Panel: Navigating the Future - Aligning Training Trends with Real-World Technologies

Luis Malbas  
All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. We had a nice short break there. And for our final session of the day, we are actually doing a panel navigating the future aligning training trends with real world technologies. Let me just check on the people tab to see who is joining us here. I see Dan Smith is here. Seer Trish is back, Shanna. Thanks, everybody for for being a part of this one. Alright, so what I'd like to start out with is if we can do introductions, so I'm going to go ahead and just sort of hide myself from the screen. Oops, sorry. hide myself from the screen. And maybe we start with you, Stephanie.

Stephanie Gieseke  
Sounds great. I will start us off. I am Stephanie and I have been working in learning development, talent development. I mean, I guess all things, l&d and talent development for the past us over 17 years. And currently, I'm doing consulting projects while I am looking for my next new role, and really excited to have this discussion today to hear what what everybody else thinks about the different technologies that are out there and how you've integrated them into your organization's.

Linnea Conely  
Okay, well, I'll go next. I'm Linnea. And I've been working as an instructional designer and an elearning. And all things learning really, since about 1996. I didn't feel like doing the math. So I can remember, I can remember the year I didn't want to calculate anything right now. But so I and right now I work with the state of Alabama as part of our Department of Commerce. I'm their curriculum development team leader, and we make pre employment training programs for companies that are coming to locate in Alabama. And I also have my own consulting business called Quest to core which is more focused on learning for civic engagement.

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
Very nice. I'm happy to follow up with that. My name is Bobby. I'm Senior Director of learning development and Global Skills exchange, also called GSX. We are based out of Alexandria, Virginia, which is right outside of Washington, DC, I myself, I'm based out of Charlottesville, Virginia, if you're ever in the area, say hi. Um, I've been in the field for about 26 years started as an instructional designer, but worked my way up in a variety of different roles in an association management company that also offered high stakes certification programs. And that's where I learned all about credentials. So not only have I done instructional design, from an HR perspective, and for a continuing education perspective for the membership, but I've also launched a high stakes global certification program in the investment industry. I do strategic design, including business process improvement, design, thinking, customer experience, user experience. And so I do a lot of the credentialing side of things with skills mapping side of things in terms of delivering any kind of learning strategy and solution.

Luis Malbas  
All right, that is excellent. So couple things we have since we have folks in the chat, we'd love it. If you are interested in participating in this panel or being a part of the conversation, we do have room for, for you to join on on screen if you'd like. And then also, I have a series of questions listed in the q&a area. That is that you can find an icon for torrents on the right side of the screen. If you look in that QA area there, you can actually vote up any particular questions that are listed there. So please, if you can vote on anything that might be particularly interesting to you that you'd want to be able to discuss, or feel free to add your own questions in there as well. So let me take a look at Bobby's just asking everybody to join us. And so with that, why don't we just is it okay, if I just start with with one of my first questions. Let's see here. All right, so how about this one? In your experience? I'm going to show this on stage, how quickly are organizations adapting to the latest training trends? And what factors influenced this pace of adaption? So I adaptation? So and I guess, the one question that is that we need to ask also is, what are the latest trading trends? Anyone willing to take that one on?

Linnea Conely  
Well, I would say one, and I don't know if it's really latest, but it's really customization. I think more than ever before. Using especially using AI to try to help learners kind of help themselves to to make it easier for people to find what they need on their own and, and to have technology build customer learning plans for people. So I would say really personalization seems to be a major trend knife.

Stephanie Gieseke  
I would also jump off that with saying that customization personalization, but then also having that like predictive analysis or like the predictive content with some of the platforms that are out there now where, okay, if you searched for this, or if you were you, if you just completed this training module, you would be interested in maybe these digital learning assets are this different content? And again, being able to personalize that for those like Linnaeus that like for those journeys? Are the the different pathways that people want to go along? So

Luis Malbas  
it's definitely just are you seeing organizations quickly adapting to these things? Or is it taking a while or? I mean, I know that l&d is notorious for being behind, like, you know, like last place in the organization. What are you seeing out there?

