The reason it has taken so long to get this DevLearn review posted is because I have started over several times. First, I shared everything I absorbed in the sessions I attended. It would just be a rehash of what is already in the #dl10 stream. Then, I wrote one acknowledging everyone who I met and those who had an impact on me that week. That started to look like a novel! Instead, this is simply an overview of what it was like to be me that week. A different perspective.
The Goal
In short: PLN – Personal Learning Network. If you don’t have one, start today. It’s imperative to your growth. This is my PLN on Twitter. I don’t make a move without their buy-in! I follow them for a reason…you should too. Go there now and start building your PLN and establishing amazing relationships!
That said…
The conference name DevLearn essentially stands for the Development of Learning and the tools & technologies that go into it. This was my first DevLearn and I came away with a different meaning: The Development of the Learning industry and the people who make it happen – you!
I prepared for this conference with a different mindset:
- Interact in real time.
- Meet face-to-face those I met and know online.
- Reconnect with people I knew but haven’t seen in several months.
- Spend more time in the Expo and get to know the vendors, their products, and the new technologies.
- Attend in a socially physical sense.
I succeeded beyond what I expected.
I was really excited to see so many friends again and meet new friends I had gotten to know online. For me, this was more about solidifying existing relationships and making new connections. If you have attended conferences in the past, I’m sure you all have the same goal. The eLearning Guild knows that networking, establishing relationships, and making connections is paramount in the growth of this industry. Social learning is a very hot topic, and what better way to learn from each other socially than to be in an environment that fosters just that – DevLearn
The App
I did the normal pre-conference warm up exercises. I studied the concurrent sessions, read the books by the keynote speakers (just got the new books), and begun the arduous task of mapping out a schedule. Ha! Like that ever works out like I planned!
When I arrived late Tuesday, here’s what the three days ahead of me looked like on my DevLearn app:
Piece of cake, right? Not! I bounced around so much I now know what a pinball must feel like!
The BackChannel
Attending conferences such as these, there are just as many who want to attend but can’t due to one reason or another. A trend in the last year or so was to micro-blog your notes of a session, or tweet comments and quotes from a session. Most folks did this time, too and some are flat out masters at it. At Learning Solutions 10 back in March, I was one such diligent participant of the Twitter stream. In doing so I missed the physical experience of the sessions themselves – the social connections. I was more concerned about my followers getting the info than I was getting it from being there. They followed a hashtag from their offices back home and in small part I helped feed it. The value was not as rewarding to me. I had to download the slide decks and re-read the hashtag session stream to recall the sessions. I was physically there, but mentally I was not.
A trend this year (planned or otherwise) was the #dl10NOT hashtag. All those who could not attend began following it as well as #dl10. Clever! From that, several who did #NOT attend wrote fantastic blog posts on how to attend a conference virtually as well as compiled and aggregated valuable post-conference resources.
This time however, I vowed to spend more quality face time and not so much Tweet time. We spend a large majority of our time disconnected from reality to get connected to the Twittersphere and other social media platforms. When we have the rare opportunity to spend real time with those in our PLN, and more importantly meet them for the first time after having countless conversations online, what do we do….we tweet that we just met them. Instead, I kept my iPhone in my pocket more often, stuck my hand out in a gesture of greeting, and initiated a real conversation. It was so much more rewarding and satisfying.
The Games
Two very clever ways of engaging participants and demonstrating the value of Twitter as a learning tool.
Dr. Strangelearn
The Dr. Srangelearn ARG (Alternate Reality Game). The competitive nature of battling for top ground was so engaging that when I returned home and reviewed all the articles and links discovered through playing the game, I had not realized what an awesome collection of resources the game produced. I can’t wait to play again! If you did not play, the game was about how to overcome the objections of new learning technologies in your organization. Here is each of the five Mad Scientist’s resources they shared:
Overcoming Complexity Objections
Overcoming Cultural Objections
Overcoming Financial Objections
Overcoming Social Media Objections
BackChatter
An ingenious game of building a prediction model of what words would be tweeted in an upcoming concurrent session block of time. You would submit three words via DM (Direct Message) to the game’s Twitter handle of what you would predict would be in the Twitter stream. I was hanging in the top ten until about lunch on the first day. I got so caught up in the energy of the conference that I missed several opportunities and simply let go. Yes…I quitted!
Breakfast Bytes
Breakfast Bytes are a great way to get the brain into gear before the day starts. Not everyone is a morning person, but those who are get a lot of value out of these informal conversations. Maybe we should have Dinner Data Dumps in the evenings for the opposite value. Debrief, debunk, informal dump the day’s sessions?!
Jam Sessions
One word – Wow!
