Did you get a chance to meet us in the DevLearn expo?

We had many wonderful conversations with attendees. Thanks for stopping by and learning more about the Litmos platform.

Many that stopped by are in the process of switching from an existing LMS. And there were others interested in finding the perfect solution for managing their training business. I learn something new with every conversation. It’s always a pleasure to talk with my colleagues in the training field.

I think my favorite part of event conversations is telling attendees that Litmos is more than an LMS. It’s fun to see their reaction when they hear about our client services team, and that we offer content bundles as well. And of course our integrations with other popular systems like Box.com, Salesforce, Shopify, TribeHR, and others, is always a big hit.

Don’t forget to start your trial or schedule a demo when you’ve recovered from your travels.

Hot Tech Conversations

xAPI and HTML5 were the big technology conversations…as they have been for a while now. Most training professionals will never need to know how these technologies work. They are the bits of technology under the hood that drive the solutions you might be implementing in the future.

There were many sessions for learning more about xAPI and HTML5. There was even an xAPI camp that gave attendees a complete day of learning.

If you are one of the tech savvy who enjoy geeking out on new technologies for learning, then you should meet Anthony Altieri. I had a chance to record a conversation with Anthony explaining his wearable LRS…and “the button”.

Keynotes and Streaming Tech

I’ve already seen David Pogue several times and so the Adam Savage keynote was the only keynote I was looking forward too this year. But while I enjoyed Adam’s message I also wanted to test out my mobile video streaming setup.  Shockingly, I was able to get a fairly decent connection and so I dared to attempt streaming via Periscope. As you can see the video turned out to be quite horrible. However, my Rode boom video mic performed quite well.

So, what did I learn? The first important take away is that mobile streaming video is a good solution when timing is more important than quality. Streaming video via a mobile device has the potential to expand your reach as a training professional. A few people enjoyed the stream while not at the event location. This can be translated in many ways into the training that we do. But I’ll save those details for another post. All in all I think it was a successful test of Periscope as a tool for sharing/learning.

How Do You Define eLearning?

Lately I’ve been hearing/seeing a split in how eLearning is defined. More on my thoughts about that later. At DevLearn I had a chance to interview a few people to get their thoughts on eLearning. I was curious about how professionals define eLearning these days. Here are 3 answers that probably won’t surprise you. Or maybe they will.

Serendipitous Learning at DevLearn

Everyone will agree the best part of attending events is not the structured content, but rather the unstructured chance meetings and random conversations that often yield fantastic results. True to form the hallway conversations at DevLearn proved to be informative and valuable. I even learned something new while having lunch.

That moment may not seem all that important. And yes it is a little tongue-in-cheek. However, consider how easy it was for me to create and share that moment. No big budgets. No professional film crew. No expensive equipment. I certainly could have simply written it down and published the knowledge as a tweet, or maybe post to Facebook. But video has a certain powerful element that is engaging and offers something words can’t.

I hope you all enjoyed DevLearn this year. We’ll see you there next year!

Always remember that you can contact me anytime on twitter via @Litmos.