A Tribute to Jay Cross

In the winter of 2005/06 I attended a training conference in Palm Springs, California. Being from New York any excuse is a good one to go to Palm Springs in the winter, but on this occasion the goal was to generate ideas for how we were going to completely revamp employee development at DoubleClick, the ad-tech company now owned by Google. I went with a peer of mine and I remember sitting in the first session as the CLO of IBM described how they invest their $700 Million training budget. The two of us looked at each other and realized that this session, and perhaps many others, would be completely inapplicable for us. We had no budget, no tech and no other help.

We left the session and started to wander the conference area looking for any session that would be worth our time. In one of the ballrooms we stumbled across a man, sitting at a table with just one or two other people with him. While not necessarily dressed for a conference, he was perfectly attired for Palm Springs in a Bermuda shirt, shorts and sandals. What really caught our attention was the poster on the wall behind him.

Intrigued, we sat down and what subsequently took place would result in a major shift in my focus on employee development. I had always looked at training and employee development as a formal process: conduct a needs analysis, identify priorities, decided on methods, instructional design, pilot and launch. As Jay described his poster and thinking on informal learning, I began to realize just how powerful informal learning could be and the impact it could have on all areas of training.

For the past 10 years I have infused informal learning strategies in almost any employee development initiatives I have been involved with. New hire training, professional development, career paths, management & leadership development have all had a component of socialization and the need to leverage the knowledge and expertise of peers.

This work eventually led to me realizing the need for a platform that could facilitate informal learning and help organizations capture the knowledge for further use. That is how I came to found showd.me.

Thank you Jay, you will be missed.