a weekly show about work. I'm Roscoe. What's that noise? on the door and the furious barking of my dog The postman's arrived. favorite mailbag episodes where we answer So please do keep sending these and the address is custom. you need like us to discuss But for now Ross. Hello Ross. Hello Ross and Hello Ross. So you both know the format? and pick out a random question. Podcast producer.
so very much friend of the show part of the mindless podcast family here's a question what are the benefits of using audio podcasts for learning and what examples do you have of seeing this work well in organizations So I actually was reminded of a newsletter that you wrote on this very topic, Ross, called If Your Podcast Isn't Available on Mobile, Does It Make a Sound? One of those classic newsletters where you've started from the title and worked backwards. I honestly don't even remember it.
Was it good? Yeah, well, I mean, I enjoyed it. Clearly it stuck out for me. I think one of the points that you make in that is the challenge with using podcasts in the context of organizational learning is distribution. So a lot of people will listen to podcasts through some sort of RSS feed, Apple podcast, Spotify, whatever it might be. They're often doing that.
on the way into work on the train, maybe while they're making dinner. And so having some kind of formal structure around that where people are at their desks. It's a little difficult to imagine how that works. And obviously you can make your podcast topically available. but then organizations are probably not going to be comfortable having all that content out in the world where it can be discovered by people outside their organization.
So I think it's kind of a tricky one to do effectively. Where we've used it recently is to provide accessible alternatives to digital learning experiences that we've designed. So I think often... When we think of accessibility, you know, you can design an experience that adheres strictly to certain guidelines or standards like WCAG.
I think to me is still less rich. It's accessible, people can access the content, but it's not as rich as maybe the experience that is offered to people who are, say, not using a screen reader. And so we've been using podcasts to give people a choice of experiencing an experience or exploring experience through... audio or by going through a new learning module. And we've had a lot of good feedback on that. So that's sort of how we've been using it recently. What are your thoughts?
varying thoughts, the first of which is based on a bit of data we've collected at mind tools a couple of years ago um of courses and it's about preferences for podcasts over time and what that looks like and
whether or not users actually value them as a way of learning in all sorts of capacities. And we find that they do. I think that the increase that we've seen... it wasn't as high as i expected and but it does increase when you compare also generations as well so we see that you know millennials for example are using podcasts slightly more often than baby boomers um as just just just a comparison um so we have seen this this increase and i think
reflected perhaps in how we're seeing or how I've seen some organisations such as Deloitte who has a great podcast. using them within their organisations as well. The reason why I really value the podcast approach to learning is about taking really sometimes quite complex topics and making them feel far more relatable and personal. And I think within businesses, this is a strong way to help build
sort of a culture that allows people to really talk about things on a little bit of a deep level but also get more out of them from that perspective. As a psychologist who understands how people learn from a brain mechanism perspective, we do understand that people are more likely to retain knowledge and information when they have listened to stories. And I think podcasts allow us to... Talk around.
you know information and insight into like i say dive a little deeper So as you will both be very familiar and something that we joked about before we actually started today's podcast, when I join these podcasts I do often talk about insights and data and I rely on research reports and I unpack those a little bit.
but it's an opportunity for me to data story tell which is one of my absolute favorite skills and and i think that's again what podcasts are allowing us to do on a different level which we maybe don't have Yeah, other outlets that was quite so powerful in that sense. So a few thoughts, I think, of different angles. But as you can tell, I'm kind of a pro podcast.
perspective for learning so i think there's a lot of value in that i think it depends on context doesn't it it's like uh it's to ross's point it's like what is that person doing while they're listening to a podcast so if you're sat at a desk all day you're probably not going to listen to a podcast and in fact we see this on the mytoes.com platform so you have quite a lot of audio content on there which hardly gets used at all relative to other content types. It really doesn't get consumed.
But our consumer members, the people who buy an individual amount of subscription, do get access to our Paying Points podcast, which is separate to this one. And they access that through a private RSS feed. So to Ross's point around. Basically, can you listen on your phone while you're out and about doing something else? Private RSS feed is one way to do that. So you can listen through Apple or Podbean or whatever app that you're using. But you do need to...
pay for it. You need to be a MindTools member to do that. I think that's one way that organizations, because an organization can set up a private ad assess feed as well. And you can restrict it to listeners have to have an organizational email, for example, in order to subscribe. So there's ways to do it. I do think it works really well if you don't want to come to a definitive answer to your point.
So often one of the things that we get stuck on when we're creating digital learning experiences is stakeholders get very obsessed about we have to have an organization-wide agreed piece of text that's written down and someone could screenshot it or bring it up at some point. Whereas I think with an audio format, there's some allowances for... We don't know the answers to everything. We're working this ourselves and sharing different perspectives.
But that's also how you discover your answer to something, isn't it? You know, it's through those conversations and it gives us a chance to do that. Alright, I'm going to go back into our mailbag and here is a letter. It's not a letter. From author and consultant Michelle Paris-Slater. So she writes, lots of people have been leaving learning and development roles lately. Editorial aside.
I think we have seen this across a lot of the clients that we work with here at MindTools and also across the wider vendor space. We've got a tough economic climate out there. Michelle continues, there's a kind of grief in such change. There is also an excitement for what people will do next. How can NND support people in such times? And is that our job?
I think there has been a kind of noticeable period of change more generally, and I think that's affected by lots of things. I think the economy is one, and then there's been changes in how... learning happens within organisations and therefore it has had a greater impact. across individuals who, within L&D teams are no exception, are thinking about what do they want to do and how do they want to move forward in their own careers.
But I think an L&D role in this is that they do have a responsibility to support this change. They don't own the change. in that sense, that they have a responsibility to support people through change.
And of course, you will have maybe people within your team or within your organisation, not only limited to L&D, who might be thinking about, you know, where do I want to be next or what do I want to do? And I think as... L&D individuals and teams we we can support them through that you know and have conversations with them or create.
even create things like sense-making spaces so people can have open conversations about how they're processing maybe changes going on within the business or changes going on within the industry and you know what does that mean for them and how does that impact them kind of in their own career path, I suppose. Yeah. And that's just going to get worse. Like the... I think particularly with the... Well, did you both see the AI 2027 thing that was doing the rounds? I haven't read it yet, but...
Yes. Buckle up. This is a prediction of what the next few years looks like in the AI space. written by various AI experts, including a former OpenAI researcher. It is truly terrifying. Spoiler Ross, we're all gonna die. I know that much. I know it's not the cheeriest. The predictions I do think get more and more wild as they go out not terribly far, you know, kind of two, three years away, something like that. But I think... What they describe seems plausible, certainly in the very short term.
And we're already seeing it. The CEO of Shopify last week issued a memo that then got leaked, and then so he posted himself online, basically putting a freeze on our hiring decisions. I was like, the first thing you got to do if you want to hire is see if an AI can do it first. And you then have to justify why an AI can't do it. And then we'll look at whether you can hire someone. And I think that's just going to get more and more the case.
And so helping people adapt to change, people are going to leave organizations, new roles are going to come up, new people are going to come in. I agree that that's where L&D's focus needs to be. Where are we now? What skills do we need in the future? And how do we help people navigate that journey?
Yeah, I think I read Michelle's question in a couple of different ways. I think there is the whole thing around training people for their next job, even if that next job isn't within your organization necessarily.
If you are developing people and they feel like they're developing, building new skills, they're more likely actually probably to stick around instead of deciding to move on somewhere else. The other way that I thought about it is How do you help people deal with that grief that Michelle references that maybe comes with people departing organizations? It's kind of difficult on the one hand to imagine what L&D would do.
directly there to help people. If you maybe attend a seminar on grief or something, it doesn't seem like the most effective way to do that. I think managers are probably... Back to your place, this is going to sound very self-serving given our focus on managers at MindTools. I do think managers are best place to help their team members deal with the emotions that they experience as a result of this kind of organizational change and managers who are.
emotionally intelligent, demonstrate social sensitivity, are going to be better equipped to have those conversations. Yeah. I would wholeheartedly agree with you Ross in that I think managers are in a bit of a unique position.
