Travel Recap (with Weekly Link Roundup coming later)....
So many miles.....
Phew. Love seeing people and being involved in great events but also glad to be back in the PNW. I’m going to try and work through some notes from these spots and cover some news, so off we go. Nope, just the recap. :-)
First up, a workshop on “Creativity and Innovation to Drive Change in L&D” at the Canadian eLearning Conference. First, huge thanks to Mark Sheppard for the push to submit a session and then for literally doing about 98% of the work putting the content together. I thought it went great and the attendees got to walk out with, at a minimum, both knowledge of some new tools and methodologies but also having used some of them to work through actual problems/challenges/opportunities back home. These might be my two favorite “toxic” slides ever. :-)
Another benefit on this event was catching up with folks I hadn’t seen in forever (Hi Jane!) and in meeting people IRL for the first time, that I’ve interacted with for years (my first almost meeting with Josh Cavalier was epic - the actual meeting was great too).
So thanks again to Mark for the push, to the Canadian eLearning Conference for the invite and hospitality, and to the folks in the workshop for the interest and passion.
Then it was off to London (UK, not Ontario ;-))
This was my first Basecamp Live (the IRL version of our outstanding customer education efforts) and my first X4 (the really cool Qualtrics user conference) and neither one disappointed.
London was steamy but we had a very cool venue for X4 and Basecamp London - maybe I’ve been binging too much Peaky Blinders but I expected Cillian Murphy to come around a corner at any moment. Great intro to the Qualtrics’ users though - very engaged, thoughtful, and enthusiastic bunch. The presenters at Basecamp London did amazing presentations - so good even I could follow along - and my Basecamp team did yeoman work making sure the event came off well. Can’t tell you how good it feels to have just joined a company and then in short order, meet so many customers who confirm that you made a good choice.
At the end of X4, I raced back to my hotel so I could do a virtual presentation to….
…the Research Triangle chapter of ATD. Lovely folks, hope there was something useful in there and some great questions and follow-up on a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. Then came Julian Stodd and Sea Salt Learning and a workshop on Strategic AI.
As usual, Julian pulled together a great group of folks from some amazing companies and I know it was good because I have 5 pages of notes! Those will come later. Right now let me just say that if you or your team or org is looking at AI and it should be - go get some time with Julian to work through the implications with you. You’ll never meet anyone who thinks as deeply about the topic and really works to center on the human experience in the midst of rapid change and in the context of rarely seen and even more rarely understood power structures and value architectures. Also, he picks places with the worst views.
Then just a quick 10 hour flight back to Seattle.
You know, I thought I was going to cover some news in this one but didn’t quite get there. That’s coming soon (like in a couple of day) so stay tuned and thanks again to all the folks in Toronto and London who were so gracious and hospitable - you’re all lovely. Cheers!