Welcome to the first Friday Finds of 2018. No matter where you are or what holidays you did (or didn’t) celebrate, I hope your new year is off to a fantastic start!! I also hope you’re not doing any first hand learning about what ‘bombogenesis’ is.
Want to Grow Your Network? Stay Home and Write
Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) reflects on his 10+ years of blogging and shares what the lessons he’s learned. This is something that really resonates with me and is well worth a read. You’ll get valuable insights on building your ‘personal bat signal’ and other great stuff. If you like what he has to say, you can subscribe to his newsletter.
Publishing ideas, learnings, opinions, for years & years is a great way to give. And you’ll figure out how to capture value later
http://andrewchen.co/professional-blogging/
Introduction to Modern Workplace Learning in 2018
Jane Hart has just released a free ebook – “Introduction to Modern Workplace Learning in 2018” This is the first in a 3 e-book series that includes some (updated) content from Jane Hart’s including her popular Top Learning Tools and Modern Workplace Learning Toolkit.
Note: Part 1 is FREE, Parts 2 and 3 can be purchased separately.
http://modernworkplacelearning.com/mwl-series-2018/
3 Scientific Reasons Great Design Makes People Want to Read Your Reports
Visual communication is becoming more and more ubiquitous and for good reason. You may have heard me say that everyone is a designer and this is more evidence of that. The way you design everything from emails and documents to slides and multimedia impact the ability of your audience to “synthesize information quickly and, more importantly, extract meaning and insights that influence their decision-making.” Good design helps you do that. Dive into Katy French’s (@katyifrench) post on the Column Five Media blog for the details.
https://www.columnfivemedia.com/3-scientific-reasons-for-great-report-design
How to Covert your Google Slides Presentation into an Animated GIF
This post from Amit Agarwal (@labnol) of Digital Inspiration introduces the Tall Tweets app for Google Slides, which helps you convert your presentations into high-quality animated GIFs that you can send via, embed online or share via Twitter and other social platforms.
Here’s an example from an old deck of mine that I shared on Twitter:
https://www.labnol.org/internet/google-slides-gif/30763/
Libby
I read a lot of books and over the years everytime I’ve tried to navigate the process of borrowing digital e-books I’ve always hit hurdles like awful user interfaces, painful search options, etc. I’m hoping those are a thing of the past now that I’ve found Libby. I’m just getting started, but so far this looks like a big improvement. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this one!
Talkbook: A Must-Have for Trainers and Presenters
If you’re a trainer, presenter or do any type of public speaking you know there’s a lot more that goes into it than just what people see. Beyond the obvious prep work leading up to an event, there is also a fair amount of work afterward to collect feedback, distribute the supporting resources or handouts (you are creating a separate takeaway document, right?!) and sharing your contact information. Find out how Talkbook can save you time and greatly improve that process.
https://mike-taylor.org/2018/01/04/talkbook-a-must-have-for-trainers-and-presenters/
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Mike Taylor 