Periodically there have been conversations about the copyright of training and coaching materials. Occasionally the conversations have gotten heated, particularly when someone professes an extreme view of the value of copyrights in principle. Here’s a post where I respond to a particular person (who seems to have failed badly in training and business).
Except for the fact that this seems also factually incorrect, there’s
some good stuff here.
The economic difficulties are challenging everyone to find new revenue streams, and this is no less the case with trainers, consultants, HR professionals, and a variety of other professionals. Single revenue stream businesses are suffering even more than multiple revenue stream based businesses.
We’ve always tried, as a business strategy, to develop income from various sources — training, consulting, speaking engagements, keynotes, and also from publishing, writing, and creating learning materials. That strategy has kept us afloat so far in these tough economic times.
I rediscovered something I wrote on the ASTD board.
Recently there’s been some posts expressing how trainers or training departments are handcuffed or interfered with by HR, or executives, or managers or other powerful villains, and that trainers do not get seats at the decision making table.
It’s ironic that the people complaining most loudly about these issues (which tend to have a grain a truth to them at least) are also unable to see their own contributions to the minimization of the training function, and thus, tend to attract the scorn of organization decision makers. An example: Continue reading
They probably should be running around in tie-dies, man. Probably do the training session and blow a spliff after, brother. But they aren’t that obvious. I like to refer to them as the hoowah diddy diddy California trainers who survived Esalen. Remaindered like old books from the human potential movement. Great empty statements about how people learn. Totally lost. Not worth a penny.
It’s about the “professional trainers” who believe that all learning (usually they say “real learning”) must be under control of the learners, at the learner’s own pace, and so that the learners can determine the content. They call that being “learner centered”, as opposed to trainer centered, the latter being akin to brainicide or something, best exemplified by waterboarding and lectures, and death by powerpoint.
Rarely is there a reputable company that can add value to learners, trainers and website owners in a professional way. Revresponse is just such a company.
Many major companies, like IBM and Microsoft produce publications designed to educate their customers, and prospective customers, and to inform about their products. Other lesser known companies do this also, and there are also publishers who produce niche trade magazines for very specific professions. The former wants exposure, and the latter wants targeted subscribers since their revenue comes from advertisers.
Don Clark, one of my favorite online debaters said, in reference to who a trainer is, said:
> Actually, my mother taught me how to cook and my grandfather taught
> me carpentry, both are which are skills that a lot of organizations
> do train. And it did NOT take them “literally years, to become a good
> trainers.”
I think the problem here is a lot of confusion. If I help someone learn to
tie their shoes, am I a “trainer”? If I coach Don so he can build a
bookcase, am I a “trainer”?