ASTD TechKnowledge Wrap Up in Pictures #ASTDTK12

Back home now after another exciting week in Las Vegas for ASTD’s TechKnowledge 2012 conference and expo. (I took a redeye home Friday night and then went camping with my son’s cub scout pack Saturday night.  Crazy, I know.)
Held at the Rio in Las Vegas, this year’s conference featured great keynote sessions from Jane McGonigal, Stuart  Crabb of Facebook, and Lisa Doyle of the VA; concurrent sessions and creation stations with Jane Bozarth, Connie Malamed, Julie Dirksen, Kevin Thorn, Aaron Silvers, Judy Unrein, Kris Rockwell, Ellen Wagner, Reuben Tozman, Cindy Huggett,  and many others; TK Chats on varied topics; and endless hallway conversations.  I know my brain was full but invigorated!

I live blogged most of the sessions I went to:

• Jane McGonigal
• Stuart Crabb of Facebook
• Connie Malamed on Cognitive Load
• Cindy Huggett on the Virtual Classroom
• Julie Dirksen on Learner Experience Design
• Lisa Doyle of the VA

Here are some other highlights of the conference, in pictures:

 Talking authoring tools and HTML5 at TK Chat with Dave Anderson of Articulate, Patrick Krekelberg of Allen Interactions, Thomas Toth and Judy Unrein.
This year’s TK Chat sessions ran the gamut, with particularly hot topics around Social Learning, Gamification and tools.  One of my favorite conference moments was during the TK Chat on mobile when Kris Rockwell (@hybridkris) gave someone her conference AHA moment about QR codes. 



Kineo was onscreen as-large-as-life every time I walked past the the Adobe Booth, where they had a Kineo Captivate project running on endless loop. 
Although Kineo’s Managing Director Steve Rayson was in London at the Learning Technologies conference, there he is on the screen behind Adobe’s Allen Partridge.  Kind of a fancy magic trick, eh?



This year was the second annual Monsters of Instructional Design TK Chat with esteemed ID professors: Steve Villachica (Boise State), Allison Rossett (SDSU), Karl Kapp (Bloomsburg), and Ellen Wagner (Sage Road Solutions).
We talked about the disconnect between many ID programs and the demands of the industry, and tried to resolve the big problems of the biz – like trying to hire talented professionals well-versed in the whole elearning professionals pie: the Science of Learning, the Art of Learning, the Technology of Learning, and the Business of Learning.


Thursday’s general session was keynoted by Stuart Crabb, head of learning at Facebook. With over 70% of Facebook employees born since 1979, they’ve got some different cultural challenges than a lot of orgs.  Perhaps a picture of the way things will be?
I took it as an opportunity to go all meta and posted to Facebook while listening to Stu talk about Facebook.







But not all of the magic happened during the day. One night I hit the town and saw Penn & Teller. Here’s me with Judy Unrein (@jkunrein) talking to Teller (yeah, he talks). Later, Judy’s phone ended up inside a frozen fish in the back of the auidence.  I got to call her phone while it was in the fish. Talk about thrilling! (Photo credit: Kevin Thorn @learnnuggets)








My role as chairperson of this year’s Planning Advisory Committee for TK12 included emceeing all the general sessions.  (Photo credit: Kris Rockwell @hybridkris)
Here I am looking particularly passionate about something. Either that or I was ready to break into song – it was Vegas after all. 
All in all, a great conference and I was thrilled to have been able to play the role that I got to play.  Thanks to ASTD for letting me play along this year!