Stephanie Gieseke  
So in, in my experience, and I don't want to stereotype but in the larger organizations I've been in which, like, global organization of 35,000 employees, versus the last two startups I worked at with who add, you'll have less than 160 employees, the startups definitely will adopt the new technology faster. But I also have, and I've been talking to doing some consulting with some larger organizations, if you have that continuous culture of or the culture of continuous learning, innovation is a little bit easier for those larger organizations for for you to be able to have them adopt some of that training technology. But otherwise, it just feels like you are pushing a rock up the hill, and you have to really utilize some heavy duty change management strategies.

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
And I'd like to piggyback off that because I think it's a two pronged question. How fast are organizations adapting and how fast are like the instructional designers and, and talent development professionals adapting? And I think they're on two different adaptation levels are places where I think people like us understand the value, we see the ROI. Sometimes it's difficult to have a seat at the table with those at the C suite to be able to really communicate the ROI because sometimes what they only hear is, new technology is a new cost. It's more money, we have to train people. And so sometimes I think about it in terms of how do you actually change it into the cost savings and the organizational efficiency? And how can the new technology, expedite the development and the maintenance of your talent pipeline framework and the future of career pathing in the organization? And like Renee was saying, like adopting the AI, that there's so many advantages there. And we, as learning professionals see that? And I think organizations are just slower to embrace it, because they, they just see the risks and the costs. Do

Luis Malbas  
you have any specifics? Is there like, do you have say, something that you've adopted, that you did it yourself, like prior to, you know, to the leaders in your organization, like giving the Go ahead? Is there anything that you've integrated into, into any of the processes that you work with? And I'm thinking, I guess, like with AI, there are a lot of people that just use it for their own personal for their own personal use, and just have integrated it entirely into their lifestyles. And it's in their workflow. Now, although the organization's themselves, like who they work for, may not have a clue that they're actually using AI for a lot of things. But do you have anything like that that you're doing?

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
So it's really a difficult question for me to answer because I work with a consulting agency. And so in the grand scheme of things, we're technology agnostic, we embrace and adopt whatever our clients are using, we are in a position to be able to make recommendations but we're not necessarily in a place where we're actually doing the implementations. We can help them strategize in terms of what is out there. So I don't have a good example from that perspective. But I will say personally, I mean, I have been using chat TPT all week to help me with some curriculum development projects I have going on. Now. The thing there, though, is I had to talk to the client and say, Is this okay? I am not asking any kind of prompts that is giving away intellectual property. I'm asking very generic questions to give us a starting point to fill in the content gaps. So it's more it's more of a discovery curation effort. So I will defer to Lindsay and Stephanie for particular examples there.

Linnea Conely  
Well, one thing we're not in most cases restricted to which technology we have to use a lot of times we're they look to us to actually make recommendations on the technology and one way that we do That is I love free trials, I mean, I'm going to go out and I'm going to do a free trial, and I'm going to build something, and then I show it to somebody. And then they're like, yes, we want that. And so that's kind of like how we get it adopted. But another thing going back, I think earlier to what you're talking about is getting the organization to adopt these types of changes, is really finding out what their points of pain are. I mean, that's, that's what I have found has been the most successful if I can identify this thing that's causing them so much pain and problems, and I can fix it, and I can show them, you know, what I did is going to fix it, I usually have pretty good success in in having them at least try it. And then once that works, you know, it snowballs, there's a specific example. And that we, we have struggled, especially since the pandemic and even shortly after, with getting enough people who are interested in taking a face to face classroom training session, even if, you know, they just, they just don't, they're not in that mindset as much anymore as they used to be. And so I proposed turning a small piece of it into an online only. And they basically finally got so after rejecting it for a long time, there was just so much desperation because they they weren't able to hold any classes because they couldn't get enough students to hold the class. So they were like, Okay, fine. Let's try it. And it worked. It worked. Well. I mean, we we have people going through the program completing the program, and you know, moving on to get jobs afterwards. And so since that time, they've kind of warmed up and said, Okay, maybe we can do some online training. Nice.

