2025 training conference recap – Elearning experience

Last week, I attended the Training 2025 conference in Orlando. I always try to review my notes shortly after an event like this to identify the main dishes to take while my memory is cool. As is always the case during conferences, it's great to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while and meet people that I only knew only by line. I also met a lot of new people and I had interesting conversations.

I know that everyone cannot attend these events in person (and even if you do, it is impossible to attend all the sessions that seem interesting). But I hope you can have a little taste of the Training 2025 conference of my notes.

Do not forget the magic sauce: 5 crucial ingredients for unforgettable training

Katie Greenman and Jon Gordan

Katie and Jon's work focuses on live training, both in person and virtual. They shared five crucial ingredients to create memorable training experiences. These ingredients emphasize the human aspects of training, especially in living and virtual contexts, focusing on belonging, clarity, challenge, joy and authenticity. A key point was that every 5 to 7 minutes in a training, you should have a connection point so that people connect with others or reflect and connect the content to their own experiences.

Keynote: curiosity, compassion and change: directing with stories

Kandice Cole and Lee Keylock

In this discourse, they demonstrated the concept of a “exchange of stories” – tell the story of someone else as if it was yours – as a tool to strengthen empathy and transform perceptions. The main speakers modeled by telling the stories of others, then we tried ourselves to acquire first-hand experience. It was an interesting experience, and it helped establish new connections. I can see how their organization uses this to increase empathy, especially in a longer program and more active facilitation.

Unlock the magic of narration: enchant your learners and transform your characters

Meredith Singleton

I sometimes attend other sessions on the narration and the scenarios just to see how other people talk about this subject, rather than in order to necessarily learn something new myself. One thing that I found interesting about this session is how it has focused on iteration to refine the characters, the intrigue and other elements of the story. Its organization uses a longer time to create stories to allow more time to collect comments and travel several times to improve their conceptions.

Creation of personalized learning interactions without writing code

Jeff Batt

Jeff Batt is often at the forefront of using AI in L&D work, and this session was no exception. He demonstrated how to use AI tools like the cursor and adorable to create personalized learning interactions without in -depth knowledge. Even if you don't need to know how to code, you are still director with AI tools. It is important to do so step by step. Do not try to create an entire application from a single prompt. Start with basic features, then add features and components one by one. Jeff showed some practical examples such as wallet sites, interactive videos and list applications to make lists.

I think it's too complex for the typical user (you must really break down the user experience and describe what you want explicitly). But it is interesting to think about the possibilities of creating an application or an interaction when you do not find exactly what you want in existing tools.

Dinner around the mixer

These conferences include the opportunity to go out to dinner with a group of the event. I participated in this in Techlearn Previously, and I would certainly register again. I was in a group led by Amy Morissey by Artisan Learning. We had six people for a dinner in Disney Springs. The food was good and the conversation was great. I appreciated the opportunity to have longer informal conversations during dinner.

Keynote: collaboration, communication and leadership: excellence orchestration

Sarah Hicks

Tuesday started with a Keynote from Sarah Hicks, conductor of Minnesota Orchestra. The orchestra used the orchestra leading as a metaphor for leadership and collaboration. She highlighted the importance of individual roles in a collective effort and how the different styles of driving and leadership affect performance. She also brought a string quartet to show how much driving is no words and has had several volunteers trying to behave. I heard several people talking about how much they appreciated this speech, and I think she did an excellent job by breaking down the subject of driving in a way that people without experience could understand and relate to it.

Accessibility test for non-tests

Chrisanna Paxton McMillin

I had the chance to spend a lot of time with Chris during this event, and it was nice to have a longer conversation with her during a meal. In its session, she shared a 5 -step process to improve accessibility with important features to check.

• Color
• Language
• Media
• Structure
• Essay

A word of advice: use the ALT text as a file name for the images you reuse. This allows you to record the ALT text correctly with the image even without more complex multimedia library. In addition, some creation tools take the file name as a default ALT text, saving you time.

Fast, focused and flexible: improved video creation of the AI ​​of Camtasia

Matthew Pierce and Ryan Eash

I had not looked much the features of the AI ​​in Camtasia, so I appreciated this overview of what is possible. I am not really interested in AI avatars (personally, I think they are above all a solution looking for a problem). However, elimination of AI background noise is a really useful tool. I will sometimes use the dynamic legends of AI for publications on social networks.

Celebrate Judy Hale

On Tuesday, there was a smaller reception celebrating the decades of Judy Hale contributions to the Domaine de L&D and training conferences. She shared some stories from the start of her career and explained how she persisted through challenges. Judy was very clear that she did not retire, even if she would reduce her travel schedule. She has two other books that come out this year and continues to write her newsletter by email and do other work.

Cultivate connection, belonging and commitment to virtual training

Kassy Laberie

Kassy had a lot of energy for her session, which was a great way to start day 3 of the conference. She spoke of combining commitment and technology to “create an experience worthy of commitment (from your audience)”. It was useful to see how she used aha slides for different interactions. She has also shown several activities that could be used in virtual training. An activity, I'm sure I can use is “image connect”: showing a series of images and asking people to identify what they are and why. It would be a more fun warm-up activity than “what time is it typical that you are” that I often use at the beginning of webinaries.

My session: Prepare the scene: make the training relevant and authentic with scenarios

I had an excellent participation for my session. The room was long and lean, as you can see in the upper image above. I hate having to talk when the back of the room is so far. But overall, the session went well. We have made a group brainstorming for specific details in scenarios using Slido, and it's always fun to see what ideas that people offer to give life to a story.

AI for id: educational design supported by AI for Elearning

Garima GUPTA

Garima does all kinds of cool things with AI, so I chose his session for the 3 -hour practical clinic. She shared ideas on how we can use AI at each stage of the Addie process to support our work.

Some remarkable ideas:

• Create an analysis model to the needs fulfilled in the chatgpt. You can really generate an HTML form in Chatgpt, not just in the text and the questions you need to build in another tool.
• Notebooklm now has an interactive mode. Instead of listening to the podcast, you can interrupt it and join the conversation. Use your voice to ask questions, and the podcast voices will answer with just a slight lag.
• Use AI to usurize stakeholders or learners depending on a character or description. When you cannot have access directly to your learners, it could be useful. It is clearly not a complete substitute for real conversations with real people, but it can help you examine things from other angles, especially for general subjects where AI probably has more training data.

Travel challenges

Many travel plans have been extinguished by the weather and coming from the conference. I know that those of us from North Carolina were all impatient to go home to the winter storm. My own flight was delayed, so I only got home after midnight Wednesday evening. It made a very long day! But overall, I am really happy to be able to attend this conference and make so many precious relationships.

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