Brian Dusablon

This past week I was able to experience DevLearn 2008, the learning conference put on by the eLearning Guild. The focus this year was on Learning 2.0 – applying new technologies to learning.

I’ve posted plenty of session summaries, but I thought I’d share my experiences in a chronological storyline with a few photos – mostly for my own archival purposes.

Thursday, November 6th:

My trip to California was interesting.

Friday, November 7th:

Great round of golf with my dad, uncle and their boss. Gorgeous day, despite a bit of wind. Shot a 105 with an old set of borrowed clubs. Had some killer drives that I was very happy with. I really need a new driver when I get home (thank you Spanning Sync).

Sunday, November 9th:

After a too-short, but very nice trip to Simi, it was time to head up to San Jose. Thankfully, no issues on this flight. I settled in to the very nice Fairmont San Jose with some Clam Chowder and a Club Sandwich and some Sunday Night Football.

Monday, November 10th:

Adobe Learning Summit. I learned a lot about where Adobe is headed with learning products. They’re launching an eLearning Suite, which will include modified versions of Dreamweaver and Flash. It, as well as Captivate 4, will be released sometime in 2009. I met up with Philip Hutchison, who I’d only known electronically before today.

I also met Doug Welch via Twitter, and Steve Howard and Shameer (Adobe Product Mgr.) at the Adobe reception. We had a great dinner at Gordon-Biersch. Afterwards, Steve and I went over to a Pub and talked about life and politics over a couple rounds of Guinness. It was a great evening.

Links:

• Steve Howard on Captivate 4
• Philip Hutchison on Captivate 4
• Captivate 4 Notes from IconLogic

Tuesday, November 11th:

DevLearn begins. Day one is workshops and symposiums. I was a little disappointed in the workshop I attended, but I was able to provide some input and help a few folks out, so it wasn’t too bad.

Dinner was great – Amici’s pizza with my manager and coworkers.

Wednesday, November 12th:

The day started with a wonderful keynote on technology, alpha geeks and the future from Tom O’Reilly. The sessions were pretty good. Twitter was going strong and it was a great way to share session experiences and notes. Mark Oehlert live-blogged some sessions. (one guy I really wanted to meet in person, but never synced up).

I snagged a quick lunch/coffee with Doug Welch and we chatted about podcasting and technology. Check out his handouts – he had a workshop and a concurrent session.

Links:

• Day One Recap from BJ Schone

Thursday, November 13th:

Another great keynote to kick off the day. Dan Roam and the Back of the Napkin. Brilliant stuff that I can actually use in real life, which is great. My Amazon wish list is getting longer. The sessions were pretty good again, except for the vCom3D sales pitch I went to that was supposed to be about learning portals. I hate that.

Links:

• It All Begins with Paper
• Notes on Roam
• Notes from Schone
• Deeper Instructional Design

Friday, November 14th:

Well, this keynote definitely woke everyone up. Medina (Brain Rules) is hilariously hyper, but in a good way. He used an odd method of presenting by using 30+ Director movies – he had to open each one and click play, rather than using Keynote or PowerPoint or just combining all the movies with a “next” button. Weird.

I would have loved to have had this guy as a professor. He’s brilliant, but passionate and entertaining, and even though he talks 100mph, you’re able to learn from him. Yet another book I’ll be buying. Great stuff around how screwed up our learning environments are, both in education and in corporations.

I have a new exercise goal, now. Thanks John!

Went to a great session with Paul Clothier on using PowerPoint to develop animations. Very clever examples and shows how far you can push PowerPoint with enough vision and time. He also backed what Dan Roam was telling us, that we need to detach ourselves from technology now and again and just brainstorm, draw, doodle and map on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. This is definitely something I will be doing moving forward.

I didn’t get to stay for all of Avron’s session on LETSI and SCORM, but I’ll be more directly involved with that moving forward and Aaron promised to fill me in a little, as well.

Links:

• Medina’s Brain Rules
• Brain Rules Notes
  
• Clark Quinn’s Mindmap of Keynote
• LETSI
• Objections to Social Learning

General Thoughts:

I had a great time. I met some great people, and Brent did a great job getting people to use Twitter. I found it to be a great tool for sharing information quickly and also for networking. Total tweets sent all time before DevLearn: ~250. Total tweets sent while at DevLearn: ~300.

Overall, the theme of the conference was great, but the sessions could have been a little better. I want more panels and discussions rather than presentations. I want workshops that are actual workshops.

I will take a lot away from this conference. Thanks to blogging and Twittering, I retained a LOT more than last year, when I just took notes on paper and didn’t record much or share anything and it was lost. I hope to keep the conversations going on this site, Twitter and a few other ideas I have brewing.

I’m excited about the future of learning and eLearning. This trip, and my recent promotion, have really stimulated my passion for teaching people, improving the learning environment with new technologies, and carving a path for myself in this industry.

Thanks to the EG folks, Adobe and all the peeps I met at DevLearn. It was fun.

Full List of DevLearn 2008 Handouts

Frank Nguyen – Five Things Your Authoring Tool Will Do By 2013

Looking Back…a history of learning tools

Right now, we’re in Rapid eLearning Era.