So in our Building Better Managers report, it reminded me of a quote that when we were describing the responsibilities that managers have and kind of showing the breadth of those responsibilities, one of the things we said about them is that managers have to support decisions they didn't make.
and quite often change feels like that so we are often the executors of change and particularly managers are in our businesses that play that role rather than the initiators so they're not the ones necessarily always making decisions whether that's a business decision or Whether it's a decision on how the world is moving, you know, a lot of that's even out of our leaders' control. But there is a research study in the European Management Journal that was published, I think, last year.
And they were looking at leaders who are executors of change rather than initiators. So we can lump managers into that role as well. And they actually found that when managers or leaders have resistance to the change of any capacity and don't know how to self-regulate that. and don't know how to kind of manage that, it can spill onto their people and actually it's very positively associated with followers having resistance as well. So these things kind of go hand in hand.
So when we talk about managers being at the heart of a business's culture and having such an impact in many ways, I think this is a nice illustration of If we have managers who aren't happy with a decision that's been made but are having to kind of push through anyway, that isn't going to go unnoticed and that's going to have a really big impact on other people. So I think from an L&D perspective, it's well, how do you deal with this?
How can we help our managers come to terms with maybe... decisions that they haven't had to make so again going back this idea of having you know sense making spaces perhaps where we can have really honest conversations as managers about processes and things that we're going through. But also how do you focus on the skills aspect of things like self-regulation?
allowing managers to get better at realising that they might not agree with something but they understand that it's a business decision or it's something that they've got to work with and move with. so how do they you know help their people how do they get better at guidance so how do they you know understand that this is a situation that we're now in how do i develop my people to ensure that we have a team that are prepared to kind of move with this as a as a group.
How can they be better at things like transparent communication even? How do they explain to their people what they're going through and how we can work together to achieve something in the context of change that maybe they don't quite like? that the L&D team can support in that space. But I do think, as you say, Ross managers are a great group.
to kind of focus on. Yeah, I mean, we've experienced our own, you know, change here at MindTools recently because after almost 20 years, you know, our colleague and boss Oh, and decided to move on somewhere else. That wasn't something that I elected for him. He decided he wanted to go and pursue a different opportunity. Amen. It's been nice that it's made no noticeable difference whatsoever to mine tools. I think that's made it slightly easier.
And in fact, in this podcast, we've kind of replaced it with you, Anna. I think we all agree it's enormous. That's very kind. If I wasn't here, I would be interested to hear how you handled that. So, next question. Mark Saunders asks, if L&D just solved email, by which Mark means made it work just 10% better. The return on investment would be very nice. How would we do that?
I peaked in the mailbag and loved this question, you know. I thought this was a really good one. I love this question as well. Who wants to go first? I want to go first. Sorry. and I had loads of little ideas I was sort of thinking this morning about kind of what would we do how does L&D support this and I think that L&D are the right sort of team, actually, to handle something like this because it isn't necessarily... Hard to disagree, but we can come to it. Okay.
I just believe that they're in a good position because it's not necessarily somewhere in between both of you. But it's not solely an IT issue or a comms issue, but I think it's more about things like culture and habits as well and well-being and all of those sorts of things. My thoughts on how would learning and development teams support improvements to how we email?
would be kind of thinking, well, what are the expectations? What do we want our people to do in this space? And, you know, giving them understandings on things like, is something email worthy? Is it something that should be sent via Teams or via Slack?
you know what are the expectations around how quickly people should respond you know can this how do we support leaders to kind of action this from the top you know no weekend emailing for example could be a rule that that's introduced and how does our new team support that so that
understood as kind of the expectation. Are there opportunities for recognising kind of good emailing behaviours? So ways that we can sort of celebrate the fact that emails are, I don't know, happening less across the business and that's a really positive thing and for what reasons, you know, how do we support people to write clearer subject lines. or how do we get people to kind of come up with the practice kind of email hacks, so things like delay sends.
