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Welcome to another episode of 'Online Education Across the Atlantic'. Today, we dived deep into the bustling world of the ASU GSV conference as well as the Times Higher Ed conference, exploring the successes and failures of putting together a good conference. We unpacked the challenges of navigating such a high-profile event (ASU GSV), from the overcrowded panels to the spontaneous connections made in line. We also touched on the power of being present and how flexibility can enhance your conference experience. Alongside discussing the evolving AI dialogue, we highlighted the event's unique focus on education and investment, emphasizing its role as a crucible for discussing significant industry developments. Thanks for tuning in, and join us next time as we continue to explore the dynamic world of online education!
00:00 Reviewing recent conferences.
04:32 Conference program can be hit and miss.
07:56 ASU GSV key conference for networking and investment pitches.
11:04 Personal highlights from conferences.
15:29 Pleasantly surprised by engaging conference sessions.
19:06 Balancing panel preparation for engaging discussions.
21:10 Effective moderation vital for dynamic and engaging panels.
25:09 Investor and vendor-focused event vs Institution focused conferences.
28:56 Interest in collective innovation in higher education.
31:11 Gartner conference exposed Morgan to diverse perspectives.
35:16 Personal stories from ASU GSV and Times Higher Ed.
36:17 Networking essential for maximizing conference benefits.
40:06 Structured groups help connect people at conferences.
42:25 AI enables easy button applications for knowledge.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction from Hawaii
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Online Education Across the Atlantic. I'm here broadcasting from Hawaii, at least from my perspective, but glad to have both Neil and Morgan with me today on a special episode. We had to avoid Neil's anniversary, so we're recording over the weekend today. So welcome.
Episode Focus: Conferences, Not News
00:00:26
Speaker
It's great to see you all.
00:00:28
Speaker
Good to see you too Phil, although it's particularly galling seeing your backdrop at the moment. Well, it was deliberate. I was actually out here on the patio saying, where do I record from? So that they have the best view while recording. That was one of the goals. So today we're really going to cover two recent conferences that we went to and spend the majority of our time really going over the experience and what we heard.
00:00:56
Speaker
and not really covering too much of news as we typically do here.
Milestone: D2L's 25th Anniversary
00:01:02
Speaker
But it's probably worth mentioning that there was an online celebration of sorts yesterday when D2L celebrated its 25th anniversary. So 25 years ago, either yesterday or Friday, was when D2L was incorporated, which seemed to be, A, a pretty big milestone, and B, caused to make us feel pretty old when we say, oh,
00:01:26
Speaker
That was a quarter century ago, and so it helps to age us. But congratulations to D2L for their past 25 years. And it does need to be pointed out that there's a picture of John there 25 years ago, and he looks exactly the same as he does now. That's John Baker. That is another thing to congratulate him on then, presumably. Exactly.
Busy Week for Neil
00:01:49
Speaker
So last week was busy for us. Well, very busy for you, Neil, because you had that, you had anniversary, happy anniversary to you and Liz, and a lot of things going on. So I'm going to turn it over to Morgan as we sort of talk about the conferences, what we learned, what we experienced.
Conference Attendance: ASU-GSV and Times Higher Ed
00:02:08
Speaker
So yes, so Phil and I just got back from the ASU-GSV conference in San Diego, and Neil just got back from the Times Higher Ed conference in Exeter. And so maybe we can start off by Neil telling us a little bit about the conference and then we can give readers who may be unfamiliar with ASU-GSV a little crib notes on that one.
Times Higher Ed Conference Insights
00:02:29
Speaker
Well, and first of all, how welcome were you at the conference? I want to hear about that as well.
00:02:35
Speaker
That's one of my highlights, so yes. Okay, ignore that one. I'm going to barely fit in my office right now. My head is so big, but tell us about that. Yeah, let me start at the beginning. No, so I think this conference has been running for a couple of years now. I was there last year. I can't remember whether it had a longer history than that, but I think it has been relatively
00:02:58
Speaker
So this year, the kind of theme was around building inclusive digital futures. And I have to confess that I was particularly bad at this conference at actually going to sessions. But I had lots and lots of conversations. So this is the kind of difference between going to conferences when you have an employer versus when you're kind of in my position. Because if you have an employee, you feel like you need to tick off as many sessions as possible to kind of prove that you've
00:03:27
Speaker
you know, you've been there and you've, you know, their investment has been well placed. But obviously being in the position that I'm in, I can be a little bit more. So stick it to the man, then you're like, wait, I am the man. I can be a bit more flexible. Yeah, absolutely. So I think just in general terms in the UK, just to give your give everyone kind of bit of bit of context, I think this is turning out to be like one of the conferences to go to actually.
