Recently I had the pleasure of attending the Charity Learning Consortium's annual conference at Prospero House near London Bridge. I would have attended both days had I not been on the judging panel for one of the LPI's Learning Awards, but hey. November/December is always hectic. A packed two days saw talks from a few familiar faces in the L&D industry mixed with some new blood, plus a couple of people who usually occupy the HR space but made the short journey across the hall to the L&D dept.

Back in September when I interviewed CLC MD Martin Baker for the podcast, I got a flavour for not just the challenges that the CLC was looking at in the coming months, but also the third sector as a whole, and attending their event the other day clarified this position further. As you would imagine, budget is something often at the top of mind for charities, and this came through at the event. Talks were very much outcome rather than process-focused.

Another through line for the sessions was the use of video: on the back of the success of the CLC's video channel, it seemed they wanted to espouse this enthusiasm for the medium, as a learning tool, an engagement method, and a promotional means too.

A key to keeping interest levels high was keeping the sessions short, and the speakers' talks clipped along nicely at 45 minutes apiece.

Opening day two was Dr Mark Davies from Codesuualt Films who gave us a potted history of video, and how it can be used most effectively.

Following Dr Davies was Jane Hart, who needs little introduction, other than to say she kicked off her talk with her now-essential 'top 100 learning tools' slides - viewed over a million times on Slideshare. No.1? Still Twitter. So, social learning is still a huge focus part of the L&D of the future. To prove that it isn't just fluffy desk jockeys who turn to social networks for a quick hit of L&D she pulled out this stat: 25% of doctors use social media daily to scan for new research, from the journal of medical internet research.

Here were some other choice sound bites:

"'we are seeing an increasing consumerisation of IT", "People now learn continuously, on demand, socially, autonomously, in the workflow"

And to end with another killer stat and quote, even though "you can't train people to be social, you can only show them what it's like to be social" apparently Deloitte predicts that by the end of 2013 90% of the Fortune 500 will have implemented an enterprise social network (eg Yammer). Food for thought.

Next up was Perry Timms, who took us through a hypothetical day in the life of an HR professional, and all the tech she would use - notably there was 'no email, "it's transactional and perfunctory", but of course, a wealth of social networks and collaborative tools, most of which were free and open source. Perry is one of the most compelling speakers I've seen, enlivening any topic but doing it in an informed and irreverent way too. His talk ended with a quote too (there's a theme here...)

This is not an Information Age, it's an age of networked intelligence - Don Tapscott

With that I had to head back to HQ. Shame I couldn't stay longer - the part I did attend was great, and everyone looked like they were faring well despite the awards ceremony the night before. For more on that including a full list of winners, click here.