We always want to encourage our staff to play, learn and grow. And, to focus on that this year we decided to spend some time teaching from within. Each of us are experts or specialists in our own fields and even though we work well as a team, we aren’t necessarily aware of the steps each person goes through to do what they do every day.

To share our knowledge, we’ve been educating each other on how we do what we do through a series of Lunch and Learn sessions, informal Show and Tell presentations and blog posts.

And one of the things we’ve learned so far is that everyone in the company has something valuable to teach the team.

To date we’ve had Lunch and Learn sessions about Google+, Responsive Design, Persona Development and Design Anthropology. And, we’ve got at least two sessions lined up every month right until the end of the year. The topics illustrate the diversity of what people find cool. And the sessions expose members of our AskingCanadians team to what’s happening with the Delvinia team and vice versa.

Our Show and Tell presentations are a more informal than our Lunch and Learns and they tend to include only members of the Delvinia team. They’re basically a 10 to 20 minute chat during which we present a client project, explaining what the client asked for, how we approached the project and how we delivered it.

We’re also looking at bringing in partners and vendors to talk about their products. Our session with Microsoft Advertising is a recent example. We’re even making a field trip to their offices later today to learn more about what they offer.

By keeping each other informed of industry trends, we’re always thinking and looking for new and interesting things that can benefit our clients. We’d like to share what we learn with you. Here’s a look at a recent post on persona development. Stay tuned for more articles on each of our sessions.