The final day. The final countdown. After four days of mind-blowing sessions and activity, I am officially Orlando’ed out and ready to head home, reflect on what I learned, and apply it to our own design and development. But first, a re-cap of today.
The first session I attended, “First-Time Leader: Foundational Tools for Inspiring and Enabling New Teams,” I’ll admit was part of my own personal agenda. I’m currently taking courses as part of the Graduate Management Certificate Program at Maryville University, and have an interest in developing my own leadership skills. This session emphasized the BRAVE Leadership Framework, which is characterized by the following:
- Environment: Where to play? (Context)
- Values: What happens and why? (Purpose)
- Attitudes: How to win? (Choices)
- Relationships: How to connect?
- Behaviors: What impact? (Implementation)
As you can see, the acronym works backwards, because to be a successful leader one must focus on environment first, then work their way up. A leader must take into account the historical context, business environment, and recent results as part of their environment; identify the mission, vision, and values as part of their purpose; control their strategy, posture, and culture as part of their attitude; establish relationships that contribute and commit to the work instead of detracting from the desired results; and develop a shared purpose among the people, practices, and plans to achieve desired behaviors.
The second session I attended was BY FAR my favorite session of the conference. It left me inspired and determined to incorporate more creativity into my own design. The session was titled “Visual Storytelling: Engaging Your Learners with Pictures.” This session provided five ways to visually engage learners, including the following. (I’ll also provide some notes for me to research each of these further when I get home!)
- Comics/Graphic Novels – Check out the book titled “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art” by Scott McCloud. The speaker is providing examples of characters and panels to be reused for our own purposes at www.vization.com.
- Infographics – Can often be used to show steps in e-Learning. Check out the book titled “Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design” by Randy Krum, as well as his website at www.coolinfographics.com.
- Process Maps
- Motion Graphics – Typically are created using After Effects and Flash; simple animations can be created using PowerPoint features.
- Whiteboard animations – Can be used as entertaining 2-4 minute videos (no longer!). Some apps/software to check out include Simpleshow, Truscribe, Nutshell, and Skillcatch.
The speaker left us with a challenge, one in which I plan to try out. He asked us to find a picture, any picture, and try to duplicate it in PowerPoint. Challenge accepted!
The final session I attended was the keynote for the day titled “Unthink” by Eric Wahl. This was one of the coolest, most motivational speeches I’ve ever sat through. Imagine—an artistic man delivering a speech while “speed painting” on stage, encouraging us to couple creativity with how we conduct our lives both professionally and personally. The main take-away from the session was that we should embrace disruptive strategies and take risks. Every child is an artist; the key is to remain an artist in our adult life. We are taught to be risk-averse, and why? Because of fear—false evidence appearing real. Fear cripples performance, and we must work past this fear and take risks. And with risks comes failure, and we should embrace those failures. We should embrace a life of growth instead of negativity; opportunity instead of loss; learning instead of deficiency; and development instead of weakness to truly be successful.
And now, a quick video to re-cap my week.