I attended the e-Learning Guild's Annual Gathering last week. This week I am using this space to share a few of my own personal observations from this year's event.

For this first post, I'll begin with a couple of overall observations:

First - the economy is clearly having an effect on industry conferences. This is the second event I've presented at this year (the other being ASTD's TechKnowledge conference). Both events saw a marked decrease in attendance versus last year. Economic circumstances such as they are, many corporations are cutting back or eliminating their budgets for conference and trade show attendance. No one is immune, not even the presenters. I was on a panel with several other analysts who conduct research on the corporate training industry, and one of our co-presenters (from a well known IT-focused analyst firm) backed out at the last minute because that firm has cancelled all event travel. Many of the providers I spoke with who had booths in the expo also talked about how they have cut back on tradeshow activities. 

I wonder, though, if the economy is the only reason that conference attendance is dropping. Perhaps the downturn is simply accelerating a trend already underway? Given the growing number of virtual channels (such as the e-Learning Guild's online forums, social networks like Elliot Masie's LearningTown, or free webinars offered by organizations like ours)by which to interact with other training professionals or gain exposure to the latest in industry back practice, are in-person industry conferences still relevant? Where do you see the industry event fitting in your own development efforts? Please add your comments below. Providers: I would like your opinion as well. Are tradeshows still valuable sources of new business? Are they really effective ways to start new relationships with customers?

I will come back to this topic in future posts. Now, onto the second thought for today...

It is worth taking a deeper look at the theme for this year's event: "Preparing You for the Next Evolution of Learning."

From their website: "The next evolution of learning is the integration of your current learning initiatives with emerging technologies that truly enable learning anytime and anywhere - and doing this in an environment characterized by extreme budget cuts and increasing demands. Now, more than ever, results matter. You need to produce effective e-Learning content in the most efficient manner possible to ensure maximum impact on performance and the bottom line."

I couldn't agree more! I sat on a panel at this year's conference entitled: "Focus on Research: Current and Future e-Learning Trends." My fellow panelists were Bryan Chapman of Chapman Alliance, Claire Schooley of Forrester Research, and Dr. Ellen Wagner of Sonoma Partners - all researchers of corporate training and development. To prepare for this panel, we were asked to imagine a chance hallway encounter with a corporate learning leader - a company's CLO for instance. What 5 things would we tell said CLO that he or she should doing right now to be successful - or as we call it - to be a High Impact Learning Organization ™, today.

I realized after the fact that 3 of my own recommendations are embedded in the above quote:

1. "Integrate your current learning initiatives with emerging technologies that enable anytime, anywhere learning." We call this formalizing informal learning, and we think it should be top priority for all learning organizations out there (Yes, even those in of your in very controlled, regulated companies and industries).
2. "Results matter." Josh says it best: You must look at your training catalog as a portfolio, which has several dimensions, including program cost; adoption among its target audience, reputation, alignment with the company's strategy, the impact of cutting or eliminating it. You have to measure frequently. Reallocate regularly.
3. "You need to produce effective e-Learning content in the most efficient manner possible to ensure maximum impact on performance and the bottom line." Process matters. Lean times expose inefficiency. The High Impact Learning organizations spend the time and effort to truly understand and optimize how they do what they do.
   
   My other 2 messages that I would add are:
   
4. "Get realigned." There are only two real things that matter in corporate training --alignment (how well we focus on the problems at hand) and efficiency (how well we actually deliver training at the lowest possible cost). While we can drive down costs with efficiency, we can also drive up value with alignment.
5. "Focus on Deep Specialization." A major shift is taking place: organizations and individuals are changing their view of what we call career potential - with a stronger and stronger focus on deep levels of specialization. Today's organizations are narrower at the top. HR leaders are realizing that the traditional leadership development model is not always working. Organizations must find ways to develop, promote, and honor the specialist leaders. "Enduring organizations," endure because they are very focused on their core competencies: they are the "best in the world" at one or two things.

We think these strategies are going to dominate the discussion of what corporate learning can and should be for the foreseeable future. And you can expect to us continue to focus on all five of these themes in our research offerings going forward as well.

Check out the next post for observations on many of the conference sessions...
-David