Conferences

Day 1 was a huge hit with me (and hopefully everyone else!), and now we’re rolling into  Day 2! Today’s the day when I’ll be speaking about all of my top tips for Articulate Storyline 360, but before that, I’ll be attending a bunch more sessions!

Keynote: Lori Silverman – Make Your Message Stick: Say It With a Story

Lori and I had a helpful discussion about presentation skills earlier in the week. That discussion left me excited  to hear her keynote today because I know she’ll have a ton of actionable tips for us. She reached out to a ton of other folks, and she’ll be spending her keynote answering everyone’s questions!

When should we use stories? Lori says not when there’s a fire in your building! Stories in business are to move people to action. Today we have research to support the fact that story is a whole body and whole brain process. Lori wrote a book, Wake Me Up When the Data is Over, and when the book was finished, she had an ah-ha moment  – there was no definition of story. She quickly met with industry experts to rectify that.

Good stories set the context, introduce the main character, resonates with everyone, and has a call to action. Different types of stories have different structures, depending on the message you want to get across.

The interesting thing about Lori’s session is that she answered all of her questions with a story.

Lori explains that we need to “free the story from the data”. The story is most impactful. In an example about donations where there are three groups, the group that only had the story, and none of the other stuff (e.g., data), had the most amount of donations. The story was what mattered most to those donating.

Hot take: Data visualizations are not insights. They are just data. Insights are meaning – the story. 

Overall, Lori is clearly an expert in the world of story. When I spoke with her earlier in the week, one of the best pieces of advice she had for me was to take my stories on a walk. This is sage advice, though admittedly, I still struggle with this. After a baseball accident that left me with post-concussion syndrome, no matter how much I practice a presentation, or take my stories on a walk, I still have difficulty in being the storyteller/presenter I’ve always aspired to me. My brain still needs to lean on assistive technology. It’s extremely frustrating, and it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, but it’s still a struggle. Though according to Lori, a well-constructed story can carry a poor teller – so there may still be hope for me yet!

David Glow – LearnHacks: Slick Tricks and Wicked Moved for Learning Professionals

I will always remember one thing about David: At the very first conference I presented at, David made it a point to come to my room, introduce himself, and wish me luck – even though he couldn’t stay to attend the session. It meant a lot to me. When I  saw that he was speaking at The Alchemy Lab, I had to grab a seat in his session!

On quick review of his slide deck, David has a ton of great tips he’s going to be sharing – one of which I too will be sharing in my session!

Congratulations, Glow Girls! It’s not a presentation from David without a kid shoutout! Also – I’m shocked to say I’ve seen your  wife’s foot before!

Trick 1: Double-Click Format Painter

Double-clicking format painter allows you you to streamline your development in Storyline and Microsoft Office by letting you format paint multiple objects until you de-select the format painter. So many people don’t realize you can do this, and it saves so much time!

Trick 2: Coordinate Class Materials

In this next tip, David is sharing how to link Word and PowerPoint. This used to be called ‘send to Word’,  but now when you  go File  >  Export  > Create Handouts >  Select Paste link. This feature has been around for nearly 20 years! When you create the paste link, it creates a relationship between documents.

Trick 2.5: Go Boss Level

Now that you know how to link between PowerPoint and Word, David shows us how to go ‘boss level’ by selecting, in PowerPoint, “Notes Master”, move the notes area off the screen. Then, go View  > Notes Page, the instructor notes appears on  the side (off the page). Add a textbook for  ‘Participant Notes’. Now, when you go to Print  > Notes Page, you can print participant materials without showing the Instructor Notes. Very handy tip.

Trick 3: Show Impact

• ROI: Make it about Return, or they will focus on the Investment.
• Make Friends with Finance: Be a great partner to have great partnership – if you have that partnership, the finance folks will likely help you defend the ROI argument.
• Quiz First: A common opportunity for strong ROI. If we quiz first, we can identify deficiencies more clearly, which allows you to prioritize.

Trick 4: Slide Master Layers

David discusses how slide masters are under-utilized, and more specifically, slide master layers. He illustrates this by adding a chat button on every slide. To do this, the chat button is placed on a layer in the slide masters. The button is on one layer and the dialog box it brings up is on another layer. Anything put on a layer on the master slide will appear on all slides universally (if called upon to do so).

