[event] Impressions of Online Educa 2012

So what was Online Educa Berlin 2012 like? To put it in one line: it was great, and it was different.

As last year, I attended most of the Business Educa track. And that is the first big new thing to report: because the number of participants grew from 2000+ to 2500+ some of the Business Educa track was hosted in a brand new design hotel "Das Stue" in walking distance of the Intercontinental hotel, where the regular conference took place. The former Danish embassy has a few elegant rooms, and looks over the Tiergarten park. The rooms in Das Stue were set up in a more 'creative' way with lots of flip charts, posts its, a tweet wall, etc. There was even a room designated as a 'cold spot' (as opposed to a hot spot, a place with no network connection), ie a quiet room to let everything sink in away from all the stimili that surround us. The rest of the rooms were very 'hot' in comparison, and the organizers had to crank up the network capacity once more, as many people now not only bring their phone and tablet, but also the new Apple iWant.

Last year, there was a general disappointment on the lack of 'the next shiny new thing'. At the same time, there were a lot of sessions painfully showing us that as a learning industry we did not even live up to the next big thing of 5 years ago in many cases. To me, it is very unlikely that 'the next big thing' will actually come from inside the learning field as it is a rather conservative profession. So I was happy to note that as the main theme for this year, Online Educa searched out the frontiers of learning. "To boldly go where no learning has gone before" means sessions on learning where you would not expect it outside the traditional corporate training department or classroom, but also to search for inspiration in a lot of fields for their impact or application on learning. Looking up these frontiers has proven to be a very insightful experience.

One of the more subtle novelties of this year's edition was the name tag: it had a QR code that when scanned directed people to your own profile page on the myOEB portal. Yes, Online Educa now has a social community site for registered participants (this officially marks the end of the cd-rom era!), complete with everyone's profile, interests, message system, conference announcements, and a per session page with presentations (although not all speakers uploaded them), and discussion. One of the nice features is the home page suggests sessions based on your interests and has a 'Did you meet...' widget introducing you to someone you might want to talk to over a drink in the bar. The QR codes were also used throughout the conference, from scanning potential vendors at the booths, to link to the online evaluation forms.

The booths were very traditional, and to avoid vendors I'm not interested in stealing away my time, I was wearing a T-shirt "I'm not buying". It worked :-). This year, vendors could also hire a few hours on 'the sofa' or rent a separate room to give private sessions on invitation only. I'm not a vendor, but I think that approach actually has more impact than your regular booth where you had out plastic toys.

One of the keynote speakers was the famous-in-Belgium Peter Adriaenssens. He's an expert on child and adolescent psychiatry and a top notch speaker. He took the audience over the brain development of children and how that links to education. He also reminded us that most children do not deviate from 'the norm' and we might be seeing mental disorders where in fact they are not. Ignatia wrote an interesting article on Peter Adriaenssen last year.

Another noted speaker was Jef Staes, who was swearing in the church presenting the thoughts in his book "I was a sheep". In that book, he talks about the fences that we put around ourselves, and wants to free the world of the barriers of diplomas. His speech 'Can you imagine a world without diplomas' featured in the Online Educa debate. The motion was rejected (know your audience...) but the debate itself was great. Twitter quote from Jef : "If you put fences around people, what do you get? Sheep."




It was provoking, but the prize for the most provoking speaker goes to Mr Goodnrich, the CEO who dared to come explain to us why he downsized the corporate training department and why that was a good thing. Yes, he was disturbing the force, and his talk set the tone for the rest of the conference. In the same session we also had speakers giving examples of learning beyond the borders of your own organization, but together with clients (to increase customer loyalty and lower support costs), with suppliers (to optimize the supply chain), with ex-employees (to broaden the talent pool you can tap into), etc. The Apple guy showing the iTunes University new features was popular too.

In line with the conference theme to look up the borders of learning, I attended the app marathon. Ten tech enterpreneurs came to present us their latest app, and we in the audience could vote in what company to invest. For some apps, the learning application was not immediately clear to me, but it did show that learning is (or always was) spreading out to all sides of life, and is not contained in the education system or its evil twin aka the corporate university.

There was also a workshop where entertainers came to give us tips to make learning more entertaining, under Nichalos Negroponte's slogan "Good education has to be good entertainment".

I attended the e-learning "crafter festival" (yes, in 2012 God is a designer, and crafter festivals where people design live on stage is another trend). I saw people put together a learning game live in front of an audience, and that's very impressive. It made me think I was part of a cooking show, only it was elearning, not food.

I also attended a session on micro-learning, which had a few good examples but also good business models to make it sustainable instead of 'for free as long as we are interested in it'.

Another session I remember is the one titled "Not invented here". It had examples, some historical, some quite recent on non-Western styles of education and views on development.

The most fun I had at the brain lab: a room where you could try out one of those new portable brain scanners. After some limited training, I was actually able to move the cursor on the screen by pure will power! As this was a very popular lab, you had to pass a test on recent brain research findings to earn your seat (hint: left/right is sooo last century...). It is funny to force learning professionals to pass a test themselves...

After the conference was over, I stayed for a few more days. The conference has a nice after-activity: a learnrave. It is as you know one of the trends of 2012, where people get notified via social media of a public learning event and all show up, not to drink this time (although it is not forbidden :-) ) but to learn. The learnrave took place on Dec 1st on Wittenbergplatz as part of the activities for AIDS awareness and was on the subject of safe sex. I found it both funny and entertaining, a bit in the style of Isabella Rossellini's green porn.

As I said in the beginning of this article: OEB 2012 was great and different.

Note: I was late for my review of Online Educa 2011, so at least now I'm the first for the Online Educa Berlin conference taking place from 28-30 Nov 2012.