Masie Learning 2007 Review, Part 2

It’s now been some time since Masie’s Learning 2007 Conference, and I’m finally getting a chance to review the conference from my perspective. Before today’s post, you got to read a very insightful post from Michael. Michael’s years of experience and expertise shine through in every post he writes (not to mention every thing he does). With me, you get a different perspective—after all, I’m the newbie, and I’m the marketer.

As a newbie, I’ve now logged a year in the industry. Certainly, I’m still a newbie, but I’m definitely feeling immersed. Consequently, I think my perspective on the conference, while very similar to Michael's, is slightly different. One thing the Masie conference is (obviously) all about is what’s new on the horizon, particularly with technology. And that’s an exciting prospect for me. The majority of my background is in marketing technology, and while I’m no “Code Fu” master, I do consider myself at least minimally a geek.

I think the promises of technology to improve functions, work and life are fascinating. At the same time, though, I think technology has a high capacity to too easily over promise. Or at least, often people selling technology over promise. I imagine most readers are shaking their heads in agreement. You’ve been there—we all have—when technology simply doesn’t deliver.

I’ve thought a lot about this over the past year, and in particular since Learning 2007. Now, I hesitate to make mention of this, but I feel it’s necessary: For all the talk of technology in learning, in reality our industry is lagging behind. This doesn’t mean we’re slow adopters (though we may or may not be). It just means that the technology we talk about, the “promises” we get jazzed about, tend to be—ahem—soooo 2003. Blogs, wikis, Flash, et al are, in reality, kind of old hat.

Don’t misunderstand. There’s really nothing wrong with lagging behind. And in fact, there may be a lot right with it. Why? Because while time heals all wounds, time tends to also vet bad technological solutions from the good (and that means not wasting time and money “healing” from implementing the wrong technology). As a result, being slow on the uptake can give us the opportunity to focus on proven technological solutions and avoid being guinea pigs.

Still, even proven technology can overshoot. Ultimately, that’s what I came away with from Learning 2007. Like Michael, I marveled at the young violinist and the crystal clear video that so beautifully allowed me to watch, and imagined of all the practical applications. Yet, I also watched a long session on Second Life, and while it had some “cool factor,” I couldn’t place a realistic and practical approach to it—or at least, I couldn’t see how it offered anything more than a lot of other proven learning techniques offer.

But that’s just me, the newbie. I’ll hold out the possibility that my lack of experience in the industry makes my assessment horribly off base, and I’d love to hear from you if you think so.

Either way, though (and here comes the plug—after all, I’m a marketer), this conference made me see once again why Allen’s value proposition is so strong. We don’t try to sell you technological promises. Rather, we’re very utilitarian in our approach to technology. If it will facilitate the learning process, great! If not, why bother? In the long run, whether in the world of learning or any other, that’s how choosing technology ought to work if we want to avoid empty buzz and unfulfilled promises.