More on my superpower

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?