ASTD ICE - Day 3

Ah, the final day of the conference... well, for me anyway. I had to leave a day early unfortunately, but at least I was able to keep up with some of the sessions I missed via other attendees and their livetweeting. All hail Twitter, allower of distance conference attendance!

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1) Keynote: General Stan McChrystal
Tying in to the conference theme of change, McChrystal talked about the vital need to adapt. As an example, he pointed to a famous plane crash that happened despite great flying conditions, a functional airplane, lots of safety equipment, and a competent crew.

This seems like the least likely set up for a tragic plane crash story, and yet the crash happened anyway. Why, you might ask? Because of a combination of too many new and complex safety features (which caused confusion) and insufficient crew communication skills (which made the confusion even worse). Things changed with how the plane functioned and how the crew needed to work together, the crew hadn't adapted to this change, and a sad, but likely preventable, crash happened as a result.

So what does this mean to us? The rate of change has accelerated, which makes it hard for us to keep up, but all the more important for us to learn how to adapt to. Unfortunately, we have an adaptability gap... a big difference between how much we're currently adapting and how much we actually need to adapt. But McChrystal says there are three key ways to learn to bridge that gap, so we can learn to adapt at the speed life is actually moving and learn from the experience.

The first part of this bridge is avoiding predictive hubris. Predictive hubris is the feeling that you can always use the same rules over and over to predict what's going to happen. In the rapidly changing world McChrystal described, though, often the rules we think we know can suddenly get shifted, or even thrown out the window entirely. What we need to do is give people the ability to quickly move with this change and figure out what the new rules of the game are, all without having to depend on someone else to tell them what do do.

In the case of the air crash I mentioned earlier, after it happened airlines realized they needed to become more adaptable. To do this, crews were trained on adaptability, situational awareness, and flexibility so they could become better at dealing with unexpected situations. And do you know what happened as a result? Airline safety skyrocketed.

The second part is shared consciousness. Sure, rapid change is tricky, but if you build bonds of trust and common purpose in your teams, that shared pool of knowledge can do amazing things and adapt quickly. That trust and knowledge can make it easier to understand how each person in the team needs to react when change happens, which makes it smoother and faster for the overall team to change.

The final piece is empowered execution. Teams where people feel micromanaged and/or unable to affect change end up being unable to adapt effectively. Empowering execution gives people the ability to do things themselves and to take ownership of their work. That means they'll be more likely to directly point out (and even fix) issues they see and be emotionally invested in the work, both of which lead to better results.

2) Build Your Company Tribe: Engaging Employees Through Online Collaboration
Speaker: Andi Campbell
This session was a case study on how LAZ Parking, a company that specializes in parking lots, leveraged an internal social network for training and collaboration.

LAZ Parking wanted to encourage employees to collaborate and feel connected to each other. That said, with 7800 employees working at 1900 locations across 24 states, sharing between employees was more than a bit tricky. Sure, in-person collaboration was limited, but LAZ Parking realized that there was another option: an internal social network.

In doing some initial analysis of this idea, LAZ Parking realized they had not one, but two ideal target markets for a social network: all employees (for general sharing) and participants in their management training program (for more specialized sharing). And so, rather than try and make one social network try and be all things to all people, they instead set up two separate networks: one for each target audience.

Here's a peek at one of the social sites they created

Both networks functioned relatively the same way. Like a simplified Facebook, they showed posts in a reverse chronological order, and let people share status updates, photos, and other user-created content. The company-wide site focused on sharing community-building content, like team photos and events. The site for the manager training program, on the other hand, focused more on tying in to course assignments and discussions, allowing users to learn from each other. What was great is that because LAZ Parking smartly made two different social networks, neither one got diluted. Both were able to focus on their core goals, which helped them resonate with the people who used them.

So, overall both sites were considered to be successes. But LAZ Parking is the first to say that social networks like this aren't a one-size-fits-all tool. They attributed much of their success to their company culture. They already had a positive work culture with a lot of trust, which made it much easier to get people to feel comfortable sharing with each other. I can't imagine this would have worked nearly as well in a toxic work environment. They also took their learners and corporate culture into account when designing how their social networks would function. A different audience might require a very different set up in order to work well in that workplace.

3) Sweet Caroline! A Super Set List for Sensational Learning Sessions!
Speaker: Rick Lozano
So this was my last session of the conference and, with its high-energy and practical message, it was quite possibly the perfect way to end my time at ASTD ICE.

Like the stand up comedy session I saw the day before, this was another session that talked about what we in L&D can learn from another set of professionals. In this case, the title tells you all you need to know about what other career we'd be learning from: professional musicians. Here are the main points of the session, in handy dandy photo format!

I *could* recap his main points, but this is even better: the recap Lozano made himself.

While I quite enjoyed the entire session, there was one point Lozano made that really stuck with me: that it's so important to find ways to connect the things we're passionate about outside of L&D to the work we do inside of L&D. Sure, it would have been easy for Lozano to keep his music life separate from his work life. I mean, it's not immediately apparent how they connect and that's definitely the approach many people take to their work life and their personal life. But no, he made the intuitive leap that helped him see how the skills he built as a musician and performer could actually complement and enhance his abilities as a trainer and facilitator. 

When you can find ways to leverage one skill to improve another, that makes your work stronger. But when you can also find ways to combine two things that you love, and to not have to live as though your passions are completely separate, that does even more. It means you don't have to pretend that your life is segmented off into completely unconnected portions, and you can instead work in a way that's authentic to everything you care about. That's some pretty powerful stuff when it comes to helping you feel excited about the work you do everyday.

Sure, not everyone is a professional musician, so we're not all going to pull our inspiration from our work onstage, but we all have things we care about outside of work that, when you do a bit of digging, can actually connect to our work in L&D. Maybe you're passionate about coaching your kid's sports team, and you leverage that to help you lead projects at work. Perhaps you enjoy scrapbooking, so you use the layout skills you learned from that to create beautiful and effective PowerPoint presentations and class materials. Maybe you're like me and you've found a way to turn your nerdy love of gadgets and software into a role where you show others the ways tech can help make training more effective. Where ever your passions are, find a way to tap into them to fuel your work and your passion about that work.

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And with that came the end to my time at ASTD ICE. I was sad to have missed the last day of the conference, but at least I got to see the Twitter backchannel coverage of the rebranding announcement while I waited at the airport for my flight home. My thoughts on that? Well, other people have covered it with more historical perspective than I ever could (I quite liked David Kelly's take on it) but I will say this: this early on there's no way to really know what the what the long-term ramifications of the change will be. I, for one, am definitely interested in seeing what comes of it.

