Rolling University

If you are reading on a smartphone, use landscape / hold phone sideways. 

A master class is a class given to students of a particular discipline by an expert of that discipline - usually music, but also science, painting, drama, games, or on any other occasion where skills are being developed. 

Yesterday, my entire family attended a Master Class, held by Marshall Goldsmith.

Well, sorta.

We had around eight hours in the car this weekend. And I had the new Audible book, The Earned Life in my phone - and so - we (all of us) enjoyed having Marshall Goldsmith riding along with us. For eight hours.

There is something about an audio book, read by the author. Some people love the good old fashioned paper book, I get that. Me, I'm a big fan of Audible - but ESPECIALLY when it is a business book read by the author. It feels like they are speaking directly to me. 

My two sons graduated from Schools of Business. I am in business - I have been a serial entrepreneur since the 80s. I am also an executive coach, so I am a little bit in awe of Marshall, the "Coach of Coaches" if you will. 

We live in a multimedia, transmedia, omnimedia world. BOOKS have been around for thousands of years, especially if we count the ones that are carved in stone. As I write this Sunday's blog, I have CNN on my TV, I have three screens open on my computer, I have laptop, an iPad and a smartphone all turned on, and everything is displaying - something. Oh, I also have my Jabra wireless headset, listening to music.

Just as how "books" have been around for a very long time, so has distance learning. I always say that Distance Learning has become DIGITAL Learning, and now, it is all just DIGITIAL LIVNG. If you really want to get down into the weeds, the phonograph (or gramophone) was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison (we think). Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s while Emile Berliner moved things from phonograph cylinders to flat disks. 

The disc phonograph record was the dominant commercial audio recording format through most of the 20th century. In the 1960s 8-track cartridges and cassette tapes were introduced as alternatives. In the 1980s phonograph use declined sharply due to the popularity of cassettes and the rise of the compact disk. And then came digital music in the 2000s. Ah yes, Napster, Spotify and the like. 

"OK, Google, how many podcasts are there?"

"Good morning, Thomas. In short, if you're asking 'how many podcasts are there', I think the right answer is more than 4 million, and not just what's in Apple."

I am one of the 4 million. Our NYDLAcast.com (aka Coffee in the Clouds) video podcasts reach millions of eyeballs, because many times our show guests have millions of followers. Actors, authors, celebrities, entrepreneurs all "teaching everything they know" in a fireside chat style interview. And, whenever possible, we "gift" the books of authors to our global community, as a value-added member benefit. So everyone wins: the publicists, the publishers, the PR firms, the authors and of course, the growing NYDLA membership. 

And so, this weekend, our car was a rolling university with Marshall Goldsmith as the guest lecturer at CumulusUniversity.org  

In The Earned Life, Marshall teaches us how to live our own lives, not someone else's version of them. The key to living the earned life, unbound by regret, requires a commitment to a habit of earning and connecting it to something greater than the isolated achievements of our personal ambition. 

For many years my battle cry was "everything is distance learning" and people would say I was wrong. I would ask: Did you ever watch a TED Talk? Did you ever watch a Netflix documentary? Did you ever listen to a podcast? Very quickly I usually win the argument as I lay out the case for the Distance Learning > DIGITAL Learning > DIGITAL LIVING journey. 

My family got to meet Marshall Goldsmith this weekend. Again, sorta. Marshall rode along with us for 8+ hours in our rolling university. Sadly, he did not chip in for gas. 

Visit www.CumulusUniversity.org