Lifelong learning

I feel very strongly about the importance of learning new skills on a continual basis. This might be the case since I often ask to be the 'teacher' and would like 'learners' to participate. Another reason for my learning passion could be the direct and positive impact learning choices have had on my career.

Those of you who went to (library) college before the Internet existed in a common business way, and who chose to be early adopters of technology innovations will immediately understand my position. The folks in my Grant MacEwan 5 week night class on HTML editing in 1993 will also be aware of the impact of what we learned.

It isn't enough to welcome change, I believe we have to anticipate it, prepare for it, and embrace all of the potential chaos and turmoil that change brings. Chaos and turmoil are the harbingers of opportunity for those glass half full types like myself.

As 2008 comes to a close, I would like to share the list of things I learned this year. The list is in no particular order. In 2008 I learned:

• that blogging about something is a good way to remember it;
• how it only takes 5 hours of development time to make a 3 minute screencast;
• that I like making screencasts of training tips and that people like having them available;
• that BC acts can be brought into force by a Regulation;
• that gathering statistics with Acumin is easy and of great assistance for reporting;
• that I can keep more accurate time without a paper time sheet;
• that I should have bought stock in RIM;
• that weekly blogging is more difficult than writing six articles a year for a paper magazine;
• that my theories on law firm knowledge management are not too unique;
• how to transfer my library catalogue data from MS Access to MySQL and then the Intranet;
• that a little patience goes a long way - and too often, I don't even a little;
• that Goof Off is the best solvent for removing ugly labels from books;
• that my children are mysteriously technologically adept;
• that a Wiki is a pretty great way to collaborate on a conference presentation;
• that there is a short line for Calgary passengers through security at the Edmonton International Airport;
• how to save formatted cases from Canadian Labour Law Library;
• that not everyone is as excited as I am about Cntrl' being the shortcut for pasting todays date in a field in MS Access;
• that a backup laptop is a handy thing to have if you are giving a presentation;
• that I should have drafted this post in January and added to it as the year went on;
• that feeding my Facebook status with Twitter annoys some of my Friends, but others find it useful;
• how to set up a wireless network;
• how to install VoIP;
• that chickens don't appreciate anything;
• restart is a good strategy for many things, including creme caramel;
• that you can write a pretty long blog post while waiting for Word to process your copy and paste of a long list of NRS hit results.

Merry New Year everyone.