Cause Marketing

In the last few months I’ve added brazen mercantilism to the cause-related marketing blog; Google Ads, Amazon, and now a “ Lemonade Stand ” with products for informal learners, which I write about on my other blog at The Learner's Guild . None of these blatantly commercial efforts, however, really lend themselves to cause-related marketing. So in the next few weeks the blog will also feature aprons, cutting boards, mousepads, sweatshirts, and… as required by law in more than 87 countries…T-shirts. All showcasing several cheeky versions of the Alden Keene & Associates logo above. On the occasion of my 250th post I’m pleased to announce that when you buy any merchandise item with the Alden Keene logo, Alden Keene will donate $1.50 to the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA). There is no upper limit on the donation and the campaign will continue until Sept 2009. COTA is an effective, honorable, and well-run charity that helps kids get life-saving organ transplants. We a...

Somewhere out there is the killer app for informal learners…the software or Internet application that allows informal learners to pick and choose from thousands or perhaps millions of things we’d like to learn. After beating the bushes everywhere else, could it be that that killer app is right here in my hometown? Time will tell. To learn more read my post called An Innovation for Informal Learners on my other blog called The Learner’s Guild .

What's it like to use the software aids like SuperMemo from Piotr Wozniak that promise to help you remember things forever? How much time does it take? Can you really recall important things at 90 percent? Does it leave any side-effects? Or holes? In my other blog for informal learners called The Learner's Guild , I put these questions to Chris Khoo, 26, a software progammer in Brisbane who uses SuperMemo. Chris had left a comment saying, in effect, that isn't always better to remember than forget? Good point, Chris. Read the interview here .

“My alma mater was books, a good library - I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” Malcolm X said that. And for most of his short 40 years, a good library was the best possible and maybe only option for a curious informal learner. Not anymore. To see what’s in my informal learner’s toolkit check the post my other blog, The Learner’s Guild .

There is an exercise neuroscientists recommend to increase the number of nerve cells, neurotransmitters (illustrated on the left) and blood vessels, and reverse cognitive and neural decline. It's as close as your front door and you should probably do it in the company of other people. For more on this wonder-exercise check today's post on my blog on informal learning called The Learner's Guild .

“A great library contains the diary of the human race,” said George Mercer Dawson. Maybe. But what of all the people who have walked the earth but never left their own 'diary' (or learner’s journal s)? Imagine what you could learn from them. Up until now the challenge has been how to crack open the human library (if I can coin a term) of the people all around you. Now a Seattle firm may have figured out a way to unite informal learners and teachers. It’s informal learning, because it’s not organized under the auspices of a university or really any kind of school and there's no credentials offered when you're done. The firm is startup for-profit business with venture funding. To learn more about accessing the minds of informal learners read my posting on my blog on informal learning called The Learner’s Guild .

The greatest informal learner’s share a secret. To really give their informal learning flight they formalize it. Leonardo da Vinci did it. So did Michelangelo. R. Buckminster Fuller, the gadabout inventor of the geodesic dome, did it in spades. More on the easy-to-use technique that has fired the imaginations of geniuses and everyday blokes alike since before the Renaissance on my blog on Informal Learning called the Learner’s Guild .

There I was watching the always fascinating Bear Grylls on Man vs. Wild rig a makeshift compass out of small strand of steel wire, a tree leaf and a cup full of water in a tiny rock cistern and I asked myself, aside from simple curiosity what good is knowing how to do this? I’m a marketing and communications consultant so will knowing this make my spreadsheets more fulsome. Will my analysis be more keen, my writing more incisive now that I know how to do the same? For that matter is there any value in knowing stuff that isn’t directly related to one’s vocation? The short answer is: yes. I address how that's so in my blog on informal learning named The Learner’s Guild in a post called Knowledge as a Goal of Informal Learning .

Researchers say that it takes right about 10 years to acquire expertise in anything. And the Tiger Woods video above notwithstanding, it isn’t innate talent that makes you an expert, but those 10 years of study and practice. That explains why Tiger Wood is better golfer than Paul Jones. But what explains why Tiger is better than all his rivals, who have, after all, been playing just as long as he has and sometimes longer? For answers to that question and the role that informal learning plays, visit The Learner’s Guild , my blog on informal learning, for the post called ‘ Let Us Now Praise Famous Informal Learners .’

Early this month Forbes ran a guest column by Columbia Business School Professor Raymond Fisman that is strangely relatable to both cause-related marketing and informal learning, the topics of my two blogs. The Forbes headline describes it beautifully; “You Are What You Learn.” I’ve posted on what Fisman’s findings mean to informal learners on my blog on informal learning called The Learner’s Guild . Tomorrow in this space I’ll post on what Fisman’s study might mean to fundraisers and to those of us who practice cause-related marketing. So why the brain in the box on the left? Fisman’s study supports two seemingly diametrically-opposed conclusions. The first is that your training determines who you are. The second is that you can change all that. Stay tuned...

For most of my life the best analogy that science had to offer about the brain was that by the time you were 35 or so everything your genes could give your brain was cemented into place. And then that block of cement was basically dropped into a fast flowing river where time (and maybe chemicals) eroded your brain. And then, sometime later, you died. Cheery, huh? But for the last two decades especially researchers have grown less deterministic in their view about the human brain. Increasingly, science is showing that brain cells and the connections between them continue to grow over time. But like muscles those cells and connectors can atrophy. And like muscles, neurons (brain cells), ganglia and synapses can be trained and even expanded. How do you do that? Check my posting at my blog on informal learning called The Learner’s Guild for some real-world suggestions.

There’s a certain extravagance to the claims made the makers of two handheld games from Nintendo and Radica. Use our products regularly, they suggest, and not only will your brain get a workout, but you may even be able to turn back the clock on your gray matter! Reporters and critics who had initially given a pass to Nintendo’s ‘Brain Age,’ and by extension the less ambitious Radica ‘Brain Games,’ are now looking at these games with a more gimlet-eye. In my latest post to my blog on informal learning called The Learner’s Guild , I look at the two games and draw my own conclusions.

It sounds like a cheap e-mail come-on, or the hyperbole of a late-night informercial, but it is possible to learn something once and never forget it again. It's based on science first identified 123 years ago by a rigorous German researcher, and improved upon by a brilliant Polish scientist and eccentric who turned the discovery into software. After you master it, you can sell your library of books on eBay, because you won't need it anymore! But for the Polish scientist, Piotr Wozniak, there's been a catch. To read more about 'Informal Learning and the Eternal Memory' go to my other blog, The Learner's Guild .