WorldTalk
WORLDTALK
ATD 2015: A Truly World Class Event
The conference is the largest of its type in the world, and this year’s event attracted more than 10,500 L&D professionals from more than 80 different countries.
DPG’s Commercial Director, Bob Wagner, shares his thoughts on the event.
The sheer scale of ATD is mind boggling – four days, three international keynotes, more than 400 speakers, 300 conference sessions and a huge exhibition with more than 400 exhibition stands.
World class keynotes
This year’s conference had three keynotes, all of whom were outstanding.
Avon’s former global CEO, Andrea Jung, talked about the qualities of successful leaders, and why the most successful business leaders are those who constantly challenge their own actions and thinking.
2013 TED prize winner, Sugata Mitra, argued that traditional learning environments aren’t fit for today’s world, whether for education or for business. He advocates SOLE – self organised learning environments – creative and collaborarive learning spaces, fuelled both by leading edge technology and eager learners.
The third keynote, Grafitti artist Eric Wahl, opened his session by creating a stunning portrait of U2’s Bono, then challenged people to ‘unthink’, be disruptive, take risks, and be innovative, arguing that these are most important skills for driving change.
While all alluded to the key role that technology will play in the new world, all three agreed that success in business is ultimately about hearts and minds and people, and L&D has a key part to play in this.
Wide-ranging learning opportunities
The rest of the conference programme was divided into eight areas, with tracks focusing on tracks on career development, human capital, leadership development, the science of learning, training delivery and learning technologies amongst others. There were also four specific industry tracks for delegates working in government, healthcare, higher education and sales.
Community development and social learning are hot topics global L&D and as a result it was standing room only when DPG’s Communities Manager, Mike Collins, took to the stage to talk about creating learning communities, based on his success in developing the DPG Community.
New technologies
More than 400 exhibitors participated in the expo and while every shape and form of L&D was represented, the big themes – cloud LMS, mobile learning, games in learning and of course social learning, which was trending throughout the conference, generated the biggest buzz.
However, it’s clear that technology alone will not change culture or behavior. L&D can be the catalyst for change but we must look from within first to ensure we are ready, before we try to sell new ways of learning to our organisations.
10 | TRAINING MAGAZINE MIDDLE EAST Q3 2015