You are on air. So, ladies and gentlemen, live from Training Magazine 2025, please welcome Megan Torrance and TorranceLearning Podcast.

Hey, Meg, guess where I am.

You know, I'm not sure, Megan, you travel so much. You're, like, here and there and everywhere. Are you at a conference? You went to, like, 25 of them last year.

So it's a safe bet. It's a safe bet. You are a safe betting person. Yes. So I am at the Training 25 conference in Orlando where I have to say the weather is amazing and I'm hearing about snow all over the country and all this stuff. And it is sunny and gorgeous and there's palm trees out there and it is beautiful. And it got me thinking. I had a few tangential thoughts about conferences and learning at conferences.

So you want to do it?

Yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about it.

Okay. So, Meg, what was your first conference?

My first conference. I think my first conference was Learning Dev camp. Maybe in 2020 15. Not 2020 15. 2015. 2015.

Yes.

And yeah, in the beautiful mountains of Utah. And it is spectacular. Very small conference, very close knit group of people.

Yeah, I love DevCamp. Yes. And actually, funny enough, my first ever conference was in the same building that I am right now in 2010. Elliot Mazzy was running the learning conferences that were in this same hotel. Right. Okay. So there's like some people in the audience. Because literally, Meg, we're doing this live.

You can't. I don't think Meg can see the audience. You can see me. Anyways, there's people in the audience nodding their head and. Because those are good conferences. Right, right. And the Learning Guild take them over. And those are good conferences.

I'm a big conference geek, so it's kind of cool. It's been almost 15 years then of conferences in this same venue, and I've been speaking at conferences for about 13 years now. But I actually really want to talk about coming to conferences to learn, which is what the vast majority of people at conferences do. And there's a question, right? Learning professional to learning professional, are conferences actually good for learning? Have you ever wondered about this? I know you speak at a few conferences.

I've speak to, yeah, I have spoke at a couple of conferences, but yeah, I think they're good for learning. I think there's some good things that can come out of a conference from your own learning standpoint. A couple of them that come to mind for me. So you can expand your thinking into new and different areas that you might not have been exposed to otherwise or found on your own. I'm thinking of sometimes when you go to a conference, the keynotes, they're related but also somewhat tangential to your industry or the topics that you're used to hearing about. So I think that's one thing. One way that learning can be really good at conferences is like branching into new areas.

What about you? What do you think?

Well, it was interesting because I hadn't thought about that. Right. So you get to hear the keynote's perspective on your industry, which you wouldn't otherwise hear any other way. So I hadn't even thought about that as somebody who I tend to skip keynotes. That's a new perspective. Yeah. I mean, what I love about conferences is you get a smattering of things. I actually think, and I often start my conference presentations with, this can be a really crummy way to learn, right.

It's a bunch of things and they're randomly scattered all over and it's all out of order. And it's a half an hour or an hour of this and an hour of this and an hour of this and an hour of this and it's like super jumbled. You might stretch it a little bit and call it like interweaving and space learning. Or you could just say it's just. What do we describe random chaos all the time.

Random scattered thoughts and chaos.

Random scattered thoughts and chaos. So that's an alternative name. Meg, I don't know if you were on, but like that's in case the tangents lined up. Random scattered thoughts and chaos all the time. All the time. So. And then you go home, right? So you have this big conference experience. You then go home and you have a weekend usually.

And then you come back to work and you're like mounded up with email. And so you don't get to implement anything that you did. Right. So that's, that's one of the downsides. Do you have any upsides to like.

I've got a couple more upsides. I've got at least one more I can share with you. I mean, so when you're at a conference, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna be there and you're gonna see people that you might only ever see through social media. Maybe it's people who are your peers, maybe it's people who are on stage speaking and you get the opportunity to have like a one on one conversation with them. Maybe go a little bit deeper than you would otherwise on, on social media. So that's a That's, that's an upside. And you can learn through that conversation maybe a little bit more.

Well, and I think what I like about that, Meg, is speakers actually really like it when you do come and talk to them. Yeah, right. Like, that's something that is really meaningful to them. And so you get that attention and time, too. And it's a good overview of what they're doing. And it's very up to the minute. Right. If somebody's like, Julie Dirksen.

I adore Julie Dirksen. Right. If she's writing a book, it's not going to come out for 18 months. But if I go to a conference, I can hear about what she's thinking right now, which is also super, super cool.

You know, you also, you get. You can get a really good take on the same topic from several different speakers in rapid succession. So whereas, like, you might get, you know, if you're online in your normal workday, you might get a little bit here and a little bit there, but it might be so spaced out. Like, at a conference, you get to compare and contrast. Like, oh, well, this person said this over here and this person said that over here. And. And so, like, you have that better ability to come away with, like, a more rounded and holistic take on a particular topic or approach to something.

Yeah. And even some of the conferences have panels where those people otherwise wouldn't show up together all at once.

Yeah.

