The Bamboo Project Blog

Accessibility and Learning

As I've mentioned previously, I'm working with a couple of clients right now who work with individuals with disabilities on some social media projects and it continues to be a learning experience. For the past week I've been hard at work pulling together a wiki for a 2.5 day workshop we're doing in August on using social media in Centers for Independent Living. We're adapting Beth Kanter's fabulous WeAreMedia curriculum,  focusing on how the tools can be used within a community with varying challenges to accessing the technology. In particular, I'm finding that there are a lot of challenges to using social media with people who have visual disabilities. Here's some of what I'm learning:

• The convention of having links that say "As I've mentioned previously" (see my first sentence) or "go here" does not work for individuals with visual disabilities who are using a screen reader to navigate the web. They need links that are descriptive---that say where you're linking too. This is actually good SEO practice, too, but something I continually have struggled to stop doing as I'm so used to making links out of vague references, as I did above.

• I'm used to embedding Slideshare and YouTube videos directly into my wiki handouts so that people don't have to navigate away from the site to access them. For individuals with visual disabilities, though, this is a problem. They can't advance through Slideshare slides or hit the "play" button on a YouTube video because their screen readers can't give them the information they need to do this. For them, an embedded video is just a frustrating blank in the wiki page.

• Speaking of Slideshare, many of the great presentations on Slideshare make extensive use of photos and graphics to illustrate their points. I find this to be particularly true of technology presentations where there are lots of screenshots and Flickr photos being used. While this is obviously a great way for sighted people to learn about the tools,  if you have a visual impairment, visuals aren't going to be very helpful. 

• Often when I do wiki handouts, I'll use photos to add some visual interest to the page. VIsuals on a page are OK for screen readers, as long as they've been properly tagged so that the screen reader can identify it as either decorative or illustrative of a point and there's some indication of what the photo is about. Unfortunately, Wikispaces isn't giving me that option (or at least I didn't find a way to do this), so I've ended up removing all of the photos to avoid confusion. BTW--this is also an issue for those of us who use photos in our blogs, which may make it more difficult for people with visual impairments to navigate our posts.

The biggest shift for me has been needing to think in very different ways about my materials and how to make them accessible. This project has been a huge reminder to me too of how visual I am in my development of materials, which can be great in some cases, but in others requires a big shift in my thinking.

Comment Problems

Just an FYI to commenters here that although work is part of the reason I haven't been commenting back on blog posts, it's not the entire issue. Off and on for awhile now Typepad has not been allowing me to leave comments on my own posts. Either I can't get to the comment section at all or I get there, type a comment and then it just hangs there. Can you say "frustrating"? Anyway, I've checked in with the Typepad Help Desk and they say they'll be issuing a fix next week, so hopefully we'll be back to more interactive blog discussion once that's done. Thanks for your patience. :-)

Who's in the Market for Learning: Individuals or Organizations?

As part of the ongoing conversation on the future business models for learning with Tony Karrer, I mentioned in both my blog post and in a comment on Tony's blog that I think we're going to see a move away from companies and organizations to individuals as the consumers of learning products and services. Tony followed up by asking if I had anything to back up my thinking. Good question, so here's my train of thought.

Everyone agrees that work today is more complex, more knowledge-based and rapidly changing. There are a lot of arguments about how we're going to develop our workforce, but no one is arguing that there's a need for LESS learning. Everyone agrees that learning must be constant in order to keep up with the pace of change. So the demand for learning is there. The question becomes, where's the market?

For the past 50 years or so, we saw companies taking responsibility for employee learning. This made sense when you had people working for you for an extended period of time, wanted to develop them along a career path and saw them as integral cogs in your company's operation. As a result of company's taking responsibility for learning, they were the primary market for learning products and services and the learning industry (at least in terms of corporate education and training) has been totally geared toward that market.They PAID for learning, so they were the target market.

But these conditions no longer exist in most industries. Turnover (both voluntary and involuntary) is a way of life. The median job tenure according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 4.9 years, but this is skewed by the tenure of older workers (9.9 years). Workers between 25 and 34 had only 2.7 years on the job. It's also skewed by the differences between public and private sector workers--in the public sector median tenure is 7.2 years (9.9 years for federal employees), while in the private sector it's 3.6 years. If the research I mentioned in my previous post is true--that employers only begin investing in training for employees after 3 years on the job--that's a lot of people missing out on employer-provided training.

