I need to give thanks to Jay Cross and Learntrends, hosts of corporate learning online conferences. They allowed me to present at the April 2009 Learntrends Online Conversations on boosting the performance of organizations through learning.
They hoped to keep the conversation platform open for 24 hours, enabling people to continue the dialog around the world. I knew they needed to fill some empty spaces in the agenda. So I thought I would not find a better opportunity to make a presentation online.
I was so excited!! I have chosen the topic: Selling eLearning in your organization, naming and overcoming the obstacles. I requested to make the presentation only on April 20 2009, in the evening
My presentation was accepted and added to the Agenda on the morning of April 21, a few hours before the opening of Learntrends Conversations.
My presentation was scheduled for April 22, 4.00 GMT (1.00 am in my country). I have requested this time, early in the morning, because I knew they needed to fill those empty hours and at that hour everyone at home would be sleeping, so I would not be distracted.
I soon found that all the articles I had on “Selling eLearning in your organization, naming and overcoming the obstacles” were authored by only one blogger. I didn’t want to use my presentation to talk only about what some else had already posted!! So, the Learntrends Conversations Online Event started, I needed to listen to other presentations, it was April 21 on the afternoon and I still didn’t knew what to talk about on my presentation. I had no topic, yet!!!
Listening to other presentations gave me the clue to what to talk about so, for me, it was really worth the time to have listened to other people’s presentations. I didn’t have much time to reflect about the topic I had selected, though
The night arrived and my presentation was only a couple hrs away. I was so nervous and I started walking in my backyard. After walking during 30 min I felt ready to start my presentation
I didn’t expect what happened later. I expected to talk during 15 or 20 min and perhaps about 5-10 min of Q and A. My presentation lasted 61 min!!!!, since there was no one scheduled after me.
There were 20 people in the Elluminate room but you really don’t know how many of them are really there listening to you. I remember that Jay and 2 or 3 others asked me some questions. I want to give thanks to all of them. They were so kind to spend their time, listening to me, and while my English was bad, they seemed to be really interested in what I was talking about.
Update – During my presentation I talked about the importance of using email in elearningl! Everyone uses email to communicate and collaborate online.
An example I have found is that the University of Phoenix was using Outlook Express and Newsgroups to teach online courses.
Now, some months later, I just read about Google Wave
Millions of companies have sharepoint, wiki’s etc. and they ARE NOT USING THEM. They keep sending emails to each other with recent updates in documents. They have done so for years.
So what is the solution? Stop calling it google documents and start calling it google wave. Make it look like email. Make it feel like email. Make it just replace email all together.
It’s like giving all the idiots out there shared revisioned document control, but putting an email-like interface on top of it and tell them ‘its just like email’.
It’s brilliant because this one will actually work. The challenge was never technical. We have seen all this before. But not integrated like this and masquerated as if it’s email.
And you have to be a real out-touch-with-reality geek to not realize that.
Even Google recognizes the importance of email!!
My Elluminate session was recorded. You can listen to my presentation, including the backchannel, from my Archive.org Moving Images page
I want to give special thanks to Jay. He was always online attending the conversations!!! Sorry Jay for this late post. It was a long post and not so easy to write for me.
I want to give thanks to my British friend Nicola Avery who was the only friend so kind enough to have some Skype Video Talks with me which gave me the confidence to make a presentation online, speaking in English.
I want also to give thanks to David Delgado who was kind enough to give me feedback about my presentation