Can you catch those email mistakes even? Can we help people realize that there are things that they might not know how that they can do within emailing now? And then it also prompted me because I had an experience recently where I was screen sharing with my colleague who I work very closely with and she was asking me because my email just popped up. And she said, oh wow, that's very organized.
And I literally just showed how I file client-related stuff. And she said, oh, that's great. I hadn't thought about doing it like that. And then it prompted me to think if people were having those sorts of conversations, there are probably people in the organisation that are doing this really, really well and have things in place that support them in that space that they could learn and teach across the business.
So I was always thinking that that was a nice illustration of how we could, as learning and development people, set up opportunities for that. come against me now because I can see her. I'm absolutely itching for it. That was my very practical approach, I think.
is what I will say. I don't think they're practical at all. I think they're completely unrealistic. The one thing I thought, maybe, maybe, and the city of us have talked about this before, is You could maybe have like every Friday, everyone in the organization gets an email comparing themselves to the average email sender within the organization. saying like, you know, you send 20% more emails than the average person on my entails.
Are you happy with that? Maybe, but I think these are very martial differences. You used to be the biggest slacker in the company. I was the biggest slacker, that's right. I would say more slack messages than anyone else at MindTools. Which I shall explain, because I was the only home worker. So I communicate with everyone via Slack. slacker of the week. The problem is not email. The problem is us. And Owen actually talked about this in one of his last podcasts that he did was...
When the washing machine was invented, it was invented as a great time saver, but it didn't save time. People just washed their clothes more. And the same thing happened with email when it replaced the telephone or letters. So we have this thing that makes it super convenient to communicate instantly without ever having to speak to someone.
And now the tasks that used to take me like 20 to 30 minutes can in just one minute be passed to someone else. And I feel great about powering through all this work. The work actually hasn't got done though. It's just been displaced to elsewhere in the organization and other people are trying to displace their work to me. And workplace chat like Slack or Teams is even worse than this. So email is not the problem, it's human nature. So I'm going to go for the more radical.
Not quite can we return to sending letters to one another, but could we cap everyone's email allowance to like 20 a day? pick your number maybe 10 and then that's all everyone gets and they have to decide how they're going to use those emails i think that's interesting it's
Maybe not that practical either, though, if you're in a client-facing role. I don't know. It's tricky. I think I agree with both of you, or maybe disagree with both of you in some ways. I mentioned deep work. Cal Newport spoke multiple times on this. podcast and in that book he mentions
He describes the fact that a lot of knowledge work is just moving information around. And when I read that, I'm unable to get out of my head is what you were saying Ross about you're just moving something to somebody else's desk and it gives this sort of illusion satisfying illusion of doing stuff but actually you're just taking up a piece of paper, walking over and putting it on someone else's desk and walking away. I do think there are lots of different people with different people.
being totally clear of which of them is meant to do it and then it can just exist as a thing that floats around yeah um I do think a lot of it probably needs to change at a systems level. So I think this is sort of the promise, but maybe also one of the risks of AI is that this could make this either much better or much worse.
where you just have these AI agents ceaselessly pinging each other back and forth with email messages, so we're not doing it. Maybe there's a ROI saving there, but still just creates lots more information. Culture, I think, is a big piece. How much is sending emails expected or just understood as what work looks like in your organization? Are you expected to respond to emails?
late at night, over the weekend, just to acknowledge that you've received it and to show that you're doing something. But then to Anna's point, I think a lot of email behaviours are just picked up because... it's kind of like english in school i never really taught how to
write well, I think. Or at least I think that's a lot of experiences that people have. I feel like I learn more about grammar through studying foreign languages than I did through studying English. I think a lot of the assumption is just that people know how to use email.
but they come in with all these terrible habits. And we actually did develop a sort of short learning experience on best practices for writing emails for one of our clients and it included Advice like including a TLDR to London read in bold at the top of your message so that someone can skip immediately too. see what they need to get out of it. I've used that ever since. I love that. Yeah, I use that as well if I have an email that's too long.
