Congratulations to The eLearning Guild for 10 years of DevLearn!

DevLearn has been the most influential event in the eLearning industry for a decade, and most people probably couldn’t tell you who the 2 brilliant minds are behind the DevLearn curtain. That’s by design. And it’s only one of reasons why The eLearning Guild is so loved and why DevLearn has had such enormous success. DevLearn is all about the community!

David Holcombe and Heidi Fisk succeeded at creating the ultimate professional development one-stop shop for the Learning & Development industry with DevLearn as the flagship event.

DevLearn is, and always has been, about the community. The community is DevLearn and DevLearn is the community. It’s that simple. The same philosophy applies to The eLearning Guild as a whole, but DevLearn has a unique community of passionate professionals striving to improve everything they do.

Brent Schlenker and The eLearning Guild

I joined the eLearning Guild in May 2007 and loved every minute of it. David and Heidi took a chance and gave me the opportunity of a lifetime programming DevLearn. I can’t thank them enough for their patience, friendship, and mentorship, during my 5 years working with them.

Seriously! I’m not joking about taking a chance on me. I didn’t have ANY event experience and was more than a little freaked out…at first. And I totally sucked at it. But they stuck with me. My favorite advice from Heidi was to “just create the type of event I would want to attend”. And so with that, I set out to add my personal touch to the industry’s largest and best eLearning event. It was without question, the most fun I’ve had in any job so far in my career. (DevLearn is also where I met the founders of Litmos which is a story for another time.)

David taught me the secret sauce of events is in providing a physical space that encourages attendees to interact with each other. Even if you’ve never been to DevLearn, you’ve no doubt heard about the “buzz”, or the “vibe”, that exists.  It’s something very special and unique to DevLearn. That’s something I’ve noticed other events can’t duplicate. Other events may have some of the same speakers, and vendors in the expo, but they’ve just never figured out how to foster that feeling attendees get from being at DevLearn. And I had nothing to do with that. That’s all of what DevLearn brings out in the community.  And what the community brings to DevLearn.

Congratulations to Everyone Making DevLearn Great!

So, when we congratulate DevLearn on 10 awesome years, we’re really congratulating the eLearning community for being the vibe that makes DevLearn buzz.

(I know that’s what David and Hiedi would want me to say, but let’s face it, we’re really congratulating them on having the vision to create an incredible event. So kudos and congrats to you both.)