Thanks to WePOWER, wind technology is now more accessible to consumers and businesses. They offer a line of PacWind turbines which are transforming the way we can use wind to power our homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, parks, and communities. Their turbines are economically viable, clean, and perpetual energy solutions.

Consumers looking for a way to reduce their carbon footprints should seriously consider WePOWER's PacWind turbine solution. Homeowners can break-even quickly because most states offer rebates for turbine purchase. In addition, consumers can sell their extra power to their power companies. As if that were not enough, the federal government provides tax incentives, the carbon credits generated are saleable, and homeowners save money from lower power bills.

Traditional wind turbines feature a horizontal axis lift airfoil design. While these turbines produce energy well during optimum wind conditions, they have a number of problems. First, they must face the wind to spin. Second, during high wind conditions, they turn away from the wind and shut down to prevent their collapse or self-destruction. They contain thousands of moving parts that require regular maintenance. Finally, they are expensive to build and transport and produce irritating noise and vibration.

WePOWER Pac Wind's vertical axis lift airfoil design avoids these problems by using a different configuration and special "rare earth" magnets. PacWind's turbines work in low wind conditions and are self-regulating.

In the past, the need for additional maintenance and inspection made vertical axis wind turbines commercially unfeasible. PacWind’s patented airfoil has a simple, quiet, and vibration-free design, with one moving part, making the turbines effective, efficient, and versatile for urban, home, and wind farm use.

Last month, in a project with "Popular Mechanics" Magazine, one of PacWind's turbines was installed in talk show host Jay Leno's garage in Los Angeles. Watch the video at

Just in time to save cash-strapped consumers comes a movement to encourage "giving away usable unwanted items to others instead of depositing them in landfills". (Wikipedia) Called "freecycling" or "free recycling", this concept offers a socially conscious, environmentally responsible way to eliminate overhead.

Many of us have seen perfectly good furniture and other items set out at the curb for the garbage men to take. Some of us "went shopping" at the curbs, when we were in college.

Registered in the United States, The Freecycle Network (TFN), sometimes known as Freecycle, is a non-profit organization. TFN has organized a worldwide network of "gifting" groups: With a worldwide online registry, including groups in Brazil, Columbia, Singapore, and Slovakia, the organization coordinates the creation of local groups and forums for individuals and non-profits which offer and receive free items for reuse or recycling. Promoting gift economics as a motivating cultural outlook, the official tagline of TFN is: "Changing the world one gift at a time".

As of February 2006, TFN passed the 2 million member mark; it has a global organization of over four thousand local chapters. As of this writing, the membership was an impressive 6,626,000 in 4,726 communities across the globe. Hundreds of similar groups worldwide have replicated TFN's original idea. TFN now has a number of corporate sponsors, including its first, Waste Management, Inc. For information about a community near you, visit http://www.freecycle.com

A wide variety of products are freecycled, from computers to copy machines, from televisions to toasters, from food to fuel to cars to paper goods. Whatever you have that you want to dispose of, there is someone who can make good use of it.

In past issues, we have discussed the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its value in internal and external marketing. We have also reported teambuilding activities increase productivity and retention. Now, there is a company that helps organizations accomplish both goals---simultaneously.

Teambonding is a corporate team building company on the leading edge. They have over 75 unique, customizable programs breaking new ground in many areas. Innovators of scavenger hunts, culinary team building, and military care programs, Teambonding is the vision of founder and owner David Goldstein.

Working together on activities that reach out to those less-fortunate inspires employees and cultivates a sense of camaraderie that enhances morale long after the missions are completed.

Here are some of the programs available from this cutting edge company:

Ecotourism is "in". People want to believe their precious vacations are not creating a giant carbon footprint to harm the environment, but rather are at least carbon neutral. And the hoteliers are responding. Going green is not just a good idea for impressing guests and supporting the environment, but energy-saving practices also often benefit the bottom line. For now, some resorts will use it as their "unique selling propositions".

In Hawaii, an increasing number of hotels and resorts now use recycled water and computer-monitored ‘fertigation’ (irrigation with doses of organic fertilizer). Another attractive feature they provide is beach-site, solar-power restrooms.