ASTD ICE - Day 2

Day 2 was a busy day for me. Not only was I all set to watch a bunch of sessions, but I was scheduled to give one of my own too. On top of that, I promised a co-worker that I would hit the Expo hall on her behalf. All and all, a good, but exhausting day.

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1) Keynote: Arianna Huffington
Did you know that Arianna Huffington was funny? I sure didn't until this session. Always a nice surprise to find that out about a speaker, don't you think?

Anyway, the point of this session was how do deal with change and succeed in life in a healthy way. Huffington pointed out that society typically recognizes two measures of success: power and wealth. Trying to achieve those two, though, can come at a pretty pricy cost to ourselves though. Huffington saw this happen to her, when her drive to burn the candle at both ends actually caused her to pass out at her desk from exhaustion.

And so, she wondered if there might be a third way we could start to recognize success. One that wouldn't require us to work 24/7 until we burn out. And so, she proposed a new measure of success. One with the following four pillars:

Well-Being
Science falls pretty strongly on the side of "less sleep makes you more dumb," and yet so many workplaces push people to work as much as possible. Huffington compares this to encouraging people to come to work drunk. It's not safe and the work tired people make is not terribly dissimilar to the junk they'd crank out if they were hammered.

To do our very best work, we need to start by being very well rested. Make sure to get a full night's sleep, take time for naps, and for the love of god keep your smart phone away from where you sleep. Beyond catching some winks, you also need to rest your brain. Our world is full of input, and our attempts to multi-task often just leave our brains overworked. Take every opportunity to be in the moment and just concentrate on one thing at a time. You'll be surprised at how much less exhausted it makes you.

Wisdom
Wisdom isn't just knowing facts. It's being able to see the big picture, avoid obstacles, make intuitive jumps and create a vision for how things could be.

Wonder
Step back and just connect with the mystery of the universe. I think sometimes we take for granted just how spectacularly cool our world is. It's healthy and refreshing to tap back in to that wonder at everything around us that we had as a kid.

Personally, when I'm in need of a bit of a wonder jump start, I always watch this video. It really is my happy place sometimes.

Giving
You know what's cool? Research currently shows that giving time and/or money can give you the same boost in happiness as an increase in income. So we need to remember to make giving a priority. It's good for other people, and it's good for us too.

To wrap up, Huffington insisted that we all have a place of strength, peace, wisdom, and joy and it's time we live life connected to that place... time to choose to live life not with stress and burnout, but with compassion, creativity, and rest.

2) Telling Your Story With Infographics
Speaker: Bianca Woods
I had an awesome time facilitating this session, in large part due to a fantastic audience who was willing to participate (and ignore the occasional odd flickering of the room overhead lights). If you weren't able to make the session, you can still check out the in-depth session reference website I created. It's got links to the tools and sites I talked about in my session (plus a few more I thought people would like), my PowerPoint deck, and all my speaking notes. Enjoy!

3) Train Like a Rockstar: Speaking Tips From a Stand-Up Comedian
Speaker: Jeff Birk
When you think about it, it's not surprising that presenting to a group and doing stand up have more than a bit in common. Sure, the content is different, but the set up is the same. In both cases you have an audience (in some cases, a hostile one) that is counting on you to keep their attention and tell them something they didn't already know. And so Birk, a professional comedian, decided to share his tips for leveraging the skills one needs in stand up to make you a successful presenter.

I should start by pointing out that Birk mentioned early on that this didn't mean that in order to learn from stand up you had to make your content funny. Some content just doesn't hit right if you make it into jokes. Make light of something like diversity or sexual harassment and you're likely to make your audience ticked off, not engaged. But there are other techniques comedians use that you can try out in even the most serious of classes (and you can always pull out the jokes and light heartedness in the right occasions). Here are some of the key tips he mentioned:

• Find a good balance between not being dull, but not being over the top either.
• Don't make the session about you (the facilitator). Make it about the audience and the content.
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse... especially your first 3 minutes of the presentation so you can be sure to start out solid.
• Rehearse enough where your presentation is so second nature that you can actually riff and improv off it based on the room.
• What can often work better than just straight humour? Mentioning something poignant that's strongly related to your topic.
• Have trouble memorizing things? Use visualizing to connect images with what you need to say. Then recall that imaging when you need to present.
• Use self-deprecating humour to connect to your audience.
• Don't let intimidation get to you. Always remember that you are the expert! 
• There's a lot of power in memorizing at least a few audience member names and using them throughout the session. Repeat people's names to commit them to memory.
• You've got to have a little ego as a presenter.
• Nobody cares about your product or service: they care about what it means to THEM.
• Use light banter, both before your session and at the beginning, to get people comfortable and friendly.
• Be aware that if people are tuned out, it's not always because of you. You don't know what else is going on in their life that could make them not feel engaged at the moment.
• Audience is unattentive? 1) Stop talking. 2) Light-heartedly call them on it. 
• Every great speaker still has quirks/tics. Have someone watch you speak and let you know about yours.
• Know your audience so you can connect with them. Also remember that knowing your audience requires emotional and cultural intelligence. Not everyone reacts/converses/interprets everything the same way.

Finally, Birk made a strong point that I think he did a great job of following in his own talk: use humour to make impact, but be careful not have it override what you're trying to teach.

4) Even a Duck Can Drown: The 6 Keys to Building Career Resilience
Speaker: Maureen Orey
Did you know that ducklings aren't born able to float? It takes a bit of time for them to develop the skills they need to stay buoyant. In a similar vein, none of use are born magically able to be resilient. That's a skill that takes time to build too. And, from the stories I heard in the room about layoffs and job cuts, it's a skill that you'll want to hone fast.

So how do you go from an easy-to-drown newbie to a seasoned veteran whose career can stay afloat no matter what challenges they face? These 6 steps!

Build a supportive network
Staying connected to others, both in our industry and outside of it, will help you stay inspired... and also help you out when you have a problem. There were a lot of people in this session who mentioned how the power of a great network can help you find a new job rapidly, but it can also help you in smaller ways too, like fixing an issue on a project or hearing about a new tool or technique to try out. I adore my network so, no surprise, I just maybe have written about the value of a strong personal learning network in the past.

