Instead of serving up a 3 Course Meal of a training course, we need to be providing educational bites of information that can be consumed within the time it takes to drink a coffee! It’s time to embrace Coffee Break Learning no more should we be drafting, crafting or developing training that exceeded anybodies retention levels. The time is now to provide our workforces with retain-able digestible bite size chunks of information to support their performance.
So I totally agree with industry respected colleagues Jay Cross, Harold Jarche, Josh Bersin and Tony Karrer to name drop but a few, that Informal Learning is here, it’s happening and its being formalized. But for any Learning Strategy to be developed, companies need to consider whether they trawl through all of their workshops and courses and refine them for delivery in informal settings, or look to use digital online content libraries to support certain topics which can be generalized across industry.
This is is why, I was very impressed by the offering by Knowledge Pills, a catalog/library of well written, pedagogically sound, content for soft skill training that can be swallowed and digested in 15 minutes or less.
Knowledge Pills developed in Europe are small nuggets of training presented via an online catalog. They are written by an expert in the field, designed to be interesting, compelling, and, where applicable, interactive and in approximately 15 minutes a Knowledge Pill allows everybody to understand a phenomenon, a technology, a new trend or business practice. They aren’t animated, they don’t include Video or Audio but what they lack in ‘flashiness’ they more than amply make up for by delivering richness in the quality of the content. Their prime focus is to help companies to provide to their employees the minimum resources for their constant growth. They offer these course are offered individually, or as a library of knowledge. They can be hosted externally, or be installed within the company’s own Intranet or LMS (SCORM Compliant).
With the production tool offered optionally, companies can customize existing Knowledge Pills or create their own Knowledge Pills. Look and feel can also be changed easily, the key here is the well designed and well written content.
The companies model is very flexible, purchase the library, or cherry pick, one pill at a time.
The library is extensive and growing rapidly, take a look at their online catalog, and see for yourself.
I recently presented a very informal presentation which you can download (you will also need to download WebEx Player, as the conversion to WMV via the WebEx Editor kept crashing my computer – sigh!) that discusses their offering in more detail, and demonstrates the content.
Take a look, review it, and give me feedback here, I know that Knowledge Pills would welcome any comment in relation to their catalog. Maybe you even want to think about authoring a specific topic yourself and receive royalties. Anybody up for writing Informal Learning 101?
I was on a conference call with a client today who just happens to be a Baby Boomer.
I received this email from PCTOOLS yesterday and thought I’d share with readers the potential threats we face as we network. It’s sad but true that no matter what technology is developed, some sickos will find a backdoor and a way to potentially disrupt & exploit us.

Last night had the rare treat of going to my local. For those not familiar with the English phrase “local”; “local” = “pub”. Despite piles of work, it was Free Beer Night for Beer Club Members at 