“With today’s rapid pace of technological and economic change, the skills gap is widening worldwide. People need new skills to succeed in the changing economy, and organizations can’t find the talent they need to grow and thrive. Governments and nonprofits are on the front lines of efforts to close this gap.” Continue reading “Talent Development and the Future of Work” →

For some time, we’ve been envisioning the next phase of learning in Maine. We’ve met a number of times, in different places, to try to capture our vision of the future of education. And we’ve done this while being surrounded by the pervasive disruption of our familiar ways of educating students. Continue reading “The Future of Learning in Maine” →

For some time, I’ve been concerned about the loss of creative work inside corporate social networks, so I’ve avoided posting unique text or images into Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Continue reading “A month inside walled gardens” →

This afternoon, the wind whipped the leaves into wispy funnels that danced out around the woodpile and up the back hill, inviting us to come out. Continue reading “Into the liminal: an ode to autumn” →

In response to N.J. Smythe’s insightful commentary: If The Web is Really Dead, What Have We Lost?

As healthy people and societies evolve, they approach new experiences and then integrate them into a more expanded structure. I believe this applies to the evolution of technologies and media, too.

In television, we may have 500 channels, but several programs are still water-cooler experiences, albeit of a higher-common-denominator than the top 10 of 1970. The same goes for magazines. Just as diversity divides without common ground and unity becomes uniformity without multiple perspectives, so, too, will new online ecosystems — open and proprietary — facilitate the very experiences we need as humans. Continue reading “The Web is dead, long live the webs” →