As the ASTD 2014 International Conference and Exhibition in Washington DC approaches, it is time for participants and backchannel followers to start thinking about sessions to follow and objectives to achieve. To help me in my own personal pre-conference mission, I took contact with a few key people in the learning world…
David Kelly is known as “king of the backchannel” for his conference curation work. You can expect to find a full set of resources, blogs and videos from him on his backchannel blog page. David will be speaking on “Why you need a PLN and how to develop one” Tuesday May 6th.
What topics that we’ve seen in the past at ICE do you think still require attention from the learning community?
“There’s ple
nty. Things that I think we need more attention to are design, business relationships, mobile, and performance support.”
“I’m looking at sessions based in reality. Sometimes too many sessions are led by people that talk about how it should be done, but don’t actually do it themselves. I like a case study where people share their project story, warts and all.”
Another conference regular with plenty of experience to share is Jane Bozarth. She will be also present in Washington next month. Her work on “Social Media for Trainers” has been an inspiration for many in the industry and her latest book “Share Your Work – the payoffs and how-to’s of working out loud” is due out during conference week.
What topics are front of mind for you as you attend ICE2014?
“People learn all the time, every day at work. The topic on my mind is workplace learning that doesn’t involve ‘courses’.”
Jane’s session “Show your work – the new knowledge management” will take place on Tuesday May 6th.
Mark Oehlert spoke at the ASTD 2014 TechKnowledge Conference on the benefits of “Going Social”.
What topics are front of mind for you as you attend ICE2014?
“I’m looking to hear if people are ready to engage with new organisational models and move away from Industrial Age hierarchies.”
Mark will be back at ASTD ICE 2014 on Tuesday 6th May to tell us that “Social isn’t something you do, its something you become”.
One of my other new friends from TK14 in Las Vegas, Mark Britz, will not be attending the conference this year. But as an avid tweeter and all-round learning gangsta, you can be sure he will chime in with some thoughts via the backchannel.
What are you hoping to get out of the backchannel for ICE2014?
“Good question Dan. If I was going I’d like to hear Charles Jennings speak and more importantly the reaction to 70:20:10 from ASTD attendees.”
Charles Jennings will be speaking on Monday 5th May about “Effective implementation of the 70:20:10 framework” and on Tuesday 6th May on “The performance support storm – how to support 70:20:10 with performance support”
Bianca Woods will be back at the conference, speaking about “Telling your story with infographics”. Aside from her session on Monday 5th May, she’s got quite a few things on her mind for ASTD2014.
What topics do you think will be the most exciting, new or important at ICE2014 ?
“The thing I’m finding most exciting is the increased focus on real and thoughtful professional development for people in our industry. More & more people are treating L&D as a real career. Not just something they accidentally stumbled into and might still stumble out of. I was pretty excited to see so many sessions on how you can build & manage your career in L&D with thought and purpose.”
Which one session are you really not going to miss?
“Oh, that’s an easy question: Michelle Lentz’s talk! Fearless Instructional Design: Learning from the Imagination of Jim Henson (Sunday 4th May). She did the presentation at DevLearn, but our sessions were scheduled at the same time so I couldn’t see it then. She’s a great speaker and I’ve heard particularly excellent things about this talk, so I’m giddy I can finally see it myself. Plus, what’s not to love about getting creative inspiration from stories about the guy who created the Muppets?!”
And myself? Looking at the conference event app, I did my usual yearly first selection and came up with an average of 6 choices per session! There is a lot of good content and a lot of good speakers. And after my fruitful experience in Las Vegas, it’s going to be tough to decide how to get the most value out of ASTD2014. I’ve got my eye on sessions about transmedia storytelling and tools to amaze and astound, big data for learning and performance support, effective coaching using what we know from neuro-science, onboarding at the Hilton, what we can learn from Google about measuring learning…
But mostly this year, my resolution is to stop running round like a madman trying to do everything everywhere. Of course, I’ll be doing the “Daily DC Weather Reports” on my YouTube channel and blogging sessions I follow live for my sponsors/partners at Kluwer. But I think this year is going to mostly be about (re)meeting up with good people, having good conversations and getting inspired.
See you there?!
