It has been a little over a week since all the cool people of LnD came to Orlando, FL to shine in one of the best conferences happening here annually. Training Magazine’s Training Conference took place at the majestic Disney Coronado Resort and it was a total blast. The keynote speakers were top notch and the experience quite engaging from beginning to end. Here’s a quick recap of my experience so that hopefully it inspires you to attend next year.
The Human Aspect
Ask any learning professional why they love attending conferences and their immediate response is “the people”. Not only do you get to meet other professionals and network with folks from various industries but you also get to meet speakers. To me, it’s always great to catch up with industry friends while also learning about the latest trends in their line of work. Aside from that, there is always the opportunity to spending off-conference time in the evenings sharing a meal and what not.
The Keynotes
Keynote speakers are usually a big draw in all conferences and TrainingConf certainly delivered this year. I was only able to catch two of the keynotes and they were awe inspiring sessions. The first one was from Matthew Luhn, an animator and storyteller with awesome credits for his work in The Simpsons, Toy Story2 and do we need to mention more? Probably not. The second one was in my experience a total surprise and incredibly insightful keynote by Professor Temple Grandin, a prominent author and speaker of autism and animal behavior.
Matthew Luhn’s Keynote
Matthew’s session was very exciting as he delved into his past experiences growing up and how his father owned seven toy stores. It should be no surprise how growing up surrounded by toys forged a destiny that led him to write and animate Toy Story2 and other amazing animated films. Before that, he has studied animation at the California Institute of Arts and then became an animator for The Simpsons TV series. His message about creativity and how to formulate a story starting with a simple sentence was fascinating.
Dr. Temple Grandin
Temple’s keynote was powerful and dynamic. She spoke about visual thinking and how we need a diversity of thinkers in society. Engineers are great at figuring math and solving problems with various tools, but they can often miss details visual thinkers tend to notice with abstraction. Her revelations come from a past where she did not develop speech until the age of 3 and if we consider this, how amazing is it that she overcame that challenge which for most people would have been quite detrimental in their development. More importantly, she delivered powerful insights about our educational system today and how we have removed certain activities that promote visual thinkers i.e. home economics, wood shop, art, etc. A major takeaway for me was that if a speaker has a resonating message, the visual quality of a presentation does not matter much. Temple’s slide presentation was minimalistic and reminiscent of a 90s PowerPoint template. Yet, that didn’t seem to distract or matter much to the audience either.
My Escape Room for Learning Design Session
Another major highlight of my TrainingConf 2023 experience was presenting after a 3 year hiatus from the conference circuit. It was a big surprise to have an audience of close to 100 participants for my session on Escape Rooms for Learning Design. I received quite the encouraging feedback and everyone seem to have a phenomenal time learning to put together their own escape room prototype. This session is quite fun because the first thing we did was play a short escape room game I designed called “Escape from the Learning Guru”. It gave people the opportunity to learn about Instructional Design theories while trying to escape a fictitious locked room.
Wrap Up
In summary, TrainingConf 2023 was a fantastic all around experience where I got to reconnect with industry friends, meet new people and be inspired by phenomenal keynote speakers. I highly recommend it for all learning professionals and let’s face it, it’s also an awesome excuse to enjoy the sunny weather and theme park fun at Disney.