Develop new skills and resources
You can't just do things the way you've always done them and expect to continue to succeed. Things change, and you need to change with them. Learn to adapt by developing new skills, being open to new ideas, identifying new resources, being flexible, and changing your mindset.

Apply and practice your new skills daily

It's not just enough to learn new skills, you also need to use them on a regular basis or they'll atrophy. How can you do this? Make it a priority to practice your new skills, be proactive, take risks, believe in yourself, then REPEAT!

Take care of your health

This seemed to be a bit of the the theme of the day, now didn't it?! No surprise, though, because personal health is so vital to keeping us sharp and energized. Of course, this isn't just our physical health that we need to take care of, but our emotional health too. So take care of yourself (physically, emotionally, and financially), eat right, exercise, avoid toxic people, get rest, and stop any negative self-talk.

Follow your instincts
This is the one that, personally, I think a "your mileage may vary" warning needs to be applied. I agree that you need to push yourself outside your comfort zone and be brave enough to trust your instincts once and awhile. But don't do it to the point that you don't take logic and/or research into account too. 

As well, this ability to take a risk on a gut feeling requires having a certain amount of privilege, don't you think? For instance, someone with no nest egg and dependants has a lot less wiggle room to take big chances than a single person with a decent savings account.

And, as always, don't let the mantra of "follow your instincts" feel like it gives you permission to violate Wheaton's Law.

Work hard and use grit
Be tenacious and scrappy. Sometimes, let's be honest, life is kinda crummy. When things get hard, work even harder to keep them from getting you down.

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But was that the end of Day 2 for me? Not a bit. I did what was one of my favourite things from the entire conference: I went out for dinner with a few other attendees and just chatted for the rest of the night over tasty food. Really, is there anything better than great company and nerding out about learning? I think not!

Plus, I got some great tips for how I can start learning to play that ukulele I've been neglecting. Who would have guessed?!

ASTD ICE - Day 1

Hello and welcome to my very first ASTD ICE! Thankfully, the weather in Washington DC has decided to make my first ICE conference (and my first trip to DC) just stunning. I got in early on Saturday, which meant I was able to spend a day checking out the Air and Space Museum as well walking around to see all the major monuments. That was over 6 hours of walking, not including my trip to in to town earlier in the day, so needless to say my legs were more than a bit sore today. Of course, I didn't let that stop me from walking over to the Dupont Circle Farmers Market early this morning (I can't recommend it enough if you're in DC for a weekend).

I regret nothing!

So, how about the conference? Well, Day 1 was a good day, but a short one too as there were only three sets of sessions today. Here's what I saw...

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1) Four Ways To Use Digital Curation In Learning
Speaker: Ben Betts
Curation is a pretty big buzzword in learning right now, but it's one of the ones I actually think is worth the fuss. What exactly is curation? Well, to hyper-simplify a bit, curation is the process of carefully sifting through information and then thoughtfully putting together just the pieces that contribute to a specific story or theme. Museums do this when they put together exhibits and collections. I do this when I make Pinterest boards on cheap design assets or things I think are cute. There's probably less of an audience for my cute things Pinterest board than there is for the work the Smithsonian does, but it all still counts as passionate curation where the sum is greater than the individual parts on their own.

But what makes a person a great curator? This question was posed to the audience and got back answers such as:

• having enough knowledge to ask good questions about content (but not so much specialized knowledge that they can't see things from other points of view)
• being able to evaluate content well
• curiosity
• passion
• an understanding of their intended audience
• the ability to see the big picture of how content comes together
• a knack for building collections
• analytical skills
• storytelling

Betts had his own answer to this question. He believes a good curator stores items, transforms them through context, and shares them with others. They add value by aggregation, distillation, and reflection.

So curation clearly has to be done with skill and purpose for it to work well. It's not just mindlessly collecting everything in a certain theme like a Pokemon trainer. It involves finding just the right pieces of content and enthusiastically putting them together in a way that brings even greater meaning than the pieces had on their own.

So, back to learning and curation. Many companies have this mindset that in order for our learning content to be good, we have to make it all ourselves (and cover it entirely in our own branding to boot). The thing is, as Betts put it, that the world is actually full of content, so we should move away from constantly creating content and consider curating it instead. Why do we always have to reinvent the wheel? Why can't we leverage the hard (and valid) work others have done using curation skills?

As well, Betts says the work we do in training has changed and is now more focused than ever on finding new solutions rather than using existing ones. And what better way of doing this than collaborating with others through curation?!

So what does this "curation for learning" actually look like in practice? Well, Betts suggests four starting points to try out:

1. Inspiration: Use curated content to spark learner curiosity and thoughts
2. Instruction: Take a look at how you can leverage curated content in your formal courses
3. Integration: Have learners curate content themselves
4. Application: Encourage learners to create their own content from their real life experiences that can be curated by others

And what's the best way to get a handle on curation? Why, by curating content yourself!

As a complete side note, the slide deck used for this session was stellar. The slides were clear and to the point, and the hand drawn chalk graphics were delightful. See for yourself:

How charming is this?!

2) Calibrating Your Confidence Meter!
Speaker: Barbara Roche
Have you ever been to a session that just doesn't livetweet well? This was one of those sessions. I rather enjoyed it, but with the more touchy-feely topic and the large number of activities, I get the sense it came across as more flaky and dry than it actually was. I'm hoping I can blog about it in a more engaging way, but if I can't, just know this: I felt it was well worth attending.

So, confidence. Some people have it in spades, some people really struggle with trying to have any at all. Full disclosure, despite appearances I often fall pretty far into the latter camp. Distressingly far.

We also can have varying levels of confidence in different situations. One of the session activities was to look at a list of ten situations, ranging from public speaking to taking on a project that requires skills you don't yet have, and rate your confidence in them. When my table discussed our results our numbers were wildly different. Some of us were rather self assured in the work situations, and terribly unsure in the social ones, and then some of us were the polar opposite. It really is an individual thing.

But, regardless of whether you get into a crisis of confidence about taking a vacation by yourself or while asking for a raise, that crisis can really get in your way. And a crisis of confidence can happen to anyone, no matter how outwardly successful you may be. If you want to overcome whatever your personal confidence barriers are, there are a number of general tips that you can apply to help you along the way.