So I think some of it is just making people aware of what they're doing with email and trying to encourage behavior change through that. But it's a tricky one. I also love this question, but didn't have a clear answer. Okay. Well, that's email solved. We've got two more questions, so we're going to pick up the pace slightly. So from Carl Alcintola-Davis, you work in learning and development. What's the difference, Ross?
I think development often occurs as a result of learning, but the slightly broader learning is one thing that can lead to development. I think the nice thing about development, the inclusion of development, we're not just the learning or the training department, is that... allows for a slightly broader understanding of what
L&D's remit is, I actually wrote a newsletter about this recently, about renaming L&D and why we could do that and why we probably should do it, but it wouldn't matter. So maybe put a link to that in the show notes. Yeah, I guess initially when I was thinking about this, I thought... For me, these two things are kind of inseparable in practice, but the differences are related to things like learning to me is a little bit shorter term, maybe a bit more role-based.
or perhaps focusing just on acquiring some new skills or some new knowledge. Whereas development is a little bit that sort of longer term kind of career based type approach where it's focusing more on kind of growth or your own maturity even and includes things like, you know. pathways, career pathways on leadership development as opposed to a training course or a workshop or maybe a digital module or something of that kind.
So I think that there are some kind of distinctions, but of course they're blurred because you can't develop someone without the learning. And learning is pointless if it doesn't then feed into a person's development or broader development as a result. And I quite liked that as a kind of concept. This is why these two things have to be together.
But I suppose if we were to have to separate and describe them as such, that's probably how I would have approached that. When I got my new job title, Chief Learning Officer, I put it in my friend's group chat. I was like, oh, I got promoted today. That's my new job title. And they all said... Not a real job. And I was like, what does it mean? Like someone was like, are you like the best learner in the company? everything these terms are.
Since I'm very sponsored. Quite vague. Yeah. And final question from our friend Phil Wilcox from Emotion at Work. Which emotion do you feel most often and not expressed at work? and which do you most feel on the next press? Oh. I actually find this the hardest question you get first, Ross. I can go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wrote rage for feel but not express as a joke. That was my joke. Quaking was rage. White heart rage.
But I think it's actually frustration. It feels like a simmering sense of frustration for quite a lot of the day. Because things are taking longer than they should, because I'm less effective than I want to be, because... someone's just sent me an email which took 60 seconds for them but it's going to take me 20 minutes to think of a actually action you're welcome
This thing, yeah, I know, exactly. Yeah, someone who will go unnamed. So there's, like, this sort of, like, simmering frustration I feel quite a lot of time. But the... I'm not sure if this is an emotion. The emotion I feel most and do express Is it laughter? I don't think that's an emotion it's not quite joy though it's not like i'm sitting here with a massive grin on my face having a wonderful time all day every day but i was thinking about it i do laugh quite a lot of work at work
I think largely on account of the pay-to-view and certain other colleagues. I do enjoy this job even when I'm sort of like frustrated and laughing about it. So that was my answer.
I have clearly spent too much time together because my answer was exactly the same. I think what I found difficult about this question in a very it's a very full question is finding words to articulate the emotions that i feel and being like is that an emotion uh so like initially i was like stress which is actually like i guess a collection of Maybe you have a different perspective as my manager. I feel like I... Try not to... Can't imagine why you're stressed, you're not that busy.
Yeah. I was just spending all day generating images on ChatGPT. But it's very stressful and they don't come out the way that I want them to. I know. But there's like some action for outside the box. Terrible. But... Yeah, and then I was like, do I feel like I don't have permission to appear stressed? I don't think that's true, because there are times where I'm stressed and I just send you a long, venting message. We've worked together for like eight years, is that right?
