Limestone Learning team member recognized as 'One to Watch' by ASTD

About a year ago a young woman named Susann (Sue) Prenderville sent my partner Stephanie and me a LinkedIn request asking if we could meet for coffee. She and her partner had moved far away from friends and family in Ireland for work in the U.S. Once contract work ended there, they headed up to Vancouver, B.C. Sue reached out to a number of individuals in the local learning community wanting to make new connections. This is how we first met her.

We got to know Sue over time and eventually she started working on projects for Limestone Learning. She is now a valued member of our Limestone team and we are fortunate to have her. Her sunny personality, her passion for learning, her persistence in getting it right and her willingness to go the extra mile when needed is part of what makes her who she is. She has made such a difference in our personal and professional lives since we’ve first met her. Being in the field of learning and development for over 30 years, it’s easy to forget the days when we were eager new instructional designers wanting to take on the world. Sue has brightened our lives with her passion, enthusiasm and fresh ideas and has given us fresh perspectives and greater enthusiasm for doing what we love to do at Limestone.

We learned last week that Sue has just been awarded the Association for Talent Development (formerly ASTD) “One to Watch” award. Six young professionals are awarded this honor per year in the training and development profession industry who are "dedicated, forward-thinkers and passionate about applying effective and creative solutions to challenges facing their organizations – and our industry". Sue will receive a complimentary ATD membership, a feature in the November 2014 T&D Magazine, a month’s feature on ATD’s One to Watch page and a recognition award next May at the 2015 ATD conference in Orlando, Florida.

We are so excited for her and offer sincerest congratulations to her from Stephanie and myself and the entire Limestone team.  Sue truly deserves to be the “One to Watch”.

Free summertime webinars

Summertime is here and there are lots of opportunities to learn new ideas and catch up on some of the latest trends in learning and development.

Training Magazine's online website has a number of free webinars including:

Tuesday, July 13, 2010: Project Team Triage. Join Lou Russell to learn about ways to facilitate project team discussions quickly and effectively, and improve your project throughout before it’s too late.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010: Creating a High-Performing Workplace with Games, Social Media, and Virtual Worlds. Join Anders Gronstedt to learn how the future of learning is about online conversations and communities, podcasting on the go, and shared immersive-3D virtual-worlds experiences.

Thursday, July 15, 2010: Active Contributors in Social Learning: Helping Learners Acquire Motivation and Skills. Join Dr. Ray Jimenez to learn how the growth and success of social learning and mobile learning are accompanied by a new type of learner - the Contributor and how theyrequire a new set of skills and motivation to become active contributors.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010: Faster, Cheaper, Better: Really Rapid Instructional Design. Join Sivasailam Thiagarajan “Thiagi” and Tracy Tagliati as they show you how you can replace the traditional systematic instructional design model with a continuous, concurrent, creative, co-design approach to designing corporate training materials faster and cheaper to produce more effective transfer to the workplace.

Thursday, August 12, 2010: Emerging Challenges in Learning: Proving the Business Value. Join Jeffrey Berk to learn about the major challenges leading organizations face in measuring the value of learning and development. 

If you’re not already a member, all you need to do is sign up at http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com.  Once you're signed in, click on the Home page to view the list of free webinars.  The site also includes links to archived webinars if you've missed past sessions.

ASTD is also sponsoring a free webinar that is facilitated by NetSpeed Learning Solutions:

Tuesday, July 20th 10am PST: From Blah to Aha! Ten Best Practices for the Virtual Classroom. Learn about ten best practices to help you move from Blah (boring, talking head presentations) to Aha (engaging, interactive classroom facilitation).

Space is limited so if you're interested, register at http://www.netspeedlearning.com/webinar/bestpractices/