eLearning Roadtrip

My PSA for the Weekend - Acrobat Users Group Mtg

When I worked at Adobe Systems I kept track of how the various Adobe products were used by and for elearning stakeholders. Students. producers, administrators, content managers. People have always assumed that the biggest Adobe product used in elearning is Flash. While the .swf format - Flash - continues to be a big deal for elearning, I have evidence that demonstrates that the most commonly used Adobe product in elearning is..... Acrobat. There is a lot of stuff that Acrobat can do that you wouldn't expect. Don't confuse Acrobat with Reader. This isn't just about reading a PDF. It's not like Microsoft Word, either. I'm not pitching product...I'm just saying. If you need to package and distribute digital content this might be something you want to know about.

This is my public service announcement for the weekend: I am happy to share this note from my former co-worker and friend Sally Cox, regarding an upcoming meeting of the Acrobat Users Group in San Jose, CA, at Adobe. I am a member of this group. Here is the note from Sally:

"Hello! I'm Sally Cox. My colleague, Steve Dolan and I run the Adobe Creative Suite User Group of San Jose.

"Want to invite all of you to a free event:

"On Tuesday, March 2, our Adobe User Group will present "Unlocking the Power of Acrobat" at Adobe's San Jose headquarters. The meeting will run from 6:00-8:30 pm. (PACIFIC TIME) Raffle prizes and snacks for those in attendance, but we will also broadcast online, if you are unable to attend. To learn more, click here."

Enjoy!

I'm Baaa-aaaaaack...

Some times are better for listening than for talking and writing. The Sage Road team been doing a lot of listening these past few weeks, thanks to being involved in strategic planning work with several of our clients.

But I am getting ahead of myself. First things first. I'm back online. It was good to take a break from blogging, and now I have a few things on my mind that I'm ready to talk about. Look for posts on topics including:

(1) A brief summary of my January visit with the Presidents' Forum in Dallas. This is a group of executives  who head up some of the best known online universities in the US. Join me to learn more about one of their key quality initiatives, called Transparency by Design.

(2) Closing thoughts about this year's ASTD TechKnowledge (TK10). I was a member of this year's program committee. I decided to volunteer after listening to chatter about last year's event, when I decided that I preferred to be part of the solution.

(3) Some highlights from the recently completed WCET's strategic plan for 2010/11, and a few ideas about accelerating the adoption of innovative technologies in practice.

(4) Last but certainly not least - A request for ID job descriptions! Cammy Bean and I need your help to build the "Great ID Skills Wordle" for our upcoming session at this year's eLearning Guild Learning Solutions conference in Orlando, FL.

2010 is going to be a very interesting time in the world of technology-mediated learning. Looking forward to sharing the Roadtrip with you.

eLearning Guild DevLearn 2009 Trip Report

I received a very nice direct message from Shanta Rohse (@shantarohse) yesterday, alerting me that she'd used one of my DevLearn 2009 presentation slides in her recently featured blogpost in eLearning Magazine. I am super flattered that my "Hype Cycle Meets the Innovation Adoption Curve" (Think Gartner Hype Cycle meets Everett Rogers) graphic captured Shanta's attention, excited that this simple illustratation captured some of the same unease about where the elearning profession seems to get stuck for her that it does for me. Of course it's fine with me if she wants to share, are you kidding?? Shanta, thank you for the attribution.

I was also very pleased to see that the eLearning Guild Research Report on User Generated Content by two of my Sage Road associates, (Managing Director) Beth Davis and (Research Associate) Dr. Colleen Carmean, was also highlighted in Shanta's blog post. The research report is almost done. Really. I confess that I am holding up the final manuscript as I make some final edits. I want it to be ready for prime time. Look for us around the first of the year,

Anyway, I was so pleased about Shanta's very nice comments that I decided to add a "PS" to my DevLearn Trip Report posting. Imagine my surprise to discover that the post had never made it to the published blog. It was still hanging there, in "DRAFT" form, waiting for me to wrap things up. Apparently with all the excitement of the past few weeks, I had forgotten to toggle, tag and publish. Not as embarrassing as forgetting to include the "D" when sending a direct message to someone on Twitter. (In case you don't tweet...if you don't include the letter "D" and your friend's Twitter name, then you end up sharing your special private message with all followers and Facebook friends.) So many social media faux pas, so little time. 

