Back in the mid ’80s when I (along with many many others) was starting out with computing and IT, when there were no IT courses, it was almost impossible to get informal learning on micro-computers validated. I recall that I became the computer expert in the company I was working at, on the grounds that I was the only one who had a microcomputer (I had a BBC micro that I used mainly for word processing). I recall some extreme moments of ‘personal lack of confidence’, especially when learning the hard way about the critical importance of back-ups and having to design only ‘good enough’ technological solutions. Much of my first 10 years of IT knowledge and understanding was built on experience and various types of informal learning. I then took a few UG and PG Open University modules to fill in some gaps and to formalise the learning with OU certificates I could point to. A year after I stopped doing these courses, the OU offered me a brand new qualification called the ‘Diploma in Systems Practice’, so I do actually have a ‘proper’ qualification in something technical!

Having worked in my own company since 1998, I’ve had to overcome that feeling that informal learning is somehow not valid or legitimate. I strongly believe that personal learning comes in many shapes and sizes and that formal learning is only a (small) part. It’s what is learned and applied successfully that counts – and of course, unsuccessful application leads to further learning, so it *can* be all good.
Since about 2005 I’ve been working on / thinking about the concept of ePortfolios and personal learning spaces, both for personal use and also through various JISC-funded and other projects, most often through the University of Nottingham’s Centre for International ePortfolio Development (CIePD). With a good quality ePortfolio service(s), you can obtain and use a framework for private and shared reflection on your personal learning, which can go some way towards validating informal learning, at least in your own mind, I find.

As a freelancer since 1998, I’ve had to learn new techniques and find those that have ready application to current problems. This sounds quite a lot like your situation. It means I’m a low-level Perl hacker, I can modify bits of PHP or Python (though I don’t programme in them properly), I’ve learnt how to create and how to teach how to create DTDs, schemas and such like, I can ‘do’ requirements engineering (though I have no engineering qualification), I can hand-craft web pages (still), and use a huge range of blatantly useful software. Therefore I have large toolbox to use to make stuff I need to do to earn money.

My problem is almost the reverse of your’s. I feel that I’d rather some university paid me a salary to follow my interests – which seem to have been of use to the ‘course related information community’ over the years (in the sense that I’ve been paid for projects at least), rather than have to always charge for what I do. I’d love to do some pro bono work, but unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills.

My own main reflection on informal learning and the application of it to ‘doing stuff’ is that the proof is in the usefulness or otherwise of the learning. I would say that the material you produce on your blog is, to re-use the term, ‘blatantly useful’, so you must be doing something right, even if it isn’t subject to conventional academic validation.

Kirstie Coolin at the CIePD is getting more heavily into the open badges idea, as a way of addressing the gap between informal learning and properly validated assessed credential-based learning. I think that it might be possible in the future to marry up the ePortfolios / personal learning spaces / informal learning networks with light-weight recognition such as badges. This type of initiative might result in making more explicit the value of informal learning and expertise not recognised in more conventional ways. And then we might be more confident of the non-validated learning we’ve all amassed.