Giving Thanks for an Awesome First Year of Blogging

This is the time of year when Americans collectively pause and consider what it is they are thankful for.  It seems only appropriate that I am also celebrating the one-year anniversary of this blog at the same time, as what it has contributed to me over the last 12 months is something I could never have predicted, and something I am incredibly thankful for.  So for this Thanksgiving-themed post, I reflect on the first year of this blog, and give thanks for what it has provided me.

I thought about starting this blog for years.  In truth, there’s a very good chance that I could STILL be thinking about it had it not been for a #lrnchat tweetchat I participated in where blogging was discussed.  I had mentioned that I didn’t yet have a blog, and a few people came forward to encourage me to start one.  One of those people was Dave Ferguson, who pointed out that I should be blogging for my primary audience: myself. It wasn’t until Dave gave me that subtle nudge I didn’t know I needed that I finally made the jump.  Thanks Dave.

Another turning point in my blogging was the holiday-themed post I wrote called “Twas the Night Before Social Media”.  That was something I wrote, tweaked, and finalized about two weeks before I published it.  It was something that I looked at as a ‘risk’.  Did it match the image I was trying to portray?

In hindsight, taking the chance was the best thing I could have done.  Without realizing it at the time, it was a post that allowed me to be a little more open, and invited people to get to know me.  It also did strike a chord with readers, and to this day is the most popular posting I have written.  It was a catalyst to many of the gifts my blog provided me in the months that followed.

That posting helped me build connections with a great number of people, including many individuals I look to as leaders in the Learning and Performance field.  I was building a network of peers through which I could grow, and in turn help others with their growth.  I increased my exposure to the industry I love many times over, and have become a part of the greater community of the field. 

That community exposure is another gift I am eternally thankful for, and one that I hope I can share with others in the future.  Being a part of the community is wonderful, but the real gift my blog provided me with was awareness. 

There’s growing discussion in the field about how we can get professionals to adapt to the shifting nature of workplace learning.  The first challenge in that is awareness that the shift is going on.  Think about walking through a hallway you are unfamiliar with.  There’s a locked door to your right.  Behind it could be a tiny closet, or it could be an entry into a whole new world you had no idea existed.

In most cases, we just continue walking down the hallway, not really giving the door much thought.  As it turns out, my blog was the key to that lock, and I an eternally grateful that I opened the door.

The blog and my participation in the industry community provided me with something else that I am thankful for: Opportunity.  In the past year I have had the pleasure of participating in many opportunities that I would not have considered possible even a few years ago.  I have been invited to write for publications, to speak at conferences, and most recently, to be the ‘official’ curator for the backchannel of the DevLearn conference.  While there were a number of factors that contributed to these opportunities being available to me, they all stem from the same starting point: this blog, and the exposure it has given me.  For that, I thank each and every person that has ever read and/or shared something I have written. 

That brings me to the thing my blog has provided me with that I am most thankful for: You. 

I don’t mean ‘You’ in the context of being a reader of this blog – though I do appreciate that.  I am referring to the connections that I have made with the people on the other side of the door that my blog helped open.  I have made very real connections with people through my blog and subsequent interactions that provide me with the ultimate value: friendship.

DevLearn was the perfect example of something I’ve said a few times in the past: Before social media – and in this context, my blog and the interactions it helped initiate – I had never greeted people I was ‘meeting’ for the first time with a hug.  I lost count of how many times that happened at DevLearn, and I can't express how much it means to me.

Happy Thanksgiving friends, including those of you outside the United States who may not celebrate the holiday formally.  Thank you for everything you add to my life.

Expanding the Value of the #DevLearn 2011 Backchannel

In just about two weeks one of the best development opportunities for professionals in the Learning and Performance field will be upon us: DevLearn 2011.

The annual DevLearn conference, hosted by The eLearning Guild, continues to be one of the best events to attend if you want to learn about what organizations are doing in our field, and more importantly, where the field is going.  It has a reputation for being a conference that perfectly balances visions of the future with immediate skill takeaways professionals can apply today.  This year, DevLearn will expand to its largest size ever when it arrives at the Aria Resort and Casino November 2 -4.

