How Did All of This Start, Anyway?

For some additional background into why I became interested in the field of adult education, I need to take you back a little bit...

When I moved to California in 1997, I was hoping to break into the technical field, and I did, eventually, as a technical support engineer for a company that has since changed hands so many times, I'm not sure where they are now. The origins of my fascination with teaching really start here: although much of technical support is about helping resolve problems, there's also a lot of teaching involved as well. How better to make sure that people don't make a mistake that requires tech support's involvement (again) than to teach them how not to make that mistake?

In 2008, as my resume will show, I was working for a company that would eventually become part of EMC, still in technical support. New hires for that position would come on board and were immediately sent for up to six weeks of product training, most of which they'd forget by the time they ended up talking to customers on the phones. The 'Use it or Lose it' adage is there for a reason, and it was very easy to see. It was frustrating for our new hires, and it was frustrating for the rest of us, and the overarching question I was always asking myself was this:

How can we do it better?

How can we make training more effective and more memorable? Can we make it more fun? Can we leverage the way the brain works to help make things stick?

In 2011, the National Geographic television network premiered a show called Brain Games, which explored the cognitive aspects of a variety of different topics: memory, optical illusions, fear, focus, and many other things. I still watch episodes from time to time, and still get caught up in just how many tricks our brains can play to help us make better sense of the world. And yes, I've used some of the things I learned by watching Brain Games to help make things easier for people!

Although I left EMC in 2012 for another company, I still stayed in technical support, until 2015, when I was given the opportunity to apply for the position of Technical Instructor. Now, instead of educating just a few customers for whom I was responsible, I could bring my technical and product knowledge to all customers, both internal and external.

Ever since, I've been leading classroom and distance learning courses to help customers and employees alike better understand all the amazing things our products can do, by teaching them how to use it, whether we're talking about system administration to add users, or talking about highly technical topics such as wireless and telephony. I'm always looking for new ways to deliver information, to make sure that my classroom and my distance learning webinars are interesting, engaging, educational places.