Watching David Clarke, Chief Innovator at Toolwire, Inc. keynote at our recent Business and Process Innovation Summit 2006 (BPIS2006) was one heck of a ride. I had already heard from other colleagues who had met David, that he was an excitable guy and brimming with ideas (as "Chief Innovator" you may expect that - but always good to have in reinforced in reality), and his keynote definitely delivered on that promise.
Really fascinating stuff, and quite timely on a number of fronts - primarily, because I've recently been completely randomly pinged by software companies, reporters, and clients about e-learning. Well, of course it's not random, as I have my fingers stretched out into as many directions as I can to get an idea of what is fresh on the radar, being re-born and flying back onto the radar, and falling off into the pit of despair with the likes of BetaMax VCRs. Still, a noticeable up-tick in interest around e-Learning, and I for one and will stand up and say "hallelujah!" to the new-found interest in this space.
When we (Delphi Group) had last paid significant attention to e-Learning, it was around the 1999-2001 timeframe. Post-bubble, post 9/11, and training/education budgets disappeared, as did of course thousands upon thousands of jobs in the high-tech space. Re-training, re-tooling, and even keeping pace flew out the window, and the long pause in the economy that we've experienced since then (I would argue) is due to an over-focus on "keeping the lights on" as opposed to inventing and delivering a future state for organizations and individuals.
So, this re-birth (if you will), in the area of e-Learning, is well overdue - and as numerous speakers at our BPIS event mentioned, innovation and in particular, the training and systems to support innovation in an organization, are what will help all of us individually and as groups/teams/organizations to rise above what feels like a inexorable drift towards commoditization and globalization - and a race to the bottom (of cost, and likely innovation and sustainability, if you don't watch out).
What does this have to do with David Clarke and Toolwire?
Among other things, I wasn't familiar until his keynote, of the concept of "millenials" (twenty somethings as of 2001-2010), versus "boomers" (you know who you are). Different learning styles, different preferences to absorb information, and yes, gaming metaphors suit millenials and some of those in-between these ages quite well, from a learning standpoint. This all flashes me back even further to the days when I created our first Internet, Intranet and Web education sessions - where I explained the web and it's outgrowth from things like Gopher, Newsgroups, FTP, etc., and as an example of where we might be headed, fired up a copy of Doom (or something similar - I don't recall exactly) to show what collaboration and learning environments might be like (hopefully without the bloodshed!).
Interesting datapoints from David's keynote, and something I plan to keep an eye on (and already am hearing others speak of millenials now). Interactivity and "experiencing" a more or less realistic simulation is certainly more likely to make the information "stick" in the brains of the learners - make it interactive, immersive, fun, audio, video, collaborative, and the experience simply has to be retained that much more.
David also prompted me to get off my virtual backside and take a look at Second Life (or SL as the kool-aid drinkers call it) - whew, I barely have time for my current life, let alone a Second Life. I've spent 30-60 minutes in the SL world, and my god, learning the new politics, currency and way of living in this virtual world is too much for me at this time. Anyone who is diving into SL, please contact me and clue me in as to what the big deal is - I've seen massive multi-player games and systems for 10 or so years now, and while the scale and "realism" continues to get better and better, again, who has time for this?
Another item - on the interactive presentation front, was his inclusion of a "keynote within a keynote" - playing a clip from the slightly infamous (depends on your circles) "Identity 2.0" presentation given by Dick Hardt, Founder and CEO of sxip. It's really quite an unbelievable presentation - I'm sorely tempted to create a similar fast-paced presentation, although sustaining that style beyond 10 minutes or so would be exhausting, in my mind!
Speaking of which, and this goes to the "agile collaboration" side of this entry - I'd stumbled across the URL for the Collaborative Technologies Conference (June 2006) presentation archive while burrowing into the stack of business cards on my desk. I'd popped into CTC ever so briefly this summer, and unfortunately, looks like I missed some great presentations. I would love to see how Jason Fried from 37Signals actually delivered his "agile collaboration" presentation - but that's worth a view as well, in the "less is more" presentation style. I would expect nothing less from the lads at 37Signals.
My point between all three of these presentations (David, Dick and Jason), is that presentations can be far more interesting than we have all been led to believe, that Powerpoint isn't the devil (it's close, but only if you're too lazy to break out of the direction it points you "out of the box") as Edward Tufte (among others) would have you believe. That said, if you happen to have a choice in your presentation platform, pick up a Mac of some form (now with Intel inside, and nice OS virtualization possibilities), and run Keynote (part of iWork). Beautiful presentations with ease.
Tomorrow I'll be doing a podcast with Clark Aldrich of SimuLearn, who has been doing a ton of really interesting work in e-Learning, including a few books in this area. Hope to have this podcast "in the can" as they say and have it posted by the end of the week, although I have another to edit down a bit, on topic of 24/7 Innovation, in an interview with Stephen Shapiro, author of a book of the same title.
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