First, you have to actually have a growth mindset: a belief that you're continuously learning, are willing to try, and your qualities are malleable (terrible related joke - Q: How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One. But the lightbulb has to really want to change). You also have to become more aware of you inner monologue and what it's telling you. The things you tell yourself can frame how you interpret your own abilities, so you have to be careful not to accidentally sabotage yourself with beating yourself down.

Next, you need to become more aware of what makes you awesome (my words, not Roche's) and get comfortable thinking of yourself (and presenting yourself to others) that way. This is essentially figuring out what your personal brand is: what awesomeness you bring to the table. To get started on this, Roche put up a huge list of potential words you could use to describe yourself and then asked us each to select the three that we felt described our skills the best.

I picked passionate, humorous, and expressive. How about you?

Those words are the start of being more mindful of what you actually have to offer the world. Use them to figure out how to play to your strengths in a situation you're less confident in (or consider using the broader list to try and figure out where you and another person might be having a disconnect because of drastically different skills).

Next up is taking a look at the people you surround yourself with. Roche mentioned the Jim Rohn quote "We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with." That can be a scary thought if you look around you and see yourself regularly in the presence of people who tear others down, don't support anyone but themselves, or always see the world as out to get them. It's no wonder that people in that situation don't feel overwhelmed with confidence. So what can you do? You need to change the people you're around the most. In some cases that may be as extreme as leaving a job or a relationship, but it doesn't always have to be. You can simple refuse to let those people be whiny, mean, insufferable, and/or energy sucking around you. You'd be surprised how well just shutting down negative conversations right when they start can be for changing how people talk to you (or encouraging negative people to go whine somewhere else).

Next is how you project yourself to others. Your body language does a lot to shape how people view you. It also subconsciously shapes how you view yourself too. So stand up straight and use confident body language. Even just faking-it-til-you-make-it can change how you feel about yourself and how others interpret you. As well, be thoughtful about what you say and how you say it. Things like mitigated speech and upspeak can lead people to believe you're confused or unsure of what you're saying. Trying to correct yourself out of those habits can do a lot to convince others to see you as someone who knows what they're talking about.

So that was the session in a nutshell. If you want more information on becoming more confident, then I recommend checking out Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. Yes, it's technically a business book, but she talks a lot about how to overcome a lack of confidence (in particular, how to cope with one of the bigger confidence disruptors I know of: impostor syndrome).

3) User Experience Design for Learning
Speaker: Julie Dirksen
Defining user experience is reasonably simple (at least, if you forgive some massive oversimplification): it's the experience someone has through the journey of interacting with a thing/product/service/etc. User experience is somewhat subjective (my experience may be different than yours simply because we're different people with different expectations and experiences), but there are ways to craft great user experiences based on what we know, on average, about our target audience. There are also some broader best practices in user experience design that pretty much apply to everything.

The remote on the right is, no matter what the audience is, just plain crummy user experience design

So, and here's what appears to be the question of the day, how does this apply to learning? Well, whether we realize it or not, we all design user experiences on a regular basis, be it with designing eLearning lessons, putting together participant guides, or making resource websites. The thing is, if the design gets in the way of how your audience wants to interact with it, then a bunch of their brain is being used to figure out how they're supposed to interact with it instead. Want to bet that this means less of their brain is available for... you know... the actual learning?!

And so, we need to be aware of when we're designing or influencing user experience in our training and put our end user in mind when we make design choices. This can be tricky when you're in the dreaded "order taker" position, where your SME, stakeholder, or client just tells you what they want you to do and expects you to simply comply. But hey, who said our job was easy and stress free? We need to convince these people (and, let's be honest, ourselves too sometimes) that thoughtfully creating an experience that focuses on the audience's needs makes for better, stickier content. And what better way to do that than to learn from the industry that's been tackling this problem for ages: user experience (UX) design.

So here are a bunch of the tips you can learn from UX:

First, don't design in a tunnel. You need to go outside of your own experiences when you make something for others or else you may end up blinded to the problems it has (the whole "it's hard to edit your own work" issue).

Next, if you have the opportunity, go out and actually observe your users in their real world setting and simply talk to them. Often subject matter experts are great at telling you how things should happen, not how they actually happen. Observations and conversations with your users will tell you a lot about how things actually work in the real world. Observing also provides another benefit: people sometimes leave out telling you about the steps/tasks they've personally automated. This is like most of the math teachers I had in school: they know how to do the task they're trying to teach you, but they skip steps because they're so knowledgable that they don't even think about those parts anymore. So they tend not to tell you some things just because they're second nature to them now.

Observing has one additional benefit: it shows you the triggers that tell a person when they actually need to use the content you want to train them on. Knowing that can help you better decide how to present that content. It also tells you how to make sure your training resembles the real word application as much as possible. Never let it be forgotten that the closer a practice experience is to the real thing, the better that practice translates into being able to use that skill or knowledge in the real world.

Another thing that UX does that we in L&D could stand to leverage is personas (or, as we call them at work, learner profiles). These are documents that summarize one or some of the different target audiences for what we're creating. Obviously not every one of our learners will be exactly the same, but it's worthwhile to figure out what things most of them have in common so that you can build your user experience with them in mind. Remember, good design isn't the same for everyone, so you need to have general understanding of your audience in order to build something that works well for them.

Something else to try is prototyping and user testing. Build mockups of what you're creating, then let a small group of potential users (always make sure they come from your target audience) try it out and give you feedback. Observe what was easy for them, what didn't work well, and where they got confused. Reflect on that feedback, suggest changes, make those changes, and test again. You'll be amazed at what will seem easy and straightforward to you and your team, but will make your audience stumble.

At the end of the day, the simple truth is that design changes behaviour. Bad design can lead to flawed learning. But great, audience-centred design can make mastering your content so much easier for your learners.

On a related note, I felt like a lot of what we talked about in this session related back strongly to great product design. Dirksen acknowledged this by recommending we all read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. I also suggest checking out the documentary Objectified and the podcast 99% Invisible.

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So that's it for the first day. I actually kind of liked this more mellow start to a conference. It makes it a bit easier to ramp up and get into conference mode than the ones that just fill the first day up to the brim with sessions and content.

Join me tomorrow for more blog coverage of this event. Also, shameless plug, if you're at ASTD ICE and looking for a Monday afternoon session, definitely consider popping over to my talk on infographics at 1:00pm in room 144BC.

ASTD TechKnowledge - Day 3

The final day! It's kind of a relief that the last day of the conference is only a half day, since everyone is so tired at this point. Of course, it's also a bit sad that it's just a half day because the creative wheels in my head where only just getting spinning this morning and then the conference was over.

