Quickthink

Back in 1994, when I was practicing law in Philadelphia, I knew how to do certain things pretty well. I had gained that expertise by (1) taking over a method for processing information (a foundation), (2) mastering how that method applied in a given context (application), and (3) repeated practice in my core service areas (supervised repetition). From my experience, all three are critical to build a high level of expertise.

In 1994 I came to Estonia as part of a US legal assistance programme to help with the legal transition here. Suddenly my expertise in legal practice was irrelevant. I had to start over again to understand how transition happens. This experience showed me a lot of things. One of the most important was how much I had relied on sets of institutions to provide a stable environment in which I could learn. The million dollar question  — what happens when these institutions don’t function well individually or together? I can answer — we all look like fools.

Apparently, the Internet is now re-shaping the ways educational institutions are likely to develop. This post by Seth Godin lays out some of what may happen. I read it, thinking about the elements of my learning path — method, application, and practice. If half of what Seth predicts actually happens, this should get very interesting.

FOLLOW - I loved this quote about learning from a 2008 Gourmet interview of chefs Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa

you can really start to fine-tune what you do if you’re willing to analyze the process

Alex and Aki run a food consulting business, where they use their blog as a “digital notebook” for developing and sharing ideas. Here is the link — enjoy! It’s a great site.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under Advocacy, Business models, Fun with Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.