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There are two online platforms I use every day as a writer at Nomadic Learning: Slack and, well, Nomadic. In a completely unofficial survey of our full time staff, 86% said the same thing. Even when Nomads are in the same room (which is rare—we stay true to our name!) we’ll talk for a little while, then get back to work on Nomadic platform, and back on Slack. As Tim said of Slack in Nomadic’s recent podcast, Learning in the Flow of Work, “it becomes where you do the work.” And he’s right.
That got me thinking about how platforms like Slack can become more than what they were designed to be, how they can be the places we go to be productive, to challenge ourselves and each other, and to learn. How they become the first app we check in the morning, and the program we have running on our computers all day.
Ideally, the best learning platforms out there will become just like Slack. They’ll be the home page for learners when they’re looking for helpful resources for a project. They’ll be the hub of new ideas, and the sounding board where people can brainstorm, challenge each other, and go back to reference an enlightening conversation.
Nomadic’s platform is rapidly checking off all those boxes. Our version of the online learning module, the Field Manual, is the foundational format for the content we produce for our clients, readying them to apply their learnings directly to what they’re doing at work (hence the name “Field Manual”). Earlier this year, Matt created a Field Manual for all of us to use as we set goals for the company. When my team and I interview potential writers, we use a Field Manual about Field Manuals to assess their skills and their ability to understand how we work. And we just finished writing a series of Resources about how to write Resources. I’m not going to pretend to be modest here; since I’m on the content development side of Nomadic, it seems fair for me to brag about what our software engineers do to make our content and the learning experience extremely user-friendly, inviting, and effective on our ever-evolving platform.
Because we use what we create, learning has become a key part of how all Nomads think and work every day. The more immersed we are in our platform, the more we learn from it and from each other. And the more confident I feel that we’ve created something Slack-like. Because, as it turns out, Slack uses Slack, too.
If you found this article interesting, check out our co-founders’ podcast The Learning Conversation.
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