Thanks Taleo Research: A Few Talent Experts You Should Follow

Here's a very nice extract from a blog post on the Taleo Research blog called A Few Talent Experts You Should Follow. David Wilkins, Taleo's VP of Research, wrote this following attending our Symposium roundtable event in London on the 28th March.

Elearnity Symposium, David Wilson, and David Perring

For those of you in the US who haven’t heard of Elearnity, it’s time to take notice.  These guys know their stuff, and they host an amazing event.  Both David’s know the European market cold and they know learning – not just the technology, but the design, implementation, and strategy side as well.  And they have been around this stuff for as long as or longer than me – which is saying something.

That experience brings moderation and insight.  They’ve seen it all, probably tried most of it, and then settled on what’s worked – they know that new technologies usually don’t displace old ones overnight, and that the often more pertinent questions are “what new problems does a change in technology help us solve?” and “what existing problems are better solved with new technologies or new approaches?” and most importantly, “what still works just fine the way it is?”  Like I said, moderation and insight.  It’s a rare trait among thought leaders to evangelize new approaches in a thoughtful, balanced way, but that’s what they do, and it’s why I respect them as much as I do.  They “get it” in ways that most folks don’t.  Needless to say, you should follow these guys and pay attention to what they say.  Even more so if any part of your company does learning in Europe since that is their home turf.

Given the above backdrop, it shouldn’t be surprising that these guys think about events differently too.  Here’s how the Elearnity Symposium works:  round tables at which multiple vendors and multiple talent practitioners sit.  The practitioners kick off a discussion topic that they are collectively interested in discussing from a list of about 40 suggested subjects (all based on questions and insights from the Elearnity consulting practice), and the vendors then share their thoughts and perspectives.  Perspectives lead to dialog and conversation, and in this exchange, buyers and practitioners get a sense for the vendors’ worldviews and directions, and vendors get a broad sense of the overall issues facing the market.  20 min per table, then the vendors switch to a new table and new set of questions.  Rinse and repeat three times per session across three sessions.

After participating in just two of these sessions, I had more info and a better sense of the market than I could have gotten in multiple days’ worth of client and prospect meetings.  And for the talent management practitioners, they heard more collective expertise about market trends, exemplars, and best practices than they would get in multiple days at a conference.  Here are just a few of the topics that we discussed:

• The trend toward “learner-centric” approaches and what they mean from a strategy and design perspective.
• Planned adoption, roadblocks, strategies, and directions related to mobile learning.
• Key design principles and best practices in blending formal, social, and informal learning models.
• Key causes for LMS implementation failures or “failure to meet expectations.”
• Platform discussions regarding the pros and cons of enterprise social platforms vs. social tools inside the LMS.

Good stuff right?  What was great about this exchange was that format fostered honesty and authenticity.  It was also pretty obvious which vendors knew their stuff after just one or two rounds of discussion, and which ones were just serving up talking points.  It was equally obvious where the practitioners were in their adoption curve for emerging trends.  If you’re based in Europe, this is definitely an event to check out next year.  If not, I’d still follow the Elearnity team – David Wilson and David Perring in particular.  They know their stuff, they know what matters in the trends that are happening, and they can give sage advice about how to get “there” from “here.”

Thanks David ... we appreciate the positive comments. 

Here's more information on the roundtables on our website. Please contact us if you are a UK/European Enterprise-class organisation and would like to be involved in future research discussions and roundtables.