Newsletter
July 2010: Five Best Practices to Harness Social Media in Learning
Featured Team Member
Every month or so, we feature a different member of the NetSpeed Learning Solutions Team - mainly as a way for you to get to know a little about the great people we've assembled to help support our customers in a variety of different ways and to learn a bit about who they are outside of work.
This month's featured team member: David Aster, Senior Instructional Designer
David Aster is a relatively new addition to the NetSpeed Learning Solutions team, having joined forces with the company late last year. In short order, David has proven to be a master instructional designer with a rich understanding of learning processes and a passion for helping our clients accomplish their training and performance goals.
David began his consulting career at a small firm in Los Angeles with projects for Xerox and Apple in the late 1980’s while working toward his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Southern California. After moving to Seattle in 1990, David provided instructional design services to Boeing and Microsoft before becoming the Manager of Online Technical Education for the Microsoft Product Groups.
Outside of his work with clients in the private and public sectors, David plays guitar and sings in a gigging, original, alternative rock band in Seattle, creates oil paintings in a unique “pixilated” style (see www.davidaster.com),and was featured in a television commercial that aired multiple times daily for 2 years in the Puget Sound region (photo right) until May 2010. He is a passionate NBA and NFL fan, loves traveling with his girlfriend, cooking, playing racquetball, and creating a loving household for his dog and cat.
David recently celebrated his first half-year with NetSpeed and is ready to meet any instructional challenge and evangelize the benefits of distance teaching and learning. Check out our March 2010Newsletter to read David's short article, "It's About the Methods, Not the Media."
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Terrell Smith, Senior Project Manager
Terrell joined NetSpeed Learning Solutions in 2009 as the first official project manager to support the growing needs of the company. He brings over 25 year of experience in project management in the areas of IT Development, Environmental Restoration, R&D and Instructional Design. Over the past ten years Terrell has been an independent consultant teaching PM classes for clients all over the world, primarily in the virtual classroom. He has considerable experience in course design and development in the traditional classroom as well as online web-based courses. He has been instrumental in assisting companies in selecting appropriate virtual tools to implement online training solutions. Terrell is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and is currently studying for the Certified Business Analyst Professional (CBAP) designation.
In the area of education, he holds a BA in Political Science (Hey, that was popular in the 1970’s!) from Brigham Young University and an MPA from Idaho State University, with an emphasis in Environmental Management. Early in his career he was a COBOL programmer and even remembers punch cards! He has worked as a programmer analyst, systems analyst, system manager, and eventually moved into the role of project manager. That career choice seemed to stick. His most memorable project was managing the cleanup of unexploded ordnance (UXO) at a Former Used Defense Site (FUDS). He has mentored other project managers, developed PM methodologies with associated tools/templates and has overseen their implementation. Terrell has presented papers at project management, environmental, and training conferences. He finds satisfaction in helping others improve their professional skills.
In his spare time you are most likely to find him in a fly-fishing stream. He recently took golf lessons and is anxiously waiting for Spring to test his newly acquired expertise. Other hobbies are guitar, gardening, cooking, exercise, camping, hiking, cross-country skiing, etc. He and his wife, Katherine, have four grown children who are almost “out on their own.” They love to travel and frequently attend theatre and musical productions.
Brant Blumstein, Master Trainer
Brant joined the NetSpeed Learning Solutions team in 2002, after years in the consulting and training wilderness. He is a master trainer of our programs, providing certifications for client trainers as well as delivering all the modules himself. He loves both roles, and finds it fulfilling and enriching to work with colleagues sharing techniques and enhancing their professional training skills; and also highly rewarding to assist leaders in honing their leadership abilities. Brant’s first work with NSLS was his most exotic, opening its “Caribbean territory,” so to speak, by developing the relationship with a Trinidad training organization looking for an excellent leadership curriculum. He has been returning there ever since, though never, unfortunately for Carnival.
Brant has more than 20 years of experience endeavoring to bring expert and passionate training, facilitation and coaching to the wide variety of organizations with which he works. His areas of training and coaching experience include leadership, customer loyalty, teamwork, communication, conflict resolution, and negotiations. Before NetSpeed Learning Solutions, he spent more than 10 years with another international training and consulting firm, as a training consultant and as Training Performance Manager. Outside of the job, Brant loves the theatre (“Because it’s even more dramatic than the training room, and I have no impact on the story’s outcome—a restful change.”), writing for his own pleasure, and spending time in the conversational and dining company of friends. 
He also likes to feel the wind in his face and the fear in his heart rollerblading, and will accept almost any invitation to spend time by the ocean. Brant lives in the casual and funky city of Somerville, MA, once celebrated in a song about its lights turning from green to red, but since developing a considerably livelier pulse. In fact, it is the epicenter of the Boston area’s World Music series, which he attends frequently. Baaba Maal, anyone?
Tim Jones, Vice President and General Manager
Tim Jones has been with the company since 2001 (with a brief detour with an Internet startup for a couple years ). He oversees sales, marketing, and operations, not to mention lots of other tasks big and small to support our customers and our consultant partners who work with us.
