DevLearn 2026: 4 Learning Mistakes to Stop Making Before 2027 

DevLearn just wrapped on the heels of Learning Leadership in Las Vegas, and Litmos was there in full force with customers who brought real proof points and speaking sessions that covered critical tactics for effective accelerated learning in 2027 and beyond. Here’s what went down and what we took away from both shows.  

Two Speaking Sessions, A Different Energy around AI 

We kept ourselves and other attendees busy with informative sessions: Melissa Kruminas, Litmos’s VP of Learning Experience and Enablement, had two speaking slots this year. One of the core takeaways: these conversations are moving beyond ‘we need AI’ to ‘how do we handle adoption and what are we even trying to solve?’ All the goods: 

	The Way We Talk About Learning is Killing Our Influence – Grab the slides
	The Learning Acceleration Journey: Benchmark Where You Stand, Leave With a Toolkit – Grab the slides Get your toolkit here

We explored these themes in our speaking sessions. Melissa’s first talk, “The Way We Talk About Learning Is Killing Our Influence,” explored turning learning initiatives and metrics into a business-impact story instead of an activity report. Melissa also presented “The Learning Acceleration Journey: Benchmark Where You Stand, Leave With a Toolkit,” an interactive session where attendees benchmarked their own organizations against the Learning Acceleration Journey and took home a practical kit for making real change.  

Melissa shared the four biggest mistakes organizations need to stop making as we head into 2027:  

1. Prescribing before diagnosing 
2. Expecting people to apply learning without connecting it to the work 
3. Knowing the answer isn’t the same as performing the task 
4. Reporting activity instead of using evidence of performance improvement 

Both sessions reinforced the need to start with the business problem and use learning science to build the capability to solve it. “The energy at DevLearn felt different this year,” said Melissa. “The conversation was moving beyond ‘How do I get my organization to adopt AI?’ to ‘What problems are we actually trying to solve, and what would solving them mean for our workforce, partners, or customers?’ That’s a much more useful conversation — and one I’m excited to keep having as we head into 2027.” 

Lenny Award Winners Brought Powerful Outcomes 

Our customers brought proof to the show, sharing their own award-winning Litmos learning acceleration journeys and highlighting their tangible business results. The 2026 Lenny Award winners were formally announced at DevLearn on November 4th, with 6 winners and 12 finalists emerging from an impressive 71 entries. We held a dinner ceremony to honor all six, handing those who could attend well-deserved trophies for their hard work and dedication to accelerated learning.  

“AI is changing what every role requires, and skills now decay faster than traditional programs can retrain people. We call that the Capability Erosion Crisis,” Eric Vermillion, CEO of Litmos, said in the press release. “This year’s Lenny Award winners and finalists show what it takes to keep pace.” 

Their submissions underscore the ways Litmos customers transform certification processes, maintain compliance, build strong retention, and reduce training time, resulting in stronger, more scalable foundations for their learning and development programs: 

• BRP (Learning Accelerator of the Year) — certified more than 2,000 dealer technicians across its global network and cut in-person training time 60% per product line. Finalists: Bath Experts, a home improvement company, and Student Roost, a UK student housing provider 
• Elevate Aircraft Seating (Workforce Learning Excellence) — delivered role-based training to more than 1,000 employees while holding 98–100% compliance, helping drive turnover down 68.6% in Huntington Beach and 62.6% in Kaiserslautern. Finalists: Acme Tools, a tool supplier, and RRI West, a hospitality company 
• Factor 8 (Customer or Partner Learning Excellence) — delivers more than 50 micro-learning courses to roughly 5,000 sales professionals a year; client retention climbed from 65% to 80%. Finalists: Check Point Software Technologies, a cybersecurity company, and Liveops, a contact center outsourcing company 
• Ocado Group (Learning Innovation Award) — used AI to replace two compliance courses with one gamified course in 8 languages for more than 6,000 colleagues, hitting 80% completion twice as fast as the year before. Finalists: The Smith Family, an Australian children’s education charity, and Veracross, a school information system provider 
• Jushi (Learning at Scale Award) — cut retail turnover from 55.45% in 2023 to just over 25% in 2025 with a 3-person L&D team, reporting nearly $1 million in year-over-year savings. Finalists: Collette, a travel company, and Parkinson Voice Project, a nonprofit that trains clinicians in speech therapy for people with Parkinson’s 
• UnitedHealthcare Services (Enduring Excellence Award) — supports more than 150,000 agents on its Learning Lab, cutting certification and navigation support contacts by about 35% for 2 consecutive years. Finalists: Australian Finance Group (AFG), one of Australia’s largest mortgage broking groups, and HCPro, a healthcare education provider 

Check out the full list on our Lenny Awards page. 

Lambos, Lenny Plushies, and Lots of Good Chatter

This year, we put our foot on the giveaway gas. Attendees entered to win a real Lamborghini ride or a Lamborghini ride-on car (the winner chose the ride-on car), with Lenny plushies up for grabs throughout the conference. If you snagged a Lenny plushy at this year’s show, post it to social and tag us on LinkedIn @Litmos. 

Booth guests had a chance to speak with the Litmos team about core challenges like connecting learning to how the work is actually done, and scaling beyond workforce learning to grow programs. We talked in depth about the topic of managing competing priorities with a lean team to more proactively get ahead of challenges like slow or incomplete training, AI skill decay, and compliance issues.  

Booth visitors were also able to meet some of this year’s Lenny Award-winning customers, who shared how they use Litmos to tackle training, compliance, and retention while improving their baseline numbers to meet organizational goals.  

Catch Up With Us Post-Show 

Missed us on the floor? Book a demo to start a conversation about how Litmos can help your organization. If Learning Acceleration is still on your mind, don’t wait for next year’s show to speed up the conversation.