I’ll confess that I may not have been at the ASTD conference every day this past week, but I do have some impressions of the event I’d like to share.

The ASTD ICE Conference from May 31- June 3^rd in Washington DC will be the training and development event of the year. There is still time to register and receive both low-fare tickets and reasonable accommodations if you use Priceline and the subway system. Based on my personal poll of those attending the workshop on game and learning object design presented by myself and Joe Rheaume, I would estimate that attendance numbers are stronger on a percentage basis compared with the ASTD Technology Conference this past January. Yes, optimism in the spring air! A nice option on the conference website is the ability to develop your own personal schedule. Here are the people and events I found most interesting:

Pre-conference workshops of interest:

Did the first eLearning Conference of 2009 suffer the same fate as the consumer electronics show in December? Were the numbers down?I asked the conference administrators several times what the attendance numbers were at the annual TechKnowledge conference held last week at the Las Vegas Rio Convention Center. The answer was repeatedly a suspicious “We don’t know yet.” My favorite part of the conference? Tony Karrer's keynote speech on day two.