One of the themes of this year’s conference is Curation, a subject that I have much interest in.  If you have visited my blog in the past, you may have noticed that I often follow conferences online, and post curated lists of the many valuable resources that are shared via the conference backchannels.  If you are not familiar with these posts, I recently posted an archive that collects them in a single location.  You’ll find a link to that archive at the end of this post.

My interest in the backchannel really began at DevLearn last year, or more specifically, through its backchannel.  I was unable to attend the conference in person, yet still discovered tremendous value from the conference by following its vibrant backchannel, and the sharing taking place there.  DevLearn 2010 was actually the first conference I posted a collected resources list for, and I enjoyed it so much that I have continued to do it for other conferences over the past year.  I look forward to once again collecting the resources shared through the DevLearn backchannel again in 2011.

But this time, things are going to be a little different.

The organizers of the DevLearn conference value the backchannel very much.  They see the added value it is able to generate not only for conference attendees, but for people that were unable to attend the conference in person, and for the field in general.  With that perspective in mind, the organizers of the conference reached out to me with a fairly simple question: “We like your Backchannel Resource postings and the value it adds to our conference; what could we provide to you to help take that to even higher levels?”

As someone that often thinks of ways to better leverage the backchannel concept as part of a learning and performance strategy, this opportunity is tremendously exciting.  At its core, this support will enable me to do what I’m already doing, but with greater access and outreach.  That in itself could be enough to add value, as it will result in more shared resources.  We’re also looking at doing other things to enhance the backchannel. 

One of the first pieces of that will appear here, in my blog.  For many people, the backchannel concept is still new.  In my experience, many people first learn about and experience backchannels at a conference. 

I’ve coached people on participating in the backchannel at conferences, and it’s often like trying to teach someone how to drive for the very first time… and taking them straight to the parkway.  Driving on a parkway requires an almost subconscious knowledge of driving mechanics so that the driver can focus on the interactions with the other cars.  The backchannel is very similar.  It’s hard to take in the value of a backchannel if you’re struggling with the mechanics of the technology required to participate.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I will be posting a series of blog entries that are designed to help both attendees and those monitoring the DevLearn backchannel from afar to prepare to participate, and to get more value out of the conference.

While we do have some plans as part of this process, what excites me most about this role is that it will be very much like the backchannel itself: something that develops organically and ultimately becomes what the interactions of the backchannel community determine it to be.

If there are ideas you would like to share on how the value of the DevLearn backchannel can be expanded this year, please do share them.  Post a comment to this blog, send me a tweet to @LnDDave, send me an e-mail to LnDDave@gmail.com, or just post to the #DevLearn hashtag to share your idea with the backchannel community at large.

I can say this though; what we’re doing here is very reflective of DevLearn.  Many conferences do a good job of reporting on what organizations are doing to take the field to greater heights.  What I’ve described here is an example of DevLearn actually being a part of that advancement, and looking to help drive our profession forward.  I’m honored and excited to be a part of it.

I’m looking forward to meeting many of you, either in person or virtually, at DevLearn this year.

See you there- David

** Click here for an archive of my backchannel resource posts

Conference Backchannels: Archive of Collected Resource Postings

I am a huge proponent of backchannel learning.  There are many conferences I would love to be able to attend, but my budget can only accommodate one or two each year.  The backchannel is an excellent resource for learning from a conference or event that you are unable to attend in-person.

I find collecting and reviewing backchannel resources to be a valuable learning experience for me, even when I am attending a conference in person.  Sharing these collections on this blog has shown that others find value in the collections as well.

As the number of these posts grows and continue to contribute value to me and others, I have created this post as an ongoing 'archive' and single point of reference to my conference backchannel collected resource posts.  The listing starts with the most recent post and goes backwards chronologically. 

