Second January 2021

 Things that happened today:

1. I saw a kite and a crow at my window-sill when I woke up.

2. Unboxed my first box of books from Bangalore. I still haven't installed all the shelves in that bookshelf (couldn't manage). But stacked whatever I could.

3. Watched AK vs AK. Really enjoyed it other than Anurag Kashyap's alarmingly stolid performance. Why? It's quite disconcerting. One of the things that has always blown me regarding Anurag Kashyap's movies, right from Black Friday and a pirated copy of his first unreleased film 'Paanch' was how superb he was with casting. And he works with such blazing talent...I couldn't fathom why he thought he would be good here? It's another matter that Anil Kapoor raises the bar ye high. He is fantastic. Still. In a movie with Anil Kapoor, if YOU are the one who is hamming, it's a surreal alternative universe. Anyway, as movies about movies go, this one is quite a delight. I don't think comparisons with Bowfinger are fair. This one has distinct flavours of our world. I liked it.

4. My Lenovo laptop is having issues. I need to replace my battery and that battery is not available in the market. If it does become available, it will cost me quite a bomb. But it's the battery. So, in a bid to get it fixed, I went to my usual spots in Vashi plaza. They couldn't sort it out. One of them told me to check it out in the Lenovo service set up near the mall. So I went there. It was all pretty and lit up and sparkly. The guy said that they were the Sales center. The 'Service' center was elsewhere. And that 'elsewhere' was in a building so dilapidated that one expected to see Anurag Kashyap or one of his cast members there staging a chase sequence...all dark, dingy...But the guy there was sweet. He too could not do anything but said he would revert on Monday. It's so telling, isn't it? The Sales center is someplace else and the Service center is hidden somewhere else, designed to be inaccessible. Funny.

5. Stats about this blog and some comments that people have made about Chiffonesque are interesting. When I started out and for a long time after that, my main audience was young girls between 24-35. Then the target audience was guys between 24-30. Now it's mainly men between 35-50. When the target audience was women, they usually appreciated what I wrote or disagreed with it. They never commented on the topics I chose to write about. The men, irrespective of age, however, comment on what I write about. Why are the topics always so sad? Why are they always so superficial? Why are they so personal? Why are they so impersonal? 

These are things to think about, considering I am planning to do more content marketing work in the coming months. Actually this insight is even good for the instructional design work as well. Women will accept stuff offered for free and will generally engage in the framework that the interface will allow them to. Unless the content creator has specifically asked for recommendations or feedback, they will not venture it. Men, on the other hand, are invested in the choice of content you put out. They would like to have a say in the earlier stage of 'content stream' to begin with. If they are patronizing a site with their 'attention', they would like their investment to yield better returns. 

Maybe gender and associated receptors play a far more important part in training than what we factor in. If your team consists of mainly women, you can design something and it will mostly fly. At least the training will be consumed. But if your workforce has more males, it is important to have their views represented earlier on in the design cycle. I realise this sounds stilted. Ideal situation is irrespective of gender, (and I am unfortunately limiting this to only CIS and binary gendered categories), you first ask an adult learner, "What would you like training on?" There's no guarantee that one will get an answer that is useful...but if my blog is any indication, even the initial engagement gets you a lot of traction. I'm talking in the zone of nearly three to four times the regular number. 

Actually the reason for not involving learners, especially in compliance training or anything related to vision-mission orientation type stuff, is the assumption that they will not have the answer, they are mostly blue-collared so their opinion on stuff like 'policy' and 'orientation' is out of their league, etc. But the truth is so much of these policies etc. is so anti-worker that it's not funny. (So much of this world and market is anti-worker that it's not funny. If everybody has to only 'strategise' and 'lead' and have 'visionary tendencies', who executes then? Who rolls up their sleeves and works through cranks when the shit gets real? It's like the difference between the Sales and Services offices of Lenovo. The Service place didn't even have a lift and it's on the 3rd floor. And there was some dingy loo with a flickering bulb. And those are the guys who are doing the grunt work. The only time the management will deign to look at them is to give them training. Why should they be amenable to it? If the only time my seniors look at me is to tell me how I can be 'fixed' some more with training, I won't like that at all. 

I really want to work with/ for a company or an L&D division with some guts. In the training feedback form, have a check box that says 'This was a waste of time.' Or rating scales that have a smiley face, frowning face, and the third finger from either side of the hand raised. 

In talks with some people who at least say that they want to try stuff. 

But I really want to do something in training that is for the LGBTQ community. It's time. Not token stuff. Important, serious, research-based assignments.

It will happen.