00:03:52
Speaker
which I think I had a really good time. For the people that it brings together in the UK, there's not really many conferences over here that bring together a kind of range of sort of online learning professionals, digital professionals. And obviously there were people kind of in the UK that weren't there, but in general brings a really
00:04:13
Speaker
good group of people together in a way that other events don't. So I had a really positive time. It was really good in terms of kind of connecting with people. I think
00:04:24
Speaker
I mean, maybe we'll get to this. Overall reflections felt a bit more of the same in terms of what was covered. And, you know, this is a conference, maybe the ASU GSV is a similar one, but this is a conference where there are particular principles guiding the curation of the program.
00:04:44
Speaker
that can make it sometimes hit and miss and that means i think this event really tries to aim to get as much university representation in sessions as possible that isn't necessarily a bad thing but it can sometimes mean that you find.
00:05:01
Speaker
people and people have said this openly kind of being put into sessions and kind of questioning whether they actually should be in those sessions because the topic that's covered isn't necessarily something that they feel like they can speak to or the things that they're working on or kind of aligns with maybe their job roles. There's lots of vendor presentations as well.
00:05:22
Speaker
I think it is a great conference in the UK for who it brings together, but the programme can be a bit mixed.
Challenges in Online Learning Rankings
00:05:27
Speaker
In terms of my reception, I think you're alluding to the fact that I've been fairly critical of their new online learning ranking.
00:05:36
Speaker
I had a good reception, I think, so I'm afraid I've not got any kind of stories to tell of arguments whilst going for breakfast croissants or anything like that, sadly, which is that might be nice for the podcast. There was a session on the online learning rankings, and I think we might kind of go on to talk about that, but that was not by virtue of my presence, but by virtue of others' questions. That was a very tricky session for Times Higher Education.
00:06:05
Speaker
But on the whole, this is starting to become a really good conference for the UK for who it brings together and for aspects of the programme. So yeah, and I had a really good time, really positive time.
Evolution of ASU-GSV Conference
00:06:17
Speaker
I think that's a great segue to talk about ASU GSB because it also brings together an interesting mix of people in terms of funders,
00:06:26
Speaker
K-12, higher ed, vendors. But Phil's been going to it the longest, so I think he should give us a little bit of a rundown of the sort of progression of things there.
00:06:37
Speaker
Sure. Well, it's interesting. I mean, it started out, Arizona State University, for listeners who aren't fully informed, then GSV is an investment firm. And they started out this session and it was held in SkySong, which was a North Tempe campus off of ASU. And it was small, you know, a couple hundred people.
00:06:58
Speaker
And this is one decade ago, more than a decade ago. And the thing is steadily grown. And then they moved it to the Phoenician in Arizona, which is a nice resort, then moved it to its new base in San Diego. So San Diego is where the conference is, but it keeps growing. And to the point now where it's, I think they were saying upwards of 8,000 attendees,
00:07:25
Speaker
And then they held a pre-session that was free that was on AI, which Morgan could talk about later. But because it was free, it brought in even more people. So both numerically, it's just become huge, really, for higher education. K-12, you have the ISTE conference, which is larger, but there aren't a whole lot of conferences larger than ASU, GSV.
00:07:51
Speaker
But it's also become a must attend, certainly for analysts such as ourselves. It is becoming one of the primary conferences to attend because of who all is there and the topics they cover. And that's changed over the years because early on,
00:08:09
Speaker
It was very much a venture capital angel seed funding type of event that was all about, hey, I got a new pitch. We're the Netflix of education or whatever it is, and then looking for people to fund them.
00:08:24
Speaker
And then they had some things a long time ago that I actually liked. They would have a series of companies do seven-minute pitches as part of their conference session. Present your company and your investment thesis in seven minutes. And part of it was helping to get them practicing on how to tell their stories to bring in investment. But for somebody like myself who wants to learn a lot of the conference,
00:08:50
Speaker
It was going to a bunch of sessions all at one time, so in an hour and a half, you hear a lot of news of what's going on. However, you felt like you had to take a shower every time you left the hallway of the conference. Everybody's pitching everybody.
00:09:09
Speaker
Fast forward to today, now you do have VC, you have private equity type of investment. You have a lot of other people who are showing up that have no activity on raising money right now, but they're there because you need to be there.