Okay, so, Meg, I want to do a thing that you're not planning for.

Okay.

Like, I don't do that every week that we work together. I'm just saying it's okay. You can say that out loud. Okay. So there's folks here in the audience and there's another mic set up. So if people have a question about learning at conferences or random scattered thoughts all the time and chaos, go ahead and hop up to the mic and either share a question about learning at conferences, a observation that you have learned about learning at conferences, or a tip for people, like, what makes conference learning work for you, why are you here? And why do you keep coming back. In the meantime, while people are thinking about that and making their way up, Meg, do you have, like, a conference tip?

Because I know you've been.

I know I drag you to a whole bunch of conferences.

Yeah, yeah. I definitely have some conference tips. I have maybe one or two. Maybe one.

Yeah, Start with one.

So good to start somewhere. I think a tip is. And this is hard for anybody who's already there at the conference, but, like, spend a little time before you go to that conference thinking about what is your goal? Like, what do you really want to take away from that conference? And maybe then tailor the sessions that you go to towards that goal instead of. I know it can be really tempting, at least for myself. Like, things are busy and I don't have time to look at the schedule before I leave. But whenever I don't do that and I don't, like, really start to plan out ahead of time what makes sense for me to go to, then I get overwhelmed. There's so much. There's so many different places that I want to be and topics that seem interesting, but if I'm not aligning them to my goal, I might walk away with such a random pile of different things that it's hard to really connect them together or take them back and really use them.

I love it. I love it. Even if you have to use a plane flight there to do it.

Yep.

Okay. Judy, is it Judy.

June.

June. Awesome.

Yeah. Actually, the best conference tip I ever got was from Elliot Mazzy himself. He said he was talking about going back. Like, you have all these ideas, you want to input everything like that. He's like, don't go back and like, blast and be all excited. He said, act very cool. Get yourself a cup of coffee. When people ask how it's going, that's fine.

He said. And then do you like the. He didn't call it a slow drip. I think of it a slow drip. It's like, you know, then start over time mentioning like, you know, got an idea, then thinking about, you know, more thoughtfully than just all excited. And, you know, then they just brush you off because, oh, she just came.

Back from a conference.

Okay, that is beautiful. That is beautiful. Yeah. Because you get all excited here, right? And you run home with a whole bunch of things. Jeff, you got one.

I do. I think my favorite thing about getting to go to conferences, and it's underrated, and you'll never sell this to the eyes upstairs, but it's the energy I get from being around people who do this as well. And I don't know about how many of you are in departments versus not, but I've been a basically solo practitioner for 15 years. It's me and that's it. And to be able to come and be a part of the community of professionals and get re energized and be around the people who share the struggles, share the understanding, appreciate what it is we do. It's probably one of my favorite things about getting to come to these is just the Time spent with peers that I don't really have when it comes to my business. I've got peers that I work with, but I don't have peers in the learning space, except when I get to come here and be a part of it.

Yeah. And, like, where else do you get to go and tell a good LMS joke and just, like, bring a room down?

Nobody else gets.

Nobody else gets LMS jokes. Right. So Alicia packs in the audience. She gets all the LMS jokes she knows. She's probably got, like, you know, like, there's dad book joke compilations. She's probably got the LMS joke compilation. Scorm jokes. Oh, scorn jokes.

You got a scorm joke? You could step up to the mic.

No.

Okay. So anybody else have thoughts, questions? Oh, we're getting another one. Getting another one. Meg. This is super fun, by the way.

It is.

Hi, my name is Kelly.

Hey, Kelly.

Hi. How do you measure the success of your conference attendance and share that back with leadership?

Oh, I love this. Okay, Meg, I want you to be thinking about this. How do you share the success of your conference attendance and share that back with leadership? So one of the things that I like to do is recommend that people think about what can they implement and show for it. And you can't. Sometimes you come in, it's like something great big, and you can't implement that right away, but you can start, like, having conversations.

So when I go to a conference, I take a whole bunch of notes, right? So, June, like, you write a whole bunch of notes, and I risk bombarding people. But before I share them, after a couple days, it. All the things, I start to whittle it down to. Oh, what's actually practical and actionable. And then whenever I am doing one of those things, I call out to leadership, like, hey, you know what? I went to this conference, I came up with this idea, and I just implemented this. Right? And it doesn't have to be a great big thing. It doesn't have to be, like, super quantitative, but definitely it's qualitative and in the moment and very, very specific. So I like to take notes, but by session and speaker, so I can tie that back later on.

Meg, do you have one?

Yeah, I think that. I mean, that was essentially what I was going to say, too. It's like being able to really think about what is it that you can take back and implement and tying those things so that you have a thread that comes through. Through. I mean, certainly you could. Yeah, absolutely. You could, like, talk about, you know, I went to X number of sessions or I networked with this many people. But I'm not sure that that makes as much of a difference to, to your organization as the things that you're actually going to bring back and implement.

