Too often, when we get rooted in our projects, we become very self-centered in our work. We forget there are people just like us struggling in the exact same way. We begin to convince ourselves that our way is the only way and, creatively, we can shut down very quickly under the weight of our workload. The panic, stress, and insecurity all lead us to not put our best work out there and, what’s more, to not share our work in pursuit of improvement and feedback.

In this session you will explore an individual case study turned confessional in which the presenter realized he did everything mentioned above (and then some), and the benefits and value he realized when he changed his approach to professional development. You will discuss the benefits of coming out of your cave and opening up via membership in professional organizations. By attending this session you will discover simple steps that can lead to amazing benefits, both professionally and personally.

In this session, you will learn:

• The importance and benefits of membership in a professional organization
• The importance and benefits of being involved and active, professionally, via social media
• The limitations you may be experiencing without even realizing them
• That community is key to professional development

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Today’s employees need to use different types of tools and they must learn how to assimilate and perform their job with limited training time and support. By using a social-networking site for a virtual-learning environment (VLE) learners can interact with experienced employees, learn how to properly use the company’s internal social network, and properly navigate through systems and repositories.

In this session you will explore how to use an enterprise social-networking site to create a well-designed VLE that will enhance the traditional corporate classroom and the learning experience. To increase performance outcomes you will identify key principles that support social and informal learning using a VLE. You will learn how to encourage participation and collaboration, and get engagement using a classroom VLE. You will leave this session understanding how a VLE can enhance participant performance, engagement, and learning experience, and reduce time to proficiency.

In this session, you will learn:

• Ways to incorporate social approaches that support learning and performance outcomes
• How to encourage participation, collaboration, and engagement using Web 2.0 technology
• How to enhance formal content by using a virtual learning environment
• The advantages of social capabilities within the classroom
• How to build a virtual learning environment using a social platform

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, managers, training managers, and facilitators.

Technology discussed in this session:
Jive, virtual learning environments, social collaboration, and SharePoint.

A conversation begins, most often, with a question. IT blogger Selena Deckelmann suggests that when those in control “ask women directly to speak up, we open the door for participation,” and diversity and inclusion can begin. “If we insist on equal participation, the structure of our organizations will change. The first time I spoke up in a user group was terrifying, but I did so because a peer politely, but repeatedly, asked me to speak.”

In this session you will learn from an observational research study of gender participation in the fields that comprise technology. You will explore the various opportunities that exist for inclusion. You will discuss the barriers that are the most difficult to break through for women who have all the skills and talent necessary to be successful. You will discover strategies to encourage conversations that lead to more participation and greater inclusion.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to explain the concepts of diversity and inclusion as they relate to underserved populations
• How to describe how inclusion strengthens practice communities and leads to better overall creativity and performance
• How to illustrate the positive and negative factors that impact a single gender and how those factors can be mitigated
• How to apply lessons learned regarding implementing strategies for a more diverse workforce
• How to demonstrate an understanding of the case study outcomes and how they can lead to new approaches and methodologies for increased cooperation and participation among a diverse workforce

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.      

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Training for sales professionals at global pharmaceutical firm is robust, thorough, and frequent. However, the training curriculum of its marketing staff, who were being asked to be its commercial leaders, creating and delivering on business objectives and strategies as well as leading salespeople, was almost non-existent. Fixing this multi-layered challenge wouldn’t be as simple as implementing new training for marketers. Because so little training had existed previously, the company needed to change its culture to take its marketers’ attitudes from “why training?” to “I want more training!”

In this session you will learn how creating the firm's college of marketing helped its marketing staff elevate their skills and close gaps in organizational profitability. You will explore how it shifted the culture of its marketing organization from one that expected little to no training to one that embraced the value training could bring. You will learn about the implementation of “enrichment days” that allowed workers to step away from daily work and focus solely on their development, and how one enrichment event on digital and social marketing generated enough buzz to reach number three on Twitter for the day.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to engage the business in a meaningful way to help set and execute learning strategies
• How to leverage Twitter to engage learners
• How to level-set marketing employees, some of whom need fundamental training
• How to get the most from your keynote speakers

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, VPs, CLOs, and executives.