Enough. Sorry about the delay in getting this posted. DevLearn 2009, was a great event. Without further ado, here is my DevLearn 2009 Trip Report.

• The Sage Road Solutions crew spent November 10- 13th in San Jose, CA with more than 1300 DevLearn 2009 attendees (#dl09 for those who care about things like hashtags.) We were busy - Beth Davis and Colleen Carmean presented the results of the LMS Deep Analysis report we recently completed for the eLearning Guild this past October, 2009. Colleen and Beth presented the results of our about to be published analysis report entitled The User Generated Content Revolution. I presented the results of Beth Davis's and my industry overview report entitled Navigating the Learning Technologies Metaverse. Look for this published analysis sometime around the beginning of 2010. Colleen and I were both a part of the Research Panel session along with Analysts Janet Clarey from Brandon Hall Research, David Mallon from Bersin Associates and and Kevin Martin from Aberdeen Research.

• Kudos to the eLearning Guild DevLearn team. Brent Schlenker, Mary Alexander, Juli Balding, and the entire eLearning Guild crew gave us a well organized, well run conference. From program to logistics, things really worked. 

• Yay for eLearning. As someone who has been around the space for a while, there is a prickly, uneasy excitement in the air that we haven't felt in our industry for the last 10 year. Yes we all know that the recession continues and the things will never be the same, and we have to get leaner and meaner and smarter and better. Yes, we know that this means getting serious about improving our own professional skills so that we can better anticipate where our customers stakeholders want us to take them.  Still, as I look at the movement on the merger and acquisition front, and watch what's happening in proprietary education, publishing and personal communications technologies, 2010 looks like is going to be a big and better year for some of us, and NOBODY wants to be left behind.

• Adobe Learning Summit.  Not exactly part of DevLearn, but still an important part of the DevLearn experience in San Jose. This had been one of my signature events when I worked you know where. Would have been super easy to kill it when I left. But thanks to the loud enthusiastic voices of the elearning community  Adobe didn't do that.  Instead, Shantanu Narayan, the CEO of Adobe Systems, Inc. was the featured keynote speaker at this year's ALS. Very, very nice.

• Mark Oehlert and Social Media Camp. It was hard not to stop by on the way to and from other sessions, by virtue of its crossroads location AND because there were always so many people clustered around. 

• Breakfast Bytes. I like the round-table, informal discussion format better than the mini-presentation format we used this year. Aside from this very minor nit I continue to appreciate the opportunity for time that encourages discussion. Even at 7 am.

• Time with Cammy Bean.  Call me old-fashioned. it was great to have some F2F time. I really appreciate the design sensibility that Cammy brings to her work. We are collaborating on research that we'll be presenting at the Learning Solutions conference in March. Stay tuned for more on that.   

• Almost as good as being there. Thanks to our community's increasing facility with social media tools and techniques, one can participate in F2F events from just about anywhere. This year's DevLearn was a perfect example of that. No doubt, we are not a sharing-impaired people. Here are links to several of great summaries of featured DevLearn events and activities from Clark Quinn, Steve Howard, Avron Barr, Aaron Silvers, and Koreen Olbrish. 

• The Twitter Backchannel. Search on #dl09 using your browser - and yes, that is a smaller case d as in dev, smaller case l as in learn - and you will see what I mean.Tracy Hamilton ( @hamtra) has compiled a Tweetbook for your convenience.

• #Lrnchat at DemoFest. I think it is totally funny that Brent Schlenker made accommodations for all the Lrnchatters to get their weekly fix in the midst of DevLearn's big techno-reception. 

The keynotes were great, the sessions engaging, the camaraderie excellent. One of the high points of the autumn 2009 season. Certainly looking forward to Learning Solutions in March, 2010.

Online Educa Berlin Trip Report

There's nothing like a quick three day trip from California to Germany and back to sharpen one's appreciation for"anywhere, anytime" distributed communications technologies. 

Even so, #OEB2009 was excellent this year - worth a little jet lag, which was easily cured with a few extra hours of sleep, some aspirin and a good soak in the hot tub.

This was the 10th anniversary of my first OEB, which is now in its 15th year. I've attended seven times. Online learning has done a lot of growing up during the past decade, and OEB has grown right along. Today it is the largest international conference dedicated entirely to online learning in the world. It's an energetic, occasionally seething mix of academic researchers, non-governmental organizations, large global enterprises, small innovative businesses, ministries of education, labor and defense. More than 2000 delegates from 92 different countries. Eye-opening and inspiring.

