TLDCast Podcast

We all know feedback is important. But have you ever considered feedback an act of love? That's what our guest Patrick Cootes was here to help us understand. As the cofounder of Mindstone, he’s on a mission to empower organizations to change the way they approach knowledge management and learning. And a big part of that is viewing feedback as an act of love, a way of helping your team improve and get better at what they do. Patrick gave us a lot to think about and I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm sure you'll enjoy the episode.

Jonathan Peters, PhD, is the Chief Motivation Officer at Sententia. He has spent over a decade studying the science and art of motivation and persuasion. As a speaker, he has helped audiences from Melbourne, Australia to Augusta, Maine more effectively communicate with their customers and team-members. With Sententia, he applies his knowledge and experience to make learning more enticing, engaging, and encouraging through gamification. Jonathan is the co-author of Deliberate Fun: A Purposeful Application of Game Mechanics to Learning Experiences, author of several titles, and ghostwriter of 62 books. But he is best known as a bourbon connoisseur.

This is definitely one of my favorite episodes of the nearly 800 in our archive. Our guest was Belo Miguel Cipriani of OLEB Media. Belo became blind in 2007. Based in San Francisco, CA, he was formerly a UNIX Administrator and Software Sales professional. After losing his sight, he had to learn how to interface with technology in completely different ways, mostly relying on accessibility features as designed by software vendors. And in this episode, you'll hear about his journey, his thoughts on digital inclusion; Belo even shared how he interfaces with the screen reader on his iPhone. Altogether, talking with Belo was inspirational and educational and I highly recommend checking this one out.

Bridget Manley was our latest Member Showcase guest and was an interesting one at that. With a background in teaching and journalism, she found instructional design and hasn't looked back. Now a business owner with her husband, they're both producing L&D services and products for Ascendant Design and Training. It was really interesting to hear how Bridget evolved to this point. She basically decided she was unemployable and had to go the freelance route; and now she's a busy business owner making her own schedule. Give this one a listen; you'll enjoy it.

With a PhD in Economics, experience as an early YouTube educator, and an L&D stint at NASA, our most recent Community Member Showcase guest, Laura Middlesworth, has some stories to tell. She just embarked on her journey as a freelance instructional designer, and we talked with Laura about her interesting path, and where she's now headed.

Leigh Ann Morgan was our latest Community Member Showcase guest and she has an interesting and unique journey to Instructional Design. Leigh Ann started out in cosmetology, then switched careers to get her degree in dietetics. And from there, after getting a request to help teach some classes, found herself loving being an educator. Which has ultimately led her to getting her Master's in Instructional Design and Technology and now working full time as an Instructional Designer. And her dream job if she wasn't an Instructional Designer? Fashion designer. Give this one a listen if you'd like to hear more about Leigh Ann and her path to L&D.

Dan Ralabate is a UX designer at Walmart Global Tech. His professional experience spans the corporate agency and freelancing industries to get learners and end users alike projects that look good --- and function better. Creativity takes the helm for this profession to enhance interactions that are intuitive to the masses. Check out this episode where Dan and Monique St Paul discuss Intersections in Learning and UX!

We started our Exploring Freelancing event a little early with a TLDCast featuring freelance newbie Stephanie Diggins and seasoned freelancers Lisa Crockett and Parker Grant. Stephanie brought a series of questions she has about freelancing and asked for answers from Lisa and Parker --- and they delivered. The conversation ended up being about much more than just freelancing. This is a great listen for anyone interested in instructional design careers and the paths they can take. Give this one a listen. And don't forget to register for our free conference next week, Exploring Freelancing. Lisa, Parker and several other speakers will be featured at the event, and if this TLDCast was any indication, it's going to be a really excellent conference. You can find more information about the Exploring Freelancing Conference here: https://www.thetldc.com/events/2022/exploring-freelancing/exploring-freelancing *Note: we had some technical difficulties at the start of the broadcast, so the first few minutes were edited out due to echo.

In this episode, I decided to bring together some of our more experienced community members to talk about the importance of Mentorship. Cyndi Nagel, Toddi Norum, and Nick Floro joined the broadcast, and all three are experienced mentors and have been mentees in the past. Mentorship makes a difference. Maybe even more so in an educational community like ours. And all of our guests shared their experiences with mentorship to emphasize the value of it, how to get it right, and what mistakes to avoid. So if you're interested in being a Mentor or if you're looking for a Mentor, keep an eye out in the newsletter; I'll be launching a couple of forms to fill out if you'd like TLDC to do some matching for you.

In this Community Discussion, Luis goes over the 2022 event schedule as its currently planned. It's ambitious --- we're looking at about one virtual conference every month aside from our weekly TLDCasts. Luis also tried out the beta version of crowdcast on this episode. There are some nice upgrades, the interface looks great, and we're excited to see the final product. But it's not quite ready as the primary platform --- there's still a few bugs to sort out --- but it's getting close. So give this episode a listen to get a peek into what our 2022 is looking like.