Out There Beyond The Wall

‘We’ve had an invite to this event – its run by a vendor, and we have no intention of buying their platform. Do any of you fancy going along?’. As email invites go, it wasn’t the most thrilling prospect. It came from our L&D team and had been forwarded to a small group of us who, whilst not necessarily working in L&D, worked closely with them in similar but different spaces. Having ignored it for a day or two, I got a message from my boss asking ‘so are you going to go to that thing or not?’. As I was busy typing ‘not’, I had a change of heart – is it the worst thing in the world to go drink some nice filter coffee for a day with no expectations for anything? I changed my response from ‘not’ to ‘why not’, and replied to the sender confirming I’d be there. A few weeks went by and the big day arrived, and I set off on the train with one key instruction from the L&D Lead – do not under any circumstances agree to buy anything.

I’ll keep the names of the company I worked for and the vendor out of this as neither are relevant to the point of the story, but suffice to say the event was run by an online learning platform. And the first thing I noticed as I walked in wearing jeans and a t-shirt was that I had massively misjudged the dress code. As I made my way through the room full of people in full suits and in one case what appeared to be a ballgown, I considered using the trainers I was wearing to make a run for it. I settled instead for hiding in the corner with a coffee and set into answering some work emails on my phone. Sadly this plan was undone by the fact that the organisers had hired a photographer for the day, and I kept glancing up to see that I was in the direct eyeline of the photos being taken. Sigh – I suppose I’m going to have to engage.

I looked around and, having found the second most uncomfortable looking people in the room, I walked over and asked if I could come hide from the photographer with them. We got talking, and it turned out that they were both teachers from a university in Europe. They told me they were really excited to be there as they never get invited to anything, and were stocking up on the breakfast pastries to get their money’s worth. The next people I met were also academics – one was a Dean of a UK university, the other a head of something in another. As I got around the room, it became very apparent that the majority of attendees were from academia, and having dropped out of sixth form, college AND university (teenage Drew’s bad decisions have caused me no end of problems in adult life) a wave of imposter syndrome hit me like a wall.

‘Nevermind’ I told myself ‘focus on the coffee, and don’t say anything stupid’

Here’s a list of just some of the things I learned during that day…

·       UNESCO’s Social Development Goals

·       The hesitancy within academia to lean in to the use of AI, through concerns about faculty taking advantage of them sharing their expertise

·       The use of an AI chatbot to supplement learning between university lectures was leading to noticeable and meaningful improvements and outcomes for learners

·       Data and knowledge management was a real challenge, and those organisations and institutions that had their act together in these areas were able to take advantage of advancements in technology much faster than those that don’t

·       Those that don’t have their act together are prepared to pay to have someone come and sort their data and knowledge management for them

·       That networking is really hard

None of the things I learned during that day were directly relevant to my day job, or anything that my team was responsible for. And yet, over the following 18 months, they’ve all ended up being incredibly useful. It prompted a project within my team to build a networking tool – an app that event attendees could use to make it easier to find common ground with other attendees at an event. It led me to reflect on how we captured and retained our experience and knowledge, and what practices we undertook to properly manage that knowledge. It gave me reference points when I became involved in a strategic workforce project focussed on skills and making use of learning and upskilling materials. And just recently, almost a year later, the social development goals came up in conversation with a fellow community professional and gave us a common ground to talk about.

As you might be able to tell, I am a great advocate for going to conferences, meetups and events which may not have direct domain relevance or that you may not have a set learning objective for. I work in software development, and I have been to many trade shows in big echoey conference halls full of vendors waving branded swag eagerly at crowds passing by. I’ve been to events focussed on wellbeing and healthcare, and one time a office facilities management conference. I’m always up front with people if I’m not in a position that would allow me to buy their services (no one is letting me choose which brand of headsets our Tech Support team is going to bulk buy), but even so its useful for me to learn why I should consider bone conducting headsets instead of the bog standard ones we all have five pairs of knocking around the desk drawer. If the technology allows checkout staff to hear updates from a team leader whilst still being able to hear a customer unobstructed, why can’t it be used to let people on your development team listen to training or music or whatever the hell they want without them being undisturbable and completely isolated within their team? Why can’t it be used by events teams so that they can be coordinated centrally in a noisy environment?

A former boss once told me that they go to events like these for a different reason – it’s a great opportunity to see what our competitors are doing and how they’re doing it. It’s a great point, and we don’t need to limit ourselves to just looking at our competitors. Being in an environment where we are learning about something not directly connected to our day to day problems affects the way we think about those problems, in a way which is new and novel to us. It is a competitive advantage that a predetermined result focussed mindset will easily overlook and miss out on.

Times are hard at the moment. Training budgets are under strain (when are they not?), and focus is placed on demanding immediate pay off and results from any investment. This is a shame as this mindset and approach will ultimately lead to a limited and sterile attitude to innovation, and that ultimately impacts the work we do, the services we offer and the products we deliver. This is something I really feel passionate about, and I hope that it inspires at least one reader to be brave and try learning somewhere new.

Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee 🙂