It’s easier than ever to learn about a subject.
The above probably sounds like it goes without saying - “yeah, the internet, duh”. But let me elaborate; if I ever want to learn about a subject (recently I’ve become quite interested in venture capital, for example) I do the following things:
- Follow people who work in this field on Twitter.
- Subscribe to RSS feeds of blogs / sites that deal with this subject.
- Add some podcasts related to the subject to my iTunes subscriptions
I then go about my normal daily media consumption routine and BAM…a few weeks later I’m well on my way to become an expert on the subject (see the Zulu Principle). As Fred Wilson said in a post yesterday, “If you read Albert’s blog, my blog, the Union Square Ventures blog, Andrew’s blog, and Eric’s blog, you’ll come pretty damn close to hanging out in our office all week”.
More and more, being able to incorporate this sort of information (sometimes passively) into a routine I follow anyway, rather than having to go out of my way to attend an evening class, make trips to the library, see lectures, means that often, consumption = learning.
(But remember, consumption is the key word. Acquisition ≠ learning. I have shelves of unread “how-to” books, just as I have gigabytes of Harvard audio lectures sat on my hard drive.)