Tim has been in sales and marketing management for most of the past 25+ years and has worked in a variety of industries (newspapers, online advertising, legal research, and of course, learning & development) and in a wide variety of corporate cultures ranging from highly fluid startups where people used doors laid flat for desks to large highly stratified, unionized manufacturing operations. Tim has a passion for details and “getting things done.”
Tim loves working at NetSpeed Learning Solutions and says it is the most functional, cohesive, positive working environment he has ever worked at. “There is not a weak link in our team and nobody is too important not to pitch in to get the job done, whatever the challenge,” says Tim.
When he is not working at NetSpeed, you might find Tim at work on his humor blog, View From The Bleachers, where he likes to share his somewhat skewed perspective on people, politics, parenting, and anything else that apparently begins with the letter “p.” Tim’s playful sense of humor is summarized by his stock response about his age: “I may be 54 but I have the maturity of a man half my age.”
Tim is married and the father of two wonderful teenage daughters that he and his Canadian wife, Michele, adopted from China. So Tim’s is truly the international family.
He loves baseball (and is excited that Seattle appears to have a major league baseball team again - finally). He also enjoys playing racquetball and golf, both of which he is proud to say are sports where his skills have rapidly progressed from “marginal” to “adequate” in just the past 25 years. He was born in Albany, NY but has lived in Seattle since 1991 and continues to love living here, despite Seattle’s well-earned reputation for being one of the cloudiest cities in the country.
Tim is a graduate of the University of Virginia, Phi Beta Kappa, and also earned a combined J.D./MBA degree from The Ohio State University, where his proudest achievement was writing most of the skits and acting as emcee for the first ever Ohio State University Law School Talent Show, where he actually got two law professors to dress up in costumes and throw pies at each other in front of the entire student body. But most of all, he is a proud dad.
Leo Brodie, Director of Technical Services
Leo joined NetSpeed Learning Solutions full-time in May, 2007, where he serves as Director of Technical Services and lead developer of all NetSpeed's software platforms. Since 1980, Leo has worked as a programmer, consultant, and technical writer for companies including Microsoft and Real Networks. He wrote three books related to computers, one of which is still in print after 25 years (Thinking Forth).
But Leo is also a true renaissance person whose many talents extend far beyond just web development, technical and programming services.
Leo majored in Theater Arts (he has Bachelor of Arts from UCLA). He wrote a screenplay that won the Lucille Ball Comedy Writing Award during his senior year. After graduating, he performed briefly in a comedy trio at the Comedy Store in L.A. where, at the time, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Robin Williams, Gallagher, and many other familiar names were headlining.
Leo also ran a part-time business called Punch & Brodie Puppet Productions, offering Muppet-like puppet characters for corporate events. His puppetry talents were featured recently at the 2009 International ASTD Conference.
Leo is also an amateur vegetable gardener and is currently taking a Permaculture Design Certification course. Leo and Cindy are both active in the Transition Town movement. You can view Leo's most recent video about his local group here.
Lisa Gallo, Client Services Manager
While she wears a variety of hats in her role as client services manager, Lisa's main priority is to make sure our customers are kept happy. If you know Lisa at all, you probably also know that she does an outstanding job of keeping her internal customers just as happy as her external customers. Lisa is responsible for trouble-shooting any customer issues or concerns, training our customers on how to use the NetSpeed Leadership and Blazing Service Administrator tracking and reporting tools, handling logistics for all TTT workshop, hosting our webinar events and much more. She also coordinates all the logistics required for our participation in major industry trade shows and conferences, like the annual ASTD Conference. Lisa has an infectiously positive personality and is always finding ways to support her colleagues and help out in any way she can. And she has about as big a heart as you are ever going to find anywhere..
Beyond her many responsibilities at NetSpeed Learning Solutions, Lisa loves hiking, camping, scuba diving, snow shoeing, gardening, volunteering and taking care of pets (especially dogs). She is very active in efforts to help create sustainable living communities.
Lisa is also a very talented, professionally trained actor who has even taught acting to elementary school children and directed them in theatrical productions. For more of her career, Lisa has been very involved in the performing arts, including theatre, television, film, commercials and industrial video performances. At the 2008 ASTD Conference, Lisa did a flawless Charlie Chaplin impersonation, and while in character refused to utter a word, despite lots of egging on by her co-workers. (An actor must stay in character, don’t you know!) And at this year's ASTD, she played the part of a Star Trek-like character named "Stella Constellation" interviewing a space alien who had come to Earth and ASTD to check out training solutions for his planet. She was a hoot! You can alsp see Lisa's theatrical skills on display in several video podcasts she has done for NetSpeed Fast Tracks.
Originally a native of the gulf coast of Florida, Lisa moved to Seattle in 2000 and has enjoyed making the Pacific Northwest her home. We are delighted to have Lisa as a key member of the NetSpeed Learning Solutions team.