President's Corner
The President's Corner presents the Report on the 2010 ASTD International Conference and Exposition (ICE) from Dave Vance and Update on ASTD NRC in Cheyenne by Susan Keehley, VP for the Cheyenne GIG

August 19, 2010 Program
Using Today's Technology with Gina Schreck

September 14, 2010 Program
“Can You Envision Better Information Retention?” with Kevin Shum

September 30, 2010 Breakfast
Network and share ideas

October 14, 2010
How to Avoid Boring Webinars with Sue Fody

February 2-4, 2011
ASTD TechKnowledge® Conference & Exposition
San Jose, California, USA

Partner Events
Upcoming ASTD-NRC partner events and other events of interest.

Welcome to the August 2010 Newsletter!

Be sure to check out the four national 2-3 day ASTD programs coming to Denver in late August and September. These include Telling Ain’t Training Conference, Designing Learning Certificate, Training Certificate, and E-Learning Instructional Design Certificate. If you have wanted to attend these but could not afford the travel costs, here is your chance!

There is still time to register for our August 19th program Tech Tools for Today’s Tech-Savvy Learners with Gina Schreck. Learn how to really engage learners using the latest technology. Added bonus: We will give away a FREE PASS to the certificate program of your choice (including the three above) to an NRC member in attendance on August 19th (pass valid until Dec 31 2010). That makes your odds pretty good!!

New members include Anna Hutchinson (Wyoming Public Defenders Office) in Cheyenne. Welcome! We look forward to getting to know you.

Renewing members this month include Melissa Powell (TLG Consulting in Fort Collins), Dan Chenoweth (Chenoweth & Associates in Loveland) and Patsi Maroney (Larimer County HR Department in Fort Collins). Thank you for renewing! We appreciate your continuing support.

We are very excited to announce the Member Directory which will go live on September 1st. In addition to contact information, the directory will enable members to share their areas of expertise and their industry to facilitate networking and knowledge sharing. Members can volunteer to be a mentor and can offer consulting services. The directory should be a great way to connect with someone in your line of work or to find a consultant to help you. The directory is a member-only benefit and will be accessed through a new Members Only button.

In this month’s President’s Corner, Susan Keehley, who is our VP for Cheyenne programs, provides an update and shares her vision for the NRC in Cheyenne. Also, Dave Vance shares his highlights from ASTD’s International Conference & Exposition in Chicago. This event will be held in Denver in 2012.

As we mentioned in July, we are doing well but could use more volunteers. As a volunteer organization we rely on our members to provide leadership and ongoing support to the chapter. We need your help with the following:

   • Staffing our booth at the September 16th Bixpo Conference (business to business  event) at the Embassy suites in Loveland. We are looking for volunteers for 2 hour blocks from 9.30- 5.00.
   • Membership (like greeting new members and contacting lapsed members)
   • Publicity (like sending announcements of our events to newspapers)
   • Social media (like updating our presence on facebook and linkedin)
   • Videos. We would like to make some short videos for the web site.
   • Meetings (like greeting and registering attendees)
   • Programming. We would a few people to help us plan programs for next year.
   • Membership Survey. We would like to do a short membership survey in October
   • Volunteer Coordinator.

Can you help us with any of the above? Please let Dave Vance or any board member know if you could help out occasionally with any of these activities. We think you will find it interesting and worthwhile, and it is a great way to meet people and get involved without a major commitment or energy or time. Now, if someone would like to make a greater commitment, we do have some open board positions including VP for Membership and VP for Communication. We also have several board member-at-large positions which do not have any formal responsibility although members-at-large are expected to attend the majority of our monthly board meetings. (We meet monthly for 1-2 hours either telephonically or at the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland.) The existing board would really like some help!

Denver, CO

Designing Learning – August 24 - 26

Training Certificate – August 24 - 26
E-Learning Instructional Design – September 22 - 23

Can't make it to Denver, CO ?  Have an entire team to train?  Bring one of our programs on-site!  Visit www.astd.org/on-site for more information.

Denver, CO

September 28-29, 2010 in Denver, CO

Based on the hot-selling book of the same name, this conference offers an experiential approach to transforming . . . . more

We must change the way we teach! Students sitting numb, with the “expert” up front, is no longer relevant, and it's no longer working! Learn ways to use today's tech tools to engage the learners BEFORE they ever walked into the classroom. Get learners actively participating and learning through simple game-like strategies and have them wanting to learn MORE. Extend your learner’s experience by offering fun tech-nuggets that allow them to continue sharing and learning far beyond a day of training.

In this action packed session you will discover ways to use today’s popular tech tools like Augmented Reality, Flip video cameras, Blogs, YouTube, even virtual worlds like Second Life to create game-like learning in ANY program. These ideas are easy to implement and most cost NOTHING to add into your next learning event. Click here for Gina's expanded bio.
Date: Thursday, August 19, 2010 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
The Moot House on South College, Fort Collins, CO
$15 NRC Members and Partners/ $25 Nonmember
Register Here

Eat, learn and share.
Share what you're working on and learn what others are doing.
Do you have tips and ideas that can help others? Get ideas from others!
Round table discussion groups as well.
A great way to start your day.
Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010 7:30-9:00 am
Egg & I on College Avenue in Fort Collins
$10 NRC Members and Partners/ $15 Nonmember
Register Here

Oh no! The travel budget is slashed and the directive is to deliver your class over the web. Now what? Have you taken webinars that have been so dreadfully boring that you’ve spent the time listening with one ear and checking e-mails instead of learning?