• PPT to Flash, etc.
• Giving anyone tools to share content.
• Articulate, Captivate, Raptivity, etc.

Before Rapid eLearning, it was the WBT era.

• Online page-turners. We’re all guilty!
• Dreamweaver (Coursebuilder, yikes!), Flash, Notepad

Before WBT, was CBT era.

• Similar to WBT
• Page-turner, delivered via CD
• Authorware, Toolbook

** CBT and WBT were basically identical, delivery medium was just different (CD vs. Web)

Before CBT, was Green Screen era.

• Mainframes.
• Software training
• Sandbox for learner developed by programmers.

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Where are we going now?

1: Personalization

Authoring:

• Tools will adapt to developer’s skill level and provide incremental levels of support.
• They will look at your past and adapt to your current needs.

Learner:

• Allow learners to filter out the info they don’t need, and allow them to reference the info they do need. (search)
• System (LMS, ITMS) will adapt to learner, assigning content automatically based on competencies, job function, etc. (User Profile)
• Prescriptive learning: without a robust profile, pre-assessments are time-consuming, and fairly unsuccessful. Accuracy of prescription is based on quality and depth of pre-assessment.

2: Interface

• We’re in the midst of an interface revolution (iPhone, Wii, etc.) – referenced Minority Report.
• Interface with tools via webcam and hand gestures – very cool. I wonder what this will mean for the learner. Physical interactions?

3: Tools and Integration

• Most people in the room use four or more tools – crazy. Hope the vendors are paying attention!
• Balance of control and speed when integrating tools.

My 2 Cents: Personally, I’d rather have 6 tools that each do one or two things very well, and aren’t bulky, than having one tool that is only decent at audio editing, only marginal at graphics, etc. (see Articulate). For some, all-in-one tools will work for basic rapid development, but are not perfect for everyone. I see two fields. The all-in-ones, and the smaller apps that do one thing really well.

4: What about content development

• Most people think they do some things well, but others not so well.
• Plug for Ruth Clark – very valid one. eLearning and the Science of Instruction…READ IT!

5: Reuse

• Definitely need to do this.
• eLearning Mashups
• Reusable content items
• Comments from SMEs, Users, Stakeholders – capture it all. (like Captivate 4)
• Distribute across multiple mediums – online, mobile, etc.

**Faster, Better, Cheaper. – We’ve gotten faster and cheaper, but not necessarily better.

My notes:

• Frank is a wonderful presenter. Very good with the crowd, just enough humor, but really good content.
• I love this industry and being part of its growth.

Why is it that when I get delayed on a flight, it’s always AFTER I board the damn plane?

Today, I had the pleasure of watching as several grounds crew folks stared into the engine on the left wing of our plane, right outside of my window. The captain told us over the loudspeaker we had two mechanical issues that needed to be resolved before we could take off and that we’d be about 20-30 minutes late. No biggie, except that’s not what really went down.

For about 30 minutes, absolutely NOTHING happened. I didn’t see anyone outside the plane, and I didn’t hear anything from el capitain. Thank goodness for my iPhone and Dexter! After a while, I start seeing some activity outside my window. Let me tell you how very reassuring it was to see several different workers come, peek into the engine, and then walk away. WTF!

After a few more minutes, two mechanics were joined by the pilots. They all looked into the engine several times, a couple “I don’t know” gestures made me feel really good.

So now we’re pushing an hour on the delay. The captain comes back on, says there’s a nick in one of the blades in the engine. This is where it gets good. He says there’s some discussion about whether or not it warrants an immediate repair. Apparently, there’s a 58-page manual they have to go through and some people they have to talk to in order to decide whether or not to repair the nick (by machining it down) before we take off. He is telling 200+ people on his flight that the powers that be are not sure if this issue is really serious enough that they have to repair it before we can fly.

I guess we got lucky (depending on how you look at it), and it was designated bad enough to repair before we could take off, so they spent another 20 minutes repairing the nick. Meanwhile, the captain (note that this is already an hour into the delay) informs us that we can leave the plane. However, if they finish the repair and we’re not back on board, we’re SOL because they are leaving ASAP and not waiting for anyone.

Why even bother telling us we could get off the plane at this point?!

Just to be sure we had plenty of things to complain about on this flight, during all of this we had two very unhappy kids nearby for entertainment. Now, I have two kids, and I’ve flown with them, so I have no problem with some crying kids (thank you noise-canceling headphones). They’re kids. They do that. However, they should have let these poor mothers off the plane at the beginning of the delay so the kids wouldn’t be so restless. At least I wasn’t in first class. If I’d paid for a first class ticket and had screaming kids in the row directly behind me, with nothing separating us but a thin blue curtain, there’d be some ‘splainin’ to do.

Note: First Class on most flights is a total ripoff. Most of the time you’ve got kids right behind you in the first rows of Coach, with nothing but the curtain. The seats aren’t that much bigger, and I’m sure the food/drinks don’t make it worth the extra money.

To top things off, when I arrived at baggage claim, this is what my bag looked like coming down the conveyor belt, ha:

So, that’s my journey out to Cali. Hopefully legs 2 and 3 of my trip will be less eventful.

Slideshow of plane repair:

Small bonus: got some really neat pictures (low quality with iPhone) while we were in the air: