For the most part I covered everything major in my professional life from the past year in my two recent posts, My Secret Life Revealed! and Success Learning Center. If you’d like to be up to date, start there. But as we get into the first work week of the new year, I wanted to reflect on a few other highlights from 2024 and what I’m excited about the most in 2025.
Perhaps the greatest experience I had this past year was in August on one of my trips to Lagos, Nigeria. I was asked to deliver remarks about distance learning at the 3rd International Colloquium at the University of Lagos Distance Learning Institute. The theme was “The Massive and Ubiquitous Intrusion of the Educational Landscape by Artificial Intelligence: Whither Open, Flexible and Distance Learning?” and the guest list was an impressive array of distance learning experts both from Nigeria and abroad. Of special note was that I finally had the opportunity to meet my longtime friend Ramesh Sharma in person after many years of online acquaintance.
Another big moment came as the year was winding down in December. I’ve written recently about how conversations with my friend Rich Douglas helped me to revise how I think about my professional life, and not long afterwards I was a guest on the podcast that he hosts for the Bellevue University’s Human Capital Lab. That episode went live this week, the first great thing about 2025 for me:
I get it, a lot of people are guests on shows all the time, so you may be thinking, “Come on, Steve, this is not that big a deal.” Maybe not. But I haven’t really done significant media before and I know that this year will be quite different when it comes to that, so having the first time out be done (and that I didn’t sound like a total ignoramus) is pretty exciting for me.
As for what’s to come, the most exciting thing is that Success Learning Center will be open for business in about a month. Kola Bakare, this is our year, brother!