Give My Regards to Broadway...
Twenty-five of us were on a Broadway tour in New York City. I'd organized the trip (with the help of our travel agent), like I've done for the past 14 years, connecting Theater Lovers with the stage through monthly local events and group trips to New York, Edinburgh, and London. Our tour guide mentioned, almost offhand, that he'd love to turn his content into an online curriculum someday.
I raised my hand.
That's the thing about showing up in the places you love. You never know what's going to happen.
I've spent years in instructional design and years building a theater community. Those felt like two separate lives. But I always hoped that one day they would collide. And now, for the first time, I can see a path where my love of learning design and my love of theater actually meet. The idea of creating audience education for Broadway, helping people connect more deeply with the stories on that stage, is something I didn't know I'd get to do. I'm so excited about what this could become.
I don't think it's a coincidence. And I don't think it's luck. It's sleepless nights, obsessive planning, and the kind of attention to detail that makes a learning experience impactful and makes a theater trip something people talk about for years. When you care that much about your craft, it shows up everywhere you go.
And lately, AI even plays a part in this. Another thing I'm passionate about - cutting-edge technology that makes our lives easier. It's given me time back in ways I didn't expect. I used it to map out nearly 300 calendar events for my kids' school schedules and custody arrangement in under an hour. I use it to pull complex client reports together automatically, so weekly reporting runs without me. And for the learners we build for, we're creating simulation-based tools that help people apply knowledge more quickly rather than just memorize it.
For my fellow IDs: try using Claude Projects to house everything for a client engagement, your documentation, learning objectives, theory frameworks, tool specs. When it's all in one place, pulling together a course outline that's grounded in your actual approach takes minutes instead of hours.
Keep showing up in the places you love. You don't always know where it leads. Sometimes it leads to Broadway.