Luis Malbas  
I think what I

Stephanie Gieseke  
found is kind of the old adage of like, what writers or authors uses the show me Don't tell me. So when I used like, what does that digital adoption platform visual SP, so overlaying it on top of Salesforce, this organization already purchased visual SPD us, but they just weren't using because it didn't know how it would actually fit in and how people would really want it if they would really be resistant to that change or not. So instead of I did propose it said, here's what we could do Did, did some workflows and show them how it will help them. But that was kind of more telling them. But then what I did is create a prototype. So went into a version of Salesforce where I could go in, add those inputs, or add visual SP in there and put all the tooltips on there, the training that was right on the screen and actually show them okay, here's how you were doing it before without using visual SP he's how long it took someone to do the specific task, and then show them here's how long it takes Now to do this specific task and showing them kind of that ROI, or here's how it will actually change or increase productivity.

Luis Malbas  
Nice. Well, I guess this next question is related to all of this recent sort of specific instance, where integrating a new l&d technology significantly impacted the effectiveness of training in your organization? Do any of you have a nice answer to this one? Get this off the screen.

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
I have a client who needed a learning management system, they had one of the bigger platforms that most people are probably very familiar with, had all sorts of bells and whistles, you could do everything under the sun with it. But it was too many bells and whistles that I think what Stephanie was talking about, they didn't even know how to even really get into it into the first step of setting it up. They were so afraid of it. And so we wound up looking at a variety of different LMS platforms, because we were we were like, What is your goal? Like, what is your end goal? And it wasn't necessarily to deliver training directly to their candidates and their certification program. It was to be able to package and customize curriculums for employers of people seeking the certification. And when you look at it from that way, you know, you have a b2c model and a b2b model and you got to come at this integration of this tool and what you're trying to accomplish into your strategy. And think about it wearing multiple hats. And that has really helped them reimagine what is possible for not just the training they had in mind for what they needed to deliver but what is possible into the future for being able to scale learning in the moment of need, not just in response to their direct candidates, but to opening the door to more conversations with employers and Like minded associations and things. So that was really nice. And in the grand scheme of things, they scaled the system down massively, because they didn't need all those bells and whistles, they needed a very specific function. But you know, I would just say even that experience, I would encourage people to look at what is happening in the LMS space, because they're, they're just all over the place in terms of what they're capable of doing. And in some ways, there's these different platforms where you can do your course authoring in there, they don't cost you anything, they just take, you know, 10% of your cost or something like that. And if you're a low scale, low budget company, something like that may work beautifully, even if you're going to have to give up some things maybe on the reporting side, or on the assessment side. But I think to Linnaeus point, you know, there's a lot of other tools out there that you can sample that you could be able to holistically integrate into the learner experience to get at what that particular client needs, and the population that we're trying to serve.

Luis Malbas  
That's interesting. All right, anybody else, just a recent specific instance, where maybe some technology kind of impacted your organization,

Linnea Conely  
one thing that we really had to shift to is, as I was saying, Before, we didn't do much online training. And so not much thought was given to mobile devices that we people thought, you know, all of our previous online, well, it worked on a computer, everybody internally in our in our company was using as we using it on a computer, but we work with Alabama citizens, and they're all using their phone, I would say 99% of people who take our courses outside of our organization, they're using a phone. And so the first things we delivered, people were struggling because the courses weren't, even though the courses were designed, so that they could work on a phone. I mean, they they were supposed to work on a phone. It's just the particular application we were using wasn't heavily optimized. And so people couldn't load the courses wouldn't load. And we get all these complaints. Like, my course isn't working. And I was like, well, just wait longer. It'll open eventually. But it doesn't work very well on a phone, can you try to use a computer? And so I kind of got tired of saying that over and over. And you know, it's okay. 99% of our people are using phones. So I experimented and I found an application that is much better. Rise 360. I haven't found anything that looks nicer on a phone than rise 360. It is just it was beautiful on a phone and on Enter computers and iPads to it just makes it so easy to make beautiful courses. And so that was one of the cases I got the free trial. I proved it. I showed it on the phone or like, yes, we're going to get that we're going to chain. So now all of our courses all run beautifully on phones, and I have not had any more complaints about the course it's not running from people. Nice since then.

