is I use it, but then a lot of times I tweak it. So how can I tweak it for the virtual setting? How can I tweak it for this audience or that audience? So I find that it's a really great springboard for ideas. So thank you. So now, how do we build habits into our workflow that helps us meet our goals, to use those resources, to keep studying, to keep learning and to keep to keep doing the things that we want to do that we have already identified are important. So now, how do we build that continuous habit of learning? And so this is the pull through that we're working through for the you know, these next few coffee chats is the focus on you before we start going back into digging deeper into, you know, how do we how do we fix the learning? In our businesses, we will get to those conversations, but first we've got to help you guys and myself upskill, be more curious, pay more attention to what our learning needs are. So I hope that you guys all have a fabulous weekend out there. It's the weekend before the Super Bowl, so let me ask you this, either in the chat or shout it out loud, chiefs or Hegel sober, where are we going? What the people we want? The puppy bowl. Puppy bowl. You music.

Thank you everyone for hanging with us. For another learning rebels, coffee, chat. Now here's the takeaway. Your growth as an L and D professional isn't just about what you learn, it's about what you share and how what sparks new opportunities for you could spark opportunities for everyone around you. Think about it, every book, tool or resource shared today could have been someone's missing piece, and in turn, their insights may have unlocked something entirely new for you, and that is what makes these conversations so powerful. But here's the thing, this podcast is just the beginning. The real magic happens live and in the moment when you are a part of the discussion, when you share your ideas, ask questions and engage with a community of like minded L and D professionals. All of these people are working towards the same goal, continuous growth and better learning experiences for themselves, personally and for their businesses professionally. So don't just listen. Jump On In head. Over to the learning rebels events page and on our website, find the coffee chat, sign on up and join us for the next live event, and bring your favorite resource or a new insight, or even just bringing your curiosity. You never know what new idea might change the way you work. And don't forget to check out The Learning rebels community where you have an opportunity to connect with other cool L and D professionals. In the meantime, stay curious, be rebellious and take over the world. Bye for now, you