00:09:25
Speaker
So it's evolved as a conference to really cover a lot of important topics. And as Morgan said, I can't think of any other conference that has the mix that this does. K-12 higher ed corporate learning, investors, schools,
00:09:43
Speaker
analysts, media, university, districts. It's just such a huge mix. I don't know of any other conference that has evolved quite the way this is. So that's sort of my historical encapsulation of it. I think it's worth pointing out, and I hope this isn't one of your questions, Morgan, for later on. It's a very expensive conference. Because of that, the registration fees
00:10:10
Speaker
are up in the thousands of dollars. And that impacts it because that 8,000 people doesn't include all of the even vendors who show up who don't even register for the conference because they can't afford to. So they just hang out to do hallway meetings. And so it might even be bigger than 8,000 people.
Personal Highlights and Networking at ASU-GSV
00:10:32
Speaker
And weirdly, the hotel where the conference mostly is has a very small bar. It has a very small bar. And so Phil actually had one of the highest ranking tweets for a while because he was offering $750,000 in venture capital funding to somebody who could get him a table at the bar.
00:10:51
Speaker
People joked about that, but I never had any offers. So I will point that out. They were pretty, yeah, people show up in the morning, camp out at a table and then own that table for the rest of the day. So there were no takers. What are the next things I was going to ask about was the highlights. And I want to go first, even though it's not a professional, I mean, it's not a
00:11:10
Speaker
It's not a substantive highlight. The highlight for me was, in a way, it was my coming out show. Because I've been working with Phil for a year. And I've been working in edtech for a long, long time. Technically, formally, full time since 1999. So 25 years, but even longer than that. But people knew who I was now in a way that they never did.
00:11:37
Speaker
I have a very selfish highlight in that I was received very well and people were wanting to take selfies with me, which was, you know, honestly, personally pleasing. And so that was thank you for all those people and probably Phil was paying them like 20 bucks on the side.
00:11:52
Speaker
No, I was not. But it's interesting as long as we're on this topic, you seem to have a little bit of a different reaction than I do in terms of that's actually one of the tougher things at conferences for me. I don't know if it's this mix of introvert, extrovert, but you know, that you can't be anonymous and hide away. But you'll get to the point of that damage. But I'm glad that things went well for you. People recognize you. People love your writing. So
00:12:20
Speaker
We don't want to be too self-promotional, but you've deserved it. Yeah, thank you. But it was very fulfilling in a way. And I'm sure being the introvert that I am, I'm sure I'll get over it. But for now, I'm going to just revel in it. And I have some more substantive points to make later on. But what were some of your highlights of the conferences that you had?
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting one. I mean, there weren't any sessions that particularly hit me between the eyes. So I'm kind of struggling around the idea of like a particular kind of highlight. I think
00:12:59
Speaker
like i said at the top i think the the big highlight for me was just being able to be at something where there were so many people that you know i wanted to speak to or wanted to speak to me and so i think that was just the big highlight for me to think actually there is something in the uk that brings those people together so that was the kind of big overarching highlight i think program wise it was
00:13:23
Speaker
a mixed bag and because you know I don't think I said at the top this isn't you know an online education conference or even just an exclusively digital education conference it has things like you know looking at kind of research experience as well as the kind of campus side of things so that means the program's kind of relatively diverse and there's some things in the program that you know I don't feel necessarily even kind of aligned with
00:13:51
Speaker
the things I do and focus on. But I think, yeah, just the big highlight for me was just this is becoming established as a really good conference to go to in the midst of there not being a lot of those things in the UK. So that was the big highlight for me.
00:14:07
Speaker
I didn't know what the ground rules were here.
Panel Dynamics: Prepared vs. Ad-hoc
00:14:10
Speaker
And one of it is a little bit self-selective. Obviously, Morgan and I have been covering the FAFSA fiasco and that it's going to have a huge impact on US higher education, not just digital education, but US higher education for the next two years minimum.
00:14:27
Speaker
So it's self-selective that people are aware we're writing about this. So we hear a lot of conversations because we're there. But one of the highlights for me is that people now are becoming aware. It seemed like a turning point at this conference where colleges, universities, vendors, I'm not sure about investors yet.