Well, now's the time to take advantage of the last of the free conference wi-fi and get some blogging about today done.  :)

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1) We’re All in This Together: Team Collaboration Tools
Speaker: Koreen Olbrish Pagano
Pagano did something really fun in this session: she gave us a bunch of recommendations for free team collaboration tools to check out and then basically let us all poke at the links with a stick together to see what they all did. It was a morning of guided play through a curated list of tools and I can't think of a more perfect way to start off the last, exhausting morning of the conference.

So what specific tools did we play with today? Here's the list (compiled into three handy, dandy categories):

Project collaboration

1. Producteev https://www.producteev.com  
2. Podio https://podio.com
3. Redbooth http://redbooth.com
4. Trello https://trello.com
5. Wiggio http://wiggio.com 

Design collaboration

1. Red Pen https://redpen.io
2. Marqueed https://www.marqueed.com
3. GoVisually http://www.govisually.com
4. Invision App http://www.invisionapp.com/m/
5. Easy Proof http://www.easyproof.com
6. Redmark http://redmark.com
7. Mural.ly https://mural.ly

Real-time collaboration

1. Scribblar http://www.scribblar.com
2. Kollaborate.io https://www.kollaborate.io 

We also got a list of great (but not so free) tools to check out as well: 

Project collaboration - Basecamp, BinFire, Projecturf, Zoho, Google Apps, Apollo
Design collaboration - Cage, Mindmeister
Real-time collaboration - Flow, Conceptboard, GroupZap

These products are all so different, so it's hard for me to make a grand declaration that one is better than another. However, there are definitely a few that I suspect will be worming their way into my heart (and workflow). For projects, Redbooth's user interface made me pretty happy, so I think I'll take it out for a proper test drive when I get back to work. For serious design work I'll likely end up using the mood board-like features of Mural.ly. For making joking annotations on pictures, though, Red Pen is a clear winner (here's the delightfully riduclous thing the group put together in the session). As for real-time collaboration, Kollaborate.io might just be the thing for times when my brainstorming buddies and I can't all be in the same place.

Anyway, I thoroughly recommend that, if you're curious about these tools, you go and click on every single one of those links and see which might work best for you.

2) How to Engage Learners With Digital Stories Using Free Tools
Speaker: Kenneth Hubbell
In this session Hubbell talked about a number of free tools you can use to put together an animated story. While we briefly touched on software like Audacity (sound recording/editing), MovieMaker (video editing), and Celtx (script writing), the vast majority of the presentation centered on an animation tool called Muvizu. This tool uses a suite of pre-created set pieces, characters, and settings that you can arrange, tweak, and light to your own preferences to create animated scenes. Add in voice over work (Muvizu does the hard work of syncing character mouth movement to your audio), stitch a bunch of these animated scenes together in sequence, and you've got an animated movie.

So what does the finished product look like? Well, here's a super slick example that Muvizu linked to on their website. So you can do that with a lot of work, but you can also make stuff that's a lot clumsier (and, sadly, visually dull as dirt) too. There seem to be two secrets to using this tool in a way that doesn't look crummy. Obviously you need to figure out all the ins and outs of the camera/lighting/animation features so you can incorporate them in to your work as needed. But even if you get all that mastered, your animation will still look lousy and boring if you don't understand the basics of film making before you begin even scripting your story.

What I'd suggest you do is get up-to-speed on film making techniques first (perhaps through some of the resources I talked about from the Day 2 sessions) and only try out a tool like Muvizu once you've gotten a good hold your film making basics.

Let's say, though, that you know your stuff when it comes to cinematography, script writing, and directing. Is Muvizu a tool you might want to try? Well, I'm not sure. To my gamer eyes the characters and set pieces looked a bit dated. Plus, the user interface (particularly for moving your design elements and camera around the stage) was terrifyingly odd. I've never played a video game that controlled as awkwardly as this. I think it's something that you'd vaguely get used to though, so don't let the initial uncomfortableness of control completely stop your from trying out this tool.

At the end of the day I might play around with this tool for fun, but don't think it's the right fit for the audience I'm designing content for. The look and feel of the final product has a rough and cartoony aesthetic that I didn't love. However, you might be in a situation where that will still work for you, so check out a few example videos and decide for yourself.

3) General Session 3
Speaker: Kate Hartman
As far as I'm concerned, if a conference opening session should get you excited, then an ending session should make you ponder new ideas that you'll need to mentally chew on during your journey home. By this standard, Hartman's talk about wearable technology, particularly from the angle of using it as "social prosthetics", was a perfect fit.

Hartman has spent years experimenting with how technology can communicate with people. An early project she worked on was Botanicalls: a device that monitored the water levels in a potted plant's soil and actually phoned you, posing as the voice of your plant, to tell you if the plant was thirsty or overwatered. Cute, right? Well, the project morphed from phone calls to giving your plant its own Twitter account and enabling it to tweet its status to you and any of its other followers. Yes, your plant can have Twitter followers. *laugh*

Since then Hartman has continued exploring alternative ways in which we can use technology to alter the ways we communicate. And through this exploration she's been focusing on communicating through wearable technology, in particular with her work as a professor of Wearable and Mobile Technology at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and as a member of their Social Body Lab research group.

Her projects have included getting her students to push the boundaries of wearable technology (check out some fun examples of past student projects here. The telepathic motion-sensitive cat vest is a personal favourite). She's also experimented with new ways to let people communicate using wearable tech, particularly through simple and cheap components like Arduino and LED lights. She shared an amusing project called Nudgeables which was designed to create a subtle way for people to communicate in a tactile way with someone else in the same room (check it out here). The challenge with this project wasn't just designing the mechanical aspect of this tool, but also to shape the design of it so it would be something people would actually want to wear too (fancy that... people don't want to walk around looking like awkward cyborgs?! *laugh*).

So what does this mean to us in L&D? Well, wearable technology is likely something that's becoming a reality in our world... and not just with obvious examples like Google Glass. For instance, think about how many people you know who regularly wear a Fitbit or Nike FuelBand nowadays? I don't know about you, but I know a lot (all of which took to these devices in the last year or so). So why not stretch your brain to think not just of how to use the existing wearable tech that's out there for learning, but also contemplate the possibilities of wearable tech that could become a reality in the future?