This is the 10th year I've been in the details. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have like three times in that entire time, send me one of your little rants. Or your tiny tantes. You know, that's when we do something about it. And the rest of the time, it's your problem. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Nana, what about yourself?
Well, this has prompted me because, I mean, again, I kind of picked a more, I guess, negative emotion for the thing that I don't express and sort of been obviously quite positive for the thing that I do. And then it kind of got me thinking, oh, this is a reflection of how comfortable we feel.
in this space and I tapped directly into this piece of you know what's the psychological safety like in your organization because we should be allowed to feel frustrated at times and actually mine was more to do with disappointment I think there have been moments where somebody's or something has disappointed me you know maybe it's not been what i expected or maybe um Yeah, it's not kind of worked in the way that I'd hoped to or something hasn't happened and I felt disappointed.
And I think that is something that I probably wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable admitting that perhaps I've been disappointed by a person or an action. And then on the flip side of that is that I express, I hope I do, a lot of joy. but then on reflection i'm thinking you can tell i'm a psychologist i'm thinking is it honest is it is it true joy or am i sometimes putting the joy on or elevating the joy in order to kind of be the person that is smiling in the group and trying to
Yeah, create a sense of this is I'm happy all the time. And I think sometimes we have to be safe to say, actually, no, I'm not feeling so great right now. Actually, I feel a bit annoyed that this has happened or I feel a bit disappointed or.
even embarrassed if there's something you know it allows you to feel like that and I think that's okay and so I found this question really hard because I think actually if you were in a really psychologically safe space and I actually feel very lucky at MindTussles because I do have that where I can be really honest with the people around me in my team and my manager and I can say that you know I'm actually not so happy about this.
and I think that that means those two things will come a bit more even as in you won't have a position where you feel that you can't express one thing and can express something else you would end up struggling to kind of pick between them
And so I kind of grappled with it a little bit. I could see how some organisations will feel quite differently and they will have very strongly emotions that they feel they can express and those that they can't. And I wonder what that says about maybe the culture that you are in. I've probably taken that question and dug a bit deep, but it was something that I thought was an interesting thought.
Well, what made me think is I have cried in front of multiple people. Multiple people have cried in front of me. On account, I don't think of anything I've said. But it's... Yeah, I don't feel any embarrassment about that and I don't think those others would either. Yeah, I think that's a reflection and that's a good thing. The fact that you can do that and you can be the person that can receive that for somebody else.
I think is a reflection on you're doing something right. If your people aren't coming to you and telling you that they're feeling sad or frustrated or upset or whatever it is. then I think maybe that's a reflection on you haven't got the safe environment that you should have within your team as a manager particularly. That's a very touching moment to end on. So now we're going to go to an ad break. Quick change of tone.
Good news this month for MindTools individual subscribers are The Ask M Coach has now been released. meaning you can't in essence have a conversation with our content. even have a cry with it if you want. You can either ask a question and receive or you can trigger a coaching experience and get on-demand you need it. by our evidence-based leadership I used the Ask Em coach just the other day to talk through an issue I was having with young Mr. Dickey here. I get a good issue.
And this feature is also now available too. So if you're a mindless customer I want to add the Ask M question. please do reach out to your client success manager. With our content hub manager skills assessment. Now ask Emcoach. You have everything you need to provide on-demand better. Do get in touch if you want to know more. Ross, Anna and myself are always willing to have a friend application chat Details for all of the above. Are we going to share something like that?
days I don't know would you I can't. I think I might have talked about mine on a previous pod. It was a long time ago if I did. But I don't think that's about it. Is it the eggs again? It's nothing to do with eggs this week. Egg update. I confirmed it is not possible to poach an egg. I tried it after the recording of our last episode and your technique didn't work at all on it. I think it's more that there's a bit of an art to it.
try again yeah and plug that gap for us because you will get there eventually um i think i've spoken about before but maybe haven't so if you're a listener for a long time then this may But I think it's an illustration of that I do do continuous learning and I just learn randomly once a week and then never again. You both will know, and anyone who has been in a presentation of mine, I'm a big fan of a slide deck transition. As interesting, as dynamic and as fun as possible.