Another trend I see going on is the rise of contract/freelance workers. As I mentioned in my previous post, there's been a surge in companies looking to hire contract workers, either directly or through placement agencies. Careerbuilder reports that 28% of employers are indicating they will increase the number of contract and temporary workers they hire in 2009. And this PBS report indicates that contract worker make up 30% of the workforce. This doesn't include the numbers of people who are probably working as freelancers, but are misclassified as employees.  That's a significant number of people who need to continue to upgrade their skills and who probably won't be getting professional development from their companies.

To these two trends let's add the fact that while companies SAY they need ongoing training, many of them jettison learning at the first sign of hard times (look at Tony's post for some stats on that). Learning is seen as a "cost," of doing business, not an investment in infrastructure and as a cost, in hard times it will be cut.

I also think there's a general reluctance to train staff because knowledge and skills are portable and with people having the flexibility to move to other jobs, companies are understandably reluctant to train their future competitors.

Finally, let us not forget the high percentage of small businesses that are out there--I've seen estimates as high as 90%, many of which employ under 20 people. These are not companies that are typically in the business of training their employees because of time and money constraints. At best they may send one or two people to an outside course. They still need skilled workers, but these workers need to get their skills elsewhere because these companies simply aren't in a position to provide the services.

I suspect that we may be at a place with employee training that is similar to where we are at on things like employer-provided healthcare and pensions. In larger companies and organizations that could afford these benefits, the trend has been to put more and more of the "costs" onto workers and for companies to get out of things that aren't their "core" business. Small companies couldn't even afford to play.  I'm not sure that employers see employee training and development as a central concern (although they pay it lip service), so I'd see T&D as a primary candidate for putting back on workers, especially if they can invest in performance support systems to cover what they need for business processes. 

So how to improve worker skills if it isn't going to happen through employers? At best, I think we'll be seeing employers using things like tuition reimbursement, which puts both the buying and the onus for learning on the individual.Yes, companies may have some guidelines on the courses that could be taken, but beyond that, they will have little input into the buying decision.

We may also see government stepping up to the plate. I do a lot of work with "second chance" workforce programs that are funded through the US Department of Labor. Here, laid off workers can qualify for "individual training accounts" that they can use to upgrade skills in order to find new employment. The Recovery Act infused a ton of funding into that system, so it may be another avenue for funding learning, although, again, it puts decisions in the hands of individual consumers. And as a government program, there are lots of caveats on how the money can be used. 

So to summarize--I see several different trends intersecting here that, to my mind, are going to reduce the amount of employer-provided/funded training and education that will occur. There's still a NEED for ongoing learning, but I think the market for this is going to shift to individuals rather than being delivered through employers. I also think that we've had an untapped market sitting there for awhile that we haven't figured out how to access yet (I'm thinking of freelance workers, for example).

What I'm really trying to say here is that whoever pays for the product or service is the target market. In the past, we've relied on companies to pay for ongoing worker training, just as we've relied on them to provide healthcare benefits. What I think we're seeing, though, is a move away from employers paying for ongoing learning, which means either people stop learning or someone else has to pay for it. I think it will be individuals, either out of their own pockets and/or with assistance from government (if government can get its act together on financial aid and supporting lifelong learning).

Frankly, figuring out who is going to pay for lifelong learning is a key policy decision we need to face as a country if we're going to survive in the long-term.We also need to figure out how to re-educate that large class of workers used to relying on their companies to tell them what training and skills they need to develop and then paying for it. These people need to fundamentally change their view of how we do professional development in this country.

If what I'm thinking is where we're headed, I do think this changes the conversation we're having about the business models to employ. Individuals are going to be thinking very differently about what they want to access and how than are employers. ROI will be calculated in a different way too. This isn't to say that companies will no longer be purchasing learning. I just think that as providers and business people, there are some markets here that are changing and need to be further explored.

So what do you think? Am I making sense here? What am I missing?

The Business of Learning: What Does the Future Hold?

Tony Karrer is asking an important and provocative question for those of us in the business of learning:

While training as a publisher of courses and courseware faces an increasingly challenging market, what other things can learning businesses successfully sell to internal or external customers?