00:14:49
Speaker
are suddenly, there's a growing awareness that this could be COVID size and its impact. There's a lot we don't know, but it could be, and therefore people need to be looking at the ramifications. So that sounds negative, but it's not. It means finally people are taking this seriously and starting to ask, well, what will the impact be? What can we do? How do we deal with this? And it's not just financial aid administrators. So the community
00:15:19
Speaker
really has woken up to this subject and I think that's that's very good news because we need some community action to try to minimize the impact. I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, you know for me one of the highlights was going to sessions and it wasn't like I felt I had to but I wanted to learn what was on people's minds and things and I went to a number of really really good sessions
00:15:42
Speaker
And I've been sort of thinking about how you might do that. One of the things I do want to discuss in a bit is what makes a good conference, but I was sort of amused because, you know, I convened a panel there and the organizers of the conference had been very assiduous in following up with me to make sure that I had a meeting with all the people on the panel and that I was organized and that I had a plan and things like that. And part of me wondered whether that was because I'd never done anything there before and whether they were just taking care of me, but then
00:16:12
Speaker
One of the panels I went to was one of the sort of more keynoty panels moderated by Jane Swift, who's the former governor of Massachusetts. And it was a wonderful panel on, you know, she had a panel full of women CEOs in EdTech and it was just amazing. And Jane Swift is an absolute joy. I, you know, she's right at the top of people I want to have a beer with.
00:16:35
Speaker
But at some point, she made a comment about, oh, oh, please answer this properly, because otherwise, the organizers are going to think that I didn't have my prep meeting, and they're going to be really, really mad at me. So even the governor of Massachusetts gets is fully prepared to sort of do that. So I think there's just a lot of care and also things aren't organized too long ahead of time. Because I think with some conferences and edtech that the panels get all you know, the
00:17:02
Speaker
the sessions you have to write your proposal like a year in advance and things change so quickly that it's hard.
00:17:10
Speaker
That's an interesting point. I hadn't really thought about that. But yeah, the ASU-GSV, like with South by Southwest, not only is it far in advance, but they try to do this, getting people to vote for panels that they want to see on the session. So people are marketing their panels eight months ahead of time. And I think it's a goofy way of trying to generate interest.
00:17:33
Speaker
because I'm not going to see a popularity contest. I actually would like curation and not just popularity. And ASUGSV doesn't do it. I actually had one of the most real time because somebody ended up getting very ill on a panel.
00:17:49
Speaker
for Wednesday the last day and they asked me on Tuesday if I could fill in for that person. I'm like, sure, I know how to talk for however long you want me to talk. Just tell me when to shut up. That's an interesting point I hadn't really thought about in terms of not curating and the topics become more relevant when you don't do it too far in advance. Little do you know, you almost roped into my panel as well, right? And that would have been literally while you were sitting there as it was about to start.
00:18:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Morgan had, uh, she was one of her panelists was John Katzmann from Noodle and, and he was one of three panelists. She was interviewing and he wasn't there. So I'm out of the, in the audience.
00:18:31
Speaker
And there's just an empty chair. So they're making jokes about John not being there, but they had the show had to go on. So they're, they're carrying forward, but that's sitting next to me and Keene knows John. So she's texting him. Where are you in any case? So he comes in, what was it? 10 or 15 minutes late.
00:18:50
Speaker
And does a flying leap onto the stage very dramatically? Yeah, it felt more like a courtroom drama where all of a sudden a surprise witness comes into the courtyard, your honor, I have an objection. But it worked out great. Yes, yes, no, it was good.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's interesting around the panel thing, because I've definitely been on panels where it feels like there's a fine balance between preparing a panel and stifling the panel by preparing too far in advance. And there were certainly sessions that I went to that felt a little bit like that. And I think maybe if you're less accustomed to doing this kind of thing,
00:19:31
Speaker
you may be more inclined to kind of pre-prepare stuff if you know what's kind of happening in advance and that kind of leads to probably less off the cuff kind of more interesting kind of
00:19:41
Speaker
discussions.
Critique on Engagement in Sessions
00:19:42
Speaker
I was actually on a panel with Peter Reed from Futureland, who's their VP of degrees. And we had decided to go the opposite route of being relatively unprepared. And I think, on the whole, people appreciated the more ad hoc nature of our session as contrast to some of the other stuff. But it's a, yeah, I can see it from an organizer's point of view. But I think there is something to be said of letting things happen a bit more organically sometimes.
00:20:11
Speaker
Well, this is a running theme of our podcast, but you're a nicer person than I am. I don't think there's a balance issue. I can't stand panels that are rehearsed and where you have multiple meetings, figuring out who's going to say what, how we do. Cause for me, like to attend, well, I hate those sessions, but there's no discussion. It's this person talks than this person talks. And I think ASU GSB was very careful not to have the panels rehearsed. So it was more that, Hey,
00:20:39
Speaker
Think about it, make sure you have a plan and let you go in there with some questions and some things.
00:20:46
Speaker
pretty much all the panels I saw were actually pretty good in that regard. And the one that was immediately before mine was actually especially good. And in some ways, that was great. In some ways, that was awful. But Matthew Raskoff convened a panel and he's just very good at that. So he was, you know, being being kind of provocative, that was getting some really good and interesting responses from people. So it wasn't rehearsed.
