I’ve been asking around my eLearning network on Twitter to find out who’s going to which events this year and this is what I’ve come up with so far in the training, eLearning, mLearning and immersive games areas:

• ASTD Techknowledge 2011: February 2 – 4, San Jose, California, USA.
• Game-based, Web 2.0 and mobile technologies, eLearning and Instructional Design: February 2 – 4, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
• Training 2011 Conference and Expo, February 7 – 9, San Diego, California, USA
• Adobe Learning Summit: March 21, Orlando, Florida, USA.
• Enterprise Learning Summit 2011: March 22, Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
• Gametech 2011: March 22 – 25, Orlando, Florida, USA.
• Learning Solutions Conference & Expo: March 23 – 25, Orlando, Florida, USA.
• Sloan Consortium Blended Learning Conference & Workshop: March 28 – 29, Oak Brook, Illinois, USA.
• ASTD 2011: May 22 – 25. Orlando, Florida, USA.
• eLearning DevCon 2011: June 15 – 17, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
• mLearnCon 2011: June 21 – 23, San Jose, California, USA.
• Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning: July 11 – 13, San Jose, California, USA.
• 27th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning: August 3 – 5, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
• LearnX 2011: September 14 – 15, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
• World of Learning: September 27 – 28, Birmingham, United Kingdom
• ulearn 2011: October 17 – 18, Christchurch, New Zealand
• E-LEARN  2011 – World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education: October 17 – 21, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
• DevLearn 2011: November 2 – 4, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
• Elliott Masie’s Learning 2011, November 6 – 9, Orlando, Florida, USA
• Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) Annual Conference, November 16 – 18, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Online Educa Berlin: November 30 – December 2, Berlin, Germany.

Please add more events to the comments section! To find out about more 2011 events check out Clayton Wright’s super duper comprehensive list here.

@Schnicker

It’s not too late if you live in the US, but even better if you are close to San Francisco! The biggest eLearning event of the year – DevLearn 2010 – begins next week on November 3rd at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. I can tell you from past experience that if you’re in the learning, eLearning or corporate training game, you do not want to miss it!

You can still register online for the full conference until Friday 29th October here. But at the very least you can register for the free Expo only area where you can check out all the latest vendor offerings, plus you can participate in the following learning stages: Mobile Jam, Learning Media Studio, Social Learning Camp, Serious Games Zones, not to mention DemoFest and the Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards! You can register here for the Expo Only pass.

But, if like me, you really can’t make it this year then at least get yourself prepared to catch as much of the info that’ll be flying by as possible by following these tips:

1. Follow the Twitter hashtags #DL10 and #DevLearn
2. Join in the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that is already up and running in Dr. StrangeLearn’s Laboratory and follow the hashtag #DL10arg
3. Check out BackChatter and get involved in the game of trend spotting while the event is running
4. Most definitely add all of who I would call ‘the usual suspects’ to your Twitter following list (in no particular order) as they’ll be sure to be tweeting:

• Marcia Conner
• Cammy Bean
• Aaron Silvers
• Jane Bozarth
• Koreen Olbrish
• Mark Oehlert
• Clark Quinn
• Brent Schlenker
• Neil Lasher
• Ellen Wagner
• BJ Schone
• Tom Kuhlmann 
• Terrence Wing
• Kevin Thorn
• Kris Rockwell
• Judy Brown
• Michelle Lentz
• Richard Culatta
• Brian Dusablon
• Steve Nguyen
• Rick Zanotti

  And a few of the event organizer twitter handles:

• eLearningGuild
• DevLearn

Oh, and you can also follow me as I’ll be keeping a close eye on the DevLearn tweet stream as it unfolds and  I’ll be re-tweeting lots of the interesting ideas I see.

@Schnicker

I was really surprised to find that an eLearning / learning technology conference I’m attending in Sydney in June does not have a presence on Twitter.  In fact, the very same event must have just announced the winners of their 2010 awards on their website but the only way I found that out was by doing a hashtag search on Twitter for the conference name. Luckily, a few proud vendors had posted their victories which then led me to the results page of said conference’s website.

So I wrote to the conference’s email address today asking if they plan to be on Twitter before June because it would be a great opportunity to get the word out about what should be an awesome, action-packed two days. Not to mention the wonderful speakers who deserve some build up and a little exposure. Plus, there’s all the live session tweeting that can go on during the conference if there’s already some kind of hype built up around it. I should note that them not being on Twitter won’t stop me tweeting about it, but imagine the potential if they had more of a social media strategy in place and had been listening to the chatter online! Such a great way to get the inside scoop from your paying attendees before your event even begins.

Hopefully I will hear back as to why they aren’t on there but these days it seems almost ridiculous that an Asia Pacific-wide brand would not have a presence on one of the largest social networks in existence. It’s not really a big job running an event-focused Twitter account, someone just needs to check in once a day (if that) to answer questions, re-tweet a conference related tweet or put out an event update, a count down, speaker bios or some session titles. Then ramp it up a little before the actual event begins and voila! You will have some attendees who have already met online and organized to meet up at the event or at their hotels, attend dinner groups together to continue the session discussions and build lasting friendships. What a great opportunity to create community around an event and make it all the more memorable so that when the next year rolls around the word of mouth promotion kicks off without any help.

*They should take a leaf out of the eLearning Guild’s book – these guys really know how to ramp up to a conference, months in advance and get everybody wishing they were going! Just search for the hashtag #mLearnCon on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean.


@Schnicker