Day 2/Take 2: Key Takeaways from the Rest of Learning 2009 Conference AND More Twitter Newbie Revelations

For me, day 1 of Learning 2009 primarily focused on great ideas, and day 2 focused on great examples of real training solutions. Day 2 kicked off with an inspiring interview with Captain Chelsey B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, he of successfully-made-emergency-landing-on-the-Hudson-river fame;  and moved from there into sessions on case studies: Julie Clow from Google presented an excellent example of a light-weight, agile learning program for internal audiences leveraging Google tools, discrete, right-sized content pieces, and a mobile delivery platform. Christian Finn of Microsoft presented a high-fidelity YouTube style social learning solution, also for internal employees. And Don Strimbu of Autodesk described converting a 5-day conference-based training session with over 1,700 channel partners into a virtual event. Then on Wednesday morning (final half-day of conference) I made it to Wayne Hodgin’s mind-blowing session on the “Snowflake Effect” and the concept of mass personalization.

Finally, at the bottom of this far-too-lengthy missive, I have captured a few more Twitter “revelations” that emerged over the course of this conference. It seems this is the next installment in what is turning into an ongoing saga of how one not-so-early-adopter slowly figures out how to get the most value out of this tool.

Sully

Masie introduced Captain Sullenberger by playing this simulation of the infamous flight. It was chilling and almost visceral in conveying the gravity of the situation and the astonishing water landing. Sully then took the stage, described himself as an, “ordinary guy who found himself in extraordinary circumstances" and credited the team (co-pilot, crew, controller, and emergency responders) for the incredible outcome.  Listening to the recording of his conversation with the control tower during the event, he sounds so cool and controlled, you’d think it could be any mundane flight communication, were it not for comments like “hit birds”, “lost thrust in both engines,” and “we may end up in the Hudson,” delivered as calmly as if he were saying “landing gear up, setting course to destination.” He clarified this on stage saying, “If you think I wasn’t startled, you misunderstand. But we did our job in spite of that.” And, “the cockpit was a crucible where we fought for our lives…what kicked in was the judgment that only comes from experience.”


I must admit that when I first read that Masie had booked Captain Sullenberger as one of the keynote speakers for Learning 2009, I didn’t get it. I didn’t see the connection between his astonishing feat and a learning conference. But you don’t have to be in the man’s presence for long before it is perfectly clear. His feat exemplifies the results of both deep experience and life-long learning.  Though he (understandably) had never before practiced losing both engines or doing a water landing with a plane full of people, he describes it as assembling the learned building blocks to instantaneously adapt to what was needed in the moment. If this is not the ultimate goal for learning and development, I don’t know what is.


Sully talked about the role of training in providing the building blocks we put together to solve problems. He spoke of the importance of situational awareness. He described constantly flying the plane with his mind (regardless of level of automation) anticipating potential issues, and adapting as needed.  He emphasized the importance of the human element, reframing the discussion form the role of the pilot in the automated cockpit to the role of automation in the piloted cockpit. He pointed out that technology doesn’t lower the requirements for training, but instead increases them, both in terms of using the technology correctly, and in that pilots must constantly synthesize what automation is doing.  He noted that technology changes the nature of the errors that are made, pointing out how the connectedness of the technology can lend itself to cascading failures and that while technology can prevent many small errors from happening, it also allows huge errors to be made very precisely. And most importantly, he noted that not everything can be anticipated, programmed, and put into written guidelines;  at no point does technology relieve us of our most critical role: that of rapidly assimilating never before encountered variables and adapting to the unknown.


Sully emphasized the importance of experience, and also the importance of passion, curiosity, and a willingness to learn. I haven’t explicitly called out any key learning takeaways from this keynote, though there are many. In this case, though, my prevailing takeaway was deep awe and respect for a truly heroic man.

Google and Microsoft Case Studies

In my last post I alluded to the whiplash affect I felt moving from the minimalist footprint approach of the Google case study to the high-production feel of the Microsoft case study. In a way, a very yin and yang set of learnings. Here’s a bit of detail on both sessions, followed by some thoughts on their unexpected overlaps.