Trick 5: Sound Advice

I  missed this one responding to someone’s question – whoops!

Trick 6: SCORM Cloud

If something isn’t working properly on someone’s LMS, the first order of business is to test it on SCORM Cloud as this will help you identify whether it’s environmental (the user’s environment), or the SCORM file. This is also a great place  o host portfolio pieces.

Overall, David had some great tips, resources, and tricks, and I’m sure folks left with at least 1 new tip that they action right away!

Sam Rogers: Creating eLearning Videos That Don’t Suck

As someone who works very heavily in video-based courses, I’m intrigued by this topic. As someone who records a ton of screencasts, I’m hoping to take a tip or two from this session to help improve upon what I’m already doing with my screencasts. This will also be the last session of the day for me – mine follows, and then I have to duck out to finish supper and celebrate my husband’s birthday.

Sam begins by discussing his experience creating YouTube Certified videos, and he’s going to share some of his tips from the trenches with us. With e-learning, we’re helping people get from where they are to where they need to go. We want the content to make sense, but video really helps create emotional engagement which can increase attention and retention.

Creating quality e-learning videos is not about the tools. No matter how much you spend on video production, you can’t guarantee the quality of the video. Focus on the script. Focus on the learning objectives. Focus on the content that needs to be conveyed.

For e-learning videos, smartphones and tablets are usually sufficient. We want to create the smallest ‘effective dose’ when it comes to training videos, and I could not agree more. It’s the old nice to know vs. need to know argument.  Giving people more than they need will only make them want to click off or skip ahead, and there’s very little learning in that!

Video Capture Tips:

• Turn your device – landscape mode
• Turn on Airplane Mode – just be a camera
• Click and hold screen with camera app open – AE/AF mode is accessible
• Don’t zoom in/out – this is just cropping things out; zoom by moving your body toward what you want to shoot
• Ensure your microphone is close enough to what it is recording  – purchasing an external mic would be useful
• Position the mic accordingly –  Use the Cindy Crawford mole position as a job aid
• Never shoot with effects – Filters are fun, but they have no place in training videos, and if you insist on them, apply the filters afterward – not while shooting
• Keep the light at your back
• Hold still – and avoid looking like a space shuttle that’s been hit
• If you don’t have a tripod, use the t-rex position (stand low, get stable, press record)
• Start, stop, move, repeat – Start recording, stop recording, move, start recording, etc.
• Play it back – watch the clip you recorded before moving on
• What to wear? Solid colour, not all black, not all white, no glasses, no flashy jewelry
• Where to look? Depends, but once you decide, commit – don’t change

Overall, Sam was fantastic – he delivered so many great tips that people can use with the devices they have on hand – we are all one step closer to being able to create high-quality e-learning videos!

Thank you again to the eLearning Alchemy team for putting this conference together (please do it again!)

I can’t thank Clint and The Alchemy Lab team enough for all of the hard work they put in, bringing a digital L&D conference to folks – FOR FREE/BY DONATION – just when everyone needed a professional development pick-me-up. Thank you, thank you, thank you! There are so many great sessions that I had trouble choosing, and will have to go back and watch the replays of the ones I missed out on.

Keynote: Karl Kapp – The Power of Play and Games in These Uncertain Times

The conference kicks off with a great keynote in Karl. Most people know his name and/or books, and his sessions are some of my favourite to attend at conferences. We’ll be talking about how to use games to help predict future behaviour.

In March 2020, there was a 75% increase in playing games around the world! WHAT?! And 1.6 billion spent on software and gaming devices. That’s bananas! 

How can we play games for learning outcomes, and not just to pass the time? Kapp discusses how games are not just about playing; games help us cope, enhance well-being, and to socialize. We live in a wild world where new games exist: Corona Ball and Social Distancing Tag. Oi vey. Did you know that Candy Land was created because of the polio epidemic? Me neither!

Karl moves on to discuss adapting games to our environment, explaining that card games that were previously distributed to organizations to make learning (various topics) more fun/meaningful, have moved to a digital environment. Games can be informative – such as the pandemic-related games. People are interested in these games for a variety reasons, but a lot of these games teach!