Nominated for the World's Leading Green Resort and located in Bahia, Salvador, Brazil's is the beautiful and luxurious Tivoli Ecoresort Praia do Forte. Boasting five stars, this idyllic resort features simple architecture in harmony with the spectacular scenery and the impressive biodiversity of the area. Guests enjoy colorful gardens and natural pools as well as "a culinary journey through exotic flavors".

Founded after British environmentalist/businessman, Jan Telensky happened upon a pipe gushing hot water near Slovakia's High Tatras Mountains, AquaCity was named the World's Leading Green Resort in both 2008 and 2009. AquaCity uses available geothermal energy to heat and power its extensive facilities.

Guests minimize their carbon footprints, at the same time enjoying the highest standards of service at affordable prices. AquaCity has earned a global reputation for its pioneering approach to green tourism. Since it opened, it has welcomed over 2 million travelers and now daily saves more than 27 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere.

In the February issue of its in-flight, Qantas announced its "Awards for Excellence in Sustainable Tourism". Among its state award winners are the Crowne Plaza Alice Springs, Australia. The hotel identified 30 actions it could take to become more eco-friendly. Among them are replacing light bulbs, reducing water and gas usage, and installation of a system that reduces in-room air-conditioning use by 25 to 40 per cent.

Expect the "green movement" to gain momentum, as every industry will look for ways to go green, while saving energy (and money) and attracting both talent and customers.

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GOOD SELECTION = BETTER RETENTION

If you are not using pre-employment assessments, you are flying without radar---not very smart in today's highly competitive environment. Let us help you better understand your candidates and your employees. In less than 30 minutes, you will know if they can do the job (abilities); their work behaviors, even their personality and attitudes (like integrity & ethics), and those can't be trained. It's very cost effective, too! For more information, e-mail assessments@hermangroup.com. Validated for many countries and cultures. We offer in-depth help with job descriptions, too! www.hermangroup.com/assessments.html

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ENGAGEMENT AND RETENTION RESOURCES AVAILABLE

Check out The Herman Group web site for free and low-cost resources to help you attract and retain top talent. Visit http://www.hermangroup.com/valuable_resources.html to see some interesting articles; then to see our list of valuable, yet inexpensive, downloads at
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Looking Forward. . .

Joyce Gioia-Herman

Recently, Hilton Worldwide announced it has been secretly monitoring the energy use in 1300 of its 3500 hotels worldwide. Using its proprietary system LightStay, the corporation has calculated and analyzed its environmental impact.

In the first full-year of findings, the 1,300 LightStay-equipped properties conserved enough energy to power 5,700 homes for a year, saved enough water to fill more than 650 Olympic-size pools, and reduced carbon output equivalent to taking 34,865 cars off the road. Reductions in water and energy use alone also translated into estimated savings of more than USD $29 million in utility costs for hotel owners in 2009.

Using LightStay, the Hilton properties reduced energy use by 5 percent, carbon output by 6 percent, waste output by 10 percent, and water use by 2.4 percent in 2009 over 2008. (Hilton engaged an independent auditor and adjusted the results for differences in occupancy levels and major weather events year over year.)

LightStay is an integral part of Hilton's effort to implement sustainability practices in every aspect of their businesses---helping them to quantify their impact on the environment. Excited about their first year results, they have committed to using LightStay throughout their entire network by December 31, 2011.

LightStay measures indicators across 200 operational practices including housekeeping, paper product use, food waste, chemical storage, air quality, and transportation. The data inspired the Hilton New York to donate more than 5,000 pounds of leftover food to a local charity---food that would have gone to waste. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=88577&p=irol-newsArticleOther&ID=1415140&highlight=

On the heels of this announcement, hotelworld Network blogger Jason Freed suggests an "Eco-Loyalty Program" for rewarding "eco-conscious travelers". Freed proposes rewarding them for participation in various sustainability initiatives---particularly those in hotels, including a monitored-temperature program, towel and linen programs, recycling paper and plastic, eating organic in the restaurant, taking the hotel shuttle instead of a taxi, and having the receipt e-mailed instead of printed. http://www.hotelworldnetwork.com/green-new-concept-reward-eco-conscious-travelers/?utm_source=HWN&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_04_22_10&utm_content=green-new-concept-reward-eco-conscious-travelers

Sustainability is not just good for the environment, it's also good for the bottom line. Given the tremendous cost savings for hoteliers and other businesses, we believe it is only a matter of time before we see these rewarding ideas implemented to effect all kinds of savings.