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So that's it for the sessions I attended at ASTD TechKnowledge this year. Right now I'm going to track down some well-deserved lunch before I have to scamper back to Toronto on the red eye, but definitely expect a final conference post in the next few days where I'll review the conference on a whole and talk about the "joys" of staying off-site at the Flamingo.

ASTD TechKnowledge - Day 2

Well, it seems Thursday was my big day for sessions as I managed to fit in 5 today. Hooray! On one hand, there was a ton of great content today. On the other hand, all the live tweeting has made my right arm HATE me. Ah well... it was worth it.

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1) General Session 2
Speaker: Amy Jo Martin
The day started with a talk on how to humanize our social media brands. The spin was on doing this to monetize our social media presence, which, to be honest, made me feel like this specific talk didn't quite fit in with the overall conference. Martin was an enjoyable speaker though, so there was a lot to be gained from her session even though the angle she took on the topic wasn't ideal.

She started by referencing a Simon Sinek quote: "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it" (I highly recommend this TED talk in which he elaborates on this idea). This is a core component of building a compelling brand, both from a company perspective as well as from a personal one. It's even more important when you're dealing with social media. Social media isn't a one-way media... it's collaborative. Because of this, your presence on social media needs to have a real personality and presence in order for people to want to follow and interact with you.

Unfortunately a lot of companies and people new to social media don't get this. They just push out content, are confused when that doesn't seem to lead to any results, and then write off social media as a fad. This is why, Martin suggested, social media education is so important these days. Really "getting" a social media tool is like trying to learn a new language... and just because you've mastered one tool doesn't mean you're a master of all of them. To make her point Martin shared this video from Jimmy Fallon where he and Justin Timberlake hilariously speak in hashtags. Sure, it's funny, but it also points out how drastically different the way communication on social media can be from real speech.

Social media education can help a person or company learn to communicate in the "language" of different social media tools. It can also reduce social media mistakes, help employees become brand ambassadors, be a professional development tool, save companies money, and make social media seem less scary (and more valuable too).

2) Transmedia Storytelling: A Hero's Journey Through New Media
Speaker: Anders Gronstedt
Gronstedt started off by immediately sharing the link for the Prezi presentation he was sharing in the session (you can check it out here). Hooray for showing your work! I'd recommend checking out the full presentation if you get a chance, but here's the high level summary for now.

Transmedia storytelling is simply using multiple types of media to tell a single story. Each media channel should contribute to the overall story, but also be able to stand on its own. Want to see a fantastic example of a deep and effective transmedia story? Check out The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice told using YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr (my love for this series is epic).

While transmedia storytelling comes from the entertainment industry, there's no reason this technique can't also be leveraged for L&D as well. But why use stories to teach information? Because our memory is itself so story based. Stories are exceptionally memorable and persuasive because of this. That means you can make training that's both easy to follow AND easy to remember.

But how do you structure telling a story this way. Gronstedt suggested a tried-but-true structure that humans have been using for ages: the hero's journey. Thanks to a recommendation from @oxala75 (hooray for Twitter!), you can learn more about this story structure with this fun (and short) video. Another great video introduction (also from @oxala75) that will appeal to my fellow gamers is this intro from Extra Credits.

Once you've figured out your compelling story, what media is appropriate to use with transmedia storytelling? Why, any and all of it... from paper posters to videos to podcasts to written stories and so on. Just make sure each story component plays to the strengths of the media you're choosing to create it in.

3) Apply the Skills of TV Directing to Your Learning Video
Speaker: Jonathan Halls
Halls opened with a rather grand statement: "The future training professional will be a media producer." Essentially, he feels that video is going to become even more important in L&D in the upcoming years, so if you don't get how to produce it (and produce content with it that's actually useful) now, you're going to get left behind.

Hall was yet another speaker who made his slide deck and resources available online (and for that I'm grateful), so rather than retell the whole session I'm going to recommend you check out his site for all the details and I'll just fill you in on the highlights.

First off, not all media is great for all situations. Because of this, you need to know the strengths (and weaknesses) of video to help you decide if it's the right fit for what you're trying to teach or show. Second, video is primarily a visual medium, so take advantage of that to make the story you tell with it is both easy to understand and compelling. Use techniques like camera angles, shot types, and framing appropriately in order to help your audience's comprehension and keep things interesting (related note: for an example of how making mistakes with basic framing can completely derail the story you're trying to tell, check out this scathing review of Les Miserables from Film Crit Hulk). Third, create visual tension to keep your audience's attention, for example through the Rule of Thirds.

Hall emphasized how important it is to pre-plan both your individual shots as well as your sequences of shots. Doing this assures that you get all the shots you actually require, and also keeps you from filming more than you need or recording less effective versions of shots because you didn't quite know what you wanted beforehand.

But all these tips are useless if you don't get one thing straight right at the beginning: don't start creating videos until you actually have a learning objective. This helps you know exactly what story to tell.

4) Making Time Lapse and Stop Motion Video
Speaker: Stephen Haskin
While this session was supposed to be about making both time lapse and stop motion videos, we spent nearly all the time on time lapse techniques. Fair enough... I'm not really sure how you could tackle both effectively in only an hour and 15 minutes.

So what exactly are these video styles? Well, time lapse is a type of video that's created by using still shots taken over time with an interval between them (for instance, one image for every 4 seconds of time) that are then stitched together as a video to show a sped-up version of events. You've probably seen this kind of video used in science and nature documentaries (here's a great example from YouTube). Stop motion, on the other hand, is created from shots taken over time with a deliberate movement between shots that creates an animation of sorts. The most likely place you've seen stop motion is in movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas or Coraline (my favourite example of stop motion animation is this music video for the Kenna song Hell Bent).

So how do you create these types of videos? Well, we only got in to time lapse because of the short amount of time we had, but here are the details on that...

Math
This is the math you can use for figuring out how many shots you need to take for the time lapse project you want to make:

Start by determining the total number of frames you need: (time in seconds) x (your frame rate)
Then calculate your frames per minute: (total frames)/(# of minutes)
Finally, use all this to calculate your length of time between shots: (frames per minute)/60

Here's the example we got in the session: to make a 30 sec time lapse of a 1 hour event, you would take 900 frames over the 1 hour event. This equals 15 frames per minute, which will mean you need 4 seconds between each frame.