Plague, for example, helps educate and allows us to place our anxieties into the larger content, and make sense of the world around us.

The Sims were released in February 2020. There was a virus in the Sims the occurred in April of 2000 – if you didn’t clean your guinea pig’s cage, put your hand in the cage and got bitten, you would get the disease and could die. The idea was that you could recover from the disease if you treated it correctly.

Whyville had a virus outbreak in February 2002, whypox. People learned in this game that there were ways to cover the disease, contract the disease, avoid the disease, prevent spreading, or spreading the disease. Students who played the game, became more educated with how to handle disease.

The World of Warcraft Corrupted Blood Incident was the largest unplanned game-based virus. If you were near the end of the game, and went to fight Hakkar, you and your pets could contract the disease. Once studied, it was found that the spread was similar to how viruses are spread in real-life. For example, community spread. Blizzard, the game-maker, came into the game and tried to quarantine players, but eventually had to program a patch release to resolve the issue.

In 2019, a Government sponsored table top game, called Crimson Contagion emerged. The outcomes of the game found:

• Insufficient federal  funding for a severe pandemic
• Confusing on how to apply the Defense Production Act
• The current medical supply chain and production capacity could not meet the demand
• Global manufacturing would be unable to meet the demand for PPE

In today’s world, this is all very familiar. Perhaps had key decision-making folk played this game, they would have learned a thing or two.

In closing, Karl summarizes the power of play and games as helping to acknowledge content (e.g., return-to-work from Coronavirus), they help calm, they help educate, and when the outcomes are observed in some games, they can be used to predict behaviour. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: I always love Karl’s sessions. They’re always super informative, and this session was no different!

Kassy LaBorie – Interact and Engage! Activities for Engaging Virtual Training

I’m excited for this session – Kassy’s such a lovely personality, and while I don’t do a ton of virtual training myself (right now), this is an incredible topic and Kassy is the queen of virtual training! In my alter ego of instructor, I want to load my arsenal with tips and tricks.

First off – As a Microsoft Teams user, I’m both excited and terrified by the mention of new features coming this month….eeeee. Good? Bad? We’ll have to see!

What are we doing here? There are a lot of different names for what we’re doing – online training, webinar, virtual training – it’s kind of like job titles in Learning and Development.

With this conference, we’re doing a Webinar. There are lower-level learning objectives, a larger number of attendees, and are interactive. Live virtual classroom training involves  higher-level learning objectives, smaller groups of participants, and is interactive/collaborative.

So, within webinars, what can we do to help make them less passive, and more engaging? Start by identifying the goals and objectives, determine what’s social (which objectives are best completed with others?), and then map interactions to the platform features (what interactions will you create using the platform you’re given).

LaBorie talks about the importance of warming up – Show folks how to use the tool (e.g., whiteboard, muting, etc.) or through reflection. Warm ups allow users to prepare themselves for learning. Recipe for the warm ups:

• Get people connected to content/tools
• Start the conversation and establish the environment
• Map the features

Next up – ice breakers. Whenever I start a workshop with an ice breaker, I always ask how many folks dread these. I ask them because the introvert in me has always been someone who would rather crawl inside of myself than participate in an icebreaker. The responses are always up and down – some workshops, people love them, some workshops, people hate them, and some workshop is a mix. Maybe we should just rebrand?

For collaborative discussion, you can start with change discussions, such as providing groups with quotes and asking that they choose one that resonates with them, which they will discuss with their groups.

Scavenger hunts can appeal to the inner competitive player in all of us, and can be a great way of both locating information, content, or resources, as well as engaging participants in the content/subject matter.

Making connections activities are perfect for wrapping up a section of the training. This is very similar to making meaning conferences in K-12. Images are presented (or topics, no visual needed), and participants create a narrative/story.

This was a great session from Kassy! One of the things I really enjoyed was that each activity presented came with a recipe. And a recipe is a good way of remembering how to deploy any activity you design.

