Monthly Learning Meeting: Transforming Chaos into Actionable Knowledge

Date: Wednesday, October 14

Time: 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM

Location: Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen
                76 Northeast Interstate 410 Loop
                San Antonio, TX 78216

ATD Competency: Knowledge Management 

Objectives: At the end of our talk, we’d like our guests to be able to:

• Discuss techniques Rackspace has applied to help their employees gain new skills and share information in a fast pace, ever-evolving environment.
• Identify potential challenges with learning, training and transferring knowledge in a 24x7 support organization and how to mitigate against.
• Describe some of the challenges that occur when trying to build authoritative knowledge bases with many contributors.
• Describe possible approaches to avoid or solve these challenges.

Speakers: 
Richie Valadez, Director of Global Talent Development, Rackspace
Sami Moran, Senior Information Architect, Rackspace

Background: Richie Valadez is the Director of Global Talent Development at Rackspace responsible for technical training. He has been with Rackspace for 8 years holding roles in Sales, Support, Knowledge Management and Talent Development. Richie is a proud UTSA Roadrunner and has an MBA from St. Mary’s University.

Sami Moran is Senior Information Architect for the ASKS (Authoritative, Sustainable Knowledge Solutions) team at Rackspace. A high-tech industry veteran with 30 years of experience delivering technical information online, Sami began her career in the mid 1980’s, writing and delivering hypertext technical content before the WWW came into being in the early 1990s. She spent many years in Silicon Valley delivering content for tech companies such as Network Appliance, Cisco and Novell and worked as an independent consultant for a decade before joining Rackspace in 2011. In her private life, Sami is a passionate advocate for children’s literacy, having raised two children who struggled with dyslexia.

Approved for 1.0 hour of General Re-certification credit toward PHR, SPHR, and GHPR recertification.

The use of this seal is not an endorsement by the HR Certification Institute of the quality of the activity. It means this activity has met the HR Certification Institute's criteria to be pre-approved for recertification credit.