So my first ICE ASTD conference is finished. What do I think of it and what are the trends I see. Let start with the trends.
Trends and topics.
Over the past few years we had big leading topics in the world of learning; Curating, Mobile, Flash vs HTML5, TinCan. All these developments are still here, but none of them was really leading at ICE. Just over 30% of the companies are implementing mobile, the rest is too afraid for security risks. This is just a growth of a few percent in comparison to 2012. Everybody now understands that Flash is dead (no matter how unbelievable that seemed a year and a half ago). TinCan is released but if you talk about it, people get a desperate look in their eyes (It sounds great, I know I should do something with it, but where to start????). Curation is the same story. So none of these topics is really leading. One thing that I noticed was that agile and agility are increasingly hot. When you read this blog more often it will not surprise you that this pleases me. Michael Allen with SAM (and a packed Ballroom), agile processes are presented as the answer to the ever increasing speed of change.
But overall it looks like everybody is catching his breath and is waiting to see which developments they can’t ignore any longer. One development is clear Workplace learning and informal learning are getting much more attention now. The role of formal eLearning courses is diminishing. Food for thought for me as a CEO of an eLearning authoring tool. But no surprise and something that we are working on. Creation vs Curation, Formal courses vs learning nuggets, it is still content, but with a twist. I was happy to hear that content management is in the top 10 of attention points for CLO’s. Since easygenerator is a LCMS the future still looks bright.
ICE ASTD 2013
As said, my first ASTD conference. It was different than I expected. I thought it would be a lot more HR and less learning, but learning is the dominant topic. Even the sessions which seemed more HR oriented where predominantly about learning. A pleasant surprise for me, although it did mean that I haven’t experienced a great epiphany. But it was more than interesting. I will be back next year but first we have MLearn in San Jose next month. a perfect place to check the mobile developments. Easygenerator is not participating in the expo there, so I will be able to follow a lot of sessions and I will blog about it.
Other posts on ICE ASTD2013:
Need more info on the conference? Check out the backchannel.
The Learning 2019 conference
I have been to a ton of learning conferences but this will be my first time at #learning2019. I’m looking forward to it and I’m planning to report on all interesting sessions via this blog.
