I Report Bugs - Do You?

I received an email telling me that my blog was having problems (showing code all over the page). I quickly checked and didn't see a problem and sent an email back. The response I received was:

Your blog looks fine now. Sorry for wasting your time.

What a misconception. The person had taken the time to report a possible bug on my site. In my mind they are doing me a huge favor.

Most of the time I report bugs. And this extends beyond the online world. If I'm at a restaurant, I will try to tell the manager about an issue - most of the time not to fix it, just to make them aware. Of course, you always evaluate how easy it is to report the issue. If the manager is not around or there's no contact mechanism on the site, then I don't report it.

Generally, people are appreciative of the bug report. But it's sometimes surprising the response you get. It's almost that you are bothering them. They don't want to hear it. No wonder the person was so sensitive about "wasting my time."

So this made me wonder ... is this the norm? Do you report bugs? How do you decide if you spend the time? And, what's your feeling about how they are treated when you report them?

Make Me Better

Needing help to Make Me Better is a common issue. April 2008's Big Question was What would you like to do better as a Learning Professional?

I appreciated part of Karyn's answer -

"How do you plan to achieve that?" Oh crud, I don't know.

I think this is a common problem. We often define goals and then we struggle with the specific steps to help make me better. One of the beauties of blogging is that you can enlist the support of lots of other people who help you think through things and help make me better.

Take a look at some of the comments in recent posts:

• Reframing Conference Social Tool Participation
• Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results
• Blog Learning

I have really appreciated recent help through comments on this blog. There have been a few new commenters who I truly thank for helping to make me better. Thanks.

Business Value of eLearning - Elevator Pitches Needed

April 2008's Big Question was What would you like to do better as a Learning Professional?

The responses to this question were quite varied. It was interesting to see that the first two responses both dealt with selling the business value of eLearning.

Shaun tells us:

I need to be able to sell the ROI on learning better. and
How can I better impress the value of eLearning across the organization?

And from his post, its clear he's not unsophisticated around it. Jay Cross will tell you to forget ROI, but I'm not so sure that you can dismiss the notion that you have to explain the business value of what you are doing ahead of it in order to sell it in the organization.

Michael says pretty much the same thing:

Really improve my "elevator pitch" to really convince sceptical behind-the-curve C-level executives that learning and development initiatives are actually going to grow their business, not send it into a Hindenburg-like crash and burn.

I really wonder if we can't help Michael out a bit by suggesting elevator pitches. There's no single right answer here, but seeing a few examples would be good. So ...

What do you say in your organization or to your clients that help explain the business value of eLearning?

In other words, what's your elevator pitch?