Learning 2011 (November 2011)

DevLearn 2011 (November 2011)
*This resource page is located on the DevLearn 2011 website

ASTD Chapter Leader’s Conference (October 2011)

Learning 3.0 (October 2011)

mLearning DevCon 2011 (October 2011)

Resources Shared at Recent ASTD / SHRM Presentations (September 2011)

#140EDU 2011 (August 2011)

mLearn Conference 2011 (June 2011)

ASTD International Conference and Exposition 2011 (May 2011)

Resources Shared at Recent ASTD Presentations (April 2011)

CLO Symposium Spring 2011 (March 2011)

Learning Solutions 2011 (March 2011)

Training 2011 (February 2011)

ASTD TechKnowledge 2011 (February 2011)

Learning Technologies 2011 (January 2011)

DevLearn10 (November 2010)

DevLearn10 Learning Resources: Collected

In a previous posting I discussed way to learn from the DevLearn10 conference via the backchannel. I shared a couple of approaches that work for me, but I forgot one very important technique that can be very effective:

Let someone else do the work for you!

In the spirit of that technique, here are some of the many resources I have collected and bookmarked as part of my DevLearn10 backchannel learning.  I hope this list is of value to both backchannel learners and live attendees looking to enhance their learning.

For starters, the official conference website has the program guide and handouts available.  You can access it HERE.

Conference Summaries and Recaps

DevLearn, Reflected #dl10 by Cammy Bean
DevLearn 2010 Recap by Philip Hutchison
Three Lessons Learned at DevLearn 2010 by Phil Cowcill
DevLearn 2010 Reflections by Koreen Olbrish
DevLearn 2010 - but no time for blogging! by Jane Hart
DevLearn 10: Day 1 by Jay Cross
DevLearn 10: Day 2 by Jay Cross
DevLearn 10: Finale by Jay Cross
What I Learned at DevLearn 10 by Steve Nguyen
2 Emerging Learning Trends Distilled from DevLearn 2010 by Nemo
DevLearn 10 Opens in San Francisco by Bill Brandon
Live from DevLearn 2010 by Jeanine O'Neill-Blackwell
DevLearn 2010 - Part 2 by Jeanine O'Neill-Blackwell     (Added November 12th)
DevLearn 10, The Aftermath... by Laura Dickson
In the Middle of the Curve by Wendy Wickham
My DevLearn 2010 Experience (#DL10) by Brian Dusablon     (Added November 12th)
My (first) DevLearn 2010 review: A different perspective by Kevin Thorne     (Added November 12th)
DevLearn 10 Notes by Michael McCabe     (Added November 12th)
DevLearn 2010 Conference Wrap by Jill Duffy     (Added November 12th)
The DevLearn 2010 Write Up (#DL10) by Aaron Silvers     (Added November 12th)
The Wrap-Up...Much Later Than I'd Intended... by Shawn Rosler    (Added November 18th)
The DevLearn 2010 Cheat Sheet: Refresh Yourself on 4 Key Takeaways (Interviews) by Nemo (Added December 3rd)

Slide Presentations
25+ mLearning Tools in 60 Minutes by B. J. Schone
The State of Learning in the Workplace Today by Jane Hart
Intro to Compressing Audio and Video AND Best Practices for Working with Video in Learning by Nick Florio
Mining the Value of Microsharing by Steve Nguyen
Games for Learning by Richard Culatta
Design Thinking + Democracy by Aaron Silvers

Session-Specific Discussions

John Seely Brown: The Power of Pull by Cammy Bean
John Seely Brown: The Power of Pull by Brian Dusablon
Translating tried and true engagement (Jane Bozarth session) by Jeff Narvid
The State of Learning in the Workplace Today (Jane Hart session) by Sumeet Moghe
The New Social Learning with Marcia Conner - Live Blog by Sumeet Moghe
How to Create a Podcast for e-Learning, DevLearn 2010 (Rick Nielsen session) by Jill Duffy
Multiple Session Notes by Shawn Rosler
Understanding the Tools of the Social Learning Landscape (Mark Oelhert workshop) by Sumeet Moghe
John Seely Brown: The Power of Pull (Mind Map) by Clark Quinn
The e-Learning Guild Announces DemoFest 2010 Winners by Bill Brandon    (Added November 12th)