As always, Tony's post includes a good framing of issues along with a reading list. The basic premise is that internal and external training departments have been in the business of more traditional formal learning and content creation--how does the model change when content is free and readily available? And how does it change when there's an increasing reliance on informal learning over more traditional formal methods?

I have no answers but wanted to get down some of the random thoughts/questions going through my mind after a quick read through his post.

What's popping out for me here is the idea that where ever things go for the future, we're going to have to embrace some of what's disrupting other industries, such as publishing and music. We're also going to have to think about the characteristics of social media that are rapidly shaping our expectations both on and off-line. (Warning--Stream of consciousness and ill-formed thoughts ahead)

In terms of the products that get created, I think we're looking at having multiple formats of complementary materials that can be used flexibly. I think of SpanishPod, for example, where you can learn to speak Spanish through a combination of podcasts (listen online or on a mobile device), videos, printable exercises/activities, participation in a language learning community, teacher discussions and flash cards. You use what you need to support the lessons. The idea of multiple formats along with the ability to learn alone or by connecting to a community is key.

SpanishPod also illustrates another thing I think we'll be seeing for the future of learning--subscription models. The podcasts are free, but to access the other learning materials, you pay a monthly fee that frankly is pretty reasonable if you're serious about learning another language--$9 for the basic package and $29 for the premium package. What's happening here is that you aren't buying content as much as access to an ongoing community and set of services, offered at a reasonable rate. You can try the subscription out for a month and then stop if you don't like it--something you can't do when you buy more traditional learning packages.

The community aspect is big and I think we're going to be thinking a lot about what makes up a learning community and how to nurture them. It may be partially about the platforms we use, but it's also about who is in the community. I tend to think that open communities of practitioners learning together across organizations may be a more viable long-term model than "behind the firewall" solutions. I can't help but think that open source and open social networks are successful for reasons that apply to learning, although I know that privacy and proprietary issues play a role, too.

How learning content is packaged is something else we need to look at. If the social web is teaching us nothing else, it's that having a personality and a point of view sells. We're talking business here, so it isn't just about who has the most "effective" learning tool. It's about who's creating learning that people want to participate in. The rest just looks institutional and like the commodity it is. People want a sense of humor, to be entertained.

 A good example of what I'm talking about is the Plain English videos, created by Lee and Sashi LeFever of Common Craft fame. That series is fun and full of personality ("Yea! Boo!") and they were able to parley that into a business for themselves. I think that it's this kind of creativity that we'll be needing more of for the future.

I'm also wondering who the market will be. If you read Tony's post, the assumption is that we'll be selling learning to organizations--in particular, large companies.  But increasingly,  I'm thinking we'll be selling to individuals. For one thing, even though businesses say that learning is important, at the same time, they are investing less and less in their workers. A few years ago I attended a conference where the keynote speaker shared research indicating that businesses didn't invest in training their employees until they'd been there for three years. Given the average tenure on the job is shrinking, we're going to see more people who aren't there for that three year window of opportunity.

Related to this, I think we're seeing a push to more contract workers. Technically these people are not employees and most companies are not going to invest a lot in their development. That leaves learning up to individual workers themselves. 

I also think that company-specific training in procedures and processes is either being handled through OJT or with performance support systems,  which decreases the need for learning that's customized to a specific company. This too will give companies an "out" in terms of whether or not to invest in training.

If I'm right, then this really changes the business landscape for learning. Individual learners are working with different value propositions and needs than are their employers. Right now, they try to get those needs met through colleges and some self-study,  but I think there might be some opportunities here for training companies, especially along the lines of the subscription model I mentioned earlier. These learners will be more price sensitive and will want learning that is flexible, creative and fun.  I also think this is where the community aspect becomes important--the right community will build long-term loyalty, which is exactly what we're seeing when community is done well in other businesses.

I'm someone who, frankly, would prefer to see individual workers being in charge of their own learning, rather than putting that responsibility in the hands of companies. This is the essence of a knowledge economy--you own the means of production, in your head. Letting someone else decide what you should learn would be like letting someone else decide what machines you would use to produce your goods in a factory. This is one reason that companies are reluctant to invest in training--you can now take their "machinery" with you when you leave. I will admit, then, that part of me WANTS the future to be in learning sold to individuals, rather than to companies. Still, I think there's something here.

