Performance Books

Long one of my favourite training game designers, Thiagi has given up all his very best secrets about interactive training in his book "Design Your Own Games and Activities."

Here you will find dozens of brief activity descriptions, 32 chapters, and 30 fully described training activities neatly compiled in one book. Need a better justification for this treasure chest? Fine--Thiagi describes 10 workplace trends that demand interactive strategies, including teamwork, learning organizations, and the changing characteristics of learners. The appendices include a glossary of 62 interactive strategies, indices of the activities in the book, and dozens of resources on everything from the design of interactive strategies to theory to workplace applications to websites on interactive strategies. Plus, a CD with the instructions and handouts for each of those 30 fully described games, ready for you to print off and use.

Each chapter covers a specific type of interactive strategy, and starts with an example. Thiagi then outlines the benefits, uses, and limitations of the strategy. Finally, one of those fleshed out examples is provided. Although the game can be played in a training session as is, you have enough information to adjust it to your own audience's needs. Plus the debriefing questions provided for each activity are extremely helpful.

I've used most of these activities, and found that this gem of a book has paid for itself many times over. TOP TIPS is an excellent game for sharing best practices. THIRTY-FIVE makes a great session review. TRIPLE-JOLT's Team Poker I is one of my favourite team-building exercises. QUICK DRAW illustrates cooperative creativity very well. This one volume alone can create the core for scores of training sessions--at a fraction of the price of many training activity sets available through other sources.

This one comes highly recommended.

Brown has done an outstanding job of capturing the elegance and brilliance of EPSS in a format that makes it easy to understand and reapply. Her methods have helped my company create a foundation on which to engage a paradigm shift from training to just-in-time performance support.

This is one of the nmost readable treatments of the subect of EPSS I've come across. Designed as a practitioner's guide, it also provides an introduction for business executives and decision-makers to orient them to what EPSS can, and cannot be expected to accomplish.

All fundamental technologies of EPSS are describe in plain English, followed by implications for instructional designers and performance technologists who will be defining functionality, information architecture, navigational and interface designs and assessment of applications. Sample code and design templates, along with over 3-dozen planning and implementation job-aids, and a side-by-side comparison of development tools and technologies make this an invaluable addition to one's library.

Duffy's approach to school improvement is cutting-edge and practical. In this book, he provides detailed guidance on how to plan and carry-out a complete redesign of an entire school system. In particular, I found Chapter 14 to be very interesting and exciting. This is where he describes a new approach to school improvement he calls Knowledge Work Supervision (KWS). KWS, Duffy says, is a process that aims to improve three sets of key school system variables: how the work gets done, the social architecture of the school system, and the system's relationship with its broader environment. Great stuff! I highly recommend this book to anyone who is responsbile for planning and carrying out school improvement on a systemwide basis. Culain Corcoran

As senior architects for Intel's network processor group, Uday R. Naik and Prashant R. Chandra play a key role in the development of IXP software framework and applications. Lending their extensive experience to customers' design efforts, they work with Intel customers on network applications design for the IXP2XXX product line of network processors.

Indonesia financial troubles were a result of large account deficits. Massive debt and forced foreign loan repayment caused the Rupiah too fall from 15,000/$1 to 2,400/$1 in 1997. Economic output would shrink by 14% and unemployment increased to 15%. Financial troubles did not seem predictable, as the Central Bank had $20 billion in reserve currency. Indonesia's top seven largest banks owned 50% of the financial assets with preferential treatment extending loans to favored business. Risk management was pushed aside in the rush for growth and state banks exceed 25% bank loan limits. Further compound no credible banking practices was the fact that Bank of Indonesia knew about bribes for loans but turned a blind eye. Rupiah selloff initiated because investors saw a gloomy perspective on the region and the rupiah was linked to the dollar and policy makers did not want to use the $20 billion reserve to stop the devaluation of the rupiah. Indonesian banking financial system was heavily in debt too foreign market. Indonesia loans owed $55 billion to foreigners. Businesses and corporations assumed financial surplus and the high levels of dollar reserves would help the rupiah survive devaluation. Business were not thinking about problems in obtaining dollars in the case the debt burden caused a shortage of available dollars and a falling rupiah valuation would increase the burden of repaying the debt. Risk of not being able to pay off dollar loans would breed Panic and cause foreign debt creditors too demand payment in full on loans coming due, reversing lax monetary policies and cause a scramble for dollars furthering the drop in rupiah value.

