The Online Educa Berlin 2012 headlines

End of November last year I attended Online Educa Berlin again, as I've done for a number of years in a row now. I've chaired some sessions, I've presented Quantified Self, I've attended workshops, spoke to people I see there once a year, etc. Come to think of it, end 2011 I wrote a fictitious review on Online Educa 2012. Some of it actually came true! Here are a few headlines and catch phrases to give you an impression of the real event.

"We want to do so much!"
This quote comes from Laura Overton, presenting her L&D Benchmark 2012 (free download) during the Speexx pre-conference workshop. We want to do so much in the learning & development function (and with fewer resources), but what does 'good' look like? The benchmark study forms an interesting reading, and I'm only including one of its findings below: the list of skills most likely to be e-enabled. Leadership is among them.

It was a great workshop to start the conference with a 'state of the industry'. I also found it a good example of modern and non-pushy marketing: Speexx had organised the event, allowed everyone in for free, did a 5 minute introduction and then gave the floor to three interesting speakers without much further self-promotion. I do remember their name now, which is more than I can say from many booths and hard vendors.

"Substantial differences from one country to another"
In the same pre-conference Cégos presented their report on the 'state of the elearning'. One of the take-aways is that adoption is very different in different regions (eg predictions for Europe are to go down, Americas stay flat and Asia goes up), but that there is even more variance within those regions. Wilfred Rubens was a bit shocked to learn that The Netherlands are not at the forefront of adoption anymore...

Data protection and your LMS : the horror story
We are still in the pre-conference workshop. The next speaker has a true horror story of spending tons of time and even more money making their global LMS compliant with the data protection laws around the world. My advice: unless you are a multinational making more than 100 million a year it is cheaper to pay an eventual fine if you are violating one of the 100 legislations out there.

"When an old man dies in Africa, a library dies."
This quote came back a few times in the conference. Once from a lady from the African Development Bank, and later during the keynotes. If knowledge is such an important resource for the continent (the African Development Bank sees it as their prime production factor), how to make sure it sustains?


The world has gone VUCA on us.
We use the term VUCA as well at work: the world has gone Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. One of the keynote sessions on Friday dived deeper on what that means for learning in the workplace. I learned in this conference that in some African languages this term actually means 'to awaken' or 'to arise'.


"Many people who use PowerPoint have neither power nor a point"

Mark David Milliron used a few punch lines during this opening keynote, including the one above. I'm sure you'll find use for this quote at some point this year. :-)  While he was at it, he also explained the 'CASE' method (Copy And Steal Everything) and CAVE people (Colleagues Against Virtually Everything). His real point actually was to have conversations around 5 emerging trends. I remember one of them being "play is serious" and I'm pretty sure another one was about mobile. I had hoped to find back the other 4 in a blog post or on slideshare, but didn't find it. Which brings us to our next quote:

"If a tree falls in the forrest and noone blogs or tweets about it, did the tree really fall?" 


"An avalanche is coming"
The next keynote speaker from Pearson used the metaphor above to explain the revolution we are experiencing. The snow is moving under the surface even though things might seem still like the always did. But when it really starts to shift the avalanche is massive. He used a nice animated presentation to show how all pillars of the university are changing.

"40% of happiness is choice"
Later that day I attended Jay Cross' workshop on positive emotion and performance. The man who pointed our attention back to 'the natural pathways of learning' is now on a new mission: to better the lives of thousands in the workplace. He went over research on positivity and well-being in the workplace. A pitty that his iPhone app BLIPS wasn't ready in time for the conference. He wrote a nice blog post about his major learnings and terminology of happiness.

"You are a sheep"
This quote-slash-accusation comes from Jef Staes during the most memorable piece of Online Educa Berlin 2012: the debate. Together with Donald Clark he persuaded the audience to vote for a ban on diplomas by higher education institutions. The motion was adopted, go figure! You can read more on Donald's blog. The debate was fun as well as insightful (and the free drinks were appreciated :) ).

The science of Yes
Steve Martin gave an introduction to his book 'The Science of Yes' and what we can learn from the science of persuasion. One of my next learning hikes will be on the topic of behaviour change and persuasive technologies, so I'm keeping this book on my 'to read' list. In short, it comes from these elements according to Steve Martin: reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistence;, linking and consensus. He also quoted a recent study that recruiting on values versus skills is better in the long run. For the first year, people recruited on skills outperform those recruited on values. After that it turns around.

Maybe it is time to declare our interdependence
The last activity I participated in at OEB12 was watching the movie 'Connected'. I've been wanting to see this movie ever since I saw the clip below of its maker proclaiming that maybe it is time to make our declaration of interdependence! If you watched the trailer below, you don't need to see the movie anymore. I was so disappointed. Instead of making a movie on the theme of interconnectedness and what that means in our world and century, I saw a movie about the cancer of her father, about debunked brain theory and a lot of other scientific errors, and how she ended up not making the movie she set out to make...  There was a lively debate on that after the movie. Most seemed to allow this 'artistic interpretation'. I'm not a fan.



But all in all a very interesting conference once more, even without snow in Berlin. (global warming no doubt...)