Consulting at a distance, or, the real article

The Canadian Society for Training and Development’s 2009 Symposium will be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 20-22.  I’ll be making a presentation on getting real work done with 2.0 tools.

CSTD invited me to write an article related to my presentation.  It’s just been published in the Canadian Learning Journal’s spring 2009 edition.  (You can download a pdf of my article.)

I decided the best way to write the article was to ask a group of training and learning professionals what tool worked for them.  I haven’t met any of these people; in fact, I’ve only spoken with one of them by phone.  I know them through virtual connections: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and similar tools.

Within 48 hours, I had seven replies.  So the article wrote itself, thanks largely to:

One of the points in my presentation will be how people and organizations solve workplace problems using web 2.0 tools (as opposed to, say, raving about how cool the tools are or how cute the fail whale is).  Each of these seven people had a different angle.  And a bonus for those who read the article is that they can go visit each person’s web site and find a lot more than could possible fit into 1500 words.

Thanks, guys.