| Interviews |
| “True contextual learning should free itself from the constraints of the word ‘course’” |
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What aspects of the congress are you most looking forward to? Geoff Stead: Meeting and collaborating with other learning leaders. This is an exciting time for L&D, and I’m eager to learn, and share which future technologies are helping reach new learners, in new ways.
You previously commented that the learning industry is still embryonic in terms of understanding how to best tap into the contextual awareness that mobile phones provide. As the Industry matures, what are some of the ways that you would like to see that contextual awareness optimized? As an industry, we’ve been OK at taking e-learning to mobile. But that’s only the first, very small step. True contextual learning should free itself from the constraints of the word “course”. If you think about project-based learning, or on-the-job performance support, or simulations, or mentoring – suddenly adding “mobile” can be a real game changer. I’d like to see more examples of “non-course mobile learning”.
What do you think is the biggest challenge of rolling out an enterprisewide mobile learning program? Managing change, and risk. Bringing mobile into your enterprise is a huge enabler, but to maximize the benefit L&D may need to upgrade some of their pre-mobile learning delivery. And internal IT may need to upgrade their pre-mobile infrastructure.
Can you give a brief introduction of the main aspects of your session on efficiently and cost-effectively implementing a mobile learning strategy?
In your opinion, why is it important for the industry to attend this congress on June 22–23, 2015? Life is moving fast. Our learners are moving fast. Our businesses are moving fast. Events like this enable our learning organisations to keep up, by collaborating with other learning leaders from the industry.
Finally, what 3 items are always on your desk/mobile workstation? Evernote: life is filled with unexpected learning moments. I use my phone to help me grab them immediately, and reflect on them later. Email: My teenage daughter thinks I’m a dinosaur for still using email, but it remains dominant in my work communications. A mix of social media apps: My kids talk to me on Snapchat, the rest of my family on Whatsapp. Friends on Facebook. Colleagues on Lync, HipChat or LinkedIn. It may sound messy, but that’s the life we live in!
June 2015
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Interview with Geoff Stead, Mobile Director at Qualcomm, who will be keynote speaker of 
I’ll be sharing how mobile has helped us reach new learners, and re-energize old ones within Qualcomm! Our team is unusual in that we have a dedicated team of mobile learning engineers, embedded inside our learning function. This has enabled us to rapidly iterate, testing out new mobile ideas before anyone else is doing that in the market place. We’re learning fast. Iterating fast. Developing winning strategies, and are very happy to share these with peers.