Luis Malbas  
Nice. Can you as a group, can you just tell me what do you think is the top trading trend right now? Ai, ai

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
that would be my guess. And I'm sitting in the world of education and training. And what that means I'm sitting in the world of competency modeling, skills mapping. And then I'm sitting in the world of high stakes legally defensible assessments. And it is everywhere. And it's interesting too, because it's bringing up challenges with you know, copyright. How much of it has to be rewritten for you to be able to get your assessments copyrighted, things like that. So it's front of mind, I think, in terms of what can it do, but legally, what do we need to prepare ourselves for, in case there's a lawsuit?

Luis Malbas  
Interesting. Now I want to know, just as a group of l&d professionals, how are you adopting this that particular trend AI using AI in your work? Is it something that you've even Well, obviously Bobby you you have your your you're getting into it but Renee Stephanie, what's your relationship to AI right now?

Stephanie Gieseke  
So I guess if we break it apart into the different pieces of like aI with talking about like the language learning models, like chat GPT copy aI think do they start using as a Jarvis or Jasper and like 2020 using it as a conversation or a brainstorming tool? And I think it was Bobby who mentioned not putting proprietary information or being very careful what information you're actually feeding into, or feeding into it because I've used it for trying to come up with some career path models will take Again, here's all the job descriptions, here's the different levels we want people to get to, can you help me come up with a different the different career path and and being able to build off of that and not just obviously taken in cutting and pasting, but then AI in the sense of like the different apps and things being able to customize. And I guess it's using different technologies, like I think about seismic and lessonly, implementing like a sales enablement, program or platform, the lessonly platform, the LMS side of it, but then integrating it with seismic to have all of our sales content, being able to personalize it. And again, I think kind of what I mentioned before, okay, you're in this training course, for how you do this demo on a specific piece of the technology, then it'll pop up, here's some digital learning assets for when you're actually doing that demo, you're not going to go all the way back to that course or the module, you can just easily access some of those assets with the content that you need. So in that aspect, like using AI with, with that.

Luis Malbas  
Nice, how about you, Lenny, what do you think about about AI is a trend and how you're preparing to use it? Or if integrating it into, into your, into your work processes?

Linnea Conely  
Well, I definitely, I definitely think it's a hot trend, everybody's talking about it. And I think a lot of people are talking about it, but don't really even know what they're what they're gonna do what they know, they need to talk about it because everyone's talking about it. I definitely though use it. I've used chap GPT. A little just to kind of brainstorm some case studies and kind of some roleplays just to get you know, kind of different voices create different voices in there. I use it a lot for video creation, we have beyond go beyond go I make about two videos a day, I just, I make tons of A's. We also use us Cynthia, which has more stock cartoonish has more realistic person avatars and, and I am so impressed at how much the voices are getting better the AI that's that's also the something that I used to not want to use the text to speech because it sounded so annoying and artificial. But just recently it is getting I mean, obviously, you can still tell that it's not real. It's not a human, but it's not annoying anymore. It's getting it's just it's getting so much better. And then something that I would like to work on that I haven't though yet is our LMS does use AI to make recommendations to make course recommendations. But we're not quite ready yet to kind of have to build that out. We haven't tagged everything appropriately. So that's something I need to work on is is kind of thinking about how we tag things so that these systems can actually put things together in meaningful ways for people.

Luis Malbas  
Okay, when asked this question, I'm just so curious. And you know, just considering that AI is like, say the top trend that we're seeing? How has it changed your job? If it has, if it hasn't? Like how do you foresee it, possibly changing your job even like, say a year from now? How different will the work that you're doing be potentially with this with this technology? Anyone want to tackle that one?

