Looking back on the first day of Devlearn 2018. The first thing I noticed it has become bigger. I missed last year and in comparisson to 2016 it has grown. There are more attendees, more vendors, more of everything. This year is the 15th DevLearn and clearly, it is alive and kicking. despite the growth, it still is a gathering of a guild made out of learning professionals. I like that spirit and I do hope that that will stay that way.
Keynotes
We had two keynotes on the first day and I have to say I was disappointed with both of them. Both Julie Snyder with her story about Serial and Ayanna Howard about Robotics, AI and the future of learning and work, were nice presentations, but no more. No connection to learning, no big inspirational boost. Which is a pity, I was particularly looking forward to the talk of Ayanna Howard, she is one of the leading people in the world when it comes to robotics and AI, I think she is extremely cool. But her message was “Robots are coming and you better be ready”, and that was it. I was expecting way more.
Sessions
I attended a lot of sessions and covered most of them in separate posts. I’m impressed with the level of the presentations this year, really good. I hope I can match that level with my own presentation on Friday.
Knowledgeable
In comparison to past conferences, I think the audience has become more knowledgeable. My impression is that there are fewer newbies and that many attendees are looking beyond old-school solutions. In the past, I wrote about the gap between presenters and audience. Where presenters talked about fundamental change and the audience wanted to select a scorm based LMS. I think that gap is way smaller now and that is a great thing to see.
The Learning 2019 conference
I have been to a ton of learning conferences but this will be my first time at #learning2019. I’m looking forward to it and I’m planning to report on all interesting sessions via this blog.
