DevLearn, Reflected #dl10

As always, the eLearning Guild puts on a great show and this year’s DevLearn in San Fran was no exception. Heading home completely exhausted and in dire need of a foot rub – good signs of all the action there was.

Life as a booth babe

At the Kineo booth, we were busy on the stand talking about Totara – the new open source LMS for corporates – and showing off some our custom eLearning projects.

I was joined on the booth floor by our US CEO Steve Lowenthal, our new Director of Totara Jonathan Newman (who’s quite the smarty pants on open source and Moodle – welcome Jonathan!); and two of our colleagues/founders from the UK, Steve Rayson and Mark Harrison.

It’s really cool to talk to hear what eLearning challenges (and triumphs) people are facing in their own organizations. Best part of being a booth babe!

I had the chance to occasionally wander away from our booth and check out a bit of the other expo floor action:

• Saw a few glimpses of Allen Interaction’s new Zebra authoring tool
• Got to see a brief demo of Lectora Inspire
• Checked out the buzz at the Open Sesame stand (an online market place for your eLearning courses – think iTunes for eLearning)
• Saw the cool dudes from Bloomfire who are firing things up with social community
• Talked ARGs with the team from Tandem Learning who created the Dr. Strangelearn alternate reality game for the show and wore some really snazzy lab coats
• And, as always, got to see Tom Kuhlmann in all of his Articulate awesomeness.

Talking non-stop at DemoFest for two hours

DemoFest is a blast but boy oh boy is it exhausting.

I showed off a project I did for Paul Mitchell – a Moodle learning portal for sales reps complete with a program on color basics, interactive product knowledge brochures, a virtual salon to apply what they’ve learned and convince a salon owner to go with their products, and a final challenge.

My voice is shot from that experience…that’s for sure.

Congratulations to Kevin Thorne (@Learnnuggets) for winning best of show at DemoFest!

A smattering of keynotes and sessions

When you’re exhibiting in the expo it’s a bit hard to partake in many sessions, but I did get to jump into some of the keynotes: really great stuff by John Seely Brown (my blog attempt here), Byron Reeves on Engagement and Marcia Connors on the new social learning.

Sumeet Moghe ran a fun breakfast byte session on Friday, exposing the myths of eLearning. (He’s also done a mad job of live blogging his notes, so be sure to check out his blog!)

I had a quick poke in to hear what Sarah Kesher Sound80 had to say about audio in eLearning. Couldn’t stay but will definitely look for their slide deck.

Neil Lasher delivered to a packed house about the science of design – ran us through some research on fonts and layouts. (ITC Garamond wins!) In

teresting stuff. His slides should be up soon on the DevLearn site.

Final keynote session

My personal highlight was getting to be part of the final keynote session. Very cool to be a part of that – up on stage with some amazing people: Richard Cullatta, Aaron Silvers (aka “the beard” or “Mr. SCORM”), Jane Bozarth, Ellen Wagner and Gina Schreck.

We each got our five minutes of fame to tell the world our big idea.

I’ll try to get my slides in shape and post on slide share so you can check out my big idea – it involved pie. Intrigued? Or maybe hungry? I mean, what’s not to like about pie?

But it’s the informal stuff that REALLY matters

I don’t know if it’s possible to document all the random hall conversations while collapsed on the couch, but let me tell you, that’s where the real learning and connection happens. Got to meet so many people face to face for the first time, meet some new names and faces, and snark with the usual gang of suspects.

I feel a bit like a showboater if I try and tell you all the people I got to hang out with – but, wow, it does make a girl giddy!

(Mark Oehlert has the idea that next time we should just all get together and hang out on bean bag chairs for a few days. I’m so in.)

If you want to know more, I suggest you follow the #dl10 tweet stream on Twitter!

Looking forward to the next one!