Stephanie Gieseke  
I guess I'll jump in. I think how it has helped me is becoming or being more e effective and able to deliver the content that my learners want, when they want it in the format that they wanted. And I just can see that trend continuing and making it easier and easier and easier for us as l&d professionals and talent development professionals to give the people what they want, right. And being able to personalize and customize that content. And I know there's I mean, I see a lot of people talking about on social media, how Oh, no, don't use AI. It's gonna take over the world. But I'm very excited about what's going to be coming in the future because I just think it's things have been built so fast, and it is very exciting.

Luis Malbas  
How about you, Bobby, how do you do you think your job is going to change much over the next year?

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
I in the next year? No, I'm I think it's going to change the nature of the conversations that we have. Because I think we can arrive at strategic decisions a lot faster. So if you think about the steps that we do in our daily job, AI is still in the forefront of it. So any of the slowdown that you had up front in terms of your discovery can now be expedited because you can get a lot of information and now you're working on validating that information instead of gathering the information. So I'm hopeful in terms of like building off what Stephanie said, it's going to transition, that time that we would spend up front, we now get to spend more time on creating the meaningful and impactful learning. Whereas right now, I feel like we spend a lot of time up front trying to figure out the problem in the strategy. And then it's like, quick, deliver the training deliver the product. Um, so I hope it's just going to be like a time shift. And again, I think it's going to change the conversations up front and help us create better products in the end.

Luis Malbas  
Right, right. And, you know, I honestly, I am a little challenged with this, because when I think about trends and training, no matter what AI is at the forefront, and I'm probably in it a lot heavier than most, just because I mean, I even use it to help me with, you know, coaching my son's fourth grade basketball team. I'm just like, all over the place with it. But, um, are there any other trends that you're seeing? That should be talked about other than AI? I mean, Lindsey, I know you were talking about, you know, you create two videos today, using AI. But is there anything else out there that you know, that that you're seeing that is a little bit standing out to you?

Linnea Conely  
Well, I think well, kind of going along with that is micro learning. I think that's something how we might see my job changing too, is that instead of wanting, you know, these long these programs and these courses, I think that we're going to see a lot more requests for microlearning, short things, short bursts just and things that can be used much more contextually and in the moment, and to support people on the job, versus trying to preload all of this upfront training. And so that's, that's a trend, I think, the just in time, and micro learning and on the job and context sensitive training, which also I think this is this is a trend that I think has been it's like it's Adamos trend. And what I saying is virtual reality has been popular, but augmented reality really hasn't caught on is always people always talk about VR, AR and then even XR extended realities. And while a lot of people are using virtual reality, augmented reality, it just seems like it's okay, it's gonna hit, okay, it's coming, but it just it never really catches on. And I think that that's something I hope would catch on, because I think that would be really valuable. Especially with even the micro learning, I mean, just the ability to be in a real situation, and then have access to things, you know, to extend my experience of that situation. I'm sitting like, I thought about this one time, we used to have a coffeemaker at work, that would always malfunction because the filter didn't work and it would get clogged, and you turn it on all sudden water was start pouring out everywhere. So if you didn't have something under it right away, you just made a big miss. And it happened to me all the time. Because I was always almost the first one turning it on. So I thought wouldn't it be great if we could just have some you have a QR code there or something? You know, immediately you could get information on how do you use this coffeemaker? What do you do, or, or just even like a warning, you walk towards it before you press the button. It says Warning, make sure you have a cup under here before you head and here's why this is what you need to do. So I mean, that's that's a trend that I would like to see. Is it going to happen? I don't know. Because like I said, AR doesn't seem like it's ever gonna take off. But at least I hope it does.

Stephanie Gieseke  
I would love that for when you're putting things together at home. Like I have this giant monitor stand here and some of the when it has like the the diagram, Okay, grab this piece. All of those giant bolts look the same. It's like a quarter of an inch off if I could could have just had my phone with AR and scanned over it. And then it would just say, this is the one you need right here.

Luis Malbas  
No, that's great. That's great. Totally those IKEA boxes I know that my wife shows up with sometimes and I just look at it like Oh boy, here we go.

