TechLearn2002
More than twelve-hundred people will participate in tonight's opening session of TechLearn 2002 in Disney World's Coronado Resort.
TechLearn's theme this year is The Futures of eLearning, an improvement over last year's Now More Than Ever.
The Limited's Beth Thomas modeled one of the futures of eLearning, making like a Disney interpretation of Judy Jetson:
eLearning vendors are in such a slump that they didn't stuff many goodies in this year's famous TechLearn wheelie bag. A couple of pens, an Element K potholder, a Thinq t-shirt, a DDI pencil case, a 4" rubber bear, and a stack of cheesy brochures and product spec sheets On the other hand, the variety of buttons has grown. A few from last year seem odd when taken out of context ("Bullied as a kidl")
I'm going to head back over to the Coronado. The Learning Showcase opens soon. I want to catch the reaction to this first in-your-face commercialism at TechLearn, especially as the kick-off event.
Reviews of the two previous TechLearns: TechLearn2000 | TechLearn2001
Posted by Jay Cross at October 27, 2002 01:18 PM | TrackBack
Hi Jay,
Googling to get more stats on eLearning ROI this bright Monday morn. Met with Wayne Hodgins last weeek. Seems that eLearning market figures & projections are elusive as ever; Wayne said he hoped to get some new info at TechLearn. Performance ROI -- info from Sam Adkins, for instance from August's Forum is not so easy to find, even on your site. I'm not through yet, but wonder if he asked to have it removed? Even if we throw eggs and snicker at IDC etc. figs, there has to be some idea of the size of this space, yes? A definitive source would be good. We are forging a strategic alliance with a million+user enterprise firm and they are turning to us for this kind of info. Chances are I'll have some soon, but it would be good to get your take or references...
Great to receive your dispatches! You should come up with "Jay's Buttons" and how about your own costume on the future of eLearning? Maybe you could do a "Ghost of eLearning Past" to get people in a Christmas mood.
Hi, anonymous. (If you don't enter your name and email with your comments, it's hard to respond directly. I don't do any stealth email address harvesting here.)
At TechLearn, Elliott made the point that there's a lot more eLearning going on than ever shows up in the numbers. A company can build an immense eLearning project in-house and never show up on the radar of the financial analysts. Analysts report expected sales by eLearning companies. If you roll your own, they'll never know about it.
If you need big numbers, you could take IDC's from two years ago. If you want something smaller, take IDC's numbers today. So what if you're off a few billion here or there? The message is that this remains a large market with lots more room to grow.
Don't be appalled by my lack of regard for precision. You could manipulate the size of the market statistic by counting IBM in or out. Or Oracle. Or any number of other part-players.
I like the concept of Jay's Buttons and will see what I can come up with. Of course, I'll have to check with my censors before releasing them.
Posted by: jay at November 2, 2002 10:03 AM
