Learning 2005 – Tuesday
I attended several sessions, including Outsourcing Custom Content (Working with Vendors) and Painless Podcasting.
I didn’t really learn anything new in the Podcasting session, but it was still interesting. The Custom Content session was interesting because I got to hear the perspective of my clients. It was good to learn certain things. The suppliers in the room were pretty amazed. From what we could tell, no one in the room had ever had a good vendor experience, and that’s pretty sad. There must be some pretty poor suppliers out there. I was sitting in the room between Trivantis, and RWD. Both companies I have worked for and from whom I learned my own methodologies. So I can at least vouch for the three of us.
The general session with Malcolm Gladwell was fantastic and he said some incredible things about how our environment shapes our decisions. Change the environment – change the behavior. Steve Johnson also returned to the stage as a wonderful foil for Malcolm. Although I do love Malcolm’s books, I find myself referring more to Steve’s book. I think I can just relate to him more, so he was definitely my favorite speaker.
I’ve been sort of disappointed as to how many of the non-sponsor sessions I’ve attended that have devolved into ads for one software product or another. In a way, I feel a little decieved. This is supposed to be a conference without the Exhibition Hall. Yet there is a whole lot of selling going on sort of undercover. I’m also disappointed with Elliott’s own lack of support for small businesses. He has the wonderful Learning Consortium for large firms who can afford to pay the large fee. But for those of us who made a significant investment to come to this conference, and there are many, there is little to no support. I think it would be wonderful if the Masie Center sponsored a community of small businesses involved in eLearning.
Finally, I think someone needs to define Rapid Development. For me, and many folks I talked to, Rapid Development is 2 – 4 weeks. I was in at least one session where it was defined as 8 – 12 weeks. How nice that would be …
I’ve met an incredible number of people (usually who have skipped out of sessions that devolved into advertisements) and had some fantastic conversations. MGM was also a blast, despite the rain. I highly recommend the Tower of Terror tonite.
On Wednesday there is one last session (I’m hoping to attend the session on Blogs and Wikis) and then the Closing Session.
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