I know we can read the papers and view the presentations, follow the #oeb2009 tweets and retweet what others are saying. We can reach out and virtually touch someone in a webinar.  But you know...and I know I am speaking heresy here...but sometimes being there, in person, really is better.

<Waiting for lightning to strike....>

Here is my top line summary from this year's OEB trip report:

Opening plenary: Lord Puttnam on education, climate change and the the role of moving pictures and virtual worlds and the future of learning. Brian Durran on the London Grid for Learning. Zenna Atkins from Social Solutions asks if education institutions will lead the news ways of learning or if learners will lead by demand.

The Internet Time Alliance brings us Creating the New Era of Corporate Learning - Jay Cross, Charles Jennings, and Jane Hart in person, Harold Jarche and Jon Husband via Connect from Canada. Jerry Michalski and Jay Cross. Barcamps and Unconferences. Excellent.

Quality time with Jane Hart. I'm a fan of Jane's Pick of the Day. I follow her on Twitter, I read her C4LPT blog, I admire her work with the eLearning Guild. I'm glad we were Battling Bloggers together. More on that in a bit.

The Online Educa Debate. Wow. It's an artform. Nothing like my weinie debate experiences from high school. No offense to my high school.

The Adobe eLearning Suite and Solutions exhibition stand. Okay, I admit it. The Adobe eLearning Suite fell short of what I had hoped to accomplish when I was at Adobe Systems. But I have to say, when I saw the trade show stand featuring "my baby", I was very proud to have been a part of bringing that product to market.

Happy birthday, Jerry Michalski!

Time with Eric Shepherd from Questionmark and discovering my new favorite blog.

Hindsight, Insight Foresight, Oversight: Learning Futures plenary. Professor Gilly Salmon from the University of Leicester, and Aaron Porter, National Union of Students, Artur Dyro from Young Digital Planet and Lisbeth Goodman from FutureLabs. Yours Truly as session chair.

Battle of the Bloggers. Donald Clark and Jane Hart and Clive Shepherd and Bert De Coutere and me. Wow. How very cool for me to share the session with these well known elearning leaders. Thankfully, we didn't really battle - I would have been shredded in a true debate.I am very glad to have met these luminaries in person and am looking forward to ongoing future conversation. Hopefully over beers.

Best of all - reconnections with friends from around the world. Sometimes when I get tired and cranky I think about all these amazing people from all over the world, doing amazing things with learning technologies. Have to say, then I don't feel so tired and cranky.

So, now. We have a new roadtrip in the works.

On to Boulder. It's time for WCET 2.0

Vorwärts zu Online Educa Berlin

The Roadtrip gets to take a break from the non-stop travel of the past month to catch up on things at both work and home. My next big adventure comes with this year's Thanksgiving  celebration.  I am thrilled to be hosting Thanksgiving dinner for several of my wildly adventuresome friends, including Wayne Hodgins and John Alonso. @WWWayne has recent returned from 11 months at sea (including a direct encounter with the tsunami in Samoa a few months ago), during which time he has sailed from Bodega Bay CA to Whangarei, New Zealand.  John Alonso and crew are about to take off on an amazing race  through Baja California. I am looking forward to hearing all about their adventures, safely settled here in Sonoma at fireside.

Following the long holiday weekend, I'll be taking the Roadtrip to Online Educa Berlin. I attended my first OEB 10 years ago, and have had the good fortune to attend many of the years since that time. It is, without a doubt, my favorite international conference. I'm very pleased that I'll be participating in this year's program  - as chair of the Friday morning plenary session entitled "Hindsight, Insight, Foresight, Oversight: A Call for Learning Futures" and, along with Clive Shepherd, Donald Clark and Jane Hart,  as  one of the participants in this year's OEB Battle of the Bloggers. Here is a link to a column that appeared in the current issue of Checkpoint eLearning where I had a chance to reflect on the upcoming "battle".Given the new partnership that Sage Road has forged with the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, I will be attending this year's OEB in two capacities - first as a Partner and Principal Analyst for Sage Road Solutions, where I will be keeping an eye out for news and trends to share with eLearning practitioners in the US. Secondly I will be observing the conference as the newly appointed Executive Director of WCET, so I will be keenly interested in learning more about consortial activities affecting higher education enterprises around the world. (This last bit of news is going to be the featured story in my next blogpost, so stay tuned!)