Phew! Reflecting on #ASTD10

I generally leave conferences both exhilarated and exhausted, and sitting on the flight home from three days in Chicago at the ASTD International Conference and Expo, I realize this one was no exception.

(What I would give right now for a foot rub. Anyone?)

Three days of booth babe duty at our lovely Kineo stand with my colleagues Steve Lowenthal, Steve Rayson, Mark Harrison and Gabe Rosenberg.

There was a lot of energy this year, overall felt like a lot more bustle and excitement than at last year’s ICE. As Ron Burns of Proton Media said, “what recession?”

I had no time to attend any sessions, but did imbibe much learning and connections nonetheless:

Moodle

On the stand, we had lots of interest in our corporate Moodle LMS offering. I’ve asked before whether the corporate Moodle is at a tipping point, and the strong indicators are, yes. Yes, indeed.

Companies want the flexibility and freedom of an open source model. People are frustrated with ongoing licensing fees, lack of good customer support and responsiveness from traditional LMS vendors, and slow time to implement.

I heard a lot of, “I’ve been looking into Moodle and we’re really interested...tell me more.” (If you want to know more, be sure to read some of the case studies on the work we’ve been doing in the corporate Moodle space).

Hanging out with Mr. SCORM himself

If you’re in eLearning, you’ve heard of SCORM. But did you know there is actually a Mr. SCORM and that he is the fabulous Aaron Silvers of ADL? (@mrch0mp3rs)

What I like most about Aaron is that he can talk about these really technically confusing things like metadata and metaparadata and the semantic web and I sort of get it.

Aaron and I talked about his vision for the new SCORM. Expect to see some exciting changes to SCORM in the next bit.

Getting social

I didn’t have a lot of time to cruise the expo hall (man, there were a lot of vendors!), but I did make a point of checking out Bloomfire and their Collaborative Social Learning Community. Josh has a great vision of helping groups put out user generated content in an easily accessible way. Bloomfire (@Bloomfire) even has a built in screencasting and video recording tool, making it super easy for people to share informal bits with each other.

Talking leadership

I love connecting face to face with people I’ve known online and I really enjoyed meeting Terrence Wing. (@TerrenceWing) Terrence does leadership training and is very involved with ASTD (he was on the conference committee!) I like his approach to training, “We create leadership packages – tools and resources for managers based on situational needs.” (He made an analogy to Jack Bauer’s hostage packages on the show 24.)

Talking content

As always, it was great to connect with Thomas Stone (@ThomasStone) of ElementK and hear what they’re up to with off-the-shelf content and LMSs. He’s possibly the most sincere person in the eLearning biz. And I mean that most sincerely.

Meeting the legends

I’ve known Professor Karl Kapp for years, but it was a bit of a shock to meet him face to face after all this time. (I told him my head would explode if this were to happen and it did.)

Great to catch up on his book (Learning in 3D continues to be a top seller!) and he even brought around Ron Burns of Proton Media to share a what’s happening in the immersive learning space.

Be sure to check out Karl and Ron's video tour of ASTD!

Top tips

Our own Steve Rayson was on the prowl with his flip cam, recording eLearning top tips from the likes of Mark Harrison of Kineo, Tom Kuhlmann of Articulate, Karl Kapp, Allen Partridge of Adobe, Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactive, and yours truly. Check out all the new additions to the Kineo TV channel.

Here’s a few to get you started:

All in all, a great show! Thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth and look forward to seeing you next year!