It occurred to me sometime at the beginning of April that I’d completely missed the anniversary of when I started in TAFE. It was 5 years ago, on the 23rd of March in 2006.
I don’t want to make a huge fuss about it, but it has come time for me move on from TAFE Queensland. I’ll be working for the Mining Industry Skills Centre, as a learning technologist. I must confess, I don’t know a lot about the mining industry… but, then again, that might be why they hired me! It will be a small team, which will mean a lot of responsibility, but also a lot of freedom to be agile.
If I’m honest about why I’m moving on, it has been that agility that I’m missing from my current role. I read an interview with Mark Zuckerberg a while ago where he said that Facebook’s unofficial motto was, “move fast & break things.” TAFE Queensland is a great place to work, but it has a real fear of making mistakes; that bold moves in any direction could be the wrong ones. I’m not going to argue whether that’s the right attitude for the public sector to have or not, but I’ve begun to realise that I need to work for a business where we can build things quickly, make mistakes, learn quickly from those mistakes, and improve.
I’m truly excited about my new role. We’ll be developing learning resources for mining companies & training providers, with a particular focus on mobile technologies. I’m especially psyched about some of the interesting challenges with training in the mining sector & I’m hopeful I can bring a fresh perspective to the table.
Thank you to everyone I’ve worked with over the last 5 years. I wish nothing but the best for the future of TAFE Queensland. There are incredibly talented & passionate people working in every TAFE institute in Queensland. If I can armchair coach for a second; I know that TAFE Queensland has the potential to be innovative, but I think it first must realise that the online world changes quickly. Like, really really really quickly.
So don’t try to be innovative. Be agile first, and innovation will come to you.
