CEdMA-Europe Members' Newsletter - August 2005

04 October 2005 Workshop

"20th century Learning Systems for 21st Century learners - R we out of touch?"
 

The early autumn CEdMA Europe half-day Workshop will take place on 04 October 2005 1330-1700 UK time at SUN Camberley. The speaker will be Professor Steve Molyneux of the UK Learning Lab "where technology enables knowledge". As requested by you, the membership, this is a technologies in training update, with the following description:

"We have spent 100s of years becoming adept at boring students in the classroom in the hallowed name of Learning, with the advent of Learning Systems all we have done is re-invented boredom by boring students on screen. It is time for another revolution in learning. The technology is there, as is the infrastructure and customers. It's about time we moved outside of our comfort zone. This presentation will look at what we should be offering 21st century Learners."

Please let Mike know if you or any of your colleagues will be attending, so that we can make sure we have enough seats, coffee, biscuits, and so on.

Advance notice for 2006 Events
We now have dates for the workshops and conferences in 2006, so please have a look at this page and mark the dates in your 2006 planner!
http://cedma-europe.org/programme.html
 

10-11 November Conference

"Getting Ready for Business in the Future"

The CEdMA Europe Autumn Conference will take place on 10-11 November at the Initial Style Conference Centre in Horsley, Surrey, where the theme will be "Getting Ready for Business in the Future".

By popular demand, we have extended Pulse of the Industry to last all morning on the Thursday. This session is intended to help introduce everyone, and help with networking during the event, as individuals explain what their key interests are. It will also help to identify potential topics for future conferences. The new item for everyone to reveal is "What was the most important thing I learned in the last six months?".

Our personal development topic to help us get ready for business in the future is Building and Executing Strategy, where Mike Kean of ASK Training will lead the session.

Friday morning is dedicated to how we shall get ready for business. After a review of recent studies and surveys of training delivery and technologies, two well-known customers responsible for IT training provision will set out their needs and requirements. Then, Sue Vine will provide an update from the May conference on how IBM is progressing with its projects to execute a 21^st century vision of learning.

After the break, we shall split into two groups to consider such things as which projects apply to your company; what individuals plan to do and to stop doing to get there; and what are the implications on such things as resources, business models, and so on.

On Friday afternoon, Phil Lawman will bring us up-to-date on how HP is progressing on increasing 'attach' rates before we discuss topics and venues for May 2006.

CEdMA Europe members have two places at this event at no charge. Additional places for members and places for non-members (prospects or colleagues of CEdMA USA members) are charged at £195 (exclusive of VAT). Overnight accomodation with breakfast costs £110 per night, payable to Style Conferences

For further information and booking (no forms required!), please visit:
http://www.cedma-europe.org/nov2005conf.html
 

Recent Articles from the Education and Training Press

The headings in this section have been changed slightly to reflect better the true contents covered.

Training Manager and Instructor Development

5 Ways to Grow Your Customer Training Business (Aug 05)

This white paper from Global Knowledge Network describes five proven approaches to grow customer education revenue. To cater to both nascent and mature customer training organizations, this paper includes basic-level and intermediate-level methods. It focuses on basic ideas that apply to most customer education businesses. There are other methods to spur revenue, but the five listed in this paper are the most used in the customer training industry. ©2005 Global Knowledge Network, Inc

The CLO’s Role in Mergers and Acquisitions (Aug 05)
Whether they find their companies in the position of being acquired or their companies are the acquirers, chief learning officers have an important role to play in the success of mergers and acquisitions—even more so today than in the past. And though CLOs often hold additional executive titles with their own challenges (often leading the HR organization), they must devote time and attention to integration specifically influenced by the learning function. What frequent roadblocks to success do companies encounter while going through an acquisition? What can CLOs do to break down these barriers? What can you do to prepare the business for a looming merger or acquisition event?
©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005 

Are You Serious about Your Job (Aug 05)

"I wish my trainers were more professional," executives and managers often commiserate to me. Even with those who don't voice it, that unspoken yearning often hovers just-under-the-surface of their conversation.
© 2001 - 2005 The Training Foundation

UK Businesses Weighed Down by Deadwood (Aug 05)
Three quarters of UK bosses (75%) and almost 80% of their staff (79%) believe that 'deadwood' - employees who consistently under-perform - is an issue of concern to their organisation, according to a new Investors in People survey.

© 2001 - 2005 The Training Foundation

Disability Equality - 10 Tips for Trainers (Aug 05)
Rick Williams FCIPD is a Director of disability consultancy Freeney Williams Ltd. He is visually impaired and has presented at many conferences on the subject of disability and event accessibility. This experience has shown that many trainers and event organisers are failing to take into consideration the issues for participants who have a disability. Based on these experiences, he summarises the issues that trainers and organisers need to take into account when planning events. ©2005 TrainingZONE

Current Trends

Industry News from IT Skills Research (Aug 05)
What's going on in the world of IT training and skills.
© Copyright 1998-2005 IT Skills Research

Market Monitor 2005 Q2 (from IT Skills Research) – Aug 05

© IT Skills Research Programme 1998-2005, last modified 22 Aug 2005

Invest on the Top of the Wave (Aug 05)
Thanks to strong economic growth in 2004 and 2005, most organizations have opened up their learning budgets. However, history has shown us that waves of strong economic growth crest and ebb. Strategic leaders of learning organizations should act now to invest in capabilities that can deliver learning critical to the long-term competitiveness and survival of their companies, whether the economy—and therefore the learning budget—is up or down.
©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

