Opening address - Learning, technology and change – a new road map for a new era
For over a quarter of century, we’ve looked each year at the emerging technologies that support L&D. We’ve looked at everything from Google Glass (remember that?) to the Metaverse and haptic sensing. From the explosion of mobile delivery to the rise of the LxP. Whether it landed or not, we’ve been there, evaluating and sharing what the tech can do, separating the hype from the reality, and exploring the implications for L&D.
These technologies were incremental, moving us further along the route that L&D had always been on. But in the past two years something has changed. It’s not just Artificial Intelligence. It’s the technologies that made AI possible – huge processing power, cheaper data storage, and smarter algorithms, the result of decades of development. Together these technologies affect not just how we learn, but how we work and, more fundamentally, how we live.
In the marketplace of L&D offerings there is now an explosion of novelty. Not all these offerings will succeed, many will not live up to the hype of their creators. And some – a few – are the first part of a wave that is going to change not only how L&D works, but our entire role.
So this year’s Learning Technologies Conference starts with a good hard look at what is happening in our field – the new ideas, the new offerings, and the implications for all of us. It’s about a lot more than AI. It’s about data, skills, coaching, talent mobility and more and – crucially – how we deal with this tsunami of change. Do we let it crash over us? Or do we get ahead of it, using it to empower L&D to become the strategic business partner we have always sought to be?