Thoughts from #LT22UK
It’s been a while since I was last at Learning Technologies conference. Since it moved to London’s ExCel centre, I haven’t been there, and it was great to see that the conference and exhibition is growing. Here’s a round up of thoughts overall. In the next post, I’ll write about things I learned from the conference sessions specifically.
Teams continue to do good work, let’s not knock that
It can be really easy to say that there’s nothing different happening in L&D. Well, that’s also an indication that there continues to be good work, and that’s a good thing. L&D teams in the last two years have been thrown an incredible amount of change along with everyone else, and still maintained a steady level of delivery and activity. More power to teams still alive and standing and continuing their good work.
Talent Teams need to be more joined up
This was a big theme for me. Talent acquisition, talent management and talent development/L&D as well as other People functions need to be much more joined up about how they’re developing career pathways. More clearly, though, if we’re going to pay real attention to the skills agenda, that has to be a joined up effort. Some organisations are doing this, but many remain siloed in their approach, and that won’t be good enough to develop our workforce to meet the skills gap.
New joiners need a clear talent / L&D career pathway, not just standard courses
It’s really not good enough not to pay attention to giving new starters an L&D or a career pathway when they join an organisation. Yes, we hire people to fulfil a role today, and we need to think about what it possible and where there is potential. How do we build towards that? Where are the opportunities?
LMS/LXP platforms have come a long way
There is a lot happening in the LMS/LXP space. Companies are being bought by bigger players, and there is big money floating around this whole space. That should mean the products are improving, and there is improved user experience. But from what I saw in the exhibition, there are many vendors. My key concern remains that vendors have a real lack of insight and understanding into L&D and wider people functions. The LMS/LXP solves a problem of access to content - and there is much better developed content than we’ve had for a long while. But, it’s the organisational system that these technologies sit in which need to be considered.
AI and VR are becoming more mature, but there’s a long way to go
I saw a lot more AI and VR companies on the exhibition floor, and that’s only a good thing. The promise of VR has always been high, but now we’re seeing more use cases. That’s only a good thing, but we’re still limited by access to the tech itself due to the cost. VR is a good option for developing insight, empathy, and skills development. AI is great for improving process, and for identifying patterns in user behaviour to optimise an experience. AI will also be great at servicing up content, but also
Many things remain the same
Many things remain the same. The industry still has a lot of men in senior roles - head of sales, head of customer success, head of design, CEO, CLO, yada yada yada. For all the talk of D&I, there still remains little effort in recruiting and growing talent in senior roles. I attended the #womeninlearning session on Day 1, and there’s a lot of good thinking and action on how to improve representation and inclusion of women and women of colour in senior roles, but there’s a lot of work to do.
The industry still is focused on tech in silos, and there isn’t nearly enough effort on tech ecosystems. This app will be great for this. This tech will be great for that. Use our tech for this content. That’s not how L&D is set up - we have to deliver against a variety of organisational needs, and we need improved thinking in how tech speaks to tech beyond APIs.
Tech vendors are really bad at showing how they can learn from each other, or collaborate with each other. L&D needs to understand how VR, AI and an LMS can all solve for organisational problems, not in isolation but collectively, because we’re trying to solve for organisational problems. There is a problem with the RFP process for sure, but that aside tech collaboration is a far stronger proposition for an organisation, than convincing procurement that your tech is value for money.
L&D isn't mature or capable enough to figure out how tech can and should speak to each other for improved organisational effectiveness. We're not tech or product experts, and that's where we need improved collaboration with vendors.
