A new cube!

status at work is measured by the size of your cube…at least here and I just moved up!. My first cube was about the size of my home office desk and in a weird corner. Everyone walked through my area to get to the kitchen, the bosses, the bathroom, the door to outside. Made for an interesting and distracting day. Now I have a cube about the size of my spare room (10×10). One wall is a bulletin board. I will be posting my little stickies with my learning objectives there so I can work with them, rearrange them, visualize how they should all work together. I finally have some storage space too, so the books will slowly be making into the office. I have an wide work surface to spread out. It may seem like writing shouldn’t take up much space, but I need to proof books, work aids, all of which have graphic elements and I need to review printed as well as electronically.

Work is progressing nicely. I created a survey before I went to Vegas and distributed it last week. I have received most of them back and the results have been very interesting. Most of the folks love their jobs and have a very high degree of job satisfaction. Most not only wanted but feel they would learn their job better with hands on activities. That didn’t surprise me at all as the work is providing customer service remotely for a software system. They need to know this frontwards and backwards and that just can’t be done in a lecture format. Today an awesome thing happened….my VP asked that I add a document to my “list”. This document is 90 % complete ( I really just needed to proof it once more) and I could have put it out today but her comment was “this is a marathon not a sprint, we don’t want you to burn out.” I have worked a marathon at a sprint pace for so long, I just didn’t know what to think. Now I know what I think…it is great to work where they want the material to be correct and attractive, a whole complete product.

I have also completed the initial MS Project plan for the overall Training and Documentation for the Software. The level of detail on the testing materials and learning objectives could be better, but I think that will come was I get closer to that section. I am deep in the Learner and Task Analysis section. That I have the opportunity and support to actually create the training in the proper manner is why I love being here. I am still learning. Some days, it is like I read a couple of chapter, then implement those ideas the next day. Most of the reading just reinforces what I am doing and that I am going down the correct path.

Now for the fun part, making my cube more personal and me. I have a big poster type picture with Terry and the kids. I am thinking some of my outdoor pictures and of course, the boys. What fun is it to be the crazy cat lady if no one knows?

Tools research next…