A Nifty Visualization of Visualization

I'm not sure if a picture really paints a thousand words, but I do know that any people feel stretched for time. They also feel overwhelmed by the tsunami of information that characterizes our modern world. No wonder designers and learning professionals are a focusing more than ever on infographics and other ways to visualize data.

If you are looking for a simple-to-understand, graphic representation of avilable options, check out this link:

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html#​

Hover over a cell to see an example.

A cool infographic idea

Birth Certificates Redesigned as a Personal Infographic http://www.good.is/posts/redesigning-birth-certificates-as-a-personal-infographic

Identity Crisis

As a Learning and Development professional, I am often referred to as an "HR guy". Despite being in L&D full time for over 13 years I have never thought of myself as a Human Resources professional.
From my vantage point, I am an Operations professional. I help prepare learners with the skills and technical knowledge they need to get their work done. If that isn't Operations I don't know what is.

A Critical Question

Like a lot of L&D professionals, I subscribe to e-zines. The result is an inbox that is seldom empty. Sometimes the emails contain little of interest; other times they contain useful tools or pose thought-provoking questions.

Today I received an email containing a link to the following article. It's a brief post that barely brushes the surface of a critical question for today's Learning & Development professional.

Here's the link:

Can Learning Keep Up With the Needs of Business

Poppies

94 years ago today, the Great War came to an end. Life in Canada went back to normal, or as normal as things can get when a small nation loses over sixty thousand dead and suffers even more wounded. The country attempted to return to a sense of normal in the years and decades that followed, until an even greater war broke out in 1939, followed by a brutal war on the Korean pennisula, smaller conflicts that fell under the guise of "peacekeeping" even when there was no peace to keep, and our own contemporary war in Afghanistan.

Ever since the firing ceased in 1918, the poppy has served as a symbol for remembering the sacrifices of the combatant. Whether it was inspired by the great Canadian First World War poem In Flanders' Fields, or whether it was the result of a natural association between the poppy and opiates which bring the sleep that serves as a metaphor for death, the days leading up to Remembrance Day are awash in a sea of poppies.

In a way, it is fitting that the poppy serves this role. It is a link between the First World War, where poppies grew between the crosses in Flanders' fields, and Afghanistan, where drug lords harvest them to make drugs to sell to the rest of the world.

Autumn

After an extended summer, autumn has officially arrived in my neck of Ontario. The days are still sunny and even warm, but the nights are getting cooler, the rains are colder, the daylight hours grow shorter. The change of seasons is a natural, even beautiful, thing, but it is always tinged with sadness.

Autum is not without its charms. The leaves are changing colours on the trees. The geese are flying in honking vee formations in the twilight sky. The pumpkins are turning orange on the vine. The evening air is crisp and refreshing.

It is a sad time, but it is good.

A Technicality

I realized earlier today that I am technically between jobs. Friday I left a job I had held for nearly five years, and I don't start the new position until tomorrow morning.