OBTC 2008 ended at noon last Saturday. Nearly 350 wonderful teaching persons spent three days and nights creating an event - the 35th annual OBTC - none will soon forget. I don't know if anyone will have any inclination to read this last OBTC Blog, but I must close the circle with one more thought.
The last class we teach in a given semester starts us thinking about how we'll do the first of the next cycle of courses better than our best previous results. This is how life has honored us for our scholarship and choice of career. We get to bring new ideas to life in our lessons and the context we design to contain our experience as teaching learners and learners teaching.
No, I am not going to be OBTC Program Coordinator for 2009. But, now, a bit more rested, I realize that what the next team does first to bring us to Charleston, SC next June builds upon all that our team did this June. I'll pitch in, for now our purpose is even more compelling to me. Inspired teaching.
With all due respect for what it takes to conduct research leading to publication, I have no doubt at all that people are paying colleges for what only inspired teachers can give them with our presence and devotion to their success. To quote the theme of a great conference - Mind Blowing Learning.
Thank you for reading these. I'd love to correspond. E-mail me at fearon@ccsu.edu.
And so, the OBTC Blog ends.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
"We're in business now"
"We're in business now" was a way we Mainers, back in my day, told each other that something that wasn't working started working.
I am thinking of when I was about 12 years old and was helping my uncle Alan, a master plumber. (I guess that would make me a plumber's helper). I was at one end of a garden hose and he way back at a faucet that he had just repaired. Out of my end of the hose came a rush of water. "Yep, we're in business now", Alan called out to me.
Now, 53 years later, I am teaching business management, and this catch-phrase comes back to me. Moments ago, the last of the big critical supplies came in to Babson College, so that folks up there can prepare the registration packets for our soon-to-arrive OBTC 2008 participants. Until that last item came, we were not yet in business. Then, I got the e-mail - The CD's of our Proceedings arrived. Now, we're in business.
"We're in business" is a handy devise to teaching managing. We can show our learners that being in business is a momentary state of affairs - not a more permanent sounding status. Managing is make sure that all the elements critical to performing as a business are in place, functional, and well-fueled with human energy and wit. That garden hose was pretty much useless in delivering water to our customer's garden, until Alan replaced a broken faucet - one that had been used over so many decades that it "plumb wore out". Seeing that water come bubbling out fixed this image of success in my mind, only to be retreived now.
Yes, OBTC 2008 is in business and we'll work at it from now through program's end next Saturday afternoon. I am sure there will be a few surprises to challenge our capacity to be in business, but we have the team, the will, and the place to keep it flowing from now to then.
Thanks, Uncle Alan, for a durable lesson about business.
I am thinking of when I was about 12 years old and was helping my uncle Alan, a master plumber. (I guess that would make me a plumber's helper). I was at one end of a garden hose and he way back at a faucet that he had just repaired. Out of my end of the hose came a rush of water. "Yep, we're in business now", Alan called out to me.
Now, 53 years later, I am teaching business management, and this catch-phrase comes back to me. Moments ago, the last of the big critical supplies came in to Babson College, so that folks up there can prepare the registration packets for our soon-to-arrive OBTC 2008 participants. Until that last item came, we were not yet in business. Then, I got the e-mail - The CD's of our Proceedings arrived. Now, we're in business.
"We're in business" is a handy devise to teaching managing. We can show our learners that being in business is a momentary state of affairs - not a more permanent sounding status. Managing is make sure that all the elements critical to performing as a business are in place, functional, and well-fueled with human energy and wit. That garden hose was pretty much useless in delivering water to our customer's garden, until Alan replaced a broken faucet - one that had been used over so many decades that it "plumb wore out". Seeing that water come bubbling out fixed this image of success in my mind, only to be retreived now.
Yes, OBTC 2008 is in business and we'll work at it from now through program's end next Saturday afternoon. I am sure there will be a few surprises to challenge our capacity to be in business, but we have the team, the will, and the place to keep it flowing from now to then.
Thanks, Uncle Alan, for a durable lesson about business.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Cover Story
My good friends Olga Fernandez and Jim Sperling, of the Idea Factory, here in Connecticut took my idea for the cover of our OBTC 2008 Program and turned it into this nifty reality.
That lively, hand-waving fellow is our conference icon. Our challenge is teaching that "blows their minds". Or, conversely, their learning that blows our minds. The other two students may be turning ideas over under their more pensive-looking visages.
The point is that all three in that picture present us will minds in various states of awareness. Are we providing experiences, questions, images that make eyes snap open and the excitement rise? No, we don't have to do this all the time, just some of the time, enough times to get them used to constant surprises that await them in our future.
Our subject is creating and sustaining organizations that work in a business world so wildly different each day, that we cannot, in good conscience, send them out of our OB classes with minds barely moved.
Use this bright yellow icon to remind you to design and execute learning events that bring about this high level of excitement. Their future will thank you.
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