00:21:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a real trick. I think having the right moderator makes a big difference to that as well, because I was moderating a session last year, which I'm not sure I did all that well. But I think I'm kind of alluded to earlier that the Times conference does tend to kind of pack panels, I think a little bit, you know, we're not talking two or three, there's kind of four or five, and that really puts the onus on
00:21:35
Speaker
moderator to kind of do a really good job which i'm not sure i did last year to be honest with you when i was a lot of kind of competing people and voices and people who are very keen to get across all of their various points so i think i think that's a really important facet i mean i think one of my slight pet hates that there can conferences in general but actually that kind of sprung up a little bit in this conference was the
00:22:00
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever had this where people say at the beginning of their sessions that they want it to be interactive and not people just talking at you from the front and then basically you get to three minutes from the end of the session and they call for questions and they maybe have two. This is my pet hate and that happened not a lot in fairness but it happened and it just so happened that I had a question in that session which I didn't get a chance to answer so. Oh I thought you were going to go a different place because one thing that drives me up the wall
00:22:28
Speaker
is people who start off a session by saying turn to your neighbor and talk about what's happening on your country. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Yeah, I mean, just any any manifestation of that, not not even just a conference, just any any kind of event. Plus, there's this like weird kabuki theater that happens. And there's some conferences that are particularly guilty of this. So when you write a proposal, you have to go into all this detail about who your audience is,
00:22:56
Speaker
and how you're gonna engage them and all these different things that you're gonna do. So you write all that and then you go into the conference room and it's a giant ballroom with chairs bolted together. So you can't do any of those things anyway because the space is completely not geared towards it. Plus people actually want to hear you.
00:23:15
Speaker
I'm having an Emperor Palpatine moment here with Neil. I'm sitting there smiling. Feel the hate course through you. This is wonderful. I didn't think this is where the conversation today was going to go, but I love this. I think those two extremes capture the problems with conferences for me, and not just for me as an audience member, because I'm only one person.
00:23:39
Speaker
but too much it's either too scripted and then I can I could go read your press release or your website if I want to know the basics and there's no
00:23:51
Speaker
you of me being there because it's just you talking for the most part. But then the opposite extreme that you mentioned, Morgan, which is the Kabuki theater, the false interaction. I went to one conference the end of last year where the topic and the abstract really interested me. But then I walk in and then they set it up as a pure workshop all about interaction. All right, let's talk about what do you think about this topic?
00:24:18
Speaker
And I'm going, I didn't pay to go to this, well, all right, we don't tend to pay because of media passes. But I'm not at this conference so I can hear and talk about a topic. I want to hear people sharing their thoughts in an interactive way that includes, when appropriate, the audience asking questions. But it's a conversation, and neither of those two extremes are conversations.
00:24:43
Speaker
And now I'm becoming very positive. I think you're right. That's part of the thing that does work well at ASUGSV. It sort of gets in that middle where you have actual conversations in so many of these panels. I was wondering as well, because I've not been, is the format majority paneled or are there kind of big set piece keynotes there?
Engagement Over Celebrity at ASU-GSV
00:25:05
Speaker
If so, who were the big names this year?
00:25:09
Speaker
Well, there are a lot of panels and because it's investor and vendor focus and expensive.
00:25:15
Speaker
a lot of that and I felt this really happened this year even more than previous years is yeah I'm paying and therefore I get to get on a panel. Now they tend to do a good job with those panels but so there are a lot of panel conversations throughout the program. When you get to the main stage ones even there they sort of rotate through so like the first day at the lunch they do
00:25:39
Speaker
main stage event during while people are eating lunch. The first thing that happened was a keynote but it was an abbreviated like a 20-minute keynote.
00:25:48
Speaker
from a Stanford professor who works in edtech, who by the way, it was a great session. It was talking about innovation and that research showing that it's really a combination of creativity and efficiency. The efficiency saying, how do you do things better? Creativity is think outside of the box and it's both, but the order they come in is crucial. And it was very informative, but 20 minutes done.
00:26:15
Speaker
Then they'll do a fireside chat. Those tend to be the more expensive people that they bring in. So they had Barry Weiss used to be the New York Times and the Free Press. They had quite a few people and they'll do it as a one-on-one fireside chat. And then they have celebrities. To be honest, I tend to avoid the celebrity sessions. RunDMC is always there. Paula Abdul was there this year.
