Jan. 10—Feb. 14, 2025
Fridays, 6:30 am to 8:00 am PST

Live via Zoom and Recorded


Welcome to the 5Cs of Knowledge Management and Tinderbox 101 Course, where you’ll gain the skills, tools, frameworks,a nd community to revolutionize how you manage, optimize, and apply your knowledge and insights. This course isn’t just about using Tinderbox—it’s about mastering transferable personal knowledge management (PKM) practices across platforms and disciplines.

While we can't cover everything in this one course, we will cover the fundamentals for you to engage in a wide range of personal knowledge work in and with Tinderbox and related software, including, but certainly not limited to, 1) general note-taking, 2) critical thinking, 3) qualitative and quantitative research, 4) email communications, 5) social media and blogging, 6) writing projects (e.g., articles, whitepapers, reports, presentations, master thesis, doctoral research and dissertations, books), 7), script writing, 8) task and project management, 9) daily journaling, 10) study cards, 11) resume management, 12) sales pipeline management, 13) personal CRM, 14) in-personal, virtual and hybrid event (keynote, panel, workshop, webinar, podcast, conference) planning and management (inc. agenda and speaker management), 15) teaching (e.g., course development, teaching, grading, working with an LMS), and 16) so much more.

What You'll Learn

Through a mix of practical lessons and conceptual insights, you’ll learn to unleash the full potential of your thinking, note-taking, and creative processes.

Foundational Skills and Frameworks

  • 5Cs of Knowledge Management: Grasp and apply the Collection, Curation, Creation, Collaboration, and Contribution framework to enhance your PKM practices.
  • CSA Framework: Implement core methodologies to structure and streamline your knowledge workflows.
  • Metacognition and Thought Leadership: Develop a reflective approach to your work through incremental formalization, enlightened self-interest, and attribute (metadata) thinking.

Tinderbox Mastery

  • Navigate Tinderbox’s powerful capabilities:
  • Note Management: Seamlessly collect, curate, create, collaborate, and contribute knowledge assets.
  • Attributes, Views, and Prototypes: Generate deep insights from your information.
  • Build dynamic and Efficient Workflows: Leveage inheritance, agents, action codes, and templates to get closer to your insights and automatically manage the manual processes.
  • Publishing and Exporting: Share your work effortlessly via HTML, MS Word, PowerPoint, Google Docs, and more.

Beyond Tinderbox

  • Tool Ecosystem Integration: Enhance your workflows with tools like DEVONthink, BBEdit, TextExpander, TextSniper, Snagit, Pandoc, Bookends, Zotero, Obsidian, learning management systems (e.g., Canvas), and more.
  • Leveraging Standards: Utilize languages and syntaxes like HTML, CSS, Markdown, and RegEx to enrich your outputs.
  • Community Engagement: Connect with Tinderbox and broader PKM communities for guidance, collaboration, and ongoing learning.

Who is This Course For

  • People are overwhelmed with too much input and want to make sense of their input and how to manage their outputs.
  • Tinderbox license holders who don't know what to do with the software or how to get started.
  • People need to understand their notes and writing and learn how to create insights from and produce materials.
  • People who want to get stuff out of Tinderbox (copy—past, export, transform)
  • Specifically, knowledge workers, executives, project managers, historians, psychologists, physicians, scriptwriters, professors (of all grades), entrepreneurs, students, etc.

Course Format

The course will be conducted live (virtual via Zoom) for 6 students and on-demand for up to 10 participants. In total, there will be 9 hours of interactive sessions—Fridays, 06:30-8:00 AM PST, Jan. 11 to Feb. 14. While we have a lot to cover, there will be ample opportunity to tailor the sessions to align with participants’ personal interests and projects. All participants receive:
All participants receive:

  • Session recordings (24-48 hours after each session)
  • Sample Tinderbox files
  • Suggested assignments
  • Relevant references
  • Email support

Prerequisites

Recommended

  • Come up with ideas on projects, problems, objectives, research questions, or learning objectives you'd like us to consider during and after the course (start by asking yourself, "what is it that I want to get done?" and not "What can a particular tool, like Tinderbox, do").
  • BBEdit account and downloaded and installed (FREE account and download is fine)†
  • DEVONthink account and download†
  • Obsidian account and download and installed (FREE account and download is fine)
  • Zotero account and downloaded (MacOS app and browser plugin installed) (FREE)
  • more... (we'll cover it all in the course)

†Get 25% off Tinderbox, DEVONThink, BBEdit, and other artesian software at the WinterFest 2024 site.