IMF wanted high interest rates and Muslim bankers wanted cheap credit flows. Structural reforms were a condition for receiving the $33 IMF billion bailout loan. First to go was the BULOG cartel, an import and marketing monopoly. IMF reasoned absolving the cartel would open up the market allow prices too competitively adjust. Also, the chemical industry would lose some of its tariff protections.

Surgically, removing ailing banks to restore credibility, but what happened was a drop in consumer confidence. In 1933, Roosevelt employed a similar tactic shutting down ailing financial institutes. The IMF reason bank closures would send a positive message, "banks can not continue operating unprofitably" and clean up banks that were riddled with bad loans. The good and bad bank list caused a run on the money by depositors, who moved money from private banks to state owned banks. Private banks lost 12% of their rupiah deposit and 20% of their foreign currency deposits. Interestingly, the 16 banks closed only represented 3% of the total assets. What was at risk was financial confidence, as people thought the banks were weak. A strong measure of political and financial action was required to restore public faith in the system. People wanted a government guarantee on all deposits. The IMF did not want an expensive taxpayer guarantee and was divided on policies that benefited the rich. The IMF chose to protect the small investor providing 20 million rupiah guarantee approximately $5,000. The indecisive solution did not stop the run on the deposit and the rupiah fell to 4,000/$1 and the government continued to inject money into the system as runs continued. The Indonesian central bank injected money into the bank system equally 10% of GDP.

The IMF wanted to rise interest rates which would stabilize currencies by providing irresistible yields keeping local money invested and once the panic abated the interest rates would return to reasonable rates. The US treasury people liked the interest rate hikes. Indonesian banks were desparate for funds offerring 75% annual rates for dollars.

A contrarian opposition argument suggests interest rate hikes contending that the IMF did not need interest rate increase but confidence building policy; interest rates would exacerbate the problem by increasing inflation and Indonesia did not need inflation. Higher interest rates only caused corporations and businesses too go further in the red, as they struggled to make interest payments. Inflation devalued collateral and so external financial institutions lend less to Korean banks as the currency devalued. Currency devaluation caused widespread bankruptcies and a crisis of confidence.

I've used this book both as a manager, working with individuals and my work team, and also as a consultant and facilitator working with client groups. It is a fantastic resource for the following reasons: 1. it has a very sound foundational model that is built on trust, organisational learning principles and action research; 2. it has an excellent blend of theory and practice, with heaps of case studies, anecdotes and wisdom acquired through experience; 3. it has a lot of really useful tools, reasources, survey instruments and so on - excellent stuff that helps you apply the ideas easily and straight away; 4. it has a lot of humanity, compassion and profound thought about what it means to be an individual working in a complex, dynamic organisation of today; 5. the ideas in it are built on values and ethics, an unusual, but welcome, approach to me; 6. what it advocates is practical, achieveable and realistic - it's not touchy-feely waffle, it is sound advice and tested approaches. Good on you cobbers!

This book was printed in 1942 by the American Technical Society. The author is very knowledgeable on diesel engines and explains the engines in a easy to read manor. The illustrations are well presented and titled. My only wish is that there were more detail technical information about each engine however I can understand the limitations he had to work with.

I was surprised to see this on Amazon.com. It is my master's thesis and is in the library at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA.

Scales included in the study were the Jr. Eysenck Personality Inventory (introversion/extraversion), the WISC-R and the Gittinger Personality Assessment System based on the WISC-R subscales, the Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test, and the McGuire-White Short Form Index of Social Status.

How else could I rate it but 5 stars?!

A friend wrote to me: "A couple of months ago, I purchased a book entitled, The Digital Producer, by Curtis Poole and published by Focal Press. It is aimed toward Avid users, in particular, but broadly usable by any non-linear system owner. One of the key features of the book is a system, provided on CD-ROM, for logging, storyboarding, scripting and a wealth of functions in production. It is the most comprehensive system of its kind I have yet seen and its strongest feature is that it works the way we work, not like some computer analyst who thinks he/she knows something about production."

I wrote back: "This program automatically does what I've been asking about (storyboarding). In its storyboarding feature, you can input an image file. I've imported a .bmp and it resizes it for me and places it on the page. Then you select another view of the page and it gives you the same image but larger size with any narration in the column next to it. These can be printed out and pasted around and . . . it's hard to contain my enthusiasm for this thing. Since you have it already you know all of this but, I'm blown away! Blown away!"

I can not say enough about this book/CD/and FileMaker template collection. If you can not organize your production with this package, you can not organize a production. It has shaved months off of my production schedule. Thanks for the great work!