00:26:44
Speaker
Paula Abdul, so it did make me feel appropriate for my age, like, hey, I know you when you're an artist. But yeah, heavy on the panels, but also even on the main stage, it's like quick segments and sometimes fireside chat, a few proper keynotes, but not too many and not too long. I make this joke about instructional design because I always tell people that designing online courses
00:27:11
Speaker
should be like being an Episcopalian or an Anglican. I happen to be an Episcopalian. And it's the religion for people with short attention spans. You know, some religions you go and it's a really long sermon, not for Anglicans or Episcopalians. You're always standing up or sitting down or going here or going there. And ASU GSB has that approach to conferences. Yeah.
00:27:33
Speaker
That's interesting. I think one of the things with the Times Higher one was the lack of the lack of a real kind of kind of keynote that really cuts through a keynote speaker, a person, an individual that people really want to flock to and see. And I think, you know, maybe that's the deliberate and it is a lot more panel focused. Maybe that's just representative of kind of the UK and maybe the sense that there's not quite that that figure or those figures over here. But I think that was one of the things that
00:28:00
Speaker
I think I'd have liked to see in the program, not an excessive amount of kind of big keynote long speeches, but I think the event would be enhanced by one or two of those and kind of more high profile people, but we didn't have any celebrity that I'm trying to think of what our Paula Abdul equivalent might be in the UK. Maybe I'll, I'm all over that.
00:28:25
Speaker
But it might be, again, self-selection. I don't hear people at ASU GSB talking about the celebrities other than, I'm going to this reception, I'm going to do this book club signing, and that kind of thing. So I wonder how many people are sort of pulled in because of the celebrity factor.
00:28:47
Speaker
because they obviously spend a lot of money on getting these people there, but I'm not sure if that's why people go, but that might just be my perspective. Yeah, I think it's interesting. You mentioned the Stanford professor who did something really interesting on innovation. I wasn't in this session, but one of the sessions that people were talking to me a lot about was on the first day, which was a professor from the University of Exeter who was
00:29:11
Speaker
essentially talking about I think the need for universities to do things more collectively in the current situation that they're in so I think he gave the example of the kind of Tesco supermarkets over here and I think he kind of drew the comparison that in the several thousand Tesco stores around the UK you wouldn't have a store and then on the second floor have their kind of all of their operations that are just to do with that store
00:29:36
Speaker
you know it's all about kind of shared services and that side of things and in a way that's something that's I think been kind of explored in the past and you know as challenges probably that was a interesting one given the kind of state that UK higher education is in at the moment and that wasn't a particularly high profile person as far as I'm aware but that was one of real interests where people were talking a lot about that I think.
Value of Diverse People and Ideas
00:30:01
Speaker
If we go back in time, like I remember, and I think, Morgan, you were at the first one I'm going to mention, Blackboard World, years ago, ironically, in San Diego, I had Malcolm Gladwell come give a talk. And I came in very skeptical of pop sociology and
00:30:18
Speaker
And he's one of the best storytellers I've ever heard. So he entertained, he draws you in for the whole keynote. So he probably spoke 40 minutes or so, but it was entertaining. But then the topic was related to edtech innovation. He wasn't talking about edtech, but the context was very important. That was very good.
00:30:42
Speaker
George will ironically is another guy who does a great keynote partial because he has such a Historical knowledge and he ties in the history of Social Security and baseball like he goes all around but things weave together So I will say there are I have had cases where the celebrity keynote really has helped the conference a lot But probably more than that I've seen celebrity keynotes where I'm like, why did you spend that money? I
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah, I've had that a lot. You know, I've been trying to sort of think, and I hadn't thought about this before, but just think about the mix of people and things like that. I think, you know, I always used to say, the place where I work before Gartner, the Gartner conference is really good for education people to go to, because it exposed them to things that were tirade, because I think sometimes it's a bit of a closed community. And you know, you go to your typical conferences, and they're all the same sort of people. And
00:31:39
Speaker
at least you got to hear other things. And I think that's one of the strengths of ASU GSB. So you're hearing from people you might not otherwise hear about. And I think that's a real, but I'm trying to think about how to foster that in a different kind of a setting as well.
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah, so a lot of what we're talking about here are like pulling out. It's not, I mean, I think it's great to hear about THE and talk about ASU, GSV, but part of what we're talking about are what are the elements that can make conferences valuable for attendees, both from entertainment, but for I learned something specific, but then what you just mentioned, Morgan.
00:32:19
Speaker
But it breaks me out of my bubble to hear other ideas and bring them in there. And I think those are all I've done so many conferences.
Maximizing Conference Engagement
00:32:28
Speaker
This is always in the back of my head. I wish they would do this or hey, I really like that. I wish other conferences would pick this up. But you really want people to come away.