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
Hello, QR codes came out. And then they died. And now they've kind of come back with a vengeance. It's almost like their purpose has been redefined in terms of the ease of use on a mobile phone connecting to the app or whatnot that Stephanie is alluding to, to be able to like integrate to other things to actually make your life easier in the moment of need. Yeah, I think QR codes are funny that way.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. Yeah. I was definitely an early adopter on the QR codes. And then like, I was really just disappointed when they started to go away. And now it's like, pretty much every restaurant I go to, I've got to like scan for the menu and be able to, to order that way rather than talking to human beings. So yeah, that's interesting. Now I do want to know, and this is, um, This one I selfishly just want to hear your answer on this. But when you're on something like LinkedIn, LinkedIn or Facebook or just on social media, and you're like, just sort of gauging what are all of these l&d professionals talking about what the trends are. And for me, I always see it. It's like aI pretty much. But in reality, like, what, what is actually happening? You know, everyone's just talking about it. I really don't see that many people using it that much in l&d. We just had an AI event for TLD. See, I think it was in October, but and I got to see some real life practical application there. But for the most part, I see a lot of conversation about it. But I don't see anything like real happening. I mean, do you have any, any commentary on that at all? Like, when you're seeing all this stuff, like being talked about on LinkedIn, but then actually, the, when you're going to do your job every day? How different is that from? You know, from from the stuff that you're seeing in like mainstream media?

Linnea Conely  
Well, like I said, I think it kind of goes back to everyone's talking about it. And they feel like they need to talk about it, because everybody's talking about it. And so there's not as much, you know, real application, if you look at those articles, they're probably like, Yeah, this is coming. Look, you need to do this, these are the skills you're going to need. But that doesn't then go into, and this is what we did exactly. I mean, a few I've seen like a couple, but most of them don't really get into any of the specifics of it, I think might be because it's kind of subtle, like, I think, when people say you have to use AI, they're thinking, Okay, I'm gonna go in now I need to use AI. What does that mean? But it's more subtle than that. Think about what we've been talking about. It's built in to the applications we're already using. Where, you know, you use VR, and you use various other programs. It's just there. It's like, Yeah, I think probably pretty soon and probably in word processing applications, it was it just it will be a part of it. So you might not think I'm using AI, you're just thinking I'm using this new feature in my program I've used forever.

Stephanie Gieseke  
So that's like, we would sit down and do a I like, what you're saying is, is actually being integrated into our processes into the technologies that we're using to be more efficient and to produce that content. And similarly to that with, like, virtual reality and linear I know, you talked about the the AR versus VR, or like the mixed reality having both of them together. I do see PL people talking a lot about VR, VR, AR VR, but not really in the perspective for like inside of the organization. It's yeah, we're using it for your sales teams or to get customers but looking at it internally, I built a prototype, I think was last year within or does that free software. I think it's frame vr.io as part of like the VR Bella platform, but I think people again, they can't visualize what you're talking about when you're saying this would be an amazing way to deliver like onboarding or some coaching where you can have different roundtables everywhere, because they think you have to have like a VR headset, but you don't, you could do it just on your computer. And it's kind of like a video game where you're just moving around, you know, on your keyboard, you can go up to a whiteboard, someone could be there talking, you could you know, in the prospective for, like onboarding, when you have new hires come in, it'd be great to have some of the executives sitting around, you can talk about specific things to them. And it's not where you all have to just be sitting there in a zoom session or a team session or some session like that. And it's more immersive where you get to walk around. And again, you're not getting like, I know what motion sickness like you don't have to have those VR goggles on to be able to have that immersive experience. You can have it partially just on your on your screen. But again, I think people like Lucy, you're saying people are talking about it, but then it's that okay, what exactly how are you implementing it? How are you doing it? But I don't see a lot of examples out there.

