Good morning.  Back on the blog today.  Sitting here at the opening session of Learning 2008.  Very different feel to the conference this year.  I think everyone is really try to search and discover where the next step and the next real move is in the Learning industry.  All the usual conversation discussing social networks, learning management systems, content, etc.  But I sense confusion over where the next move is going to be.

There is also trepidation over the economy.  How is what is going on at Wall Street going to affect all those gathered here and the people they train. 

But the critical issue is how do we change to a new reality.  The opportunity here is to make Learning a critical part of the business.  The opportunity is make learning the head of the change process that leads us into a new economy and a new way of working.  Productivity is critical and people are vital.  So where do we find productive, qualified people who are vital to the organization?  My instinct tells me that it is not about finding these people externally, but it is about developing these individuals into incredibly value contributors.

I think this conference is going to be very interesting this year.  Lots of changes, lots of opportunity and lots of great people to speak with.  More to come on all these topics.

I will speaking at 130pm ET today.  The topic...Implement a new LMS or stick a pencil in my eye...touch choice.

 

What an interesting day.  As much as the Bersin organization thought this event would focus on Talent Management, I believe the real conversation was more focused on content.  The idea that employees were looking for content when they wanted it, how they wanted it and in bite sized chunks (5min or less) was interesting as always.  Yet I was struck that the idea was represented in the context of employee development when this is actually an function of performance support.  Not a new idea but a growing idea in this industry.  When we really got down to conversation it was content that was more of a function of talent management than the actual system.  No surprise to many of you I am sure.

 

Interesting debates around learning management systems, content development and workflow management for the organization.  Another hot topic that continues to develop is the learning organization trying to find a way to support all of the requests for training.  Many of the centralized training departments seem to be coming under fire because they do not have the resources to support the requirements of the business.  Those organizations who have dispersed training into the organization are having issues with connectivity and consistency.  There is no one right answer, it is clearly organization dependant.

 

Great conversations but again no solutions.  Of course that is where Bluewater comes in but no sales pitch here today

 

Today we are on to the final day.  Sessions range from Leadership to Outsourcing, Learning Portals to Scorecards.  Should be a great day of fun and information.  Check back tomorrow and I will throw a few more tidbits your way.

 

Have a great day.

 

Good morning from St. Petersburg.  Day one at the Bersin conference started out with the welcome reception last night.  It was great to meet some new people, see some old friends and realize that the vendor to participant ratio is about 4 to 1.  The is 4 vendors to each participant.  Should make for a very interesting conference.  Since this is not setup as a trade show the interaction should be great.

 

Some of the real buzz from happy hour last night was not about Talent Management but about content and the consultative efforts necessary to help organizations understand how important content is to a successful learning program.  I like to here that because that is where I live.  Content is still king to making learning work.  And if you do not have learning working then it is tough to develop talent.

 

I will be blogging over the next two days to give everyone my opinions of the conference.  Have a great day and I will chat with you soon.

 

Day two has concluded at the Learning Systems conference and I am on the plane headed back to Dallas.  A few thoughts about the conference.  Overall the conference was very productive for myself and my team.  We met a lot of great people who are really trying to understand what they need from a learning system.  As I have mentioned before there are quite a few who are still lost and confused.  I am not sure this conference helped but I hope everyone found a contact or resource that can help them in the future.

 

I believe that it is more important than ever for the learning systems community to come together and begin discussing more than best practices and fascinating ideas of the system of the future.  I believe it is important that this community begins to find a way to continue the process of making learning a strategic driver in each business.  But that will not happen if we do not come together.  Over the past three years I believe this event has been a wonderful place to begin that collaboration but it needs to continue and we need to expand the reach of these discussions.

 

This years conference expanded on the past two years by including all learning systems.  Great for us because we focus on all learning systems.  However, I am not sure it was great for the participants because the sessions were too general in nature and there was not enough meat in the discussions.  Many participants asked for the opportunity to spend more time directly with vendors looking at their products and asking real questions in a collaborative environment with other users.  I think this is a great idea but it calls for a different type of conference and a longer conference as well.  We shall see where the future of this event progresses.  I for one will be back next year.

 

Here is what I see as a list of the hot topics at this years conference:

 

1. How do I make sure I purchase the right LMS for my company?
2. I think I really need an LMS governance program.
3. I have too much content and my learners cannot find what they are looking for.
4. I have all these systems.  How do I link them together and present them all to my learner?
5. Search
6. I think I bought the wrong LMS.  How do I know and what should I do?
7. SaaS - Software as a Service

 

Good conversation about the impact of the ecomony on learning and learning systems yesterday.  When the audience was questioned about the impact of the economy on budgets the responses were that budgets were not being impacted by at this time.

At the beginning of the year several big learning system deals were stalled but those deals had been released towards the end of March.  Overall there was a real feeling that a move to a purchase model which minimized the upfront expense to clients was going to be very important.  Monthly contracts that limited the exposure over a three year period to less than $300,00 we going to be the most likely deals to be done over the next twelve months.  This idea of the sub $300k deal is not new, but i think we will see this expanding as more mid-size businesses grow and expand their need for training.

Enterprise deals are changing as well.  Again, the idea of minimizing the upfront dollars is going to be important.  It is very apparent that people are still buying new systems and replacing old learning systems.  The demand for training has become strategically aligned with the business.  This will lessen the impact of the economy on learning.

Pretty interesting stuff.   

Good morning. 

We the first day of the conference was very interesting.  Lots of discussion about the LMS.  Not too much on other learning technologies but i think that is just where the market sits today.  Yet when we engage the participants at the conference in one on one conversations the importance of content becomes clear.

As the day progressed the group began discussing lots of social networking opportunities.  i think this is one of Elliott's pet projects.  Get everyone into social networking will be an interesting experiement.  In fact there is a new site you might want to check out www.learningtown.com  A very interesting learning social networking experiement.

Lot's of conversation about the RFP process.  Prospective customers wanted more information, vendors wanted more focus.  It go a little tense at times but I believe what we saw was the need for the development of relationships between customer and vendor.  Relationships that elicit information and ideas.  Relationships that can help solve busienss problems.  As an industry we need to move beyond the technology and into the solution of real business problems.  We keep talking about it and it is time for a change.

So here is my little pitch for Bluewater.  I believe the real value we bring to organizations is focus on the value of the business.  We maintain relationships with vendors and bridge the gap between what the system can do and what it should do.

So back to the program...bottom line here at the conference.  There are still quite a few of the lost, confused and scared when it comes to understanding learning systems.  Great conversation, more awareness and people looking for solutions.  Great to see and experience.  Wish you could all be here.

Day One was excellent.  Let's see what Day Two brings.

We will made it to Vegas inspite of American Airlines cancelling over 800 flights today.  DFW airport looked like a parking lot for MD-80's.  But security was easy to pass through.

Attended the opening session on user created content.  Pretty interesting stuff.  I think it will be an education process for any company to begin adding this type of content to their inventory.  Certainly ramps up the need for better content management platforms.

Overall I belive the idea of user created content is not a new idea but an evolving idead that will get some play in organization who are ready to collect knowledge from the retiring workforce.  Much of the discussion focused on video and the impact it can have on the recepient of this knowledge transfer, if we can call it that.

Video really takes us into another world.  Spending many of my years in the video world creating training content we know that is a difference between video and compelling video (credit to Michael for that comment).

More to come as the session is still going on...

If you have questions or would like more inforamtion just send me an email at chrisbond@bluewaterlearning.com.  I will be checking it all day long.

Thanks.