Technology discussed in this session:
Twitter.

There’s an increasing awareness of the value of social learning in the workplace. Knowing that it exists is one thing; creating the scaffolding and support that allows people to capture, categorize, retrieve, and share what they learn is something else entirely.

In this session you will explore why eLearning practitioners and instructional designers are in a unique position to provide vision, leadership, and specific strategies to bring together informal social learning with formal eLearning and other training activities. You will examine tools for personal and social knowledge management, discussing their facets and merits as they pertain to various learning cultures and individual learning objectives. You will discuss examples of how eLearning courses dovetail with continuous individual learning to provide a more context-based and immediately applicable learning program that encourages individual learners to find, use, and share knowledge.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to leverage the forces that can amplify formal eLearning programs via already-in-place informal social learning
• How to analyze ways in which formal and informal learning can work together to reinforce broader learner goals
• How to identify ways to fold formal and informal online learning into a unified continuous-learning program
• How to use knowledge-management methods to extend and bind the larger learning program
• How to compare and contrast several existing online social learning tools for their fitness to specific learning needs

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, managers, directors, and VPs.

Technology discussed in this session:
Twitter, Scoop.it, Google+, Delicious, and Diigo.

Narrating our work—also known in some circles as “working out loud”—is getting a lot of attention lately as it offers great potential for connecting talent pools and capturing tacit knowledge, reducing rework and duplication of effort and maybe even meetings. While there is a lot of discussion around the value showing your work provides in the context of learning, there’s less clarity around how showing your work provides value to a business or organization.

In this session you will explore the value of narrating work from the point of view of management. You will discuss what it means to narrate your work in an organizational context. You will discover why this is critical to business outcomes and how organizations can encourage more people to narrate their work. You will leave this session understanding when to support showing work in the ever-challenging quest for surfacing organizational knowledge.

In this session, you will learn:

• A clearer view of what “showing work” means
• Ideas for choosing what to share and when
• Tips for identifying the most appropriate tools for narrating work
• Strategies for ensuring success at helping workers successfully show their work—and avoiding mistakes and pitfalls

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.      

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Social learning has been the “next big thing” for years now, yet discussions often still focus on introducing the tools and simple uses for them. It’s time for learning professionals to go beyond the basics and focus on advanced techniques for using social tools and networks for learning.

In this session, you will go hands-on with Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. You’ll also explore some of the newest social networks: Snapchat, Secret, and Vine. You’ll be presented with a challenge and then explore how the challenge can be solved using common social media applications. You will learn best practices for incorporating these and other social networks into your learning programs. You will leave this session with tangible ideas for using social networks as part of your enterprise learning strategy.

In this session, you will learn:

• Advanced features of Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest
• How to use Vine, Secret, and Snapchat for social learning
• How to stay abreast of the latest social networks
• How to incorporate these social networks into a course design

Audience:
Intermediate designers who are familiar with the basic functionality of Twitter and Instagram and with the general principles of social learning and social networks.

Technology discussed in this session:
Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Secret, and Snapchat.

eLearning has had a good run. It will always have a home in our organizations, but change is in the air. New learners, new social technologies, declining resources, the rise of informal learning, and innovations in learning design are all converging to change how we must think about using technology for learning.

In this session you will join an open discussion exploring the changing social and technical landscape at work and the implications these changes have for learning. You will develop a greater understanding of how eLearning will change in the near future. You will explore the role of curation as part of your learning strategy. You will leave this session with a realistic roadmap to begin using social learning tools and technologies strategically to support organizational learning and performance improvement.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to make sense of social and informal learning approaches
• How eLearning acts as seed content in communities of practice and social media environments
• How curating digital learning content develops employees
• How eLearning can and will adapt in the emerging social workplace

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers with understanding of instructional design and eLearning and some interest in social learning.               

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A