So I got back safe from Online Educa. That's good. In many ways I feel privileged to have been at all, considering that some people, including a few TrainingZone members, didn't even get off the ground as the weather affected flights all over the UK and further afield. But, with over 2000 delegates the Intercontinental Hotel was a hive of activity for both days. A cosmopolitan mix of delegates, speakers and suppliers, Online Educa was truly an international smorgasbord of the best minds in the business.

Most of the buzz and chatter centred around that little device that's slightly bigger than an A5 sheet of paper and looks a little bit like a big iPhone, the iPad. If people weren't speaking about it, they were using it to blog from the talks where people were speaking about it, and if suppliers weren't demonstrating how their software works on an iPad, then they were detailing plans on how 2011 is the year when they're going to roll out their software for the iPad. Right now, to me it feels like one of those things that I'm not sure I need, but would probably quite like. But that view may well change as we all become more willingly mobile (from a work point of view).

To read my coverage of the conference, check the Cover It Live panel on the right hand side of the front page of the site.

Until Learning Technologies then, that's it for gadding off to events as we buckle down to plan next year's publishing schedule, and take a look back over the year past. Today, January 2010. A sluggish month where everyone's skint, hungover, maybe a little depressed after overdoing it at chrimbo, TZ's January was invigorating, inspiring and refreshingly teetotal. The theme was 'trends for 2010', and featured great pieces with Henry Mintzberg and Wendy Stern. It was a solid start to the year with a lot of popular pieces, and set us up nicely for the coming months ahead.

Tomorrow, we review February.