Kudos to Brent Schlenker and all of the eLearning Guild team for putting on another great learning geek fest. See y’all next time! (And Brent, note bean bag chair idea above…)

John Seely Brown The Power of Pull #dl10 Keynote

These are my live blogged notes during the Wednesday keynote at DevLearn (non-edited version – apologies for any typos, etc.!) – I didn’t get through the whole keynote – had to get to our booth as the Expo starts while the keynote is still going…and my loud typing was just too annoying.

Clark Quinn has done a nice mindmap of the entire keynote -- worth checking out.

But here goes.

_______________________________

John Seely Brown -- A new culture of learning in a world of constant change

The emergence of a new culture of learning in a world of constant change.

learning on demand – how you pull, not push.

A simple belief: the old institutions aren’t hacking it very well. Nor are our schools.

We have to look at things differently.

20th century infrastructure built on roads, cars, ships, etc. – scalable efficiency became the goal (the more you do something the better you get.)

The trouble with this insight – that curve is a diminishing returns curve. We now scramble faster and faster to stay in place – we have to work that much harder to make the same amount of improvement we used to make.

predictable, hierarchy, control, org routines, minimize variance – the core of scalable efficiency.

This transferred over to our 20th century push-based education system. Predictable curriculum, standards based, authority focused.

The 21st C. infrastructure is driven by the continual exponential advances of computation, storage, etc.

having to relearn fundamentals of computer science – the half life of a given skill is shrinking.

The big shift: Push vs. Pull

How do we enhance the imagination of our workforce? Creativity?

the 2nd shift: The explosion of data!

rethink how we learn, what we learn: Importance of the tacit (need to marinate in new situations)

DevLearn The New Face of Learning is Here! #dl10

Brent Schlenker kicked things off here at the DevLearn key note – talking about the new face of learning.  Which is you and me.

It really is! Brent explained the DevLearn logo is made up of images of eLearning Guild members.  And he said my name out loud to everyone – along with Clark Quinn and Tom Kuhlmann.  Holy cow!  I’m right above the woman’s left eye. I had no idea.

Reports have it there are 1600-1700 registered people this year.  And by the looks of the crowd, I believe it.

I’ve mostly been doing my booth babe duty on the Expo floor – things have been very busy in there!  Have popped my head into a few keynotes here and there, but seem to find most of my conversations and connections happening on the couches in front of the Expo hall. 

Will try to send occasional messages from the floor – my keyboard is too loud for the live blog notes that I like to take (I’ve been shushed one too many times and have finally learned.  Need a stealth keyboard for the next conference!)

Over and out.

eLearning Professionals: What did YOU want to be when you grew up?

Please share this post with your eLearning colleagues -- I'm gathering data for DevLearn and would love to include as many examples as I can! Thanks :)

__________________________

All jokes aside (“I’m no grown up!” or “I’m still trying to figure that out…”), take a step back in time.

I’m thinking back to that early teenage-young adulthood time when you were (perhaps) starting to get a sense of yourself and your aptitudes and hopes and dreams and schemes.

What did you see yourself doing as an adult? What did you want to be?

I’m putting this question out to the vast group of people who make up the eLearning profession – be you an instructional designer, an LMS administrator, a graphic artist, a sales consultant. You’re an eLearning professional now – but where did you see yourself way back when?

Free form your answer in the ‘other’ field in the poll widget on my blog (unless you’re being some kind of wise ass and then you can choose one of the other options).

I’m picturing a word cloud of our responses (as part of my prep for my upcoming session at DevLearn) so thanks for sharing and I’ll be sure to share back with you!

I’m Special! Check out DevLearn 2010!

 

Whenever this particular eLearning Guild announcement hits my inbox, I blush a little and feel very, very special:

Hope you’re coming to DevLearn this year and be sure to connect. 

I’ll be hanging out a lot at the Kineo booth, and obviously mingling with some other REALLY SPECIAL eLearning types at Friday’s “Perspectives on Learning” keynote session.  Expect some interpretive dance numbers from the lineup…