Amsterdam - the perfect place to rest and break up the long 10,000 mile trip to Africa. Or so I thought! After visiting the famous Anne Frank house, I roamed down streets, canal after canal. Thinking this may be the last time I'd be able to check email, I darted into an internet cafe, unsnapped my backpack belt from around my waist, and carefully placed my bag under my chair and sat down to work. Suddenly, I looked around and my backpack was gone! My heart sank into the pit of my stomach as my psyche began to catalog what had vanished. My passport, all my money, credit cards, bank cards, traveler's checks, my camera, video camera, medications, jewelry, itinerary, plane tickets, lizard key chain complete with keys, and my precious 2005 journal.

To demonstrate the importance of listening skills in dealing with customers via telephone, Shari Petrak, a liability claims training specialist, Nationwide Insurance Colombus, Ohio, pairs off participants and designates one person in each pair as the “sender” and the other as the “receiver.”

Becky Bowman of the Clarke County Board of Commissioners, Athens, Ga., stretches her budget by collecting end rolls of newsprint paper discarded after production at a local printing plant. The large sheets of paper lend themselves well to group activities, large flip charts, and many other uses.

What are the Top 5 mistakes that cause people to walk out, ask for their money back, send letters of complaint, and in other ways torpedo your speaking, presenting and training efforts? Over the years, I've asked audiences for their list of deadly sins that cause them to tune out the presentations that they have attended. Here are the top five of the 22 that have come up repeatedly.

Training, and reviewing, doesn’t have to be dull…but it’s so easy to make it that way. And yet, intersecting information with review creatively doesn’t have to be time consuming either in the preparation or the presentation. What’s the point of training? Training is never just for training’s sake—the whole point in training is the outcome. One of the training keys to unlocking those results is Review and Revisit (which also happens to be the “R” in our CORE*).

The following Creative Training tips work well with at least two learning styles. The three generally-accepted umbrellas for learning styles are: auditory learner, visual learner and kinesthetic learner. Passing the Hat: Tip #5 from Optimizing Training Transfer One way to ensure participants get a chance to share what they’ve learned is by “passing the hat,” says Rick Bennett, a team leader trainer at CSARC in Windsor, CA. After a topic is covered...

QUESTION: What ideas would you have for making handouts more fun and interactive? These are the guidelines we use with our clients in preparing presentation handouts:

One thing that's always important is connecting with your participants. I believe they need to know that we're teaching from prepared lives as well as prepared lessons…and that we are there to benefit them. Here are eight tips for doing a better job of connecting with your next group.

What was the greatest cause of death while traveling to the west during the days of covered wagons? If you said small pox, drowning or death by gunfire you are correct! Name the route most frequently traveled by covered wagons to settle the western United States back in the old days…

The manager registered for your program is not always the person you need to connect with in the weeks before the course. In many cases, addressing your correspondence to an administrative support person more likely ensures your participants will arrive prepared for the course.