Luis Malbas  
And are these training trends that we're even talking about? I mean, are they relevant to talent development, like at a real basic level when you're talking about, you know, talent development? Do do those trends? Even stick? I know, Bob, you were saying that you had I think it was like skills gaps? What was it you're saying you had open on your you had a Chrome tab with some some? Yeah,

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
so I have a window open regarding, like, skills, libraries, writing rich skill descriptors, the competency modeling, being able to map all of those things to occupation code, Stephanie was talking about, you know, the career path and a job profile. There's tools out there that exist Second, feed you all of that information. Some of those are being generated and fed through AI. But you can also use AI to capitalize on what you need. So yeah, so I have a window open with those types of things and how a proper assessment that demonstrates true proficiency of skills gains. It's to not just a digital badge, but a digital credential and what that means for people in terms of getting jobs, the whole smart resume movement. So there is this whole skills based movement that is happening. It's within talent development, but it's happening more in like the higher ed space right now. But I think it matters a lot for Talent Development, internal to organizations, because they need talent pipelines, they have to acquire talent. They need talent exposure, or job exposure, career exposure in K through 12. So talking about like VR, AR Mr. Like, that's where some of those things can come in handy. Because every school system cannot afford the technology to be able to integrate students into different type of career opportunities. They have very specific career and tech ed opportunities that they may be offering. But some of these trends, I think, will help shift the talent acquisition pipeline to more of that K through 12. Using more of these trends, especially on like, the the VR side of things, and then the skills piece is what will help transition people into actually acquiring the talent, but developing the talent and managing the talent and retaining the talent. Right. So I think what we're seeing is this, I don't know, what do you want to call it? Like the Oreo cookie? Like, we're sandwiching, the learning from the employer side, and then the career pathing and skills growth side?

Luis Malbas  
Wow, that's really good. That's really that's that actually gives me a lot to think about Bobby, I like that. That's great. Let's see, I did have one question come in here from Cindy. Let me go ahead and show that one on the screen. There are conversations about social learning in the industry lately. We've talked, we've talked about them before, but there seems to be a shift around learning communities in the workplace. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Linnea Conely  
That's kind of interesting, because I recently read an article I was about AI, and training employees on AI. And it was actually from Udemy. And it was a an outline for a course telling you how you could upskill your employees on AI. And it was all built around social learning. It was built around gathering a group of your employees together, and then running them through this trial of how they're going to use AI. And then they're going to report back to each other on what they did. And they're going to talk about how they're going to use it next, they're gonna basically collaboratively come up with a strategy on how the company could use AI in the process of themselves upskilling themselves on how to use or learn to use AI. So I thought, I mean, that's not something I've done, but I just read about that and say, I thought that was interesting. Yeah,

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
I feel like the AI thing is kind of a groundswell. I think, you know, people are using it, whether leaders note or not. So I think it's important for organizations to have some sort of policy or guardrails out there, especially to protect their intellectual property, safety and security. What was it earlier this year, Samsung Developers leaked a bunch of their code because they were using chat GBT. And they weren't doing it securely. So I think there needs to be some parameters around it. But I think back to one of the most impactful projects I've ever worked on was they hand picked like 12 people across the company. And they locked us in a room for like three days, and they said, This is the product that we need. This is the problem it solves. Y'all figure it out. Here's your pizza money, Here's your coffee, and y'all pick out your rolls, you figure out what it is that you're going to do. And I kind of think giving employees especially like, low level employees, you know, not the leaders, the decision makers, give them an opportunity in a safe space to learn how to play with it, and help have them go oh, this is how it can impact my job. This is how it can impact my job. And then that empowers them to then go to leadership or HR, whatever to say, These are the skills that we need to gain the you know, this is how my job description potentially needs to change. And this is what the organization needs to think about. And again, you know earlier on I was talking about translating the ROI and organizational effectiveness and cost savings by doing these things. You're gonna spend a little money up front, totally engage and empower your employees. And then you can like radically transform your organization and your people at the same time. So I tend to see the AI piece as that groundswell.

Luis Malbas  
Interesting. Yeah, I guess it's worth all that pizza and coffee.

