I’m using the book and learning more about in-depth aspects of WordPress and the results are actually visible in my “Blog-Playground” area at http://knowandshare.de/wptry/

Once I have more info and knowledge, I share it surely with you all. This might also lead to me restructuring this main page, but we’ll see.

So back into the combined learning, using, sharing.

One of the important aspects in all parts of our life, but specifically in our professional life, is to stay informed. While this was done in previous times using only a limited number of sources and resources, it has become a typical aspect of today’s knowledge workers to ensure that we are not overwhelmed by the offerings of information. The number of emails in your inbox is increasing, calls are happening all the time and there are numerous channels for news which are competing for getting your attention.

And yet, this diversity of information sources and formats might fulfill a demand which is present in our desire to stay informed. As is true with so many things in life, there are multiple ways to achieve the goal of gaining more expertise and/or keeping current. And doing so might be done by reading books, surfing to some blogs, getting input from listening to webinars or watching videos created by other experts.

Differentiated learning from my perspective means to enable people to use the best vehicle for them. Also, some format present a better approach for certain needs than other. Examples: Sharing best practices might go very well in a discussion, which could be recorded and listened to live. Last minute updates would be nicely done through blogs and up-to-the minute discussion can be facilitated not only in conference calls but also using Chat/Instant messaging.

So an effort for all Technology companies is to ensure that their field has the ability to keep updated and hence providing that multitude of formats is playing well in that arena and it also supports the needs of a flexible workforce (working remotely, different timezones, different access).
Formats that can be offered are eBooks, Blogs, Wikis, Video, Chat, Forums and not to forget the other formats like “real” books, newspapers, magazines etc.

Nicely fitting into this is the idea of asking experts to share their way of keeping up to date. This has the advantage to get real world lists of information which are proven by colleagues. Similar to recommendation lists on existing online-shops this is something that fits well into the human nature to check what others are doing and it has the additional benefit of enhancing networking between people with common interest. This further drives establishing networks of expertise.

A great combination is to actually use Social Web techniques to propagate this information to the employees. So in contrast to just put this information up on a webpage, how about putting this on a wiki, enabling the “crowd” to update and enhance this information (building a “wisdom of crowd”) and through comments drive ongoing discussion amongst experts. You can also then use RSS for these pages so people are informed about those areas that they are interested in (in contrast to do mass-broadcasting) and if you have micro-blogging in youur company, you might even use that to inform about updates or new additions.