00:32:39
Speaker
feeling they've been entertained, they've learned something, they've met people that they wouldn't have done otherwise. If you add to that the Instructure conferences, particularly in the mid 2010s, they added that community element. You were truly off-site. You were at a resort in the mountains. You really couldn't get away that much.
00:33:01
Speaker
in the snow in June. Yeah, I forgot about that, the snow in June. But you're all in it together. But because it was such a community, it wasn't just the sessions. It was even in the evening, you're talking to people, doing things, making connections, learning things. So not many conferences have that element, but certainly they had this true actual community. It felt like a retreat kind of deal.
00:33:31
Speaker
And I heard Phil, and I'm interested, I was chatting to someone at the conference about ASU GSB and he was talking about how it's grown and grown and grown. I think the person I spoke to didn't have the most fabulous experience there because they really struggled to get into the sessions and on multiple occasions weren't able to get in. And so it sounds like it is extremely popular to its detriment, perhaps.
00:33:56
Speaker
I'll let Morgan speak to that because she's willing to stand in line. Yeah, I had to stand in line quite a few times and didn't get in sometimes. The one upside of that was that I made friends in line, you know, so I landed up chatting with people and met people that I might not otherwise have met. But somebody in particular had to pull some serious rank. She had to call the conference organizers to get into my session.
00:34:19
Speaker
And she did it because she's a mover and shaker. I'm talking about you Camila. Yeah, that's true. But no, that was a problem. And you mentioned this in your post Morgan, the fact that it's in your review of the conference, there's a balance. And yes, that was a real problem at ASU GSB. A lot of people couldn't get into the sessions they needed to get into. Now, logistically, you'd say, well, then hold it in the conference center right next door and guaranteed you get bigger rooms.
00:34:49
Speaker
But once you do that, you're going to lose a lot of the intimacy as well. Well, but you have a thousand and growing number of people. So there's a real challenge. I don't know where that conference is going to go because you're right. It's at the breaking point in terms of bar space. Not yet where we joke about the breaking, but for the impromptu meetings, but even getting into sessions. Yes, that's absolutely an issue there. Yeah. I had a, I had a meeting with a vendor.
00:35:19
Speaker
at a coffee shop off-site. And I went to the wrong coffee shop and I landed up having to catch an Uber to get to the right coffee shop and I was 20 minutes late. But right at the beginning of when I should have been meeting him, he got in line to get coffee and he only got the coffee as I was walking up. So it took him 20 minutes to get coffee at an off-site coffee shop. Yeah, there were a lot of people there.
00:35:43
Speaker
And then you do have to, you know, the introvert factor we're talking about, then you get into the evening reception. So we tended to do, or I tended to do at least two receptions a night, which is very healthy, by the way. But there's a lot of mingling. I mean, there's a lot of opportunity to talk to people, but
00:36:04
Speaker
the introvert factor, you can come away from these conferences quite exhausted as well. I'm still exhausted. And that's an interesting one thing I do want us to talk about is how do you get the most out of conferences? Yeah, well, I'll take that one. I mean, I, I my wife describes me as a socially sociable introvert. And so I, I definitely feel quite fatigued at the end of these things. But
00:36:30
Speaker
What I got a lot out of this conference and it was mainly through the hallway conversations and I think I'm not necessarily saying that this is kind of the strategy that I would always take but I think this particular conference I think just because of who it brought together actually that was a little bit more deliberate on my part I got the most out of it by
00:36:49
Speaker
being uber selective about the sessions that I went to, but being quite deliberate at making sure I was around to chat to the people that I wanted to speak to and therefore, in another context, I might have come away, gone to a lot of sessions and got something slightly different out of the conference. But for me, at this time, that was the way to just
00:37:12
Speaker
I guess be a bit more available and be a lot more selective around the kind of sessions that I did go to. But yeah, that's kind of one of the ways this time round that I felt I got the most out of it. Yeah, it's always challenging around the whole introvert thing and how you manage that in terms of recharging. But because this was just a few days, I think I could just about manage that. I can tell you what doesn't work for me lately is preparing.