I hesitate to prognosticate--I'm sure you guys will be able to point out a lot of the flaws in my thinking here. In fact, I hope you do! This is an interesting conversation for us to be having, though, because in a knowledge economy, how people will be able to access learning is a big deal. The business opportunities are also going to shape what learning is provided, how it's provided, etc. so I'm curious to see where this takes us.

Do You Know How to Ask the Right Questions?

Looking at tools like Google Squared, Google Trends and Wolfram Alpha, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that one of the key challenges we have before us is learning how to ask questions. And not just any question, but the RIGHT questions. There's tremendous power in the possibilities of these tools, but if you don't know what to ask about or how to ask it, then what's the point?

This leads me to wonder if we're really doing a good job of teaching the art of questioning, either in schools or in the workplace. My anecdotal response would be "no, we do a terrible job of this," partially because we seem to do what we can to kill curiosity and creativity, starting from an early age. A 4-year old does a great job of asking question, but by the time he gets out of 2nd grade, not so much.

And from what I can tell,  many workplaces are structured to avoid questions. Let's just do what we've been doing and not stir things up with curiosity. We also seem to love moving immediately to answers and solutions. Maybe we need to spend more time formulating the right questions.

This seems like one of those areas where we need to think carefully about how our tools may be outstripping our ability to use them. I love all this cool technology, but are our skills keeping up with what the tools can do? And how are we going to address this?

The Big Question: How Do You Spend Your Time?

Last night I had a quick IM chat with Christine Martell, who asked me when I planned to re-join the online community--her way of pointing out that I've had my G-talk status on "invisible" for several weeks now, haven't done a Twitter update in 16 days and have clearly been remiss in posting here. So it was serendipitous to find that the Learning Circuits Big Question this month is "how do you spend your time?" And more specifically:

• What's a typical day like?
• How much time do you spend and how did you find time for all the relatively newer things like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.?
• What are you doing less of today than you were 3-5 years ago?
• Do you have less of a life with all of these new things?

Given that I've not been organizing myself very well, it seemed appropriate to use the big question as a sort of check on myself. Here goes.

A Typical Day
Currently, I have several major projects going on for about 5 clients. I'm doing everything from facilitating and developing a strategic plan to designing a couple of training programs and setting up client blogs and social networks. Most of these projects need to be finished by June 30, which is the end of my clients' budget year. This does not include the myriad administrative things hanging over my head that are necessary to keep my business going--little things like invoicing.

I'm generally at my desk by 6:15 a.m. every day. This is when I routinely violate one of the first rules of time management by checking my email as soon as I plop my butt into the chair. I continue the email violations by monitoring my inbox throughout the day, just so I know what's there. This doesn't mean that I respond right away, but I seem to have this need to at least know what's coming in.

From there, I go to Netvibes, where I catch up on any news stories and try to read at least a few blogs. Lately I've had less time for reading and NO time for commenting, which is not a healthy state of affairs. However, I'm considering this to be a time-limited situation that I hope gets better in a few weeks.

The rest of my day is taken up with client calls and meetings, emails, writing/designing and responding to the latest client fire. I have moved firmly out of any strategic use of my time and am currently dwelling in that place known as "crisis management."

I am trying very hard to be finished by 5:30. At that point my brain is fried anyway and we're dealing with the law of diminishing returns. I'm also trying to reserve mornings for thinking and writing and afternoons for calls and meetings.  I've been less successful with that.

Time for Social Media

When things were calmer in my working life, I spent a good amount of time (10-15 hours a week?) on nurturing my online connections, reading and writing blog entries, responding to and making comments, etc. Considering that I work alone from home, this served not only as professional development, but also as a way to feel less isolated. Since January, though, I have found I have less and less time for these pursuits--and it shows. I'm feeling less creative, less energized and less connected.

I've been trying to find ways to kill two birds with one stone--hence blog entries that started out as work for clients, for example--but this isn't always working. What I loved about my first few years of blogging was that they opened up so many doors, both creatively and in terms of connections. Now, social media has become more of a means to an end (i.e., wikis for managing my projects), rather than opportunities for learning and exploration, which is really a shame. The nature of my work right now just isn't lending itself to the freshness I so prize.

