Somehow it's already that time of year - time for vast swathes of the L&D world to congregate at Olympia in London for the Learning Technologies exhibition and conference. This year the event is taking place on 1st & 2nd February and is packing the venue to the rafters with talks, exhibitors and learning professionals from across the world.
The line up is quite comprehensive, so here are some of our picks from the 2 day event - or you take a look at the full conference programme or the exhibitor list if you want to see everything that's going on.
The opening addresses
You may only just be digesting your first coffee of the day, but the opening sessions on both days are worthy of your attention. Day 1 is Future change: living and learning in the connected society with Thimon de Jong, focusing on how we can shape learning around the emerging expectations and trends in society and the workplace, from AI, VR & data through to the transition to more informal & personal ways of doing business.
Day 2 kicks off with Story for learning and learning from story wirth Deborah Frances-White, which should be an entertaining and informative session on how a narrative and imprvoed structure can make your training sessions much easier to digest for learners.
A debate over lunch
There are lunchtime sessions on both days, with topics such as:
- Can mandatory training ever be fun?
- Skills, salaries and sentiments in L&D
- Women in L&D - time for action!
If you're not busy networking or dashing to Pret during your lunch break, these talks look like they'll be inspiring some interesting discussion.
The barcamps
There are two barcamps for you to get involved in: the Learning Tech barcamp, and the xAPI barcamp - both take place on the Wednesday after the conference activities in nearby pubs. Listen to talks from industry experts, with the bonus of having a drink in your hand. A good way to wind down after a busy first day!
The hashtag
Make sure you follow #LT17UK both before and during the event to get up-to-the-moment news and feedback from the sessions and exhibition. Add your own thoughts to the discussion, and use it as a handy way to find people to connect - we'll be doing out part by seeing who wants to keep us company for coffee and cake during break time, so make sure you follow TrainingZone too!
The free seminar programme
There are 150 free seminars taking place in the exhibtion space across the 2 days, with subjects ranging from:
- The current and future applications of AI in learning
- Using social to supercharge your training programme
- How Dell transformed their global content delivery process
- Best practices for a successful LMS implementation
- Gamification RIP: 2017 is the year of gameful design
- Mobile learning for a great customer experience at Air France KLM
- Policy distribution, acceptance & compliance through rapid authoring
We'll be checking out as many of these as we can in between the conference sessions - the seminar programme is fairly vast so we're not sure which yet!
Useful blogs
We also really enjoyed the Top tips for Learning Technologies 2017 blog from Good Practice, full of handy tips. Kate Graham from Fosway has also written a useful LinkedIn post, 14 key people and four useful things to know about Learning Technologies 2017.
Hopefully that's given you a good taster of what to expect - let us know what you're looking forward to in the comment below, or keep up to date with the event by following the hashtag LT17UK on Twitter.
