S'mores for lunch and other reflections on 2020.

I’ve spent most of my year consulting with businesses and universities, transforming their services and courses into online experiences that allow them to serve their customers and students in the face of a historically monumental set of logistical challenges.

A small portion of the work was creating new, shiny, delightful things.

The vast majority of it was "all hands on deck" triage work, moving quickly, meeting hourly, and doing whatever it took to deliver high-quality material on time, sometimes just a day before it was needed. I stood arm-in-arm with product managers, department chairs, SMES, and stakeholders. No egos. Just get it done. The practice of just-in-time instructional design was taken to, and beyond its limit!

As irony would have it, my family was ravaged not by COVID, but by heart attacks and breast cancer and blood disorders. Many a work session was spent in an ER waiting room, or an ICU room, or in a hospital cafeteria. My clients were gracious, understanding, and supportive. I learned lessons that one glazes over in Reader’s Digest at the dentist, lessons one can only learn from experience: We don’t have a long time here, treasure your closest relationships and be intentional in developing and nurturing them.

Back at home, I adventured daily in a myriad of learning management systems. I remember a day in which I was building and administrating in two versions of Blackboard, two versions of Canvas, and ending the day wading through Moodle’s rich scaffolding of preferences. Falling asleep, my dreams were painted with endless dropdown menus, broken HTML input boxes, and configuration files written in characters unseen since the dawn of humankind.

Looking back at the challenges, both personally and professionally of 2020 - the primary emotion I feel is gratitude. I’m thankful for the chance to reevaluate and prioritize the most important relationships in my life, and also for the chance to work on meaningful projects that have made a real impact on society during a very difficult time in our world’s history.

Looking forward to 2021, I am making space in my head/schedule/heart for a few things:

1. Making more time for mentoring new instructional designers. I had the chance to meet with and mentor a few new instructional designers that reached out to me here, and the feedback I received from them was so encouraging. I want to be generous with my time and my experience. 
2. Exploring and experimenting with new technologies. At my core, I am a technology innovator and early adopter. It’s important for me to feed this part of my brain! I want to play with RFID and xAPI to build real world graded physical simulations. I want to learn the basics of augmented reality and prototype new forms of experiential learning. I plan on investing in a new 3D printer and diving back into my BeanCounter coffee dosing robot, driven by Arduino. Some of these could end up in client work, but the real purpose is combining play with learning. We need this!
3. Joining in. I have signed up for both Devlin Peck and Megan Torrance’s free xAPI workshops more times than I can remember - always having to miss them at the last second due to pressing client needs. This will be the year I attend!
4. Writing regularly. I was inspired recently by a friend who wrote a book about his hunt for Forrest Fenn’s hidden treasure in the Rocky Mountains. I want to tell more of my own stories, or make some up! I don’t think I quite have the discipline to write the small prompts and tips that my colleagues create here on LinkedIn, but I can see really throwing myself into one big post (like this) per month.
5. Moving more. As a mechanical watch guy, I battled with my inner analog self before getting an Apple Watch. “You have too many screens!” “Ok, but this one is TINY!” I bought it with the intention of moving around more, standing more, exerting myself more, and dare I say: exercising. Let's tack a more balanced diet on there as well. Less S'mores for lunch.
6. Brand building. Excuse me while I dry heave precariously close to my laptop keyboard. I am horrendous at self-promotion and branding. I’m just bad. Really bad. I find it cringey and tacky and fake and I mostly loathe it when I see it. Yet, I have also seen brands and individuals do it the right way, creating thoughtful, useful, entertaining, and most importantly occasional pieces of content that built their brand and offered something of worth to the community. I want to do that. I think I can do that?

That’s my 2020 and I hope a glimpse of what I want 2021 to look like.

Thank you to all my wonderful clients and to all the new colleagues and acquaintances I've met here. I can be cynical when it comes to social media, but I see real value in the opportunities and relationships I've developed here.

I’m Stephen, and I craft clarity. I work with businesses, organizations, and universities to plan, develop, and deploy effective and engaging learning experiences. I also help solve funky technology integration issues, wrangle LMSs, and produce multimedia and screencasts. I am booking client work for 2021 and would love to chat about how I might be of service to you!