Skipping the Learning Technologies show (again)

Not all that long ago, a year without attending the Learning Technologies show would have seemed unfeasible. The exhibition (and occasionally the conference) was a key part of my annual networking, current awareness and personal development.

Instead I am now nearing a decade without attending – having attended the main exhibition in 2016 and the Summer Forum conference in 2017.

Covid has a played a role here in my low attendance of in-person events, but there has also been a shift in the focus of my roles to broader topics than learning (technology) as well as a move to webinars, podcasts (more on that coming in a future post), LinkedIn Learning, and other sources for personal development.

I post this as the end of day one of the conference/exhibition closes – predictably, from a quick look on LinkedIn, all the talk is about AI. That said, following events via LinkedIn is certainly not as good an experience as Twitter/TweetDeck used to be.

For those who are attending in April 2025: I hope you find it useful, and I will certainly try and be there in 2026 for my 10th anniversary of last time.

New year – new networking

One plan for 2025 has been to try and get more involved in different professional groups again. This is, in part, as I am conscious I rely more and more on webinars, videos and podcasts rather than the more interactive and synchronous networking.

Therefore I’ve joined, or been more involved with, the below – all of which might be of interest to others:

  1. Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – a lot of L&D talk focuses on corporates and office-based work. This group is more niche and hosts regular sessions for those working in non-profits. I have joined a few sessions already with some good conversations spilling out into follow-ups and 1-2-1s.
  2. GLDC (Global Learning and Development Community) – I’ve been a member of this for a long time, but only in 2025 attended anything (that I can remember). The Wednesday catch-ups are a nice mix of networking and a quiz (I’m a sucker for a good [pub] quiz).
  3. LPI Hive – I have not spent too much time in this group yet but it was handy for finding out about a few new podcasts. I have not used Slack very much over the years, so it will be interesting to see how this compares long term to LinkedIn, Ning and other sites that have been used by L&D-related communities.

Happy New Year (aka party like it is 2007)

As we enter 2025, a lot of people will be looking for new roles as part of their new year resolutions.

It has been noticeable in my emails that quite a few new job roles are also being advertised – perhaps due to calendar year budget cycles for some organizations.

However, what I have also noticed is that salaries seem to remain stagnant. A selection of roles in different JiscMail emails were all in the 30-50k a year (GBP) range. Out of interest, I put my 17k (first London salary) into the UK’s official inflation calculator and apparently that salary – which was painfully low at the time – is now the equivalent of 30k. That professional positions are being advertised at this rate (compared to my first London role which was a one-year role between graduation and going onto a postgrad) is pretty scary stuff.

A BBC article (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64970708) on the lack of UK wage growth since 2008 covers more on this. Indeed I wrote about the problems from the lack of salary inflation in 2019!

For those in the UK running April financial years – here’s hoping for more of a 2007 mindset in salary negotiations than what has been the norm since.

Involvement in Standardization – The missing piece of your talent management jigsaw?

Learning and Development (L&D) teams are often intensely self-critical.

As a result, L&D orientated conferences can feel like group therapy sessions with never ending quests such as “proving impact” and considering if all the industry talk is just “emperor’s new clothes” (just two example sessions taken from this year’s Autumn Forum sessions which, unfortunately, clashed with other things for me).

Meanwhile, headlines on recent LinkedIn posts in my timeline have included “Are the scope of AI discussions in L&D too limited?” and RedThread have discussed “The Existential Crisis of L&D”. All of this while old arguments continue, sometimes seemingly over mere semantics – such as skills vs competencies, training vs learning, etc.

One issue many L&D teams have struggled with is how to deal with technical or senior experts and how to keep/develop these people in routes other than moves into leadership/management. Back in my L&D for consultants days, this was a particular issue as it was recognized there needed to be a route for people to develop in the firm whilst remaining a technical expert in, for example, Cyber security. This differed from the traditional broad>specialism>broad career path (or “I shaped career”) of the firm – and L&D often focused on the broad (via new hire/graduate/introduction materials and management development at the ‘top’). The Mind Tools podcast picking up on this theme recently, with some discussion of the classic issue that whilst someone may be good at a job they might not be good at managing others. This is another thing L&D then get criticised for – trying to develop “leadership and management” training that is only likely to have an impact if the individuals involved actually want to change their behaviour(s).

So what can/do we (L&D teams) have as options to support those who are best kept away from management (either due to their own desire, financial reasons to keep them as specialists, past failures as a manager, etc)? Well, one option many might have already taken is interest in professional organizations and associations. These organizations are often a great way to keep your current awareness up and may give opportunities for your technical staff to influence future generations, for example how CILIP had a role of working with universities on librarianship programmes when I came through for chartership and early career.

However, there is another option that I do not think I have ever really heard talked about in L&D discourse – standardization.

International Standards reflect the global consensus and distilled wisdom of many thousand technical experts – https://www.iec.ch/understanding-standards

The opportunity to contribute to national, regional or international standards will be of real interest to many of your experts as well as a benefit to your organization (not least keeping your experts aware of trends and changes).

Don’t give up

It is election day in the UK (July 4th 2024).

While I won’t get political here, there is one thing of interest to me in this election (that has not had a huge amount of coverage):

The boundary changes.

I really like my current MP but she will no longer be my MP after this election, not due to the vote but due to boundary changes. These changes resulting in my address being grouped in a different political geographic entity.

The changes in the boundaries for this election had been assessed as hugely benefitting the incumbent Conservative party. Instead we are seeing predictions of an opposition Labour landslide, perhaps even bigger than 1997.

So a lesson from this campaign can be seen as for us all not to give up on what we believe in.

The UK Centre-Left appears resurgent, when just a few years ago it risked terminal decline. With elections in France, the USA and elsewhere ongoing there is a lesson for the eventual losers – don’t give up.

Just some of the previous evaluations of the boundary changes that were expected to reinforce Conservative dominance: