DevLearn 2021 is officially in the books, and we’re still taking it all in. It was a triumphant return to in-person events, and we can’t wait until our next conference. But before we get to that, we wanted to debrief. Here are some of our main takeaways from the week.
It was great seeing everyone at DevLearn. Being back in person at a conference and seeing everyone at the booth and speaker sessions was amazing.
Our collective heads are still spinning from the event, but we wanted to give everyone a recap from the Caveo point of view for every who couldn’t attend or for people that might have missed us.
In this blog, we’ll get into some of the highlights, and we’ll answer some of the more frequently asked questions we received while at DevLearn.
3 Main Takeaways
#1) The Booth was a Hit
First off, we had a lot of visitors at our booth! Now that may sound like a brag, but we did have an awesome giveaway in which we raffled off four Apple AirTags and an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. And our booth was part of a scavenger hunt. So that may have something to do with all the visitors.
But regardless of why you visited our booth, we still enjoyed speaking with you. We got a lot of great questions about our offerings and the L&D industry overall. There are quite a few people we will be following up with in the future. If you’re one of those people, stay tuned.
#2) The Speaker Session Rocked
The speaker sessions were top-notch. But there were so many that we couldn’t get to them all and still run the booth. However, the speaker sessions we saw and heard about were informative and innovative, and that energizes us to keep innovating and pushing our offerings.
One of the biggest highlights for Caveo was having our very own Tim Youngman speak about how a combination of ADDIE and Agile can reduce training time and costs by 20–30%. He did a great job, and the topic is certainly timely.
If you couldn’t be there here’s a quick summary…
The last 15 or so months have been among the most disruptive in recent memory for designers, developers, and L&D professionals. Departments are understaffed and overworked, and everything is in short supply, from designers to budgets. More than ever, businesses need cost- and time-efficient ways to roll out training.
The blend of ADDIE and Agile is so important, and Tim did a great job of explaining why and showing how the process works and how projects are structured. We received a lot of positive feedback from the speaker session. If you attended but didn’t get a chance to ask a question, feel free to follow up with us. We’ll be happy to talk.
#3) We Saw a lot of Startup L&D Departments
One positive that we can take away from the shift to remote work is that there are a lot more companies out there truly investing in L&D for the first time. And those people were in full force at DevLearn.
We spoke with a lot of people whose organizations were just dipping their toes into the L&D space, and we couldn’t be more excited to help guide the way. Like we’ve been saying throughout this blog, L&D is so important in a world of hybrid and remote work. And the increase in remote work is driving a lot of people to look for ways to onboard, train, and retain new remote employees.
The 3 Questions We Were Asked the Most
We got a lot of questions at DevLearn at our booth throughout the conference and at the speaker session. We wanted to take the time to answer some of the ones we got asked most often.
#1) What’s our policy with content? Do we own the content we create or does the client?
Short answer: you own all the content we make for you. At Caveo, we work best when we work as an extension of your L&D team. In that sense, we view our clients as business partners, and the materials we make in that partnership are yours completely.
#2) How is A2® different from SAM?
We got this one a lot and we wanted to clear the air here.
A2 is a combination of ADDIE and Agile. Without getting too wordy, we designed this process to take the best of both of those approaches applied to instructional design.
SAM, or the Successive Approximations Model, is another approach to instructional development. The structure of this model is centered around intensive development sessions, creation of wireframe mockups, and then iterating based on client feedback.
The A2 approach is more structured, centered around four steps of define, detail and implement, add, and finalize. This collaborative approach cuts down on the back-and-forth, helping to streamline the entire instructional design process.
#3) How do you pronounce Caveo?
Honestly, this one was fun for us. And if you weren’t at DevLearn and have been wondering, that’s okay because you’ll know from now on…
It’s pronounced Cah-VEE-Oh.
Conclusion
To wrap up—thanks again to everyone who visited our booth and attended our speaker session. We hope you all enjoyed DevLearn as much as we did!
Topics: Learning Trends, Training and Facilitation, Caveo News and Events