This week we take a trip to Vegas for this year's DevLearn Conference. This marks 20 years of the industry-leading learning technologies event shaping the future of L&D.

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Welcome back to Learning Matters. I'm Doug Oldridge, your host. And today we're headed to Vegas for DevLearn 2024. So pack your bags, let's get to the airport. It's early November and we're headed to the desert, to the sleepless city in the West. In the L &D world, when you think of Vegas, you think of DevLearn. This year marks the 20th anniversary of DevLearn, the industry-leading learning technologies event shaping the future of L &D. This also happens to be my first time going and...

Let me tell you, I was blown away. First things first, we made our way to the Expo Center to check out all the incredible booth setups. The amount of creativity on showcase from each booth was unbelievable. Massive interactive installations. Simple, yet elegant booths, and an untold amount of time and energy goes into setting up a booth that attracts as well as informs folks. From LMS providers to custom L &D houses,

authoring tools, and AI tools galore the expo center had it all. While we made our way through the crowd, we caught up with some of our friends in the industry, as well as some of the big names in authoring tools and learning solutions. Hi, Michael Cardenas from Local Concepts. And in short, we make you look good worldwide in any language, in any culture, in any city, no matter what product you have. Been around for 35 years and the world loves us.

They love our penguin Lexi. All right, Lexi. Hi, I'm Matt Pierce from TechSmith. We're the makers of Camtasia and Snagit. And we are so excited to be at DevLearn to talk to people about the power of video and what it can do to help people to learn. And so what I think is happening in the world is so many opportunities to use video in so many creative ways because, look, people are happy and excited to get something that's exciting and interesting. And video could be one of the solutions to help you do that.

Hi, I'm Brandon Merce from Mindspring. I'm an accounting executive here. We build custom training and we do consulting in the learning space too. So we build e-learning, video production, virtual reality, augmented reality, and we help with learning strategies, learning paths, you name it, we can help. Hey everybody, my name is Wason here with WellSaid. A couple things about WellSaid, we're responsible AI, ethical-backed, trying to improve voiceover in the AI space. Hi, I'm Tom Peyser, Director of Learning Technologies for GP Strategies. I'm on the Learning Innovation Team, and what that means is that I have the best job in

strategies. The innovation team focuses on new learning innovations and new ways of doing business. Awesome. And I get to work with Tom. My name is Jeff. I have the very ambiguous title of Vice President of Solutions. Yes, there's a question mark at the end of it, so I pronounced it correctly. And over the last couple of years, I've had the privilege of helping GP navigate a lot of the AI disruption that's happening within our organization. So I'm helping.

spearhead some of the new product initiatives we're bringing to market and figuring out how to help people navigate from the tinkering to the actual productivity gains of using AI to help their organization. We're an authoring tool that uses an object-based capture technology to create hyper-realistic simulations of training environments that look, act, and feel exactly like a live application. After that, we headed over to the ELB Learning Experience Room.

Anytime we get a chance to hang out with our friends at ELB, we take it. I just want to add also that all the arcade games were donated to a children's hospital. So while I wasn't able to sneak Pac-Man back with me, they all found a great home after the event. We waltzed over to the Articulate Experience Room to take a look at their new AI functionality and to see what else Articulate had cooking. We'll be doing a podcast with someone from Articulate in the future to showcase all things AI assistant. So keep an eye out for that episode to drop.

One of the most exciting reasons to go to DevLearn is DemoFest. It's a huge science fair-like event where you go from table to table, getting a chance to see the latest and greatest creations from the best in the industry to do it. Our very own Rose Benedicts did the heavy lifting of showing off our incredible DaVinci experience, an escape room that we built for the American College of Chest Physicians. All components were built with a mix of Photoshop and Articulate Storyline. The team was headed by our Creative Solutions lead, Eric Burgett.

and his small team of innovative designers and developers were able to deliver this incredible learning solution in just 12 weeks time.

What I love most about this learning solution is all the little things. The mood, the depth that they were able to create even though all the objects are too deep. It feels like at every turn you could just reach out and touch books, letters, etc. You can almost smell the dust and the dampness of the rooms. I can say that we had multiple folks from Articulate that came up to our table and were gobsmacked when we told them that we only use Photoshop and Storyline to create this piece. The whole goal of this solution was to keep the interest peak of physicians.

Folks who don't normally find the idea of sitting through yet another training session with much excitement with this though. You're working as a team to go through multiple different rooms that are all interconnected with clues that take the entire group's effort and communication, that's key, to solve the puzzles. It really is like a digital version of an escape room. So if you've ever done one of those, you know that the only way out is to work together and think outside the box. Learners had to collect notes, keys, tools, and solve a slew.

of different puzzles to make sure all individuals made it through their rooms to get to the goal of diagnosing the patient properly. With a lot of learning solutions, the game portion of it comes at the end in the form of an assessment. That's not the case with serious games. So here, the learner is immersed in the game and the only way to finish is to learn the material and properly

Use what you've learned to get to the end goal. It's an incredibly exciting and fun way to keep learners engaged and feel like they've accomplished something greater than maybe passing a 12 question assessment at the end of a point and click e-learning solution. The most fun we had that night was just watching people's eyes light up as more and more folks flock to our table. There's nothing more exciting than seeing someone realize for the first time that a tool that they've used maybe hundreds of times can do way more.

And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter, The Buzz, to keep up with all things L &D. I just want to say also thank you so much to our new friends and our old friends for hanging out with us at DevLearn. It was an incredible experience. So I cannot wait for next year. See you next time.