And maybe even like thinking about, as I mentioned earlier, like your goals going in, making sure that you figure out what things you're going to take back and implement. Also tie and relate to your goals going in or your, your organization's goals, your personal development goals, that kind of a thing. So that there's that clear connection there.

I think that's pretty cool. And, and as you're talking about like those clear goals and those clear like connections to people before you go to a conference, it occurred to me just, so I've just been to two conferences so far this year. This is my second one and for the first conference and then for this one I had bounties. Like people are like, hey, would you find out like, so one bounty wise is AI video at a point yet where we can do a 90 second on location shoot and not have to go do an actual video shoot? Right. That was one of the bounties. The answer is no, not yet, but probably, probably before next cycle, two years from now. Right. So that was good. Right.

So it gave me a specific thing to go hunt and track down. And my second thing was to go and find out if a certain consultant we wanted to work with was available for hire. So I had like two bounties and then actually I should pull up my bounties for this week just in case they're there. So one is to find there's a particular learning community. I want to find out more like, is that actually like rocking and doing the thing? And then we run a, we call them Leaders of LLAMA, which is our agile method, but to find guest speakers, guest leaders to come and speak to this leadership learning experience that we have. So I have two bounties that I'm tasked to go find.

I love that you're bringing in the bounty language because that is something that I think we first encountered when we were doing the very first xAPI cohort. And but it makes, it makes sense that you know, you've got a thing that you're after that you're hunting for. You've got to hunt it down and bring it back to your team.

And it's a reason to use a Boba Fett.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because like when should you not bring Boba Fett into any conversation? But yes. So if Meg, do you have Any bounties for me here at the conference that I haven't already listed?

Like, anything you need me to bring back?

On the spot.

It's kind of like gamifying your conference attendance.

Nothing's coming to mind.

All right, you think.

I'll think.

You think so. One of the things that I believe in doing in your organization is having a really strong network. And when you have that network, sometimes you need a reason to talk to them. So one of the things that I might do, kind of to June's point. The other direction, though, would be to go to people I want to connect with who. Who maybe didn't get to go to the conference and say, hey, I get to go to this conference. Is there anything that you want me to find and bring back for you? A vendor that does a particular thing, an answer to a particular question, a consultant to come in and do a certain thing, and then they know that you're looking out for them. It's a really great way to build a strong connection.

And then it's a reason to go visit them and talk to them after the conference to say, hey, Like, I went, I looked at this thing and here's some other ideas I had. So.

Okay, I've got one. Megan, you gave me enough time. I've got one.

All right.

What?

Here it is. Can you find more people that want to be guest speakers on our podcast in this next season that we're going to do?

I think I could find more people. Oh, Jeff just said. Jeff just raised his hand. You can't see Jeff. There's Jeff.

Bounty. Bounty achieved. But maybe more than one would be cool.

Can I get a prize? Do I need a whole bingo card? I could get a whole bingo card of bounties. That'd be super fun. So. All right, Meg, we promised these podcasts would be short and tight, and this has been kind of rambly and super fun.

That's okay. That's the beauty of, like, post editing, right? Is we get to.

No, we don't want to edit. We don't want to edit. But that's actually kind of what conference is all about. So, Meg, thank you. And a huge shout out to our multiple headed production team of Dean Castile back at the office. Hi, Dean. And Jeff Weaver here on site. And the whole concept.

Betty Dannewitz, like, created this. You and Betty, like, did this whole thing like, let's do these live. Which to me, I didn't. It took about four conversations with Betty for me to figure out what the heck this was. And I'm so glad that I just, like, followed the energy and did it. So thank you.

Thank you for being a part of it. It's been a really, really great part of the conference, and I'm. I'm so excited that you were able to join us for it.

Super cool. Meg, thanks.

Thanks.

Bye.

So, Megan, how'd that go?

That was a lot going on. Right. I mean, we put people in four different locations. Three different locations and people who'd never worked together. Different technology. Right. We were.

I'm so used to doing this podcast with you, and I look across the table, and you're right there.

Yeah.

And this was very weird because you were right there on Zencaster, but on a big screen behind me, and it seems strange to not see you unless I turned my head away from the microphone. But by the way, between the two producers that we had going on, it was. It worked. I mean, for as bonkers as it was to have all those things happening at once, it worked and it was great.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel similarly. I was amazed at how kind of seamlessly it was pulled off with so many people involved. And, yeah, in a similar way, I'm used to being together in person, and that particular day, I was coming off another meeting and then recording with you virtually, and then off into the next meeting. So it was a little out of our element, but it worked well.

It worked well because we were in good hands. Producers make all the difference.

Absolutely. This is Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance, and this has been a podcast from Torrance Learning. Tangents is the official podcast of Torrance Learning, as though we have an unofficial one. Tangents is hosted by Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance. It's produced by Dean Castile and Meg Fairchild, engineered and edited by Dean Castile, with original music also by Dean Castile. This episode was fact checked by Meg Fairchild.