Where and when
The Learning and Technologies Exhibition and Conference 2009, 28-29 January 2009,Olympia 2, and Olympia 2 Conference Centre, London
Are you ready for this?
More than 3,000 visitors are expected to attend the annual two-day bombardment of technology and high-tech learning solutions at London’s Olympia at the end of the month.
The Learning and Technologies Exhibition and Conference celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. And the organiser says this year’s show will be the biggest yet with more than 120 exhibitors, 50 free seminars and as many as 350 conference delegates descending on Olympia 2.
The event is split between a free exhibition that showcases the leading technology used to support learning at work and a paid-for conference featuring a range of speakers.
Exciting line-up
Event organiser Ian Smout says: “The conference programme has an exciting line-up of topics and speakers and the exhibition has expanded to accommodate the demand for space, and includes all the leading providers shaping the way we learn and develop corporate skills.
“There has been considerable change in organisational and technology supported learning over the past decade and the Learning Technologies exhibition and conference has reflected these changes. The 2009 event will show visitors all the latest advances in learning technology and hopefully a few insights into some of the technologies to come.”
Record numbers
Despite the current economic climate, the organiser is confident of hosting the biggest show yet after attracting record numbers to a recent web-based seminar linked to the show. More than 170 professionals attended the Learning and Skills Group’s webinar on how blogs, wikis and RSS feeds are impacting on learning. The popularity of the webinar highlights the importance of new technology and shows just how fast the tools that assist learning can change.
Visitors to the exhibition can find information on a host of subjects including virtual classrooms, organisational strategy, measuring technology and collaborative, mobile or e-learning.
Some of the biggest names in the tech world will be exhibiting, including Adobe Systems, Cisco-Webex, SkillSoft and Video Arts. Staff from Training and Coaching Today and sister publication Personnel Today will also be on hand to meet readers and can be found at stand number three.
During the exhibition, free seminars will demonstrate how learning technologies are influencing the way we learn at work, covering a range of topics.
Visitors can choose from 50 free seminars that will be running every 45 minutes in locations across the venue. Meanwhile, delegates can enjoy lectures from up to 46 speakers including some of the best-known figures in the industry.
Learning Technologies 2009 : the conference
This year’s conference features 46 speakers who will – hopefully – enlighten delegates on everything from virtual worlds to using open source technology.
The opening address by author and educationalist Tony Buzan will argue that the financial crisis was largely caused by inadequate learning and misguided thinking. He will explore change, learning and the power of the mind to emphasise his message that, in tough times, skills are even more important.
The conference will also bring together three of the industry’s best-known figures – Donald Clark, Jay Cross and Charles Jennings – for an insight into what the future holds. The closing session, with the above speakers, will look at lessons learnt by the profession in the past decade and consider how the boom in technology has supported workplace learning.
Conference chairman Donald Taylor says the session will put the industry under the spotlight. “For the first time we will bring together on stage three of the greatest thinker-practitioners of the world of technology-supported learning. Their session will ask what has been learnt after 10 years of revolution in learning.”
Another session will look at how social media tools such as Facebook and YouTube can be used by learning and development professionals as part of their work. Jane Hart, from the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies and Andy Tedd, an e-Learning and Social Media Consultant, will explain the dos and don’ts of using these tools for development.
“Boundaries between work and learning are blurring to produce ’embedded workflow learning’ where people learn almost without noticing it. Using social media communities to bring people together makes this work. But it’s not about the technology, it is about the right tools with the right learning management processes.”
After the hype surrounding Second Life, Marco Tippmer of Capgemini Consulting and Ron Edwards of Ambient Performance will discuss how virtual worlds can be used in organisational learning.
George Siemens will explain how new ways of delivering content can impact on the way training professionals meet business aims. “Learning in business is changing; money and time used to constrain learning to the classroom or on-the-job. Today, new ways of delivering content and electronic networking are demanding new approaches from the L&D profession,” he says.
