I’ve just been really inspired by reading Creating Passionate Users. This blog has some mind-blowing, wise and well-researched things to say about learning. It’s a mine of useful information and, far more important than information, inspiration and teaching.

I’ve been on a major blog crawl today - when I should have been preparing for the Home Office on Monday, but it was all worth it to find Creating Passionate Users. It’s such an ass-kicking site (to use one of its favourite phrases). It may be focused on the software industry, but what it says about teaching and learning is spot on. It took me to Beyond Bullets another useful site about the use and abuse of PowerPoint (or, in my case, the much cooler Mac app known as Keynote). But what I love about Creating Passionate Users above all is its out-and-out commitment to the importance of effective learning and teaching.

Because what you believe in, you can teach. And teaching is the “killer app” for a newer, more ethical approach to marketing. While in the past, those who out-spent (on ads, and big promotions) would often win, that’s becoming less and less true today for a lot of things–especially the things designed for a younger, more-likely-to-be-online user community.

Kind of a markets-are-classrooms notion. Those who teach stand the best chance of getting people to become passionate. And those with the most passionate users don’t need an ad campaign when they’ve got user evangelists doing what evangelists do… talking about their passion.

As an ex-teacher, I can really go with this.

Nobody becomes passionate until they’ve reached the stage where they want to grow in a way they deem meaningful. Whether it’s getting better at a game or helping to save the world, there must be a goal (ideally, a continuously progressive goal) and a clear path to getting there. It’s our job, if we’re trying to encourage others to become passionate, to enable it. And the only way to do that is by teaching.

So, how do I teach Home Office officials about the Baha’i Faith in a way that won’t bore them rigid and will answer their questions, give them what they need, improves their day?

It sounds like one of those really over-the-top self-improvement ideas. But it’s not like that at all. It’s a witty and wise set of observations about people’s strengths and weaknesses.

I enjoyed this set of pages called My Superpower.

It set me wondering what my superpower is. How about procrastination? I’m actually procrastinating now; I should be preparing a presentation on the Bahai Faith that I’m giving at the Home Office on Monday as part of the HO’s diversity week.

Or there’s my ability to collect snippets of useless information and bore people rigid with them. Did you know that the Great Western Railway’s broad gauge (the distance between the rails) until 1872 was 7 feet and a quarter of an inch (please don’t ask what that is in metric). Why the quarter of an inch? Who cares?

Then again, I have a hopeless memory. I can tell that you I read something “somewhere”. But where? Some people have an uncanny knack for remembering book titles and page numbers and even the line on the page, but I can’t even tell you the title of the books I’m reading right now.

But my all-time superpower is my ability to “wing it”. I can join in discussion and give wonderful talks and presentations and make you believe that I know what I’m talking about - usually based on my half remembered collection of useless information that I just KNOW I read somewhere.

Now, how can I capitalize on this wondrous superpower?

Portsmouth Harbour

Originally uploaded by John Barnabas.

I like photos that are taken against the light. This picture has an interesting sky and the sun glinting on the sea beyond the yacht.

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