Despite having gotten up at an ungodly hour for me, I had a great day at the first Austin eLearning Symposium at the DoubleTree Hotel off of I35. It was the first Central Texas Symposium geared towards managers and decisions makers in charge of eLearning development, from a broad range of organizations, from state, municipal, non-profit, boutique corporation and Fortune 100. And a few odd Tech Writers like me. 


I attended thanks to a discount offered by the Central Texas Lectora User Group, which I joined when it started end of last year.  Between the early bird discount and the sponsor discount, it was well worth the money out of my wallet.  I got there a bit later than I wanted, but it was still before the introductions.  Breakfast was a nice mix of hot breakfast tacos, fresh fruit, pastries, juices and (?!) cereals.  Lunch was also tasty, and then they put us in sugar overload with chocolate covered strawberries, brownies, and candy bars.  I didn't resist the temptation, but it was a while since I've had that much sugar. Yeesh!


The topics ranged from Planning and Budgeting an eLearning Initiative  (boy, and I under budgeted!), Curriculum Development in the Digital Age, Legal Compliance and eLearning , eLearning Technology Selection and Implementation, and my favorite, Models for eLearning Project Management.  I wasn't impressed with the legal session, as it wasn't very focused and didn't stay on target.  Otherwise, it was all on target. 


I really wish I'd heard what  Dr. James Moshinskie had to say on the project management aspect of eLearning last November; it would have saved me a lot of time.  "Dr. Mo" was one of only two speakers who had handouts; otherwise, there were no paper materials around, save the name tags.  Very "Green" of the organizers.  He put a LOT of data in his handout, and generously offered electronic versions as well. I started my current gig without having experience creating online courses (lots of two day warning live training sessions and metric tonnes of training documentation, but not eLearning modules).  His portion alone was worth the price, as it helped me fill in gaps in my knowledge, and validated many of my principles and methods. He knows his stuff, with "five international awards for excellence in eLearning from the ISPI and ASTD."


I was also impressed with Chris Justice, one of the organizers, and the first speaker of the day. He made us all do introductions at the beginning of the symposium, including our overall expectations for the day. Justice is the CEO of SparkSight, and apparently is quite busy, on several boards, and is a member of Chris also maintains a vigorous role in the board of directors for Open Source Matters, Inc., the Association for Corporate the Foundation Working Group for the Joomla! Open Source Content Management project, which is something I really need to look into, as I need to learn more about Joomla.


I did get some networking in, and learned about ASTD (American Society for Training & Development).  It sounded interesting the first time I heard about it, but then I kept hearing about and realized if I'm going to continue developing courses, I really need to check them out!  I'm planning on attending their next event.  



The last session was a panel Q&A of questions writtend down in the first half of the day.  They had considered doing breakout sessions but the questions were too diverse. And before the Q&A got underway, one of the folks at MicroAssist asked us to consider forming an organization for eLearning in the Central Texas area. I think this is a great idea; I certainly want to learn more.  MicroAssist is a CTLUG sponsor, that invited us to be a sponsor of this event as well. I'm really liking this collaborative attitude people in eLearning seem to have.