Julie Clow of Google described a “gLearning” program on the foundations of leadership for early career Googlers across the globe. (For a short time, the slides for this presentation can be found here.) The program design leveraged self-paced learning components (videos, articles, books, movies), content that was largely already available, collaborative Google Apps communication tools, and virtual classroom “debrief” sessions. She emphasized authentic collaboration (vs. simulating human interactions via WBT), leveraging both tools and content that already exits (vs. developing all content from “scratch”) and this approach - Key takeaway #1: design small content pieces for self-paced consumption within the boundaries of an expected completion date. She also described their use of Moving Knowledge, a tool for delivering and tracking learning via mobile devices. (For a demo of this tool, either email demo@movingknowledge.com and type the word 'demo' into the body of the email and the subject line, or text the word ‘demo’ to 407-421-7408 to register your mobile device. If you have trouble contact support@movingknowledge.com )


Christian Finn of Microsoft described Academy Mobile, a YouTube style intranet site where all Microsoft employees can post podcast that they have created on any (presumably work-related) topic.  You can find an early blog post (August 2007) describing it here and a YouTube video about it here. It’s based on the premise that what the learning organization can cover and teach nowhere near approaches what the organization knows. Therefore, it is the responsibility of learning orgs is to tap into this expertise, and to connect people to the knowledge and expertise of other people. Academy Mobile provides a social learning platform built on SharePoint with some custom code to layer in social media capabilities such as ratings and comments. I’m sure I can’t do justice to this highly-polisshed solution from a few hastily written notes and tweets, so I’ll jump to the list Finn provided on “Top 10” Takeaways for designing a social learning solution and how I understood them (a lot of overlap here with my earlier blog post on Top 10 Reasons Enterprise Learning Communities Fail):

1. Have a clear scope and purpose: think about what you’re trying to accomplish and build for that.
2. Design for ease of use and access: disintermediate as much as possible. (Miicrosoft does not require an approval process for podcasts to be added, but it does require the person’s name; thus relying on  accountability vs. regulation)
3. Focus on low to no barriers to participation: Microsoft provided the video recorders for its initial push for content; provides multiple tools and avenues to encourage comments and ratings.
4. Stock the pond: seeding with initial content is important. People won’t return to a content site (user-generated or otherwise) if there’s no “there” there.
5. Enlist champions: get some early users and evangelists.
6. Provide incentives: users get points for various acts from adding podcasts, to rating or commenting on them. Those points can be converted to prizes. (My favorite: Microsoft lets people convert their points to dollars to give to charity, and then provides matching funds as well. LOVE that.)
7. Iterate rapidly: don’t wait for perfection. Get something out there, see what’ working, and where people are stumbling, continuously make incremental improvements. (Pleasantly surprised to hear this coming from Microsoft.)
8. Provide great search: absolutely critical with user-generated content. It’s no good if people can’t find it. Academy Mobile provides for both taxonomy and folksonomy.  It also lets you filter on highest rated, and most downloaded.
9. Promote the solution: don’t just put it up there and expect people to find it and use it. Have a plan to get the word out.
10. Have a network mentality: you may start small with one content area or one functional org, but have a long-tail mentality and plan for expanding into other areas over time.
11. Provide users unlimited data plans: this one should be pretty obvious if you’re providing mobile access, but good call-out to start here rather than to get a costly wake-up call post-deployment.

In both of these examples, Google and Microsoft showed their willingness to push the envelope to design effective learning solutions. Google used a quick-hit, leverage content and tools already out there approach, and Microsoft used a build the infrastructure to tap into the collective knowledge approach.  Takeaway #13: some cool design things they both did:

• Stepped away from the “I am the keeper and/or creator of all wisdom” position that learning teams can so easily fall into
• Provided content in small, discrete pieces
• Built in authentic exchange between people (Google: collaboration and debriefs; Microsoft access to UGC, ratings and comments)
• Reached them where they were at (online and mobile) vs. pulled people into a classroom
• Used a launch and iterate approach
• Built on their own tools

Autodesk Virtual Event Case Study

Full disclosure: my company supported Don Strimbu and his team with this endeavor, so I may be overly-enthusiastic about its merits.


To end my day two, and in keeping with the break-me-out-of-the-classroom theme, I sat in on Don Strimbu’s presentation on converting a large conference-based even to virtual.  Most fascinating about this was the breadth of its scope and the incredible high-stakes underlying this move.


A bit about the breadth and stakes. Strimbu described how Autodesk’s channel partners are the intermediary between the customer and Autodesk and that 85% of Autodesk revenue comes from its channel. That means partner training is a high-stakes proposition for Autodesk, and one they are very invested in. For the past 20+ years, Autodesk has been hosting annual events that coincide with product releases, to bring over 1700 partners together and get them trained on the deltas. This year, they converted a 5-day event into a blended, virtual event, consisting of some eLearning pre-work and a series of webinars organized by track. The scope of the event spanned multiple company divisions, multiple product tracks for each division, differentiated learner roles for each track, multiple requirements for each role, and multiple sessions for each learning path component. All of this added up to hundreds of sessions that needed to be set up, delivered, and supported.


