This year has been an intense learning experience for me. It was a year of learning driven by curiosity, the need for background information for projects with folks I met via social media, and in preparation for major projects at work. In addition, a significant portion of my learning came through reading, mostly on my iPhone and kindle app. The topics I read include the following:
- Change & Innovation
- Communication – Public Speaking
- Communication – Writing
- General Business & Productivity
- Higher Education
- Information Technology
- Leadership/Management
- Technology (Social Media, Big Data, Wearable Computing, Cloud, Mobile, …)
For the most part, I went through these books by skimming and scanning them. I then went back and deep-read those I found really interesting and/or those requiring more analysis. There are some books that could have been better written, but I always start a book with an open mind so I try to find new ideas from them. However, there have been some books I have had to return (Amazon allows electronic refund within a couple of days after purchase) as I either found them to be too hard to read (the author uses too many big words I don’t understand and I fall asleep/get headaches), or ideas are not well thought out, or just not very interesting. I found that in reading enough books on similar topics, I came to find themes. It is during times when I could combine themes from across disciplines/industries and analyze them as they relate to my current work and future of higher education that I find myself thinking about possibilities of where my world could be heading.