Learning Conference Round Up – February 2018

It has been a busy few weeks for Fulcrum Labs attending learning conferences from coast to coast!

For those of you who didn’t attend ATD’s TechKnowledge or the Brandon Hall HCM Excellence Conference, we’ve put together a few thoughts and learnings we gathered at the shows. (For those of you who did make it to one of both of these conferences, we’d love to hear what resonated most with you.) Here’s what we found:

ATD’s TechKnowledge kicked off our 2018 season with a nice crowd gathered in San Jose from January 24-26th. This was our first ATD Conference. Iit seemed well attended with a very manageable-size exhibit hall and breakout sessions scattered throughout the convention center. Two topics were front and center at this show:

• VIDEO – There was a lot of focus on video and it was great to attend with our new partners from onQ. You can read more about how we’re working together with onQ to provide greater access to video engagement and efficacy data here.
• ADAPTIVE LEARNING – We also were excited to see the significant interest in Adaptive Learning. What struck home was that adaptive learning seemed to have a lot of different interpretations. We also heard quite a few misconceptions about the technology. For information about how we approach adaptive learning, click here.

Another key topic around adaptive learning was about how easy/hard it is to implement. It’s clear that organizations, like ours, that have dedicated the time and resources to build easy-to-use, SaaS authoring tools within their platforms are best prepared for success in the adaptive space because they largely take the onus off the L+D professional.

We are considering attending the international ATD Conference later this year and would love to hear from anyone who has attended in the past. Was this a good conference for you? Would you recommend it? Any tips to maximize the visit? Let us know!

Brandon Hall held their Human Capital Management Excellence Conference last week in Palm Beach.  It looks like they have outgrown the PGA National Conference Center. As a result, they are moving on to a larger facility next year in Palm Beach. We were excited to win Silver in the Brandon Hall Award’s Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology category this year! You can read more about our award-winning entry with our friends at Allegiant Travel Co. here.

The HCM Outlook for 2018 is a key handout at this conference and the L+D themes are squarely in the Fulcrum wheelhouse. In particular:

• DIGITAL – The digital learning train continues to roll, with more organizations embracing digital transformation of their L+D programs. Another interesting note is an increase in the number of companies using AI in learning.
• DATA – Critical to the Digital Transformation and AI themes, was the notion of data application. It’s apparent that as L+D teams embrace technology, they will have to manage and act on the data it delivers. This highlights why an adaptive partner who can help aggregate and interpret data is so important to companies as they search for providers. Read more about how Fulcrum Labs approached learning data and make it easy to interpret, apply and report on here and here.
• ADAPTIVE LEARNING – There was continued momentum building off last year’s theme – adaptive learning. As more companies begin implementing adaptive programs, organizations are looking to evaluate the benefits of adaptive in real-world applications. Read more about how Fulcrum’s clients are benefitting from adaptive learning in our platform here.

Next week in Atlanta, Training Magazine will bring thousands of L+D practitioners to its annual conference. One of the things that we think looks most interesting is the Innovations in Training post-event with tours of Atlanta-based Home Depot and UPS. What looks interesting to you?

It looks like it will be a busy week in Atlanta. If you’re attending, let us know! We’d love to show you some Southern hospitability and treat you to a coffee while you’re in town. Let’s connect now and set up some time to chat!

Do you have any favorite events we should try this year? Any thoughts on what is good/bad about conferences and how they help your organization? We look forward to hearing from you – and hopefully meeting you in person as the conference season rolls on!