Web Streaming Means Conferences Are At The Beginning of Their End

By Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin

Educational Technologies (broadband video, collaboration tools, e-learning development tools, marketing and distribution tools, apps, etc., etc.) passed a tipping point in 2011 and will change ‘training’ and ‘learning’ business models forever. 2012 is the beginning of the end for current approaches to how we attend conferences; collaborate at seminrs; develop ourselves and our colleagues; train our subordinates; support local-tax-based school systems; matriculate at college and much more.

This article in Forbes: M.I.T. Game Changer (passed on to us by Carmen Hudson) begins by noting an M.I.T. announcement from December 19, 2011 that it will offer online courses for free beginning in January (not its current decade-old OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative with 2300 courses online anyone could audit but) “a new online learning initiative, internally called M.I.T.x, which combines research, technical innovation and new online learning opportunities” and where “Students using the program will be able to communicate with their peers through student-to-student discussions, allowing them an opportunity to ask questions or simply brainstorm with others, while also being able to access online laboratories and self-assessments.” Individuals who complete the program will receive a certificate of completion.

The comments at the end of the article are well worth reading and include many naysayers who, in our humble opinion, missed the point that tens of millions of people around the world and currently cut off from ever attending college can, in the future, access knowledge vetted by some of the best and brightest minds in the world, and develop and collaborate with a learning network.

Whether or not a learner has ‘experienced’ a college campus or formally been granted a degree is just not as relevant from a global, long-term perspective. Demonstrating that someone knows what they can do with what they know (and with those they’ve developed a network to do it) is increasingly what matters.

But that isn’t the whole point either. Anyone who has looked at a TED presentation (any TED presentation), heard the Khan Academy story or sent a friend a link to an archived ERE Expo session after watching it live has to suspect that something new is in the wings. When students (of every stripe) can access low cost, just-in-time learning objects that offer interaction with the author, networking & collaboration and ability to demonstrate mastery, you’ve got a winning model.

Trainers, educators and learning developers might look at this expertly developed list of the Top 100 Learning Tools for 2011 compiled by Jane Hart. How many are you familiar with? How many of these would enhance your content; expand your reach 100 fold; create an interactive and collaborative platform to upgrade your content continuously?

Will geo-location learning events disappear? Not a chance but the cost and the expectations of going to a conference, attending a live seminar, traveling to a training, even matriculating at a college will escalate both in cost and expectations.

Sitting in a darkened room in a lecture format in 2012 just won’t cut it at a national conference or a college campus. Searching and finding content that is video-streamed live (or recorded sub-rosa by any number of attendees) has gotten much easier. If we can ‘huddle’ with our fellow students, chat with the instructor and participate in the learning from our home or office, we’re going to spend much more time doing that and learning what we need to learn when we need to learn it.

If we do attend in the flesh, we will want intense, face-to-face participative involvement emphasizing networking, hands on activities where highly specified outcomes are promised. This will draw attendance but not much else. Conferences are already shifting their focus from what goes on in their concurrent sessions to what goes on around them.

— Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler work full time consulting, educating and discovering how talent and opportunity connect through emerging technology. They can be reached via email at mmc@careerxroads.com, phone at 732-821-6652, or on-line at http://www.careerxroads.com.