"According to research conducted by Bersin by Deloitte, a typical employee can devote only 24 minutes during a workweek to training. That's why businesses eagerly adopt microlearning: it fits into a tight daily schedule seamlessly and employees can take bite-size courses in an off moment, on any device," says Slava Uskov, VP of Product Development at iSpring. "Many professional authoring tools might be overkill for preparing such courses because of their excessive features, a busy interface, and steep learning curve. The series of quick, bite-sized lessons can be used for new employee onboarding, product and sales training, and also as job aids and video explainers. They are especially effective for training "deskless" and field workers who typically don't have access to desktop computers during their workday.

Over at Data-Mania, I've started a blog series on analytics as a service, specifically focusing on IBM's Watson Analytics technology. I originally planned this series because I wanted to quash some recurring worries I've heard among the data science community. Accordingly, I'll be demonstrating that IBM's Watson Analytics technology was unequivocally not designed to annihilate the careers of data science professionals. What's more, I'll be underscoring just how much IBM is doing to foster, cultivate and enrich the careers of working professionals in the big data and data science space. The Datapalooza event is one major avenue by which IBM is supporting the data science community, seeking to educate the "next generation of data scientists on how to apply their minds, creativity, and tools in the creation of innovative data products." That sounds pretty cool, right?