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
I think it is that project was so fun. And it was people who didn't really work together. And so you get that kind of collaboration. And there were no wrong answers, very Design Thinking ask. We put out a workable product in just a couple of days, we had a demo ready to go. And hit product project like that would have taken a year if we followed our normal protocols, right. And, lo and behold, they got it in under a week. That's

Luis Malbas  
fascinating. That's great. And just as an aside, I actually would really like from a social learning perspective, to kind of just chase down some of this AI thick stuff, because I think, you know, I don't spend a ton of time on LinkedIn, it just terrifies me in that place. But I do love talking about AI and having those conversations, but I like doing it from more just a real world perspective. So I think with TL DC, I would just like to set something up where it doesn't have to be about learning or about l&d specific about how you're using AI. But I would love to hear how people are just using it in general, just so that we can start just sharing experiences, you know, it's just something that is going to be a part of our existence going forward. So anyway, I guess that's sort of just the side conversation. Alright, so any any last things you want to add to this one, thank you so much the group of you for for your feedback on this panel. Any other questions in the chat, I just love to hear anything that you have to wrap things up.

Stephanie Gieseke  
Oh, I like Cindy's idea.

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
Love it hackathon.

Luis Malbas  
Talk to real intelligence about artificial intelligence. And I think that for me, that is a part of the community too, is the fact that we can get together as human beings, and, and talk to each other about things versus and talk to each other about AI. Because I think that there is going to be this period where I mean, there are already people that are just regularly have conversations with with AI and feel like it's somewhat sentient. But that's a whole other conversation I'm sure that other people talk about.

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
So I really liked Cindy's idea. in Charlottesville, there's a design society, and it's more web designers, graphic designers. And as an instructional designer, felt very strange being there, but a great community fully embrace. And I learned a lot and I come to find out they have a design marathon that happens every year. And they partner with a nonprofit that needs either a rebranding or some product created for them. And they create different teams. And the teams go in and they meet with the client, and it's an eight hour affair. And the team that I was a part of it was a rebranding exercise, you know, you you come back together, you do your Think Tank thing, you create your pitches, you go back, you get some initial feedback from the client, you go back to the room. And then at the end, you give this formal presentation, all the teams do and then the nonprofit slacks, you know, whatever the product is the you know, the annual letter format, or this one was a rebrand. So they picked the rebrand out of that. And maybe that's an opportunity for us to do something if there is an organization that has a problem that needs to be solved, that we bring together a couple of teams and figure out different ways in which we're doing it, how we're utilizing AI. And so a great organization can get a product and a solution out of it and potentially some advice on how to use AI to make their jobs easier.

Luis Malbas  
That's interesting. All right. Yeah, um, I would love to be able to, you know, I whatever resources I have, if the community wants to build it, I'm I'm all for it. I you know, I don't mind throwing my hat in for anything that the group sounds valuable. Even if we wanted to host the AI l&d hackathon within this platform that you know, that I have access to? Yeah, let's do it. Let's we'll make it happen. I actually, yeah, this is kind of a side thing too. But I also wanted to do an unconference in, in this in this in this space as well, which I think would be a lot of fun. But, again, it's just like finding the time and the resources to do it all.

Stephanie Gieseke  
You don't have unlimited time and resource So

Luis Malbas  
I'm assuming like my from my work my like the Slack channel is just ding ding, ding ding. I'm

Bobbi Losee Vernon  
like, I was supposed to fix that.

Stephanie Gieseke  
Me over there. Because I just think like, can't it sense your emotion or like when it sends that you're frustrated, then it just shuts down all notifications. It's like, I know, I hear you being frustrated.

Luis Malbas  
I wish. I wish, I wish. All right. Well, I'm Stephanie. I would love to hear more about your journey. Now to looking for more opportunities. I think we're going to be doing a transitioning to l&d event, which is just not just opening to, to teachers, just anyone that is looking for, for or trying to continue on in their journey and l&d that's going to be happening next month. So maybe that's something you can be involved in as well. Yeah. And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and just wrap up the panel. Bobby Lenay. Stephanie, thank you so much for being a part of this. And everyone in the chat. Thank you for being here. And, and then we'll see you tomorrow, opening up tomorrow with Rebecca Prejean, and she's going to be discussing breaking barriers, implementing accessibility policies and learning amid organizational resistance tomorrow at 8am Pacific 12 I mean, 11am Eastern. So, with that, we'll see you all tomorrow. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Hey,