The holiday season and the start of the year is often when we take a closer look at our lives: who we have become and where we want to go. We can compare our accomplishments to siblings, friends, or our past selves. However we measure success, whether it’s with small personal goals like losing a few pounds and quitting a bad habit or strategic goals like seeking higher monetary gain or devoting yourself to religion, our self-value is fueled by achievement. This is the time of year when we review our report card, and we are often more critical in grading ourselves than anyone else. How do we focus on goals that have been and need to be accomplished? Sales trainers use “Victory Logs” because they understand how much rejection and tenacity salespeople must have to land a sale. When it takes 25 or more calls for every hopeful conversation, logging the victories becomes an important tool to keep on calling. So it goes with the team you manage.

Jeff Cobb of Tagoras Inc. recently released a report focused on learning management systems for associations. Find below my interview with Jeff, discussing not only the report but also his life as an entrepreneur and his quest for a balanced lifestyle. Full disclosure: Web Courseworks’ LMS called CourseStage is one of the featured systems in the report. I am writing about the LMS Report because it is an invaluable guide for associations considering a business model involving eLearning. I am also intrigued by Jeff Cobb, the entrepreneur.

The association marketplace has caught my attention as a promising avenue for eLearning services. The market is as large and diverse as it can get— an association exists for almost all types of interests and businesses from the American Bar Association to the Knitting Guild Association. There are associations for associations, with ASAE being the most well-known, and there are associations for companies providing management services for associations (AMC Institute). No matter how you try to break down the association market, whether by size, staff, industry, trade or professional, the sheer size and variation of the market presents challenges much like a Rubik’s Cube.

Since I started writing a blog in early January, I have been surprised and impressed with the effect it has had on my own education. First of all, you can imagine the sheer number of eLearning blogs out there is pretty daunting to keep up with on a regular basis.

Then comes the issue of focusing my own blog—I’m interested in serious games, learning management, and self-paced eCourse development. Not to mention the ACTUAL theme of my blog is supposed to be the management of eLearning and being an eLearning entrepreneur. On one hand, I know I need to focus more, but then again I feel I could do more in the eLearning blogosphere to stimulate conversation and garner more comments if I broadened the scope.

Hello to those readers out there—Please help me out with your thoughts on this subject!

Here are a few highlights from my first few months with the blog (I gathered most of these stats from web analytics tools):

I am in a quick turnaround from speaking at the ASTD TechKnowledge ‘09 workshop and flying today to Atlanta for Training Magazine’s Annual Training 2009 conference for two speaking sessions. I am adjusting my two lectures (Managing eCourse Development, It’s a Team Approach and Moodle Doodle: Building Online Courses Using the Open Source CMS, Moodle) to account for people’s preoccupation with the current economic downturn. (Click on header to read more.) Watch for my Wednesday Blog post for more details!

As an eLearning entrepreneur, I want to address topics centered on managing projects and people. People are most definitely in the news this past week as we hit unemployment levels previously unseen by many in the workforce. I have had several conversations with individuals who have lost their jobs. My advice to them and all those currently employed is to always think like an entrepreneur. Here are my top ten quick tips: (click header to read more...)

This is my first blog post since 2005, when I wrote about my experiences playing the video game, XMEN, for a class I was taking at the University of Wisconsin. Last week I became inspired by my holiday reading of David Merman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Well here I go…As an eLearning entrepreneur, I have paid special attention to the overly depressing 2009 economic prognostications. This is my fourth recession. I’ve been self employed as an educational technologist since 1978. I feel that eLearning is going to be one of the winners during this current downturn. More associations (and there are thousands) will begin investing in online learning and will begin to eliminate a few face to face conferences.