Matt Ash – From Betamax to Fleedwood Mac:  Failure & How to Bounce Back

I’m waiting in the session lobby, so I’m gonna go ahead and turn on some Fleetwood Mac to prepare!

Matt is the Director of Learning at Media Zoo, and  he starts his session by taking us back to 1976 with Fleetwood Mac, a band plagued by divorces, fights, drug abuse and other disasters. Coming off of a very successful tour, success should feel different, but everything was falling apart.

According to our polls, fear of failure is very present, but it feels very different things to all of us. For me, I’m afraid of public speaking (particularly in front of a jury of my peers), what people are thinking/saying about me, and leaving the bathroom with my skirt stuck in my underwear. Though I’m slowly conquering all of those fears, trying to be more compassionate with myself, and just quadruple checking my butt before leaving the bathroom.

Fleetwood Mac made a masterpiece out of heartbreak – “thunder only happens when it’s raining”. We can create powerful things from the trenches. So it’s not about escaping failure, it’s about reframing failure. We need to be clear about what we’re trying to achieve and believe in it. That doesn’t mean that we won’t change. We can change and adapt as needed, but keep your goal in mind. Suitcases with wheels were once considered a failure – I love my Away suitcases, and they have built an entire brand on suitcases with wheels!

Next up, he discusses the Betamax, a tape war won by JVC. Betamax is shaking their fists at the abandoned boxes of VHS tapes in everyone’s basement. Betamax was too expensive and VHS was more easily available. It doesn’t matter how good something is (e.g., Betamax) if people aren’t using it! Similarly, with blu-ray vs. HD DVD – it’s very important to learn from your mistakes.

Finally, Matt discusses the curious case of Lizzy Grant. She recorded an album that was pretty much forgotten, but reframing her failure as Lana Del Rey – she is wildly successful!  So if you fail, keep trying. Great advice!

Top Tips:

• Know what you’re trying to achieve
• Expect it to go wrong
• Work collaboratively
• Try again
• Build a process around these principles

Overall, this was a great session. I lived for all of the pop culture references, and would if you ever see Matt Ash  on a  conference schedule, you must attend – he’s a fantastic presenter!

Kati Ryan – WAKE & SHAKE THEM UP: Injecting Fun Into Your Onboarding Training

I recently connected with Kati on LinkedIn, and was super excited to attend this session. The millennial in me is perpetually distracted, so I wanted to learn some tips for keeping and engaging attention. From a selfish perspective…for myself. Keeping and engaging my own attention, but also for my learners.

Kati begins her session with a pulse check; we saw these in Kassy’s session as an ice breaker – You receive a prompt (how do you feel about onboarding programs), select the image that resonates most, and indicate why.

30% of employees voluntarily leave an organization within the first 6 months.

Three main reasons:

• Poor onboarding experience
• Lack of understanding (how to succeed/what’s expected)
• Crumby manager

However, we can resolve these issues. She uses terrifying mountaineering photos to help illustrate her point (holy crap!).  We need to tell stories, use pictures/images, and try to engage our learners in new hire training. We need to help guide learners so they don’t feel as though they’ve had a poor onboarding experience, they do feel like they know how to succeed within the organization, they do know what’s expected. The crumby manager…that may need more work.

58% of organizations solely focus their onboarding on policies and paperwork.

Tips:

• Set the stage – Think of it as a branding campaign
• Create cohorts – Helps create community
• Leverage games – But, align them with your learning outcomes
• Inject culture – Hear from someone at the top of the organization (e.g., executive members)
• Weave in Employees – Pair current employees with new employees
  • This can allow for stretch opportunities, and create a more dynamic environment
• Design for Retention – It’s more cost-effective to retain employees vs. continually onboarding

Overall, Kati really knows her stuff. She provided tons of tips that we can take back to our own training worlds – onboarding or otherwise – so that we can creating overall engaging learning experiences. This is my last session of the day because I’ve got a cake to bake/frost for my husband’s birthday tomorrow, but I’ll be back tomorrow to 1) present (Top Tips: Articulate Storyline 360), and 2) come through with a Day 2 Recap!