00:37:42
Speaker
this one as well as others we go through the program ahead of time and you pick the sessions you want to go to and then inevitably at least for me I don't get to those sessions or in certain other conferences that I won't mention I'll go and I'll find out the abstract was 99% of the value of the session itself and I'm not
00:38:04
Speaker
like, oh, why did I even bother? So preparing doesn't work for me. What does help is not being as cheap as I used to be. I used to always be, I've got to do Airbnb. I know a cheaper place to stay. I'm not staying in the hotel. But there's some real value in actually staying in the conference or hotel or right next to it. And not just that, but then
00:38:26
Speaker
being present for the conference so that throughout the day you can allow those impromptu sessions and scheduled meetings and one-on-ones and go to the sessions and just
00:38:39
Speaker
being there. So for me, it's actually don't be so cheap and actually stay right there. And then just experience it. Don't try to schedule outside things or be available. I think I think you've articulated the point. Well, I think I think going with the flow rather than kind of, you know, being there with your marker, scribbling everything off on the agenda that you want to go see, I think is the way to go. And I think
00:39:03
Speaker
You know, to your point around kind of accommodation near to the venue, I have been known on occasions to have a short nap in my hotel room when things have gone a little bit, you know, just need a bit of a recharge. So, you know, there are additional benefits for that as well. What are Morgan's success factors?
00:39:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think staying at the hotel is a key one. And just to talk about the Gartner experience, you know, people used to get annoyed because at the Gartner symposia, the analysts stay at the conference hotel, everybody else usually is in other hotels, some of them a 10 minute bus ride away, you know, but there's a reason for that because the analysts have to be on, you know, in terms of the presentations, the one on ones and stuff like that. So
00:39:45
Speaker
So I think that's really crucial. I think sort of having a friend, and I'm trying to think is there a way to do this? You know, like one of the things that really helped me a lot at ASU, Phil almost literally had me on a dolly and he would push me around and introduce me to people. Or maybe I just stuck with him and he was trying to get rid of me. I don't know. Either way, just having that sort of, because it can be lonely if it's a
00:40:13
Speaker
population that you don't know and if they aren't structured ways to meet people. Years ago when I lived in Washington DC, which is one of the friendliest cities in some ways because nobody comes there, but I chance upon a social group that ran meetups for a certain variety of person and actually it was
00:40:32
Speaker
it was gay women older than 30 who had professional jobs so you'd sign up and you'd go to this one particular bar and they would meet you at the door on a certain day and then they would take you in and introduce you to somebody and if they saw you by yourself they'd come back and they'd introduce you to somebody else and
00:40:49
Speaker
you know, I met an amazing number of really wonderful people like, you know, economists at the IMF and, you know, analysts at the World Bank and FBI agents and stuff like that. But I think we need that service for conferences.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, I know that's a really good point. I just wanted to ask, because one of the things I think we touched on in the last podcast was kind of being hopeful around maybe something of note or interest coming out around
Shift in AI Discussions at Conferences
00:41:19
Speaker
AI. And I haven't got anything from my conference to add to that, but I just wondered whether there was anything around AI that you felt kind of added to the discourse or not. Now I remember my second main takeaway from the conference that I forgot earlier on.
00:41:37
Speaker
For me, the AI conversation has also changed, and it really seemed to be ASU represented a turning point. And again, quoting Morgan, we're past the moral panic. That doesn't mean people aren't still talking about it. Is it cheating? How do we detect cheating? Is it going to destroy education? We're getting out of the moral panic, and we're getting into, well, what can it do?
00:42:03
Speaker
But a lot of that what can it do is very undefined, which is fine. That's part of a new technology. But I really felt what Morgan wrote about that there is a new phase we're into. So not specific answers like this use case I saw, that is what I learned. It's just I'm seeing the field evolve.
00:42:25
Speaker
I think in terms of the use cases, especially around vendors, I'm seeing a lot, and I saw somebody posted this on LinkedIn, and I can't remember who, but it was good, a lot of like easy button kind of applications. So they let loose an AI on a certain body of knowledge, like a course or something like that, and then boom, you've got your TA or something. So I saw a lot of those sort of like easy button kind of applications, and I think we need to
00:42:50
Speaker
It'll be interesting once we move beyond that and see some more complex, but maybe that's enough, you know. Yeah. It felt healthier to me than the conferences I saw in the fall. I were obviously further evolved, but in a healthy way. But don't mistake that for, ah, that thing's going to work. You know, you're not quite seeing those yet, but it definitely is a healthy evolution and AI is what I saw.
00:43:15
Speaker
Hey, well, this has been fascinating. Hey, just like conferences, this is not the way I thought the conversation was going to go, but I enjoyed it. And so it's great talking to you all. And as you can see, I need to head out to the ocean. It's a little bit too early for piña coladas, but I've got to go do something enjoyable. So thanks for joining us.
00:43:36
Speaker
We're not going to talk to you next week. We're taking a week off next week from recording. So there's a one week break so we can get our schedules together. So we'll talk to you again in two weeks.