DevLearn08 - Day 1

The guy on the radio this morning said it was 55 degrees and overcast as I was getting ready to leave the motel. I debated grabbing a jacket for the three-block walk to the conference hotel. The moment I stepped outside I was glad I chose to leave the jacket behind.


I walked up to the registration desk at the conference, gave the lady my name, and she promptly handed me a backpack with the Adobe logo on it. I said, “All right! My fourth Adobe backpack!” She kind of chuckled like she knew what I meant. She has no idea.

DevLearn08 has a wireless network set up throughout the conference floor… somewhere. I have yet to find it. Supposedly I should be able to access it from the main foyer and any session room. I have tried from three place, but my computer has been unable to find it. So these posts will likely all be uploaded from my motel room in the evenings.

The opening general session is now starting. I had to make sure to sit with a speaker near to my left ear because my right ear still has not popped from the flight.

The speaker just asked how many people are first-time eLearning Guild event attendees. It looked like around half the room raised their hands.

Not being able to hear much out of my right ear is turning out to have some benefits this morning. The people to my right won’t stop talking. To me it just sounds like a low mumble, not at all distracting, but the guy right in front of me is getting pretty annoyed.

Brent Schlenker just asked how many people are familiar with SCORM. That got a few more hands.

Today’s keynote speaker: Tim O’Reilly, the guy who coined the term Web 2.0 and founder of O’Reilly Media. O’Reilly Media publishes lots of books on programming and technology. I’m sure we have a couple of them in the office.

According to O’Reilly, Web 2.0 is about harnessing user input to determine what additional products or services would be useful to them. While that is obviously a sales-driven perspective, it can still apply to learning.

O’Reilly just made a great Sarah Palin joke. That’s knowing your audience.

Amazon has a rule about project teams they call the “pizza rule.” If you can’t feed your team with two pizzas, the team is too big. I’ve never thought of it that way, but I couldn’t agree more.


All right, so I’m giving up on the DevLearn wireless network. It must be broadcasting using 802.11.b because I’m sitting about twelve feet away from one of their signal repeaters with direct LOS, and still don’t see the network. It’s just sitting there, laughing at me and saying, “No Internet for you!”

I stopped into the expo hall before wandering into my first session. Lots of cool stuff, but the vast majority seems to be rapid e-learning development tools. I have to admit I’m becoming increasingly interested in that particular line, but it seems pointless to spend much time on it knowing that we have no budget for new toys in 2009.

First session: “Podcasting for Purpose.” The concept here is that podcasting is an inexpensive way to deliver training on very specific topics in a JIT fashion, and with high credibility. Part of the idea is that people prefer to ingest training like a snack rather than a whole meal. I took some notes during this session that will be valuable in the future as we start looking more seriously at podcasting.

Lunch was excellent for a conference. They served salmon (yay!) with some other stuff that, although good, was not nearly as exciting to me as the fact that I got to have properly cooked seafood. I felt a little embarassed at the table because of the fact that I couldn't properly participate in the various conversations going on around me due to the fact that I couldn't hear out of one ear. But I did meet a woman from a startup company that is trying to figure out how to best create and deliver useful conent and information to their external audience. She and her co-workers in this small company have no education or experience in the field of training or content delivery, so this is all new to them. I think I was able to validate some of their ideas, and at least let her know that they seem to be headed in the right direction.

My second session for today is "Work Literacy: A Key to eLearning 2.0 Success." The guy presenting this session also presented at the eLearning Guild Online Forum I attended in September/October (whenever that was), so there is probably going to be a lot of overlap between this presentation and that one. I also subscribe to his blog. Still, I suspect that there will be some useful information in this session, and I might get an opportunity to pick his brain a little bit.