ASTD Technology Conference Day 1 Part 1

I accidentally posted this on the wrong blog. Oops! Not sure I can delete it from the iPad app... Such is life...

We are off to a great start. I was actually able to get up in time to get some breakfast. Though it wasn't the best. The fruit was a little nasty but the Danish was good as was the muffin (once I picked out the nuts!)

I was a good girl and sat at a table with other people (reality there were no empty tables)
it was a nice group of people and actually international. A lady from Maryland who was happy to be out of the snow, a guy from San Diego, who I am sure is NOT a native. Then we were joined by a lady from Boston also grateful to be away from the snow. Two gals from Canada, which their was. O doubt they were from Canada. Their accents made me smile and then we were joined by a lady from Peru. They were all very nice but being the recluse I am I was glad to get away.

There are around 1200 at the conference according to the ASTD president Tony Bingham who opened the session. As always Tony was wonderful. Tony reminded us that technology is rapidly changing and management is feeling unequipped for it. What I found most interesting is it is in the area of creativity. He feels trainers have some great opportunities in that area.

He also challenged us to utilize such tools as iTunes University and YouTube. He shared that there are something like 2 billion YouTube videos view a day. I have utilized YouTube several times but haven't tried iTunes U. Kind of crazy considering we have it at APU.

Our keynote, Kara Swisher, was excellent. I think I enjoyed her because she seems to be a tad sarcastic and I can appreciate that. She is an insider in silicon valley. But she brought out the point the computers have become social. We use to see the programming geek off in the corner doing his thing. Now it is Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and even WOW. There is interaction happening all over the place.

She also dealt a little with the death of the desktop followed closely by the death of the net book. Smart phones and tablets are the thing and the future.

The expo floor opened after Kara was done and I wondered through doing my best to avoid eye contact. My goal was a demo by trainup.com I liked them. They are a broker basically of a lot of different online training company. They do much more.

Session beginning more later!