Reflections on AWS Solutions Architect Exam

I’m happy to say I just passed the AWS Solutions Architect Certification Exam with an overall score of 75% (not to say that I’m thrilled with the 75% score, but I think the exam was fair). FWIW, I wanted to share a few reflections on the experience overall. To begin with, I had a lot of traditional… Read More »

Brand storytelling engagement and Chipotle’s Scarecrow

Today, I came across a post entitled “How Powerful Brand Storytelling Can Supplant Commercials” at the Content Marketing Institute by Michael Weiss,  from figure18. I hadn’t heard much about the term ‘brand storytelling,’ but it really resonated with me because I’ve been using the term ‘interactive storytelling’ to describe my approach of using simulations and… Read More »

The elearningmanifesto is too hard, I prefer the dlearningmanifesto I just made up

Like many others in the eLearning field, I watched Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, Clark Quinn, and Will Thalheimer present the elearningmanifesto, which, if this were a serious post, I would strongly suggest absorbing and adopting. However, such is not the case (the part about the serious post), let me spend a few minutes expounding on what I call my… Read More »

Sourcing the Right Content at the Right Time for Marketing

Last week, John Lane from Centerline Digital wrote an informative piece entitled “Think People Hate Marketing? Try the Right Content in the Right Place“. In short, I agree with his observations that people’s negative reaction to marketing/advertising tends to be the result of an unwelcomed disruption of the marketing material. He identifies two types of dissonance:… Read More »

How Nike+ Running app gets me motivated

I have had a gym membership for many years, and most of my efforts to exercise and lose weight have, at best, succeeded for a few weeks. That is, until about December, 2012, when I came across the Nike+ Running app for my Android device. Now looking back 9-10 months, I can see a number of things… Read More »