The Way I See It... The Investment Case for IT Training (Aug 05)
Rick Marshall, MD of networking and communications infrastructure specialist Comunica plc, discusses the importance of ongoing development for existing IT employees, as well as the need to invest in the recruitment of new talent for the industry. ©2005 TrainingZONE

Accenture Study - Recruiting, Retention Top Priority for Senior Execs (Aug 05)
Attracting and retaining skilled staff ranks highest on executive agendas for 2005, according to a global study released by Accenture.
©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

Global Knowledge Builds on its Technology Training Foundation
(Aug 05)
A learning company widely known for its IT and technical training capabilities has quietly emerged as the world's largest privately held provider of training and enterprise learning services. ©2005 TrainingOutsourcing.Com

SumTotal to acquire Pathlore (Aug 05)

SumTotal Systems™, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUMTE) and Pathlore® Software Corporation, two leading enterprise software companies in the learning and business performance management market, today announced the signing of a definitive merger agreement for SumTotal to acquire Pathlore for approximately $48 million. © Training Press Releases 2005

British Airways - The Wings of Learning (Aug 05)
Janet Windeatt, British Airways’ head of training, and her team are responsible for making sure that the organization’s 46,000 employees—6,000 of whom are based outside of the United Kingdom—are equipped to carry on this tradition of excellence. “Training matters to us as a business,” Windeatt said. “We invest in it, and we believe that it’s key to delivering the levels of service that our customers expect from us.” ©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

Selling and Marketing Education

Smart Marketing - Driving Business through an Intelligent Extended Enterprise (Jul 05)
This WBT Systems white paper was assembled for sales, marketing, channel operations, education, and customer support executives who wish to make their partners and customers smarter about their company's products and services. This document suggests ways you can begin to grow your business today by ensuring your partners, customers, and prospective customers are well educated about your organization's products and services.
©2005 WBT Systems

Learning Media

Delivering the Dream - Models for Intelligent Assistance (Aug 05)
“The vision of the future of learning is to be able to get just the right stuff to just the right person at just the right time and place in just the right way and with just the right context on just the right device and through just the right medium.” — Wayne Hodgins. Clark Quinn describes various models to make this happen. ©2005 Learning Circuits

Education Projects

No articles this month.

Measuring Education Value
 

The Value of Human Capital - What Logic and Intuition Tell Us (Aug 05)
Within the past century, the economy has moved from agriculture to industry to a knowledge-based system focused on productivity—shifting from land to machines to the human mind. Managers, human resources professionals and accountants struggle to place value on human capital. The accounting function strives to apply its financially oriented principles to the human capital assets. Corporate decision-makers are challenged to determine how much to invest in human capital. ©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

Measuring Success - Capturing the Right Metrics (Aug 05)

Measuring success at the individual level sounds arduous, but if you step back and look at the bigger picture, you’ll find that individual measurement becomes manageable when you capture the right metrics.

©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

Managing Costs/Outsourcing

Training Outsourcing - the Economics (Jun 04) and Slides
Outsourcing of training functions is a hot topic these days. Companies such as DuPont, Nortel and GM have committed to major outsourcing approaches. Hundreds of others outsource their content development, their LMS systems and various parts of their training operations. This report looks at the economics of outsourcing training operations. Why do companies outsource? What functions do they outsource? And, most importantly, does outsourcing save money? ©2005 Bersin and Associates, © Licensed materials, distributed by KnowledgePlanet

Opportunities for US Training Companies in China (Aug 05)
“In ten or twelve years, China will be the second largest economy on the face the earth. Only the United States will have a bigger economy.” - Former US Secretary of Commerce, Mickey Kantor. ©2005 TrainingOutsourcing.Com

Instructor Resourcing
No articles this month.

Education Administration

IDC Study - Optimizing the Training Back Office (Jun 04) and Slides
This IDC benchmarking study suggests that as these senior training and development executives attempt to align their personnel and operations with the needs of their enterprises, they have an opportunity to streamline the time and money spent on administrative processes. To this end, IDC believes that these professionals should investigate sourcing models that enable access to shared infrastructure and services. ©2004 IDC

Skills Gap/Technical Certification
No articles this month.
 

And, Finally.....

A man and his wife had been arguing all night, and as bedtime approached neither was speaking to the other. It was not unusual for the pair to continue this war of silence for two or three days. However, on this occasion, the man was concerned. He needed to be awake at 4:30am the next morning to catch an important flight, and being a very heavy sleeper he normally relied on his wife to wake him. Cleverly, so he thought, while his wife was in the bathroom, he wrote on a piece of paper: 'Please wake me at 4:30am - I have an important flight to catch'. He put the note on his wife's pillow, then turned over and went to sleep.

The man awoke the next morning and looked at the clock. It was 8:00am. Enraged that he'd missed his flight, he was about to go in search of his errant wife to give her a piece of his mind, when he spotted a hand-written note on his bedside cabinet.

The note said: 'It's 4:30am - get up.'
 

Feedback, please!

Once again, I would really like to get input from you, the readers. I am also trying to create a library of useful articles on the website, all of which will appear first in a newsletter. If you have any article to contribute, please send it.

I look forward to seeing you in Camberley or Horsley or BOTH!

Mike Dowsey

Business Development Manager

CEdMA-Europe

mike@dowsey.net