Announcing Public Sector Learning Conference – Fresh ideas for tomorrow’s people

Twitter hashtag for this event : #pslc

Event blog: Learning Pool’s Blog

Event booking page: Public Sector Learning Conference – Fresh idea’s for tomorrow’s people

I’ve been invited to attend an event at Hilton, London Kensington tomorrow (20th May 2009) for the Public Sector Learning Conference – Fresh ideas for tomorrow’s people by LearningPool. As highlighted by Dave Briggs in his post a few days ago here . Dave did make an interesting point when he said Mary McKenna (MD of Learning Pool) must be a good egg because she’s on Twitter.  I couldn’t agree more! I myself have experienced such positive and vibrant responses on Twitter, that eventually gave my research a breath of fresh air!  I once did a research on the impact of forums and other learning tools such as Moodle to facilitate learning in higher education and large organisations.

My personal opinon is, eventhough those tools are great and can be effective, the new media incorporates flexibility, ingenuity and exceptional social networking capabilities, has brought learning to a whole different level. And it is my belief, that it is this conference that will bring all this new exciting potential to life. Especially with social media groups flourishing in local government organisations recently, this could be a great opportunity to pick up some handy and useful tips!

After years of research into the public sector community, I’ve seen and learned alot from my informants. I’ve learnt that the public sector works and manevours itself differently. However recently there seems to be a shift in how public sector is growing and moving forward. There is a sense of cultural change slowly inching its way into public sector agencies.

The cultural change is defining a new type of workforce that will be able to communicate and deliver services more creatively and make use of their skills and social technologies.  The workforce will be able to cross boundaries and save time and cost, as well as discover new hungry talents that can and will make the shift to change.

In a nutshell – Its Fresh Ideas for tomorrow’s people!

So, if you’re wondering about who and what they’ll be talking about at the conference, check this out!

Conference Agenda

Ben Page – MD of Ipsos MORI

The conference will kick off with the Keynote Speaker, Ben Page who is the MD of Ipsos MORI and one of the 50 most influential people in local government according to the Local Government Chronicle.  What a pleasure to meet someone so influential! Ben will set the tone of the day by talking about the social networking phenomenon. I personally am interested to see what Ben thinks of it all.

• Does he see it as a positive or negative thing?
• What are the challenges?
• Since Ipsos MORI itself is a leading research company, I’m dying to know how they are using social networks in progressing in research.
• Are there any limitations involved?
• If yes, how do we overcome them?
• And what about the public sector community, are they capable of making that leap and and embed themselves within fabric of society that has started to embrace social networks?

So many questions! Hopefully they will all be answered tomorrow. I’m secretly hoping I’ll be able to pull Ben aside for a special intereview, so check back to see if I’m successful!

Other speakers

Charles Jennings – Director of Duntroon Associates

Duntroon Associates slogan on their website says “improving performance through learning innovation” and I couldn’t agree more! As a full-time student/learner myself if not in studies but also in life, one thing I’ve noticed is, I progress in my understanding of knowledge through different styles and strategies.  There is no one way of learning but there are different strategies for different environments and knowledge. And innovating the learning experience is vital to ensure knowledge is transferable and remains relevant.

Charles advocates that it’s not enough to simply ‘add technology and stir’.  That will almost certainly result in failure. Charles approach to the “8 questions before you start” certainly looks like sound advice and I for one will be listening intently to find out the common pitfalls and mistakes that we might stumble upon when learning.

Major Roy Evans – Mobile Learning in the Army and Public Sector

A few weeks ago I featured this video by the US Air Force and wrote a post about it too. You can find the post here.

Its quite interesting how the US Air Force is using new/social media to operate. And it is for this reason, I will be sitting at the edge of my seat to see what Major Roy Evans will share with us. He will be sharing his views and experience on Mobile Learning. Eventhough he will only be speaking for 20 mins, all the content seems to cover everything we need to know i.e. trials and pilots, materials design, context, repurposing of existing materials, platform choice, security, strategy and policy. But fret not, if I feel we’ve missed something, I’ll grab Major Evans aside and throw him a few questions and post the video online 😉

Donald Clark – Why social-networking will shape the 21st Century and where the opportunity is

Donald Clark, board member of UFI LearnDirect and blogger extraordinaire. (Wow, when can I become a blogger extraordinaire?;)) Donald will possibly be picking up on what Ben Page’s keynote speech and tell us a little bit more about the social networking revolution.  The power of collaborating will also possibly take centre stage during Donald’s presentation.  Throughout my research, I’ve always felt that I was never on this journey alone when I was twittering or facebooking. Eventhough in true research form, I was indeed conducting the interviews and analysing the data alone, but its the energy, input and sharing of knowledge and skills that certainly made my research what it is today.  Without all those collaborations, research is mainly words on a paper but with networking and the technology to support it, it give research a whole different meaning and purpose.  So with that said, I’m really interested to see Donald talk about the opportunities that social networking has to offer the the public sector learning community.

Henry Stewart will be providing top advice on ‘How to turn learners on’ and keep them engaged. What an interesting topic! I’m possibly usually one of those students in class that get bored easily and am easily distracted! So I’m very curious to see what useful and handy tips Henry has to offer so when I’m teaching, my students will definitely be engaged!

So that’s the round up of the speakers.

What else is happening?
Conference delegates can choose to attend one of 4 master classes on:
• Writing for Electronic Media
• What’s the point of Equality & Diversity?
• Taking control of your email
• How to develop your e-learning strategy

There will also be a series of showcases run by public sector organisations on:
• Using e-learning to communicate policy
• Training lots of colleagues quickly on Government Connect
• Delivering social care e-learning
• Collaborative partnership working by Essex HR Partnership

If you haven’t booked yet and would like to, here is the link to do so. BOOK HERE NOW

Hope to see some familiar faces there! For those who could not make it, be sure to catch the tweets at #pslc

Liz Azyan