Life can be strange sometimes. I am sitting here in our BBQ shack in the garden sheltering from the midday sun catching up on some of The Learning Stack (TLS) work. I have some contractual stuff I need to go through and I definitely needed to write a newsletter edition. What’s strange to me though is that I am doing this on a Sunday.
The weekends have always been for downtime from business related stuff. Gardening, cleaning, shopping, or just chilling with a book are what the weekends are typically for. Maybe a trip down to the beach.
So why am I working on a Sunday? Well, life has changed once again.
At the start of the month I started a new full-time role. I was planning to focus on my own business and grow it to something that could pay the bills long term. I even paid myself for the first time recently. But then life happens.
I’m not going to go into details but, due to some family health circumstances, I need to have a stable income and that’s not something I have or would expect to have for some time with TLS. As a family, we made the decision that it would be best to find a full-time role if possible.
I really didn’t want to go back into a leadership role after 10 years building, growing, and shrinking teams. I wanted to be an individual contributor focused on one area of business where I could learn new skills.
I am now responsible for Product Enablement at Camunda, wholly focused on the Go-To-Market organisation (think tech sales, technical account managers, etc.). I have been involved in Enablement, Education, Training, Learning - call it whatever you like - for over 30 years, so the role isn’t new to me. What is new though is the capabilities we have for a single person to build and create meaningful experiences at scale. With the help of Claude, and a set of other tools I can now help people learn in ways I couldn’t have dreamed of when I started in this world of learning. In 2 ½ weeks, I have almost used my entire monthly Claude allowance.
There is a huge opportunity for ICs to deliver and measure real business impact without needing a huge team to do it.
What about The Learning Stack?
I have been asked this question a few times since I posted about my new role over on LinkedIn. The good news is that nothing will change for the foreseeable future. I will probably need to change some posting days, and when I work on TLS stuff but other than that it’s business as usual.
This week, I had a couple of days off from Camunda to head to Dublin for a Sana breakfast event. I was up on stage talking about Sana as well as demonstrating some of their cool features live (always fun!) to some of the local L&D community. I am very grateful to still be able to do those kinds of things, as well as be focused on my day job.
I have definitely been a lot quieter for a few weeks. Motivation for writing here and on LinkedIn hasn’t been high. I think the combination of interviews, figuring out the things life throws at us, starting a new role, and the summer heatwave here in the UK has just not been conducive to delivering useful thoughts. There are nearly 400 of you who subscribe to this newsletter, 2000+ on LinkedIn, and even 60-odd subscribers over on my YouTube channel.
I want to be respectful of your time and ensure whatever I produce has value. I don’t want to post just for the sake of it.
I have some cool stuff to share with you very soon - I have built a whole new second brain setup which is easily replicated, open source, and free.
I have also been working on building my own piece of Learning Tech. I am not sure where it will go but, even if I never release it, I have learned lots of new skills along the way. It’s amazing what you can do with some time, some ideas, and Claude helping you along the way.
Speak Soon,
Mark