What's Different Now Compared to 3-5 Years Ago

The biggest difference in my use of time is the sheer volume of things I do online. Five years ago, email and static websites were my primary online activities. Most of my work was done face-to-face, through calls or in Word.

In 2005, I started an art blog-- my first introduction to blogging--and by 2007, things really exploded with blogging, RSS, wikis, etc. I now manage most of my projects with wikis and all of my training sessions are accompanied by a wiki "handout" of resources, videos, slideshows, podcasts, etc. Although I've badmouthed Twitter on occasion, I am finding it a great source of links to really valuable blog posts, articles, etc., so I check it at least a few times a day. I'm less active in places like Facebook, but have used Ning to roll my own social networks for some client projects and it's been a great way to connect people. I'm also an avid fan of Netvibes, which with my Gmail account, is my online dashboard. And I can't say enought about the virtues of tools like IM and web conferencing for working remotely.

What I realize is that social media for me has become a fabulous tool that really informs my work practice. Although my personal professional development has suffered lately, I have still found blogging to be one of the best things I've ever done in terms of my own learning. It has also been the "home base" from which I've been able to launch tons of friendships, projects and opportunities. When it makes sense (and it usually does), I'm integrating some social media tool into virtually every piece of work that I do. This is a huge change from only a few years ago and one that has made a big difference in my life. 

On a purely practical level, I can't imagine doing my work now without social media as a backbone. However, I am not pleased that social media has become more utilitarian for me and that I have less time to reflect on the bigger ideas and questions that have always enthralled me in the past. 

I'm realizing there's no small irony in the fact that even though my clients are asking for and using social media on most of my projects with them, their use of the tools tends to be closed--private wikis, private Ning networks, etc. And in helping them set up their systems, I'm ending up neglecting my own.  That needs to be fixed.

So--that's how I'm spending my time right now. Would love to hear what you're doing.

KeyHubs and Google Wave Are Looking Interesting

A few things that have popped up recently that have me excited to explore further:

KeyHubs for Mapping Informal Networks
Via a Delicious save from Beth Kanter, I found this article on mapping networks--an interesting read in itself. It led me to Keyhubs, which lets you map the informal networks that lie behind your formal org chart. The case studies show some interesting examples. It appears to evaluate networks based on who people trust, who they go to for advice and who they socialize with. 

I could see using this as a tool to help plan for social networks within your organization--finding out ahead of time, for example, who your key influencers might be so that you might work with them ahead of time to support the learning community. You could also use it to analyze your existing networks, see where there might be gaps in sharing and connection, then plan for and evaluate the success of some interventions to grow the network.

Google Wave
Although it won't be ready until later this year, Google Wave looks REALLY interesting. According to Mashable, Google Wave is

. . . a hybrid of email, web chat, IM, and project management software. It features the ability to replay conversations because it records the entire sequence of communication, character by character. Because of this, discussions are also live in Google Wave: you will see your friends type character-by-character.

The features don’t stop there, either. Google Wave also supports the ability to drag attachments from your desktop into Google Wave. It loads that file and sends it immediately to anyone in the conversation. It’s also embeddable, so you can embed Google Wave conversations on any blog.

. . . it looks very similar to a Gmail () inbox, except it’s more focused on your contacts, whose faces you can see in your contacts sidebar on the left. As for conversations, well, it’s a bit different than anything we’ve seen before. You can reply and add your thoughts anywhere within a message. Communication within Google Wave is completely shared.

The key to it all is the faster line of communication. Attaching documents, like you do in email, is unnecessary in Google Wave. Real-time conversations and collaboration make it an ideal tool for business teams as well. Imagine an entire office having Google Wave open to quickly share and receive files. It combines some of people’s favorite aspects of many different web communication tools.

It looks to me like this could be a really RICH way to develop a collaborative learning environment that combines the best parts of synchronous and asynchronous communication. What is also interesing is that you can record the evolution of the wave, so it looks like you'll be able to see how things develop over time. And the embedabble aspect also looks promising--I'm picturing a blog or a wiki  to pull together related waves.