Production
So that's the math for the timing and number of shots. But how do you go about taking the shots? Haskin recommended using the Interval Timing settings on a DSLR. This makes it easy to set up the camera to take just the right number of shots of the right length of time without you having to monitor it the whole time. Also important: keep your camera stable for the whole shooting period by using a simple tripod.

Once you have your shots, keep the file names as the camera has created them (the camera will thankfully number them in chronological order for you), and move them all into a single folder. From this folder you can use Photoshop or Premiere Pro to compile them into a video. Here's the process you can use for each tool:

• Photoshop: Open Photoshop and use it to open your image folder. Select the 1st image. Check the Image Sequence box. Click Open. Set your frame rate. Click OK. You now have your time lapse video set up. To publish your video click File, then Export, and then Render Video. Choose your settings and you're good to go. Cool bonus: you can use Photoshop filters to add visual effects to your video. Obnoxious downside: Photoshop takes a long time to render video. 
• Premiere Pro: Open Premier Pro and press Ctrl+N to create a new project. Set the preset to Digital SLR and choose either 720p or 1080p. Click Import, navigate to your image folder, click the 1st image, click the Image Sequence box, and then click Open. You've now got your time lapse video. When you're done, just publish as you would any regular Premiere Pro project. Plus side of this tool: it has a MUCH faster render speed than Photoshop. Minus side: it doesn't have filters like Photoshop does.

5) Keepin' It Legal: Free Stuff to Spice Up Your Training
Speaker: Michelle Lentz

Surprise, surprise... this was my third session of the day where the presenter, much to my delight, decided to share their full slide deck online. You can check out Lentz's excellent presentation here. It's definitely worth spending some time with if you want to find out more about Creative Commons licensing and/or are looking for a large number of useful links to free media resources. Because you can see the whole deck yourself, once again I'm going to go with the key points review for this blog post.

To start, in order to use something legally you need to understand copyright. But when is something copyrighted? Why, when the idea is committed to paper/screen (not when the idea comes to your mind, but when it's actually created in a physical or digital form). A term you might have heard regarding copyright is fair use. Fair use is the idea that you can use something within copyright if you're parody it or critiquing it (this is the legal way, for instance, that shows like SNL can get away with their spoofs).

When it comes to free resources you can legally use without violating copyright, there are two groups of media you'll want to be keenly aware of. First is public domain. This refers to both old media where the copyright has expired as well as some government materials as well. You can use anything in the public domain for free.

The other group is the kind of licensing this session focused on leveraging: Creative Commons. What exactly is Creative Commons? It's a type of license creators can release their creations under if they want to allow it to be used for free (but possibly with some limitations). If you want a simple overview, I recommend checking out this comic explanation. This type of licensing structure was created by a group of people who were passionate about sharing information and content for free, but also wanted to give content authors a simple way to have some say over how that free content was used by others.

There are currently 6 easy-to-understand types of Creative Commons licenses a content creator can choose to use for their creations. The licenses are all in plain English and the differences pretty much centralize around whether the author needs to be attributed, if the content can be altered, if it can/can't be used for commercial work, and if the content user has to also share their work under a Creative Commons license too.

So, long story short, this means that there are a ton of people online who are making and sharing content that you can use for free (as long as you respect the easy-to-follow license they're sharing their stuff under). If you want to find Creative Commons media to use yourself, there are thankfully a bunch of services that can help you locate this type of content easily, and Lentz cataloged many of them in her slide deck. I've used quite a few of her website suggestions in the past and can vouch for the fact that they're a great resource to have at your disposal.

One final word based on some of the questions asked in the session. Creative Commons licensing works on a lot of trust, particularly in the case of attributing the content you're using to the original author. While you could usually easily get away with not attributing content, I think it's important to keep to the spirit of Creative Commons when thinking about attribution. Remember, someone was nice enough to share that content for free. The very LEAST you can do is credit them as a thank you.

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That was one full and productive conference day filled with a bunch of content on learning media! I had a lot of takeaways from today, but none more than this: I am so glad more and more presenters are sharing their slide decks and resources online. It makes it so much easier to review the content and share it with others, which is what many of us come to conferences like this for.

ASTD TechKnowledge - Day 1

The first day of TechKnowledge is officially over. I'm completely exhausted, but also delightfully full of knowledge. I also reek of smoke, but this is Vegas. I suppose such things are expected.

As usual, here are my thoughts and feelings about the sessions I attended (for even more detailed notes, definitely check out the live tweeting I did earlier today).

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1) General Session 1
Speaker: Jeff Dyer
Typically what I look for in an opening general session is a speaker and topic that get people thinking in a new way. Dyer's session on how to be a better innovator definitely fit the bill nicely.

He opened with a discussion on whether creativity comes more from nature or nurture. People typically think of creativity as an inborn talent, but research says it's not. It's something you build. And yes, as a former art teacher I'd most thoroughly agree (my rants about the perception that creativity comes from some sort of stroke of luck rather than years and years of hard work will have to be saved for another full blog post some time in the future). This rest of this session was designed to give people ideas for how they could actually go about the process of building their own creative abilities.

To do the talk a bit of a disservice and give you guys the Cliffs Notes version, Dyer feels that there are several skills that are vital for being a creative innovator:

• Associating: The ability to connect ideas in new ways. Dyer recommended two ways to build this skill. First, he suggested a thought exercise where you brainstorm ways to combine two seemingly unrelated products, which forces you to think about things in a flexible, innovative way. Second, he talked about ways to use questions to help groups think differently. Depending on the situation, asking questions that impose constraints, completely eliminate constraints, or create substantially more questions can be incredibly useful for helping a group to innovate together.
• Observing: The name really sums up the task here. Too often people go about creating things based on assumptions or because it's the way it's always been done. True innovators do lots of observations and look for things that surprise them. What can help you think about solving a problem in a new way is to do these observations from the perspective of focusing on the task, not the tool used to accomplish the task. On a related note, Dyer also suggested that doing observations outside of your typical work environment can be incredibly helpful. Your newbie eyes may see issues those close to the task would miss.
• Networking: Most of us have an informal list of people we tend to go to when we want ideas for how to solve a problem. However, for many people that list is filled with individuals who are just like them: the same industry (maybe even with the same job title), the same age, the same work experience, the same socioeconomic group. The thing is, when you're always bouncing ideas off of people with the same experiences as you, you're probably always going to get the same answers. That's why you need to build a network that also includes people with substantially different experiences from you too. To do this, Dyer recommends tapping in to experts who have solved problems like yours before, attending networking events, and joining a networking group. I'll also add that Twitter is an amazing place to meet fantastic people with a wide range of experiences and interests, but all of which share the love of simply sharing knowledge. Seriously: getting hooked up with Twitter was one of the best things I ever did for my own creativity.
• Experimenting: Test ideas, seek new experiences, and take things apart. Challenge yourself to learn skills that, at the surface, seem unrelated to your work because you never know what these new skills might be able to inspire in your work, now or in the future. Try prototyping to test out your ideas and see if they actually work (and if some work better than others). Don't be afraid to make a mistake, particularly if that failure means you learned something important that helps you do better later or gives you new insight. I also recommend doing the mental equivalent of going around and poking new things/ideas with a stick to see what happens. It's a fun way to learn.