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JOYCE DEBUTS NEW TECH: SAVE THE DATE: APRIL 20 AT 4PM EDT

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FIND OUT WHAT YOUR EMPLOYEES REALLY THINK AND FEEL

Discover what’s really going on in the hearts and minds of your employees. Our InnerViews interviewing service uses SPHRs and PHRs, certified human resource professionals to probe for the information you really need to know. Exit and Stay Interviews, as well as Why-Didn't-You-Take-Our-Offer Interviews. Call Rosalie Catalano at 937-416-7066, or read more at: http://www.hermangroup.com/retentionconnection/exit_interviews.html

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THERE'S A REASON WHY ASSESSMENTS ARE BECOMING MORE POPULAR

The reason is because they work to help you better understand your candidates and your employees. In less than 30 minutes, you will know if they can do the job (abilities); their work behaviors, even their personality and attitudes (like integrity & ethics), and those can't be trained. It's very cost effective, too! For more information, contact Joyce at 336-210-3548 or e-mail assessments@hermangroup.com. Validated for many countries and cultures. We offer in-depth help with job descriptions, too! http://www.hermangroup.com/assessments.html

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Looking Forward. . .

Joyce L. Gioia

Kiosk Learning,

Caroline Avey - 2/9/11

The way people, technology and learning meet is continually changing, moving
toward increases in fidelity, convenience, collaboration, specificity and
confluence.

This is a year of opportunity for chief learning officers to assess their
learning strategy in the context of a constantly evolving and changing business
environment. The challenges for today’s CLOs are more complex than ever: They
are required not only to demonstrate clear value and business relevance for
their learning strategy on a global stage, but also their ability to link
learning and performance programs directly to the goals of their organization,
despite constraints in time, budget and talent. Extraordinary times call for
extraordinary skills on the part of our CLOs as they creatively balance the
demand for knowledge and information against the realities of changing content
and instructional design, disappearing content expertise, disruptive
technologies, demand for on-the-job proficiency and an increasingly dispersed
workforce with less tolerance for off-the-job formal learning.

Last year saw the introduction of new technologies that could increase access
to information but blurred the lines between learning content, learners and
expertise. Organizations embraced experimentation with mobile or tablet devices
for learning, immersive 3-D or collaborative environments, and the incorporation
of wikis, micro-blogging or podcasts as learning tools. So what is on the
horizon for 2011? Let’s take a look.

Increased Fidelity of Experience

As access to learners becomes increasingly precious, managers are demanding
that learning be as relevant to the job as possible. This means an increased
demand for highly relevant experience, immediate transfer of content to
on-the-job proficiency, and the ability to provide a holistic learning
experience that models job requirements, such as the ability to demonstrate
multiple skills and decision-making in a robust learning exercise. The ability
for learning to apply to real life is termed “fidelity” by the industry. We’ve
seen an increase in complex gaming, immersive simulations and the use of
technology as a business modeling engine. Examples of complex gaming include a
group of engineers who compete in an online game to design the best solution or
a group of sales executives who participate in a sales conference game to test
and challenge their ability to gather information about a prospective client in
order to present a proposal. While most organizations have courseware to support
competencies for particular roles, some are looking at learning activities that
challenge cross-functional groups of learners to work together for an improved
business result. Fidelity can be a highly desirable design element where online
learning looks exactly like the Web page of the firm or dynamically renders
images of a tool for technology training.

Business modeling is another tool that can be used to create a high fidelity
experience for the learner. Unlike branched solutions — where a learner selects
from a given set of options and then continues on that path, choosing from a
fixed set of options — business modeling allows the learner to make multiple
discreet decisions. The modeling engine provides each learner with unique
feedback and allows the learner to see both the relationship and the magnitude
of decisions. An example is financial training for managers of a business unit.
The learner is challenged to respond to the loss of a major customer, in which
he or she looks at aspects of the business and decides whether to increase,
decrease or not change new sales efforts. Similar decisions are made for
managing inventory, employee morale, etc. The model then shows the impact of the
multiple decisions.