Of course, we're relying on descriptions at this point, but I've signed up to be notified when they go live. I'm very curious to see where this goes.

UPDATE--Looks like Mashable has posted a Complete Guide to Google Wave.

Some Resources for Accessible Learning

In using social media tools for learning (or anything else), one thing I think we often forget is the issue of accessibility. And by that, I don't mean in terms of issues like having access to a computer or broadband, although those are issues as well.

Currently I'm working with two different clients who work with individuals with disabilities and one of the things we're grappling with is how accessible these tools are. For many of their consumers, web-based technologies have been a God-send that has helped them access information, resources and communities of support  they never would have dreamed possible a few years ago. Opportunities for teleworking, online learning and self-employment have also exploded.

But for some people, especially those with visual or cognitive impairments (including brain injury and learning disabilities), social media and the Web can be a mixed bag. One one project, for example, we've had problems with one of our team members, who is blind, being able to use our group wiki with JAWS, a tool that many people with visual impairments use to surf the web. I've also heard some individuals from the brain injury community complaining about use of Flash and how difficult it is to navigate through some sites. And let's not forget the large numbers of people who have learning disabilities.

This has all been a real eye-opener for me, so I've been doing some research into accessibility issues and wanted to share a few resources.

• 100 Killer Web Accessibility Resources: Blogs, Forums and Tutorials--Resources on general accessibility, as well as for individuals with specific disabilities, such as visual impairments and epilepsy.

• Accessify--News, tools, etc. related to accessibility. Shows you how to do things like easy closed-captioning for YouTube videos, as well as providing some useful tools for development.

• Access eLearning--a tutorial of the Georgia Tech Research on Accessible Distance Education (GRADE) project at Georgia Tech. Includes 10 modules.

• Designing Web Content that is Accessible to Users with Cognitive Disabilities--This webcast provides information on cognitive accessibility research conducted by NCDAE and others, and overviews and provides strategies for addressing the most common web accessibility issues for users with cognitive and learning disabilities.

• TARGET Center Discovery Series--a whole series of webinars on issues such as making accessible PDF files and emails with file attachments. Also a bunch of webinars on ergonomics and the home office.

• For Twitter--Accessible Twitter and TwInbox have both been recommended to me. The latter lets you use Twitter from Microsoft Outlook. This post on Twitter for Those Who Can't Talk or Type is also eye-opening.

I'm still learning a lot myself, so if this is something you have experience in, I would love to get your feedback and links to the resources you use and find to be helpful.

Feeling Like Dirt

The past few months for me have been a sort of hodgepodge of deadlines and projects and weird personal things like realizing that my younger daughter is going to college next year (COLLEGE! My baby!) and that she doesn't need her mother so much anymore. Compounding the situation,we've had lots of rain and cloudy, cool days and my heart is crying out for 85 degrees and sunny so I can sit on my patio and listen to the birds.

I've also had several profound reminders recently that I've been doing what I always do when I start to get overwhelmed, which is is to retreat deep inside myself where I don't have to notice that I'm overwhelmed. I can just slog through things under the premise that I have my act together. Which in many ways I do, but in many more important ways I don't.

The problem with this mode of dealing with things is that I end up feeling really alone and isolated and my feelings of isolation only reinforce the sense that I should stay inside my little hermit cave. I am also less into blogging and commenting and online socializing because of course that means coming out of my cave. And then I miss that sense of community, which further reinforces the cycle. . . well, you can see the problem.

So this morning I have time to breathe a little after weeks of competing deadlines and I come across this post by Havi Brooks who talks about how she's feeling like dirt right now and giving herself permission to do so. And I realize that right now I'm feeling like dirt, but have been trying to talk myself out of that feeling, which honestly only makes things worse. If you're going to feel crappy, at least don't add to it by beating yourself up for feeling crappy.

Why am I writing about this? Because I think a lot of us can get stuck in feeling like dirt and we don't have enough compassion for ourselves to just let those feelings be there for a time.  The combination of feeling this way and trying to make yourself NOT feel this way is a powerful recipe for personal and professional dysfunction. I've seen it in action and it's not pretty.