DevLearn is upon us and I’m sad that I’ll be missing this one. I’m not cleared to fly post-op until the beginning of November, so I will desperately be consuming the conference backchannel all week long! In any event, several of my colleagues have been sharing their conference-related tips, so I thought if I can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Tip #1: Be Comfortable

So you’re attending a conference, you’re going to spend your days (and sometimes evenings) learning. You will do a lot of sitting and a lot  of walking. If you have an activity tracker, THIS is the time to capitalize on all of the steps you will be getting in!

Because you will be doing so much walking, you will want to make sure you pack a sensible shoe, one that you won’t want to set on fire immediately after the conference because of all the blisters they gave you. When I travel, I usually bring options, but will ultimately choose my old reliable Birkenstocks because 1) they go with everything, and 2) they’re the most comfortable shoes I own.

In addition to comfortable shoes, make sure you bring your most comfortable outfits – things that you won’t mind spending 8-10 hours in. I like to pack comfortable dress pants, flowy dresses, and jeans.

Tip #2: Fuel Yourself and Pack Snacks

I like to think that I’m good at taking breaks, making time for myself, and being smart about eating lunch and drinking water…but I’m not. I’ve learned that in order to set myself up for success, I need to pack myself a range of snacks. Because there’s so much going on at conferences from the sessions to the expo to the networking nights to the other random conference events, I can’t guarantee that I’ll force myself to eat regular meals.

Here’s what I do: I wake up a little earlier and make time for a decent breakfast. I’ll either fuel myself with something healthy and hearty like oatmeal or eggs. Then, I’ll hit up Starbucks and get the largest vat of coffee they offer. While there, I’ll load up on my pocket snacks of nuts/fruit/something sweet, and will also grab a green juice and fill up my water.

Packing snacks ensures that whatever time it is and wherever I am in my conference-day journey, I can reach into my bag and shovel something into my mouth. This is a very important tip.

Tip #3: Be Organized

This concept can be applied to several areas:

• Session Selection: Be sure to use the conference app to select your sessions and plan out your day. Before the conference is in full swing, do a quick lap around the event area to identify/locate the rooms for the sessions you want to attend. With big conferences (e.g., ATD ICE), you usually don’t have a ton of time to get from room to room, and not being organized in terms of conference geography may contribute to you missing a session you really wanted to attend.
• Note-Taking: You are most likely at a conference for professional development reasons, so you’re most likely going to do a ton of learning and a ton of note-taking. I recommend setting up a notebook page (physical or digital) for each session you plan on attending, ahead of time, so that you can simply flip to that page and start taking your notes. Don’t forget your pen/notebook/laptop. Depending on how organized you are, you might be able to come back to your organization post-conference and share what you’ve learned with your colleagues.
• Devices: Make sure you pack your devices, such as phone, tablet, laptop, and ensure you pack all of the related charging peripherals. You will deplete your batteries faster than you think.
  • If you are participating in a conference event, such as DemoFest, this is doubly important for you! Make sure everything is pre-charged and bring fully charged battery packs in case you deplete yours.

Tip #4: Network, Network, Network!

As a Learning and Development (L&D) professional, your participation in these conferences is also to network your butt off and make as many connections as you can. L&D is not only a great world to work in, it’s a great community to be a part of and I have met some of my best friends at these events, so don’t skimp on this tip!

Tip #5: Treat Yo’ Self

Now this is a tip that I learned just last year. If you have spare time at the conference…say you got in early or you fly out late, make some time for yourself. You’ve had a long week. This could be something as simple as taking yourself out for lunch to a nice restaurant, hanging out by the hotel pool, or my personal favourite: spring for a spa day (you will thank me later).

Last year at DevLearn, I delivered a pre-conference certificate workshop, facilitated a morning buzz, judged a HyperDrive competition, delivered a Bring Your Own Device session, participated in (and won!) DemoFest, and then filled up on all of the conference sessions and networking I could. My Friday I. Was. Beat! My flight didn’t leave until 11pm, so I finished up with the conference and admitted myself to the spa at the Mirage for the rest of the day. It was hands down the best decision I made. I got on my red-eye flight back home so relaxed and zen that I couldn’t care less about being trapped in a metal can in the sky for 7 hours. It was luxurious! 10 out of 10 would recommend.