Leader board within “Connect” their social learning component – however, I did not see any type of incentive tied to it. Social Learning in general – can’t anyone come up with something fresh? E-commerce. E-Learning 24/7. MORE

What I like about conferences is the ability to see the latest products and hear the pitches from the vendors. Demonstrations are crucial, whether it is a 30 minute one, with an audience or one on one, with a potential customer. Yet, for all that do it, their are equal number of vendors who do not. E-Learning Trade Shows. Vendors who hand you a product (trial) and their business card or they just have their items in a bowl and you grab one. MORE

They are great to announce to your fellow competitors, general public and potential customers. Granted it does not include bloggers (I hand them out- more on that in a sec) or believe it or not – other vendors, but it is a nice list nevertheless. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, after all when a company or vendor wins such an award it makes for great advertising and marketing. In the LMS market alone, there are over 395 vendors. E-Learning 24/7 Approach. MORE

For the past month, I have been conducting a survey on learning platforms and specifically learning management systems. . The data shows that what many vendors assume end users want is far from accurate. Do you have a LMS/LCMS/Learning Platform. E-commerce – 14.2%. MORE

LMS – Learning Management System – most commonly sought out by folks. LCMS – Learning Content Management System – going the way of the dodo bird. M-Learning- Mobile Learning. E-Learning – Online Learning. Many people confuse the term thinking it means electronic learning and thus will boost that they were doing e-learning 20 years ago or even longer. LRS – Learning Record Stores. MORE

LMS vendors are continuing to add some very unique features in an effort to set themselves apart from the competition. You don’t have to go to funkytown to see some feature sets that put the “WoW” back into learning. Built in E-mail that blocks viruses, spam plus you can send out of the LMS. Desktop sharing (appears with a few vendors). DVD to video conversion for creating courses. e-book publishing. Guess what some vendors do. MORE

Vendors in this space include Docebo, eFront, Litmos and of course Totara. My Learning tab – shows alerts, recent learning, upcoming events. My Learning – Made up of two sections, Development Plan and Bookings – You can also find this info under My Learning Tab. MORE

After one quarter (for most companies) into the fiscal calendar year, it is time to see what the future holds in our space. I mean ever&# , from a senior executive at a mid to large size vendor that has been in the market for several years. Across the board, a large number of vendors (from small to large) saw increases in their quarter numbers. Especially, when vendors released their 2010 final numbers and saw big increases from the previous year. E-Learning 24/7. MORE

There is a growing list of vendors, including small/mid size that are adding talent management components that match the Big Dog systems. A couple of vendors have added HRIS modules. It is interesting to note, that many of the vendors are targeting the SMB space, especially the small size (less than 500 employees) market. The challenge though is that there are customers who have no desire and zero interest to use or have a TM in their system. E-Learning 24/7. MORE

How many of you have had hundreds of comments as a result of these questions, and than rather than solve it, create only more confusion? How many of you have seen vendors respond to your questions? A: Virtually every LMS vendor out there in the marketplace provides these features. Examples: E-mail notification via SMS. Congrats, you are probably looking at less than 10 (based on my LMS directory which contains 475 vendors). E-mail notification, automatic. MORE

If you are like the thousands of other people exploring the purchase of a learning management system, the key to success is asking the right questions. . PENS was created by AICC as an alternative to SCORM 2004, 3rd edition. . For people who are working on certification, does your system provide e-mail reminders to end users whose certification is near expiration and thus they need to go into the system and complete it? As for customization, always be a tad concerned. MORE

The year kicked off with lots of potential, lots of excitement in the air and lots of customers gearing up to purchase new systems, despite global economic woes. Mobile Learning. LMSs – Finally vendors took notice. eLogic Learning. exact learning. MORE

Do these systems have customers with more than 10,000 users? Some systems in this space include e-commerce at no additional charge. The standards – curriculum paths, reports, calendar, batch uploads, assign users to one group and they see X courses, while another group sees Y courses will appear in these systems, along with the most common features in any system. Many vendors’ sites do not state this information in their pricing. E-Learning 24/7. MORE

Ability to e-mail a group of people or an individual within the product – ideal for classroom, webinars or even admin to send specific notifications without having to sent it to everyone. Event calendar/event features. E-mail notifications and reminders. E-Learning 24/7. MORE