Reflections from #LSCon 2012

I have had a short week to get my feet back under the desk after a whirlwind trip to Orlando.

Such a great week amongst some of the clever people in our industry, so much to listen to and so much to learn from other’s ideas.

Of course they tweet the same about being with me and listening to my presentations, I just get embarrassed in the normal way.

What was clear in this week and in reflection since leaving the hot sun in Florida is that there are a number of interesting changes taking place across the world in T&D. The first is that T&D is on it’s very last legs in large corporations. If you are still working in a department with this name or have a business title of L&D Manager, get ready as sweeping changes will knock you off your feet if you are not ready.

The changes are a distinct move towards the Business Performance Department, delivering a set of technologies that include training where required but more of acquiring and rolling out technology that assist your workers to make more money for the organisation. The talk in the back rooms and of course on the backchannel were about revenue and profitability, not about good LMS scores or completion rates. Jay Cross almost had it right last year with ‘Work Smarter’ concept but I think in times of economic downturn that we are all experiencing, Work Leaner may have been a better term. But I take my hat off to Jay as he was ahead of the game on this one.

Those who understand business and how to generate higher revenue through capability and capable staff certainly have the edge. (Check out my paper i2 that was launched at #LSCon which aims to replace ROI with an Incapabiity Index. Paper available at http://www.thelearningcoach.co.uk/media.html)

The tools being spoken of were more of performance support, remember how that came and went, it was just too early and is making a huge comeback. Other technologies in the frame are those that provide a social lounge for the workforce to talk about what is important to them, where they can dip in and out learning materials and use new concepts like IVR (see http://www.phone2know.com) to deliver contextual information in numerous ways.

New products were in the expo to deliver to mobile devices, the imminent product from Articulate, Storyline, is the first of a new breed of tools to help deliver this type of learning. I have used the beta of this product, the latest version includes mobile and html5, very exciting prospects for the future.

The second big thing to come out of #LSCon was the concept of Conversation in learning. I was not the only person presenting or talking of this. Conversation in communication is key to creating a platform where people can learn. The presentation I made ‘Conversational Learning’ is available to watch in a cut down form from http://bit.ly/HesHMt

I have come home very enthused about this coming year. I have launched a great service at Phone2Know using the latest technologies to add conversation to learning, eLearning, mLearning and delivered as an addition to face to face training. Some cool concepts that will grow over the coming months.

The next conference I attend is Congreso de Recursos Humanos in Mexico City later this month http://www.congresorh.com.mx/ where I will be presenting what can be achieved using conversation and mobile learning. Then I am onto mLearnCon in San Jose for June to host the Mobile Tools and Tech Stage. By this time we should be seeing some very cool additions to the mobile scene.

Big Decisions on new paper i2

I am about to release a new paper called i2. i2 stands for Incompetence Indexing and will show a new evaluation of learning, formal or social. The lower he score the better.

Now here is the big decision. Do I publish my normal way by placing the paper on my website and posting it here, or do I create a new iBook? I am worried about the copyright issues in the iBook EULA.

How will you publish from here on?

Is SoMe killing us softly with it’s words?

Struming my pain with his fingers
singing my life with his words
killing me softy with his song
killing me softly with his song
telling my whole life
with his words
killing me softly with his song

Notice I ain’t blogged for ages. I think I was suffering with what Cammy Bean highlighted this week as SoMeFat. Social Media Fatigue. or was it really SoMeBo? Social Media Burn Out?

It prompted me to ask myself some questions about my own changing patterns of use of Social Media in the last year.

In October 09 on this blog I asked ‘How many tweets make overload?’ How much are we actually learning or are we kidding ourselves that it is learning. Are we just spending every moment in the electronic Hyde Park Corner listening to others bleating on about what interests them? Or in real terms not even bleating about their likes, but the likes of others, the RT?

I took some time to recover from the shock of reality some time ago and realised I was spending far too much time blogging, tweeting and facebooking everything in my life that actually was none of your business. Did I need to share the fact I just had a great poop? (not that I shared that information) Why would I want you to know that i was stuck in traffic on the M4 and using my phone illegally? Why would I want to tell you that I was going to the theatre tonight. (only really interesting to you if it was your intention to burgle my holiday home in Wales… No I don’t have a holiday home in Wales and were you interested in that information?)

Hey, why am I writing this blog now? Are you interested? Will you comment on it? Do I care if you don’t… hell yes!

I think we are all suffering from a new form of hysteria, defined as ‘A mental disorder characterised by emotional excitability’. We all get excited when we tweet, blog or f/book and even more so when we are re-tweeted or commented on. And we are all doing it together all the time, while we pretend we are learning something, other than what time John on the next continent to us put his cat out!

The more we do this, the more we get into Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, we want to do it more and more until we actually are doing no work, have no real social ability to talk to one another unless it’s in 140 characters or are repeating someone else’s thoughts or views. Have you noticed the distinct lack of new papers being written or published on groundbreaking learning ideas? Its because we have no time.

So time to reconsider SoMe, how to limit how we use it, limit how we teach our children to use it. Watch the next time their phone goes ‘ding’, it is the new fastest thing known to man, the time it takes between phone going ‘ding’ and clicking send on a response to the sender.

For me the new So for 2011 is meeting people, chatting on the phone or in person and getting a real ‘Social’ back into my life. I will still Tweet and Blog but far less. Care to join me……