Kiosk Learning

Retail and customer service counter industries are moving into using devices,
such as the iPod Touch — and, more recently, the iPad — as tools to access
learning. Many organizations have groups of employees who are remote from
computers, or their computers may be point-of-sale devices or call center
workstations that have limited capacity to run engaging learning that includes
multimedia. An iPad allows multiple users to learn on a single device, so iPads
posted at remote locations become digital learning kiosks. Additionally, iPads
allow for multiple user log-ons, so that learning can be tracked by user through
distance-learning applications.

Such learning kiosks enhance on-the-job accessibility to learning: The
learner avoids travel to a learning location and can make use of any downtime. A
key advantage of the learning kiosk concept is putting the learning at the point
of need – not only for traditional courseware, but also on-the-job support.
Examples of the use of kiosk learning in retail range from skills enhancement
training for customer serving counter agents at an international airline to new
product training for retail store counter clerks that can be updated as customer
sales and data evolve.

Crowdsourcing for Learning Assignments

Web 2.0 tools and platforms continue to provide a collaborative environment
for knowledge workers and learners. Although the most popular tools in use are
still simple solutions, such as e-mail, instant messaging, Web conferencing and
file sharing, users are becoming more sophisticated in combining various tools
to meet their particular need. Skype is making inroads in the corporate world
for connecting learners to tutors or subject matter experts. There’s also a
trend toward embedding wikis and blogs into learning programs or instant
messaging into other collaboration events in an effort to improve e-learning
effectiveness.

Organizations are investing in external tools, such as NewsGator or Q2
Learning to provide robust collaboration environments, whereas lighter tools
such as Ning and Moodle are still popular for blogging and discussions. Google
is focusing on collaboration tools, and Google Apps are being used in education
and are crossing over to the corporate sector for document creation with
real-time editing, sharing controls and seamless compatibility for learners.

Examples of crowdsourcing as a learning strategy range from the capture of
best practices during planning process training for a military group to
capturing cadres of learners’ assignments posted for technical training on
SharePoint for an energy company.

Data Mining

Micro-learning and user-generated content in blogs, wikis and YouTube-like
video servers can become information overload to learners. While access to
thousands of knowledge objects may initially be appealing to learners, they can
quickly become discouraged and disinterested if their search results are not
relevant. The key for learners is to access knowledge sites and get exactly what
they need and only what they need. First and foremost, knowledge systems must
have robust search and tagging systems to accommodate data inquiry.
Additionally, users must either be trained to use the system or, more
preferably, the system should be a highly intuitive one that guides the user and
recognizes his or her preferences. Intelligent systems search for relevant
words, such as the Google search engine does; these systems look at the affinity
of a learner’s search pattern and then make intelligent recommendations. While
CLOs may or may not manage knowledge management systems, it will be important to
contribute input into how these systems will support access for learners.

The LMS Adds Informal Learning

Learning encompasses both performance readiness through formal learning and
performance proficiency as well as support through informal learning and social
networking. The traditional LMS hosting a catalog of courseware may not be
robust enough to support a learner’s need to search for specific formal learning
support objects and provide ready access to knowledge objects and collaboration
sites. Many of the LMS providers are responding by adding their version of wikis,
blogs and communities of interest.

There is strong interest in overlaying the traditional LMS interface with a
“front door” portal that not only provides links to traditional courseware on
the LMS, but also provides access to informal learning, such as wikis and blogs.
This type of portal is more demand-ready so that the user can easily browse for
topics or take an assessment to identify a gap in knowledge, with the gap report
providing links to both formal courseware and informal learning content that
addresses the identified need.

So What Does The Future Hold?

Technology will continue to push our comfort zone, with avatar experiences in
3-D on mobile devices; use of cloud computing to enable access to software;
holographic imaging to increase the fidelity of a learning environment; personal
LMS sites for users to track firm, academic and other professional experiences;
and increased capability for augmented reality solutions with cheaper broadband
access through a wide range of devices.

What about traditional instructor-led courseware? It won’t go away, but firms
will continue to be more selective on when to use traditional face-to-face group
learning. The experiences will be richer, simulating on-the-job experiences for
immediate job transfer. Firms will look to tools and templates for rapid
authoring of instructor-led courseware.

Caroline Avey is a learning strategist and director of
innovative learning solutions at ACS Learning Services, a Xerox company and
learning and development service provider. She can be reached at
editor@clomedia.com.

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Looking Forward. . .

Joyce L. Gioia