I also know that for myself as a learner, it's just as important for me to acknowledge and explore the emotional undercurrents that pass through me as it is for me to look at using a new tool or developing a new process. I'm reading Brain Rules right now and I can see so clearly how emotions and stress are as important to learning as anything else, but you have to know where you're at in order to move forward. And if I'm going to blog about learning and development, then I need to also blog about when things are NOT working, which right now, they are definitely not.

So suffice it to say that I'm feeling like dirt, but I'm cool with that, because this too shall pass. Plus dirt can be what makes things grow as long as you give it the chance.

Flickr photo via Teeny!

Your Guide to Job Search and Personal Branding on Twitter

Twitter--the 140 character social networking site--is becoming increasingly useful for job seekers. It doesn't work for everyone, of course, but it can certainly turbo-charge your networking, a key strategy for successful job hunting. It can also be an effective part of your personal branding campaign.

Here, then, is a (somewhat) definitive link guide to getting a new job (or losing your current one) through Tweeting. (I put this together for a client, so thought it would be nice to share).

Getting Started on Twitter--If you're new to Twitter. . .

• Newbie's Guide to Twitter
• Getting Started on Twitter in Plain English
• Surviving the Twitter Learning Curve
• An Illustrated Guide to Using Twitter
• 13 Twitter Tips and Tutorials for Beginners

Twitter Skills & Culture--You'd think it would be easy to type 140 characters and go, but like all social networks, Twitter has a culture that requires some skill to navigate. Ignore this section at your own risk.

• Twitter Vocab--note that using "tw" in a word (as in "tweeps" instead of "peeps" or "twirting" for "flirting") is a fundamental Twittering skill.Or at least it shows you're one of the cool kids.
• 10 Twitter Etiquette Rules
• Top 7 Twitter Commands Everyone Should Know
• How to Use @Replies
• How to Retweet
• To Follow or Not to Follow: That is the Question
• 9 Useful Sites for Finding People to Follow on Twitter
• Find the Right People to Follow on Twitter
• How to Unfollow with Class
• The Twitter Hashtag: What is it and How Do You Use It? 
• The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags

Pimp Your Profile--Think of your Twitter profile as your "digital interview suit." First impressions count.

• Pimp my Twitter Page
• Twitter Avatars as Personal Branding
• How to Give a Personalized Touch to Your Twitter Page
• Develop a Twitter Landing Page
• Brand Your Twitter Profile Page
• TwitPaper: Free Twitter Themes, Backgrounds and Layouts

Twitter for Job Search--The nitty gritty of job searching on Twitter.

People and Sites to Follow

• Twitter Users Every Job Seeker Should Follow
• 50 People Every Job Seeker Should Follow on Twitter
• 50 Twitter Users to Follow for Your Job Search
• The Job Search "Twibe" (Twitter users interested in job search)
• Twitter Job Search Resources--job boards to follow, many for specific career areas.
• 375 Twitter Feeds of Job Openings from Around the World (NEW--6/16/-09)

Job Search Tips and Tools

• How to Find a Job on Twitter
• TwitterJobSearch.com
• 15 Twitter Applications for Your Job Search
• Leverage Twitter for Your Job Search
• 5 Twitter Applications to Find Out Who is Hiring
• 50 Terrific Twitter Tips for Job Seekers
• The Beginner's Guide to Finding a Job with Twitter
• Use Twitter for Your Job Search
• The Twitter Job Search: Does it Live Up to the Hype?

Case Studies

• Tweeting for a New Job: A Case Study
• How David Murray Found a New Job on Twitter

Twitter Brand Building--The Twitter job search is also about building your online brand.

• Twitter for Personal Branding: Getting Started
• 30 Minute Brand-Building for Twitter
• 10 Ways to be Useful on Twitter
• 7 Ways to Be Worth Following on Twitter
• 30 Personal Branding Experts on Twitter
• Personal Brand: How to Build Yours on Twitter
• Leveraging Twitter to Market Your Personal Brand
• Using Twitter Hashtags to Boost Your Credibility and Visibility

Twitter Fails--Twitter isn't rocket science. These mistakes can be avoided with a little forethought.

• The Top 10 Tweets to Get You Fired
• 13 Fatal Twitter Mistakes
• Top 7 Mistakes Twitter New Twitter Users Make
• 30 Ways to Lose a Job on Twitter