But because I like to kind of... dabble in the area of information design. So taking data or insights and turning it into something that looks interesting and meaningful as well. And I got into this. you know slowly over my career but perhaps more sort of seriously over the last 18 months and that was because I found a a content YouTube called Luis Arrutia who calls himself The Presentation Guy.
and he does these little short videos of how to use things like PowerPoint and create a cool slide transition to tell some story about a given topic. And I set myself a challenge about 18 months ago that each month at least I would sit down for a couple of hours for one afternoon and I would block a little time.
and I would learn a new transition. And then I would try and bake it into whatever slide deck I'm working on at that particular moment. So it could be I'm going to be doing a webinar, it could be that I'm giving a talk at Learning Tech, which I am. week and or it could be you know an internal insight session and it was great because what it allowed me to do is learn something new and then use it immediately.
but then also have a sort of catalogue or template of slide transitions of my sleeves so that in the future when I put a deck together I can revisit those and say well that was quite fun, that worked well. and kind of repurpose it for sharing information in a new and more exciting way.
I've managed to keep it up. I would say pretty much every month I've managed to sit down and learn something. So this week I spent a little bit of time because, as I said, I have a presentation next week at Learning Tech. I'm delivering a talk. This week. This week, for when this podcast comes out, it is this week. This week, with our lovely Claire, also from Mantles, and we're going to, yeah, you're going to see some slide deck transitions if you attend that, so watch out.
Is it worth seeing what it's about? The talk is an opportunity for me to show off my transitions. It is about behavioural change, how we measure that within our businesses and how do we identify as well the sorts of behaviours that we want to change. And so Claire and I are doing a bit of a double act. giving you some insight from a behavioural science perspective but also a quite practical session as well on
what does that look like in practice and how might that play out with one of our real clients that we've worked with quite recently. So it is not to be missed and we're very excited about it. Yeah, perfect. There's also a session on blended learning that Claire is hosting and Paula Hughes from our custom team is taking part in a session on award-winning learning. So we'll put links to all of that.
in the show notes if you happen to be listening to this before learning tech. This is kind of the day before learning tech, so I realise it's quite short. Ross, what have you learned this week? Mine is utterly trivial in comparison, but you sent me a link which allowed me to customize my LinkedIn. url so after having for years url which has lots of random numbers in it my url is now linkedin slash in slash ross dash dicky so
There'll be a link in the show notes, but you can also just type it in and easily find me there now. Lots of ways to connect with me. I'm glad you figured that out, Ross. Yeah, that's the best thing that's happened all week. I always got annoyed at my messy LinkedIn URL and now it's like
other roses, but just with Garner instead of Dickie. Very neat and tidy. And I think mine is Dr. Anna Barnett, so I also have... It was yours that inspired me, Anna. I saw yours and I thought, how has she done this? I figured this out maybe a year or so ago. It was a while ago. But when I figured it out, I was quite impressed. I now realise I should have shared it at that time. So I apologise for not passing on the knowledge.
All right. Mine's also trivial, so this is a sliding scale of triviality. I've been reading The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, and I came across this passage about the residents of London Bridge. I'm not going to do a Mark Twain impression. The people talked bridgey talk and thought bridgey thoughts and lied in a long level direct substantial bridgey way.
Children were born on the bridge, were reared there, grew to old age and finally died without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London Bridge alone. And I thought, that's weird. People used to live on London Bridge. And so I looked it up. And true enough, there used to be rows of houses on the bridge over the Thames until they were demolished in 1832. Thank you. That's slightly less trivial than my thing I think. Maybe less immediately applicable.
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