During this session we will look at ways to convert instructor-led designs to web delivered designs so your learners will engage, participate and learn! We’ll look at webinar applications at the generic level and discuss the features that allow the trainer to engage learners almost as actively as if they were in the classroom. Expect to come out with a list of tips and techniques that will help you transition a course to web delivery. Bring your dreadful stories as well…we’ll want to examine how not to be a boring web trainer. Click here for Sue's bio.

Date: Thursday, October 14, 2010 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
The Moot House on South College, Fort Collins, CO
$15 NRC Members and Partners/ $25 Nonmember
Register Here

ASTD TechKnowledge® Conference & Exposition
San Jose, California, USA February 2-4, 2011
Email me when registration is available.

Other News & Events

Northern Colorado Human
Resources Assn. (NCHRA)

August 19, 2010
Time: 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Financial Assessment & Planning for Renewal - No Cost Event
Visit the website.

September 21, 2010
Time: 8:30 AM - 1:15 PM
Fall Diversity Seminar: Beyond the Surface - Leveraging Diversity & Inclusion
Visit the website.
 

Colorado Career Development Assoc.
(CCDA)
There are no upcoming events at this time.

August 13, 2010
Time: 10:30 AM - Noon
Boulder Connections Career Check Up
Visit the website.
 

ASTD Rocky Mountain Chapter

August 18, 2010
Time: 11:30 AM - 1:15 PM
CHANGE IN TITLE: Participatory Webconferencing: Interactive Methods for Hosting Experiential WebMeetings facilitated by Dana Bowler
Investment: Member $32 Nonmember $42
Visit the website.

September 15, 2010
Time: 11:30 AM - 1:15 PM
"The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance" presented by Tony Schwartz: A New Way of Working Book Tour.
Visit the website.

October 8, 2010
Time: 9:00 AM - Noon
"Building a 2011 Business That You Never Dreamed Possible" a half-day workshop presented by Alan Weiss.
Visit the website.

Loveland Chamber of Commerce

No events at this time
Visit the website for more events

Update on ASTD NRC in Cheyenne
by Susan Keehley, VP for the Cheyenne GIG

The Cheyenne GIG (Geographic Interest Group) was formed in 2009 as a satellite location of the Northern Rockies Chapter of ASTD to better serve southeast Wyoming. With the help of Veronica Pederson of LCCC the first three events took place in Cheyenne during 2009. Two have already taken place this year and two more are in the planning for the remainder of the year.
Goals of the Cheyenne GIG include attracting a minimum of ten participants to each event, increasing chapter membership by two per quarter, and providing programs to benefit Cheyenne professionals, companies, and the community. We would like to begin partnering specifically with local companies, SHRM, and the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce to offer a variety of locations, times, and speakers. While goals have been established for membership and programs, we would really like your feedback and ideas to help us be successful. We also need volunteers to coordinate events and realize our membership growth. Please contact me at skeehley@unionwireless.com if you would like to help.
      *************************************************************************************

Report on the 2010 ASTD International Conference and Exposition (ICE)
by Dave Vance

Every learning professional should make an effort to attend at least one ICE.
It is the largest gathering of workplace learning and performance professionals in the world.

This year it was held in Chicago May 16-19 and was attended by more than 8,000 which is considerably more than last year when worries about the swine flu kept many international attendees from participating. (More than 1200 attended this year with the largest delegation from Korea.)

ICE is always energizing. How can it not be with that many of your colleagues and great sessions combined with an amazing exhibition area! There is a keynote each day by a well known speaker and a plethora of sessions offered throughout the rest of the day. The hardest task is deciding what to attend!

Daniel Pink (author of a A Whole New Mind) was the first keynoter. I was not familiar with his work, but I am certainly a fan now. He is brilliant yet down to earth and an excellent communicator. He challenged our notions of what drives performance and argued that many common organizational incentives reduce creativity, satisfaction and performance. For example, he shared research showing that traditional rewards (money, promotion) increase performance only if the task is transactional in nature. If the task requires higher-level thinking and creativity, traditional incentives will actually reduce performance. He believes three elements are necessary for enduring motivation and effective creative thinking: autonomy, mastery and purpose. In particular, he recommends adding the “purpose” motive to the profit motive.

Charlene Li, author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, challenged learning professionals to adopt social learning to dramatically transform the way learning occurs in organizations. Success will require “open leadership” where leaders have the confidence and humility to give up control. She envisions a curriculum which is peer-based and knowledge & experience rich combined with a delivery system which is distributed and asynchronous. In this future, learning takes place at the time of need and in whatever way best suits the individual learner. The learning professional becomes more of a “curator” of knowledge than a content creator or deliverer, reviewing and selecting the best learning. In this role the learning professional is a guide and partner.

There were many other great sessions. In my view, the most prevalent theme at ICE this year was social learning. Many sessions were dedicated to it and it certainly created the biggest ‘buzz” in the hallways. Tony Bingham, President and CEO of ASTD, talked about it in his opening address and has just coauthored a book on the topic. The trick, as always, is to figure out how best to best integrate this new approach and new technologies in a way that really works in your organization.

For Questions, please email info@astd-nrc.org               Visit our website at ww.astd-nrc.org
Please Unsubscribe Me