After over seven years of speaking at eLearning and training conferences, I decided to concentrate my session speaking at conferences dedicated to a specific population.  The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and the Association Forum of Chicagoland provide opportunities to reach the over one million associations operating nationwide.

At the upcoming ASAE Technology Conference being held in Washington DC on February 11^th-12^th, I will be sharing my knowledge on the open source learning management (and content management) system called Moodle. The Moodle platform is ideal for associations seeking to generate revenue through their professional development offerings— ranging from testing for credentialing to an entire certification curriculum. I will be co-presenting with Sharon Chaplock, the Director of Education at the Society for Clinical Data Management. Our focus will be on sharing two case studies to help answer common questions associations might have when managing Moodle for members:

I’ve had about a week to settle back in after giving a presentation at Training 2009 on the open source LCMS, Moodle. As I mentioned last week, I had a packed audience but received mixed reviews. We have been utilizing Moodle for over two years for several client projects. The Moodle pedigree stems purely from higher education, so it was not designed for corporate use as a generic LMS. Moodle.org seems to have little interest in adapting to fit the needs of companies that want to train thousands of employees using hundreds of courses (see threaded discussions on the site-wide grouping feature). Nevertheless, there are many specific corporate training initiatives that Moodle is perfect for. Click here for my presentation.

When you attend a conference you expect the keynote speeches to deliver inspiration. Training Magazine’s conference held this week in Atlanta did not disappoint. In fact I found myself laughing loudly and crying softly while listening to Tuesday’s keynotes.

First a note about economic impact: Yes, attendance was down, especially pre-conference participation. The headline of the Show Daily magazine read: “Game On or Game Over” Oops…double meaning? My article on project managing game and simulation development certainly came out at a pretty inopportune time.