"Remember the e-learning!"

This new battle cry has replaced the classic "Remember the Alamo!" this week in San Antonio as the GeoLearning 2008 Summit on Learning & Performance has rolled into town.

Today marked the official release of version 5.2 of the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (LCMS), and the Summit was a great place to mark the occasion. dominKnow Learning Systems is the platinum sponsor of the event, honouring the six-year partnership between the two companies.

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Next week the dominKnow instructional design team is off to the Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) conference in Toronto.

Of all the conferences of its kind that I have attended, the CSTD event is one of the best for the quality of the sessions. Since dominKnow offers a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) as well as learning solutions through courseware consultation and development, I have interests in many different areas. It is often difficult to choose a CSTD session to attend from amongst many worthwhile options.

If you're not familiar with CSTD, the conference is a great way to learn more. Our local Ottawa chapter recently held a great workshop on storytelling in the workplace, led by Jennifer Cayley and Lucie Roy. Sprinkled throughout the workshop were quotes on storytelling, leadership, and learning. One was from Alan Kay, the vice president at Walt Disney, who said, "Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories."

That's one of the things I look for at the conference... the opportunity to listen to and share stories with others working in training and development.

In previous years, I have come back to work with practical tips to improve workflow, write challenging assessments, motivate learners, and more. This year, I'm looking forward to keynote speakers David Weiss with Leadership Solutions, Ed Hoffman's Project Management and the Three Little Pigs: The Power of Stories, and Pamela Wallin's Cross Border Connections as well as sessions on emerging trends, Web 2.0, and learning strategy.

The dominKnow team will also be in the trade show in booth 611.

The exhibit floor is a good place for us to meet people interested in learning solutions, find out what others are doing, as well as chat to some of our current partners. We hope to see you there or in one of the sessions.

Catherine Orfald, Senior Instructional Designer

Our new API is an exciting development for the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (LCMS).

By giving clients better tools to access the LCMS and the learning content it contains, we really feel we're taking the idea of re-usable learning content another step forward.

I'm writing this from the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference, where Stephen Downes opened with this morning's keynote address - a presentation on the development of E-learning 2.0 that included the audience's live blogging comments on one side of the stage while Downes' presentation ran on the other side. It was an interesting experiment, one that hopefully inspired the creativity of those sitting in the crowd.

Our new API is something that we hope will lead to some interesting and inspiring experiences as well. We can already predict some applications for it, such as simplifying the process for hooking the dominKnow LCMS up to an e-commerce site, for instance, or for allowing Learning Objects to be used in context-sensitive help within other applications.

What I think will be most interesting, though, is what others may try to do.

The new API opens up a world of learning possibilities and can help remove barriers to learning. We have no doubt that there are challenges out there, waiting to be solved and the API is an important way for us to empower our users to solve those challenges.

It's shaping up to be a busy fall for the dominKnow team, including several road trips for us in addition to development work on the dominKnow Learning Content Management System (LCMS) and our services team's custom courseware work.

Two events we're looking forward to in September are the Oil Sands Trade Show and Conference in Edmonton, Alberta on Sept. 19-20 and the Innovations in Learning Conference in Santa Clara, California on Sept. 24-27.

The Oil Sands Trade Show and Conference will give us a chance to once again meet with folks in the oil and gas industry in Alberta.

This industry is struggling with many growth pains, including a shortage of trained and qualified workers, and we feel that e-learning is a very powerful tool to help address many aspects of this issue. We'll be at booth 573 at the Northlands AgriCom.

The Innovations in Learning Conference, set for the following week, is an event that has the instructional designers among us quite excited. We're attending as part of a contingent of Canadian e-learning companies under the auspices of the Canadian eLearning Enterprise Alliance (CeLEA). We'll be providing a short presentation on the dominKnow LCMS during the Canadian E-Learning Showcase scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 25.

We're looking forward to the "non-trade show" approach of the event's Conference Café, and, we must admit, there is also some interest in the wine-tasting on the Santa Cruz Pier.

Look us up if you're planning on attending the conference or even just the wine tasting!

The Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) annual conference and trade show kicks off on Sunday, Nov. 5 in Toronto.

CSTD has been gathering some great momentum over the past few years, and really has consolidated its role in the training community in Canada.

Last year's CSTD conference was one of the best such events I've been to in the past five years.

I was only able to attend for one day, but all three conference sessions I attended were well-done.

I came away with new knowledge and insight (something that doesn't always happen at conferences!) and I found the whole experience to be very energizing - I talked the ear off one of my colleagues for several hours afterwards.

That experience convinced us that dominKnow Learning Systems needed to be a bigger part of this year's show, to help build on the CSTD energy.

We will be at Booth 603 on the show floor, and we're looking forward to greeting many new faces and re-greeting old friends.

If you are attending the show, feel free to drop by our booth - we'd love to meet you in person.

We'll see you there!