Overall this session did a great job at framing exactly why no one can get away with saying "I'm not a creative person" anymore. It also was pretty much exactly the energy booster I think a first session should be.

2) The Special Sauce of Social Learning
Speaker: Marc Rosenberg
The premise of this session was simple: social learning isn't anything new. It's something we've actually doing for ages. What is new, though, is the technology that we're using for it and the way we're trying to integrate it into learning situations. L&D is, as a group, quite behind the curve on both social learning and social media and we need to catch up to how society on a whole has already started using it. Now, this doesn't just mean we should shove everything into a social media tool and call the job done (no surprises: this doesn't work at all). It means we need to really grasp social learning as a strategy and then understand how to leverage things like social media to enable this kind of learning.

Rosenberg then went on to talk about what he sees as the next generation of learners: impatient, multi-tasking, more purposeful, not "clock-bound", tech savvy, and social. And here's where I'm going to disagree a bit and say that's not a set of learners that's coming in the future... that's many of the learners we have now. Heck, it's me, and I'm by no means super young. So maybe what's more realistic to say is that these are the preferences of more and more of our learners now.

So if these are the learner needs we need to get better at responding to, and social learning can better help us address those needs, what should we do to incorporate legitimately good social learning in the work we do? Well, here are the suggestions Rosenberg had:

• Make your social tools and technology extremely easy to use. That way the user sees the tools as a natural way of doing things (Apple, we're looking at you here).
• Nurture authorship. Let people contribute. You'll need to walk a fine line between not putting too many barriers in their way but also acknowledging that not everyone who creates content creates good (or even accurate) content.
• Support mobility. Sharing shouldn't only happen in restricted situations (like only when you're at your work laptop... AND it's connected to the corporate intranet). It should happen anywhere.
• Identify clear, meaningful goals for your social learning that are actually important (both to the company and to the learners).
• Make membership in your social learning meaningful. Give people an answer for the question "Why do I want to participate?"
• Put effort into facilitation. Sometimes social learning needs the help of certain people who work to guide the conversation or push it in new directions. This doesn't mean this role has to be be filled by specially trained official facilitators, though. You can even ask one or more of the learners themselves to take on this task.
• Get leadership on board. A great way to do this is to talk about social learning from the perspective of how it benefits the business (rather than fussing about the tools you'll use). Also, start small with easy to implement tiny pilot projects rather than massive, full scale ones.
• Remember that management can't be all "Big Brother" about social learning. People need to know that they have a safe place to share or else they won't share at all. Keep management at bay and remind them that this isn't the appropriate place to monitor employees closely.
• Align your social learning with more formal learning. This is a good way to ease people into social learning habits and techniques.
• Develop a knowledge-sharing culture. People need to see the benefit of sharing knowledge rather than hoarding it (and the business culture needs to reflect this change in mindset too).
• Make sure your learners know how to learn. Many people have gotten into the habit of expecting learning to be a passive experience where all the content is pushed out to them. Social learning requires them to become more comfortable with the idea of seeking out and sharing information themselves, which can take some adjusting to (depending on your audience).

Using these tips you can begin to build a work environment that fully utilizes social learning. That said, I do wish Rosenberg had spent more time directly addressing the problems corporate culture can create when trying to integrate social learning into a workplace. I personally see this as one of the biggest hurdles most L&D folks will encounter when trying to increase their use of social learning. Because of this, I would have liked to have gotten more of his perspective on how you can reshape corporate culture in a way that's more friendly to the habits you need to have to make social learning work

3) Choose Your Own Sim-venture: Branched Simulation Basics
Speaker: Bianca Woods
Oh look! It's my own session!

Okay, obviously I'm not going to review my own content. However, because I always share my full slide deck, presenter notes, and resource links, you yourself can review this content on your own. Yeah, it's more fun when it's actually me presenting it, but it's the next best thing.  ;)

Here's the link to my full session materials.

4) Leveraging Devices to Create Amazing Mobile Learning
Speaker: Chad Udell

This was my last session of the day and, while I quite enjoyed it, it's nearly impossible to capture with a blog posting. Basically what happened was Udell talked about how we need to become better at designing for the specific affordances of mobile devices. And what exactly is an "affordance"? It's a quality or feature of an environment or object that allows you to perform a a task. For example, three of the affordances of binoculars include magnification, a dial to adjust focus, and an adjustable size.

Mobile devices have their own unique affordances (an overview is captured in this blog posting from Float Learning), but when we design mobile content many of us don't fully take advantage of these fantastically useful features. So what the rest of this session was designed to do was to help us become more aware of what these affordances of mobile devices are and what sort of ways we can consider using them for learning. Udell took advantage of a tool called Poll Everywhere to let the entire audience text and message our thoughts about the learning application of specific mobile device affordances (like a camera, device sensors, and geolocation) into one big brainstorm. Udell is planning on collecting all the ideas from this session later in the week, and I'll post that link here and on Twitter as soon as I have it (Edit: here's the link). Suffice it to say, there were a lot of creative and useful ideas proposed.

So, this session was all about pushing people to see mobile in a more accurate and broad way. For those of us who routinely push the boundaries of what our mobile devices can do, this didn't really shock us. That said, I still really enjoyed the exercise of it. For others, though, that had previously thought of mobile in a more limited fashion, this was a great way to see mobile in a new way. I thought Dan Steer did a fantastic job of summing up the session from that perspective on his blog.

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So, overall, a good first day. I'm still looking for that session that completely shakes up my own thoughts about some L&D-related topic. While today I found a number of sessions that reinforced my own beliefs, I haven't seen one yet that makes me question them. Crossing my fingers that I come across that in the next two days.