What Past Participants Are Saying

“Dr. Becker’s 5Cs framework and Tinderbox course have brought me closer to my ideas and content, including text, images, quizzes, and more. I’ve learned to think with Tinderbox, improve my writing, and automate repetitive tasks, saving time and helping me write more clearly and concisely.” Dr. Mary Beth McCabe, Professor of Marketing. Point Loma Nazarene University


"Michael's course on Tinderbox takes you beyond the basics of note-taking and into the world of curating your content into sophisticated outlines and knowledge maps that can be flexibly published or shared into the platform of your choice. Along the way you'll appreciate and use techniques to automate your workflows using action code queries, stamps, and other Tinderbox features.. Michael's course focuses on real-world applications of Tinderbox and helps make sense of the vast array of tools in this valuable application."


"Thank you Michael for a great course - your enthusiasm, knowledge and generosity in sharing these (as well as with your time!) was very much appreciated. I would readily recommend this to anybody wanting a good grounding in the basics of Tinderbox!"




Example Curriculum

  Introduction to the 5Cs and Tinderbox 101 6-Week Course
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Class Preparation
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Week 1 (Jan. 10, 2025): 5Cs and TBX Fundamentals Review
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Week 2 (Jan. 17, 2025): Organization, Collection, Curation
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Week 3 (Jan. 24, 2025): Working with Action Code and Media (images, videos, audio, PDFs files)
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Week 4 (Jan. 31, 2025): Working with Agents, Templates, Media
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Week 5 (Feb. 7, 2025): Working Functions and Export
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Week 6 (Feb. 14, 2025): Wrap-up (Pulling all the pieces together)
Available in days
days after you enroll
  Course Survey and Testimonial
Available in days
days after you enroll

This course is closed for enrollment.

About Your Instructor


About Dr. Michael Becker
Dr. Michael Becker is an international strategic advisor, author, and educator. As the founder and CEO of Identity Praxis, he advises Fortune 500 companies, startups, and non-profits on self-sovereign identity (SSI)–principled identity & data management, privacy & cybersecurity, product development, marketing, business development, and knowledge management. He is an advisor to companies like Assurant and Military Connect, Predii, and Magic ID. He is a member of several leading trade organizations, including Mobile Ecosystem Forum (formerly, he was MEF’s ID & Data Chair), MyData Global, and The Startup Marketers (SUM)—he sits on the SUM’s Advisory Board. Dr. Becker’s professional and scholarly interests focus on SSI-principled identity & data management, privacy & cybersecurity, digital [mobile] marketing, personal knowledge management and tools for thought, and The Identity Nexus™. Dr. Becker has delivered over 1,000 keynotes, panels, webinars, workshops, and courses. A prolific author, Dr. Becker writes blogs and has co-authored several books, including Mobile Marketing for Dummies, Web Marketing All-In-One for Dummies, and Mobile Marketing Essentials (online courseware that includes a textbook, learning outcomes, learning assets, assessments—assignments, quizzes, and exams—lecture slides, etc.). He was the founder and co-editor of The International Journal of Mobile Marketing. He has been the program director for several ID & Data and marketing in-person, hybrid, and virtual forums and unconferences (e.g., DMA conferences, MMA Forums, The Connected Marketer Forum, MEF ID Data Forums and unconference). He hosts a weekly Tinderbox community meetup on personal knowledge management and tools for thought—The 5Cs of Knowledge Management for Leashing Your Creative Potential. He is also an adjunct professor for several institutions, including California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, National University, Association of National Advertisers, and the 5Cs of Knowledge Management. Previously, he co-founded mCordis & The Connected Marketer and iLoop Mobile, an industry-leading mobile marketing SaaS offering. He was a founding member of the Mobile Marketing Association, sat on its board for ten years, and was its North American Managing Director for three years. He has been involved in custom satellite test system development, has developed all-media rich instant messaging solutions, has sold medical devices internationally, and was a member of the team that built the world’s first eBooks (the Rocket eBook by Nuvomedia) and one of the first social media sites, the Rocket eBook Library. He holds a U.S. patent—Method, apparatus, and computer-readable medium for multiple messaging session management with a graphical user interface. Dr. Becker has received multiple awards, including the Marketing EDGE Education Leadership Award (2014). He earned his BS from Saint Mary’s College of California, an MBA from Santa Clara University, and a DBA from Golden Gate University—his dissertation focused on personal information management systems use. He is an avid reader, athlete, and traveler—he has traveled to 54 countries and lived in Tokyo for five years.