Everything Sir Ken says in this TED Talk, from February 2010, is just as true about adult learning as it is about our children’s education. And my commitment to this perspective about “informal” learning is central to the program design for the Madhatters Tea Party Group Coaching programs.

If we are to resurrect our local, national and global economies, we’re going to have to resurrect our spirits first. Starting with the spirits of adults! And the resurrection of spirits depends on organic processes, not pre-packaged “scalable solutions.”

Early in the talk, Sir Ken says, “Changing education is about challenging what we take for granted, challenging the tyranny of common sense…. And it’s very hard to know what you take for granted – because you take it for granted…”

Then, delightful, dry Britt that he is, Robinson quotes Lincoln:

‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with it. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country.’ – Abraham Lincoln

Robinson went on to say so many funny and profound things. I captured just a few in text as I listened:

” The idea we are enthralled to in education – the idea that life or learning is or should be linear – is simply false. Every TED speaker has, either implicitly or explicitly, told us this for the last five years!

“Life is organic. We create our lives organically in response to things that happen to us. This is what is true. Yet, we have built our educational systems on a fast-food model where everything is standardized. And that model – as Jamie Olivers’ Food Revolution has been telling us – is depleting our spirits as badly as it is impoverishing our bodies.

“We have to change metaphors – from a manufacturing model based on linearity, and conformity, and batching people – to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We simply have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it is an organic process.

“We cannot predict learning outcomes. All we can do – like a farmer does – is create the conditions under which human beings can begin to flourish.

“So when we look at transforming education, it’s a process of customizing and personalizing services for people you are actually teaching. Doing this is the key to the future.

“The reformation of education isn’t about ‘scaling a new solution.’ It’s about creating a new movement in education where people create their own solutions with external support based on a personalized curriculum.”

Amen, Sir Ken Robinson!! Amen!! Bravo, bravo, bravo!!

And bravo to the Spring, 2010, cohort of Madhatters and Virtual Tea Partiers! Your willingness to use virtual meeting rooms, video conferencing, Web 2.0 tools and innovative teleconferencing tools to learn together – online, organically, and grounded in your precious and personal passions and dreams – makes my life worth living. As a coach, as a trainer, as a consultant.

As a “teacher.”

I would like nothing better than to be able to use that word, “teacher,” again without thinking of a hapless supervisor on some horrid assembly line like the one Chaplain depicted so masterfully in “Modern Times” – now close to 80 years ago… Can’t we please wake up from the industrial /mechanical trance? The alarm’s ringing loud in the Gulf of Mexico!

I don’t know about you, but I’m watching the economic news from the sidelines.

On the one hand, things look truly bleak. Some days the future’s so far in the RED that it almost looks BLACK.

On the other hand, with everything in the toilet – now including the US auto industry – there’s a lot more room for new possibilities.

I never thought I’d find myself feeling gleeful watching so many things and so many concepts we’ve considered “valuable” get flushed away all at once. But as the news gets worse and worse, I find I’m often feeling better and better.

Call me perverse.

Maybe I’m finally getting the wisdom of hopelessness Meg Wheatley wrote about after 9/11.

Whatever it is,  besides feeling surprisingly okay watching most of my lifesavings float away,  I’m also getting more and more excited about helping friends and other independent business people develop their “telepresence.” Because it’s time now. Really time!

We simply have to do some things differently if we expect to save money and save time for what’s really important in 2009. And using social media – including virtual meetings – is one of the best ways I know to augment close business and personal relationships without driving and flying all over the place all the time.

So, what is “telepresence?”

The way I use that new word, “telepresence,” is a little different than the way the manufacturers of the expensive, high-definition video conferencing systems are using it. I’m not talking about buying and installing $50-$300K remote viewing systems in your home office.

For me, “telepresence” is a way of referring to your skill at being present with people you’re not able to be in the same room with.

Understood this way, “telepresence” has nothing to do with hardware and very little to do with software.

Instead, “telepresence” is about using your telephone, IM, text messaging, and now virtual meeting rooms in ways that make people feel like you’re with them, even when you’re across town, across the country, or across the globe from their physical bodies.

