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Mike Morrison - Trainer, Coach & Developer
Another learning Professionals.co.uk - Getting Seen weblog
My Trainer Profile Development – the first week
Ok its almost been a week for mytrainerprofile – and what a week it was:
Sunday 24 Jan 2010
Been thinking for some time that most trainers don’t blog enough as for me its a great way to market myself and what I do. On Sat night I discovered a concept in software i was not aware existed and that led me to thinking there was a solution for trainers.
Then I started thinking about a name for such a service – did a brainstorm, while looking on the net for some inspiration came across the idea of “trainers profile” – as the idea of having a blog is just that – to enhance our marketing profile… then when trainerprofile.com was not available, the idea of it being owned or “my” trainer profile was born.
I bought the domains. Bought the hosting and software… and 4 hours later we were up and running.
Submitted the site to Google.
Monday 25
Phoned my good friend Gary Gorman, reminded him of a concept we had last August about running workshops for trainers on this, and said “what if…” Gary said sounds great… where do we start, to which I replied go to www.mytrainerprofile.com and its now exists!
We put together an outline next steps plan and agreed to talk again on thursday.
On Monday I also put out to tender some of the much need development work – design and some of the programming required to make the site unique.
Google still does not know we exist 
Tuesday 26
Offeres to undertake the work had been received. I sorted through and shortlisted some for each project. Not having time (also there was the world time difference) I opted to send them 3 questions each to answer – and one of them was “we have a go live of 1800 GMT on thursday – can you guarentee to meet this? – some said yes some said no
Contracts were awarded.
I then set about writing the phase 2 development, how to integrate some social media software I have been using on my site for some time and thinking what would be the “ideal” enhancements I would want – and in an easy way for less tech people to understand and do.
Google search results still show us as not existing
Wednesday 27
First draft of the sales copy from Gary goes live on the site.
Answer questions from one of the providers, nothing from the other yet – maybe they are ok with the brief. Spent much of the rest of the day getting the software on the home page working – its the tools that ensures the copy on the right is different each time someone comes to the site. This will be made available to all users soon. Finally its all working, links, pictures, colours… phew!
1800 comes and goes – no sign of the software being ready – I wanted to spent tonight setting up for Gary. One emailed me to say sorry, they had miss read it as 5 days after contract being awarded… Nothing from the other.
Spent the evening setting up and testing some functions to ensure we have a unique blend of content, and some ‘knowledge ables’ prorals or pages – see http://cipd.mytrainerprofile.com or http://psychology.mytrainerprofile.com (correct at time of post) for examples
Google – YES! we are listed… Page 1 spot 1 for “my trainer profile” page 1 position 7 for “trainers blogs” and page 3 for “trainers profile”. that is a great start… many people spend weeks or months getting listed. Must be the stuff I was doing on Tuesday that will remain a secret 
Thursday 28
Checked Google – yes still there not a fluke
Friday 29
Gary was planning to run a session for a network group on using social media for marketing for trainers – a stretch goal was to have the basics up and running for him to showcase.
Only the changing text was available for him to show, not the profile or ‘clean’ site
Interacted with Gary’s participants as they set up their twitter accounts – some will become users.
Got an email from one of the providers – now saying that they bid too low (this is 12 hours AFTER they said they could have delivered!) and wanting to increase the price by 400% !! So assignment re-posted and a complaint made about this providers unethical and unprofessional behaviour.
Saturday 30
Rounding up on blogs, made some comments on a new bloggers post. Published another article on the main blog. while searching for keywords I realised we had missed a trick – so now we also own www.mytrainersblog.co.uk & com – why I did not think of that last week I dont know DOH!
Learning Technologies 2010
Yesterday I visited Learning Technologies 2010 at Olympia.
This is an annual showcase primarily of the technology available to support training, learning and development.
This year the show has grown from previous years and now spills from its usual first floor location at Olympia 2, to the ground floor.
The show not only provides a paid for conference, but 8 free seminar session rooms within the exhibition areas. While the audio is not the best in these situations there were some interesting sessions, including one from the TrainingZone and HRZone team.
The traditional first floor exhibition area was packed with both stands and visitors looking for the latest, quickest and cheapest solutions to e-learning and learning distribution. The new ground floor had exhibitors that looked to be new to exhibiting, in that compared to the first floor exhibitors were in general must less polished in the design of their stands.
There was a fair share of membership organisations exhibiting including:
- LPA – The Learning Practitioners Association
- BILD – British Institute for Learning & Development
- IITT – Institute for IT Trainers
- IFL – Institute for Learning
Communications technologies like Webex were starting to make themselves better known, and Adobe was in fine force with its showcasing of its e-learning tools. Along with a plethora of e-learning content providers, this year saw the increase of the number of organisations promoting open source LMS Moodle – in years gone by many would have their own bespoke system – it is looking increasingly like open source is the way to go.
Also featuring were a large number of survey, 360 and other assessment/ examination tools for deployment in electronic environments.
Blended Learning
what seemed to me to be missing on the whole was the blended integration of e-learning with face to face – many of the providers seemed to take ‘blended’ to mean a mix of technologies, not its wider and more holistic meaning. maybe this is a missed opportunity?