We have worked in virtual teams for the last 10 years or so and are excited to be offering workshops helping organizations to make this transition. Elizabeth Childs, another consultant with expertise in the area, will be working with us to deliver a workshop to Environment Canada this month.

We've developed a model based on our collective experiences and research into the area to guide this workshop, along with activities people can use when moving into virtual team work. One activity we've found particularly valuable is a professional return on investment. Follow the link below to download a copy of that.

Give us a call or drop us an email if you'd like to find out more about the workshop. We'd love to work with your organization!

In September last year we included a few restaurant reviews in the Muse and they were very well received. In this month's Muse we've added reviews of three of our favorite restaurants in Toronto.

While we were in Toronto for the CSTD conference we visited the Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar, a new restaurant that had mixed reviews in Air Canada's enRoute magazine coverage of the year's finest new restaurants in Canada. We also visited Crush Wine Bar which we'd been to before and enjoyed and Fred's Not Here, an old favorite.

We had a wonderful time at the CSTD conference in Toronto, catching up with existing LearningEdge clients and meeting new people. Dave and I were both excited to receive our Certified Training and Development Professional (CTDP) designation, presented at the annual awards luncheon.

We were most interested in the types of conversations we were having with people about their challenges in workplace learning. Readiness to shift from a training paradigm to a learning paradigm certainly topped the list. Organizations are still struggling to capitalize on informal learning, and T&D professionals are looking for tools to help them do this.

The other main interest for us at the conference was how committed CSTD is to becoming a truly national organization. In that regard, there was much talk at the conference of the possibility of a 2006 conference outside of the Toronto area. Of course, given our bias, we were pointing out how wonderful Victoria is.

We've scheduled four face to face certification workshops for 2005.

Vancouver - April 11-13
Toronto - May 9-11
Vancouver - October 3-5
Toronto - November 21-23

Please contact us if you'd like more information about one of these or would like to suggest other dates and/or venues.