Miscellaneous
#Lrnchat Live at DevLearn by Jane Hart
Visualization of the #Dl10 Tweet Stream via the Archivist
Making Connections by Harold Jarche
Flickr Stream by Charles Jennings
Enterprise Social Learning Needs Porous Walls by Sumeet Moghe
The Faces of e-Learning by Kevin Thorne
#dl10 Tweet Stream Archive for 11/1 through 11/7
A collection of DevLearn 10 photos started by @onEnterFrame
e-Learning Pros: What did we want to be? by Cammy Bean
e-Learning Product Launches announced at DevLearn by Learning Solutions Magazine
DevLearn 10 Conference and Expo Pics by The eLearning Guild    (Added November 12th)

I will be adding to this list as I discover new resources, and will tweet updates if warranted.  If you know of a valued resource I should add to the list, please add it to the comments or tweet me a link to @LnDDave.

If you find these collections of value, I have posts that consolidate the backchannel resources from other conferences.  An archive of all of these posts can be accessed by clicking the link below:

Click here to access the archive of backchannel resource posts.

Tools for BackChannel Learning: DevLearn10

Last month I wrote a post about extracting learning from a conference you are not attending. In it I explored a number of ways that non-attendees can learn a great deal, even without attending a conference.

This week, I put much of those theories to practice, following the backchannel for the DevLearn10 conference. This blog posts expands on the recommendation from my previous post by exploring the unique backchannel learning opportunities that may exist at a conference, in this case, DevLearn10.

Explore the Program Guides

Learning from a conference is obviously easier when you actually attend it. Therefore, it's also understandable that a backchannel learner may need to do some extra pre-work to help bridge that learning gap.

One way to do that is by reviewing the conference's program guide before the conference begins. This is an excellent practice for any conference you attend, but I think the importance of this task differs for in-person and backchannel attendance. When you review the conference program for planned attendance, the general perspective is one of 'Which session do I want to attend?" For backchannel learning, the review of the program is a more critical part of the learning process, as it provides a fairly thorough overview of the themes, trends, and ideas being covered at the conference.

Another important part of the program guide review is planning what sessions you want to learn from. This, again, is in some ways even more important for the backchannel learner. When I attend a conference in person, my 'work calendar' for those days consists of something like this:

8:00am - 6:00pm: Attend Conference

It's highly unlikely that my work schedule when learning through the backchannel would read: 8:00am - 6:00pm: Follow Conference Backchannel <-- That's unrealistic in most organizations

It's therefore critical for a backchannel learner to review the program guide in advance, so that they may be able to block out time periods with speakers they may want to learn from. As a personal example, I have many projects I am currently working on, but I blocked out the time period for Marcia Conner's DevLearn10 Keynote.

DevLearn really raised the bar for program guides this year with their excellent program guide app pictured to the left. Powered by EventPilot, this app truly set a high bar for future conferences. Then again, would you expect less from the leading e-learning conference and expo?

The app contained much more than the schedule and details of all the sessions. It also included many other features of value to a backchannel learner, including:

* A live twitter feed of the conference hash tag

* A listing and summary of all of the expo exhibitors

* A great number of presentation slides from each of the sessions, which could be searched upon.

* A home page that features what's happening now

* The ability to take your own notes directly into the application, even linked to specific slides, and then email all of it to a colleague or yourself - nice!

That last bullet point alone made this application tremendously valuable to a backchannel learner. I only wish that I had discovered and explored the app more in advance of the conference so that I could leverage it more during the conference. As it was, it still created tremendous value as I explored it on the fly.