Looked at this way, telepresence is a set of engagement skills. Some of them are technical. Most of them are social. Some parts can become routine. Some will remain art and, therefore, require practice. But the good news is that all of them are FREE to develop and practice.

Skype, GTalk, DimDim, Yuuguu, Yugma, vYew, Elluminate, and WiZiQ all offer free places to practice and play with people around the block or around the globe.  New places are opening up every week. Get yourself a membership in one or more of these places and let’s practice!

Instead of wringing our hands about things too big for us to change, I’d like to suggest that the year ahead is going to be a great time to practice our “telepresence.” Like Meg Wheatley, I’m ready to “journey through this time of increasing uncertainty. Groundless, hopeless, insecure, patient, clear. And together.”

What have we got to lose?

It’s Wednesday afternoon at 3pm: you’ve got to leave the office one more time to drive across town and sit with a client to explain a complex document.

Or it’s Friday morning at 10am: your partner can’t make it back today to meet with the Board chair, so you’re scouring the office for a recorder and a mic so you can at least record your conversation.

Or it’s Tuesday at 5pm: your client just made crucial changes to your project plan. You need to alert the rest of the team to change direction right away. Only three people are out of town and so is your boss.

Just another day in paradise, right?

People who make a living selling their expertise need help saving time and reducing the costs of doing business.

The good news is that virtual meeting technologies give us the ability to do both right now.

In virtual meeting rooms, from two to two dozen people can easily share voice and visual data in real-time without anyone having to drive across town or fly across the state to do it. And, if you know how, you can do this for FREE!

When you understand how to use them effectively, free virtual meeting rooms afford you enormous freedom and save both time and money.

They allow you to conference with others over critical documents anywhere you can get on the internet. They spare you and your clients the headaches of rush-hour traffic jams and skyrocketing fuel costs, not to speak of the money you spend on hotel rooms and crummy restaurant food.

And they help you reduce the carbon footprint you’re leaving with all that business travel, too.

As you become more familiar with them, free internet conferencing tools can help you free up hundreds of hours and save from $5K to $50K – or more – a year!

Just off the top of my head, here are 21 things I know you can do just as well in a FREE virtual meeting room as you can face-to-face:

1. Update participants on project teams without anyone having to travel.
2. Train from 1 to 1000 people – presenting crucial information, taking questions, sharing answers.
3. Collect input on a critical issue from a dispersed group of stakeholders.
4. Discuss highlights in trend data with decision-makers without anyone having to travel.
5. Qualify sales prospects so both parties are ensured of high productivity from face-to-face meetings.
6. Do the same with job candidates.
7. Collaborate securely around visual data in real-time with a dispersed group of experts.
8. Include non-local stakeholders in a Board meeting.
9. Provide customers both data and personal support when they’re experiencing difficulties making use of your products or services.
10. Explain or clarify news about your company.
11. Explain document complexities in a low-pressure context so you can negotiate contracts and close sales faster.
12. Consult one-on-one with clients when you’re on the road, providing them both voice and visual support.
13. Demonstrate confusing software operations.
14. Record contributions made by meeting participants for later review – or so people unable to attend live can see and hear what happened.
15. Poll stakeholders on crucial questions and explore their responses with them in real-time.
16. Review a budget, line by line, making annotations and changes with others.
17. Elicit and capture people’s informal feelings and needs (using text chat) while moving quickly through a formal presentation.
18. Share pictures, diagrams and technical drawings in a secure environment, without delay and without travel.
19. Reduce operating costs while enhancing the frequency, efficiency, and effectiveness of coworkers’ real-time communication and collaboration.
20. Extend the reach of personal services to shut-ins and other people challenged by travel.
21. Host interstate and international conferences without having to think about airport shuttling, parking, hotel reservations and setup, catering, or name badges.

How do I know you can do these things? Because I’ve done them all myself.

And, this is really just the tip of the iceberg!

Free virtual meeting tools offer independent business people and nonprofit organizations enormous potential benefits and savings.

Of course I would never recommend that you move ALL your meetings online. But as you begin to move the right ones into free virtual meeting rooms, you can pocket huge savings… and start using all that time and money for what’s really important to you – and the planet.

Save once – win two or three times over!

If you want to learn more about how to use these free technologies, stay tuned here. That’s what I’m all about.