I’m still deciphering why these attracted me so much, but it worked. They were open-air venues with a more informal casual conversational style discussion. I was attracted to the social aspect and it seemed to match my overall goal. Maybe it was the venue, or having four instead of one and not shoved in the corner of an expo hall that made these work so well. Just about every block had every chair filled and two to three deep standing.
DemoFest
I can’t close out without mentioning DemoFest. It was extremely rewarding and humbling! I was very nervous to be presenting alongside some of the world’s leading designers and developers. If anything, I hope for those who stopped by that I was able to share a tip or technique that you can use in your own design & development. Congratulations to all the winners and hats off to everyone who worked so hard and participated!
The Guild
You may have noticed I didn’t call anyone out by name in this post. I wanted to reserve this section for those who I do want to mention and thank publicly:
Brent Schlenker for being simply Brent. And for being the world’s best host!
Heidi Fisk and David Holcombe for ensuring the eLearning Guild stays true the roots of this industry – you!
Juli, Ina, Luis, David, and Mary. Yes, this is the backbone crew of every eLearning Guild conference. Without them standing guard literally from sunup to sundown, we wouldn’t have the great experiences we do. Thank you!
Kevin, what impresses me most about this post is that it’s both specific to you–it reflects what you thought, what you rethought, and what you changed as a result–as well as generally useful as a good example.
I don’t mean everyone should do what you did and make the choices you made. But everyone should, I think, step back and consider what they want to do, what they are doing, whether those two things are bringing about the desired results, and what to do (if they are, or if they aren’t).
I’ve never attended DevLearn, but what you and others share has made me eager to. And, like you, when I do attend, I’ll lean toward being in the moment rather than in the tweet stream (though I’m sure I’ll splash in the stream a bit as well).
Thanks Dave! I really appreciate your kind words.
This was my first DevLearn, but just knowing how the eLearning Guild puts on a conference, I had no doubt it would be great!
I’ll be the first to advocate Twitter as the ultimate tool for communicating, sharing, learning, Tweetups, TweetChats, and even playing games. I just got caught up in the shininess of it last time and realized I was missing something…the person I missed meeting that just walked by me.
DevLearn was awesome, and I suspect the upcoming Learning Solutions 2011 in March will be no less just as awesome. Perhaps you can make that one and I’ll dabble my toes in the stream along with you!
Kevin – great post and for someone who did not attend the conference, it was so awesome to have a few people on the “inside” who were tweeting (thanks for the nod to us DL10NOT folks), but I think you do need to be there and be fully present to get the most out of it. It is easy to get caught up in conveying the sound bytes and pithy observations. If the conference organizers build in some “reflection” and “tweet-time”, and equip it properly (I got the impression that the wi-fi was less than stellar). Then, you can concentrate on meeting folks, learning in whatever session you end up in and still have a little bit of time to tweet about it. But, these are one of the times that you need to be selfish.
I would love to make it to Learning Solutions – harder for independents to afford it. But, they seem to put on a good event.
PS – you didn’t even mention that you won awards!
Hi Holly,
Certainly there is not comparison of the energy of being at one of these in person. The DL10NOT folks were passionate about following along…and we all knew you were in the shadows listening. The air almost seemed like an unspoken obligation to ensure the rest of the community who could not attend were given as much information as possible via tweets and blog posts. To me its like this undefined phenomenon. We know it, we understand it, but we can’t define it.
The eLearning Guild hosts and organizes one of the best user-focused conferences I’ve ever attended or heard about from others. To me, “tweet-time” is an oxymoron. It goes totally against the idea of SoMe. You can’t “control” the conversation or put rules around a specific time to use it. Surprisingly, by a show of hands in the opening session, there were still a large number of people who are still not using Twitter. That struck me as odd, but it solidified my goal of being more personal and not virtual. How many people would I have not met if I only concentrated on the Twitter stream?
So glad you stopped by! Start planning now. LS2011 is going to rock!
p.s. Nope. I am extremely grateful and honored to win, but his post was a reflection on my overall conference experience. There are plenty of articles being written about DemoFest and all the winners.
Hi Kevin,
I sat with you at lunch one day at DevLearn 2010 and had no idea I would be listening to you on the Webinar I attended yesterday. I asked you about your avatar – the nugget. That made it stick in my mind that you are one and the same person with whom I ate lunch. I really enjoyed your part of the Webinar yesterday and love what you did with the Mission Turfgrass module. Congratulations on your award…very deserving!
Hi Donna!
Yes, I remember! Seems the NuggetHead self-branding things works 🙂 Thanks so much and I’m glad you liked it. I had a lot of fun building it. Now just gotta figure out what to do next year! Thanks for stopping by.