Use a Twitter 'Power Tool'

There are a great number of desktop and online tools that provide additional Twitter functionality not found via Twitter.com. Leveraging these tools can greatly enhance backchannel learning.

The tool that I use is one of the most popular: TweetDeck. TweetDeck enables a user to follow multiple Twitter feeds simultaneously. At first glance TweetDeck may seem overwhelming; in reality, it is actually filtering the Twitter stream into more targeted and actionable information. Using TweetDeck, I can simultaneously monitor my primary Twitter feed, as well as various search options.

During DevLearn, I had four primary columns open: My primary feed, my favorites, the DevLearn10 hashtag feed, and mentions. This combination of columns is, for me, the ideal backchannel learning environment. The DevLearn hashtag lists all the conference tweets. As I see something I may want to investigate further at a later time, I can set it as a favorite. If I am actively participating in the backchannel, I can immediately see if people are trying to interact with me via the mentions column.

I highly recommend TweetDeck and tools like it to enhance your general Social Media experience, and consider it to be a prerequisite for backchannel learning. The image below shows the TweetDeck layout I am using during DevLearn10.

Another reason I like TweetDeck is that it very well supports the in-and-out nature of backchannel learning. I can very easily review the tweet stream for a bit, return to my regular work for a period of time, and come back to TweetDeck without missing a beat.

I leverage TweetDeck's 'Clear All' button for this purpose. During DevLearn, I have TweetDeck running as shown in the above image. When I have the opportunity to review the backchannel, I do so. When I need to return to regular work, I click the Clear All button in each column to clear out the tweets. That way, when I return to TweetDeck later, I know anything on my screen is new and I should review.

Engage in Conference Learning Activities

DevLearn10 had a couple of excellent activities that expanded on the learning and engagement of the conference. One such activity that I participated in was called Backchatter.

Backchatter is an interesting game that further engages conference attendees. The idea behind Backchatter is simple: Participants think about the conference and choose the three words that they think will appear most often during the upcoming 60-90 minutes of backchannel. Those words are scored based on how many participants chose the word, and points are earned every time a tweet contains the word.

It was a simple game with real-time scoring that definitely added another leavel of engagement to the conference. It also enhanced backchannel learning.

For one thing, participating in this game put a backchannel participant on almost equal ground with an in-person attendee, at least in relation to the game. It also further enhanced backchannel learning. One basic rule of learning is just as true in the backchannel as it is in any other type of learning: If you are engaged, you have a better chance of learning. Backchatter definitely succeeds at increasing engagement.

Another way that Backchatter contributed to the learning was a subtle part of it's home page. It included a tag cloud that showed the most commonly chosen words of the participants. Like the program guide, this tag cloud provided a glimpse into the overall themes and ideas that were floating through the minds of conference participants.

Search the Hashtag for Tweets with Links

Monitoring a conference backchannel can be time consuming. Doing so live is preferred, as it gives you the option to interact with conference attendees. Unfortunately, that's not always an option.

When time is an issue, that doesn't eliminate backchannel learning. You can make best use of your limited time by performing an advanced search for tweets that provide more detail for your backchannel learning.

In my previous post on learning from a conference you did not attend, I suggested performing an advanced search looking for blog posts about the conference. For DevLearn10, I used a different approach that I think casts a wider, and more effective, net.

Using the advanced search functionality of Twitter (available at http://search.twitter.com/), search on the conference hashtag. In addition, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the search options, you will see an check box option labelled 'Containing Links'; check that. Here's what the results of such a search look like:

Since most tweets referencing blog posts include a link, this search covers that. It also catches much more valuable information for backchannel learning, including:

• Photos from the conference, often including pictures of slides being displayed.
• Links to resources and tools that speakers recommend
• Links to videos that compliment the conference content.

These are just a few of the techniques that can be used for backchannel learning. I have found them very helpful in enabling me to learn a great deal from the DevLearn10 conference. I hope these tips help you learn from an upcoming conference.

If you have any additional tips for learning via the backchannel, please add it via a comment.