One of the ways Autodesk made this happen (and a recurring theme for the day, I am just realizing) was to use technologies that were already available to them and in use. This minimized risks associated with new or unfamiliar tools. In Autodesk’s case, they used SumTotal as a hosted LMS, and Adobe Connect. The LMS was used for registration, eCommerce, deployment of learning paths, and course completion and tracking. Adobe Connect was integrated with the LMS, and used to deliver the sessions themselves.


For the most part, execution was smooth and most of the challenges that arose came from the unreliability of the internet itself, in terms of connectivity and more important, latency.  In terms of things Autodesk could control, Strimbu offered the following – Takeaway #14: Recommendations for pulling off a large-scale virtual event:

• Need to thoroughly work through the technology requirements, constraints, and logistics
• Need to make course registration, requirements, and access to materials as easy as possible
• Content design must be adapted for virtual interactivity
• The delivery team should include:
  • A dedicated moderator/host
  • A technical producer
  • Multiple trainers when possible
• Trainers should be trained on how to deliver effectively via webinars

In terms of impact, Strimbu said that though feedback was mixed, the top resellers (responsible for 80% of the revenue) resoundingly agreed that the virtual event was both valuable and effective. They supported this transition, and hoped it would continue to be the approach used from now on. In terms of cost savings, Strimbu didn’t use specific numbers, but indicated that it was significant. He said that production costs were the about the same, however, the savings came from eliminating the need for facilities and hospitality.  (Presumably the channel also saved significantly on T&E and lowered opportunity costs.) Multiply this by however many similar events Autodesk holds in other geos, and their perpetual need for update training, and it is not at all hard to see why Strimbu concluded with this thought - Takeaway #15: even when the economy recovers virtual training will be more than good enough for most of what we need to deliver.

Wayne Hodgins, The Snowflake Effect, and Mass Personalization

Takeaway #16: it is very hard to distill Wayne to 140 characters. I’m not going to even pretend like I could do justice to Wayne’s session. It’s not just that he talks really fast, but that he thinks really, really fast. Or perhaps that he’s just been thinking about this stuff for a really long time, so it rolls off his tongue as easily as you or I might describe what we had for breakfast.  Only he’s not talking about breakfast. He’s talking about complex concepts, and seems to be synthesizing them and coming up with new applications for his ideas as he speaks.


So I’m just going to sketch the basic premise and leave it at that: we’re all unique, each and every one of us. Even more, every situation is unique. Yet, if we agree that we are unique, why is it that we design for sameness? Instead, we should design for mass personalization, or the idea that we can deliver every person just the right content, in just the right amount, via just the right method, and at just the right time for what they need. Sound ambitious? Indeed. But after listening to Wayne for an hour, you start to believe that this might just be possible. In fact, he tells us - Takeaway # 17: much of what is needed to make mass personalization a reality already exists. And then he gives examples. Lots of ‘em. Really fast. Some examples are things you’ve heard of, but may not have thought about in this context. (Online dating engines and algorithms as a model for matching people with the type of training they need, for example.) Other things you may never have even heard of. (3D printing of complete assemblies? Really?) It’s a bit mind-boggling. And very inspirational.


Shameless plug: I’m breaking my own rule about keeping this kind of stuff out of my blog, but only because it comes from a true sense of awe in what Wayne has to offer in terms of vision and inspiration – so here it is. Contact VMG if you’d like to have Wayne speak to or consult with your org.

More Twitter Newbie Revelations

Finally, since I love nothing more than to display my ignorance, I’m going to outdo myself with this section. Here are a few more newbie Twitter “revelations” I had this week, driven by my concentrated and active use of Twitter tools (especially TweetDeck) during the conference:

1. I had already figured out that I can use TweetDeck to create custom groups of people to follow (friends, thought leaders, etc.) Suddenly, I realize I can do the same thing by – get this – topic. Who knew?
2. The little icons at the bottom of the TweetDeck groups do things. Really cool and useful things, in fact, to further aggregate and sort your already filtered streams of tweets:
   1. Filter: search for tweets containing a specific word.
   2. Tag cloud: click the little cloud icon to index all the content in that group and see a tag cloud of recurring words. This not only shows what’s trending in the tweet slice indexed, but provides hyperlinks to the subset of tweets to the word clicked.
Starting to see how people manage the deluge.  (Next up, I need to figure out what’s the deal with lists. Anyone have some quick tips or a favorite reference they could point me to?)


So it was a great event. As @swacheson put it on Twitter, headed home, tired but full. If you also attended, please point me to your own blog posts, or add any thoughts to the comments. I’d really love to hear what some of your key takeaways were.

~ posted by Beth Chmielowski on 12 Nov 09
   tagged as: #L2009, Learning 2009

 

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