This is one in a series of short posts featuring commentary from attendees of our recent Irish Learning Showcase event in Dublin, December 2nd & 3rd 2009.

This entry is by Patrick Torrekens, BENELUX Region:

“BENELUX senior executives were impressed by the innovation capability of the Irish e-learning companies. They recognized that in-depth research has lead to true product innovation. The application areas for this innovation spread way beyond the traditional employer/employee e-learning. It opens perspectives from more efficient communication between all stakeholders in the corporate world.”

Hello everyone – I am new to Enterprise Ireland’s Boston office and will be working with the ILA. This will be my first of many posts. I look forward to hearing your comments and questions!

The Fourth Annual Irish Learning Showcase was recently held on December 2nd & 3rd in Dublin. This was a new and very exciting experience for me. One of the biggest things to impress me was the amount of energy and activity packed into a two day learning event. Senior executives attended from the US, Benelux, Dubai, Australia, France, Canada and the UK, each bringing with them unique perspectives on the present and future of learning solutions, as well as the specific business needs of their companies.

It was a great opportunity for everyone to learn more about the industry and see all the valuable innovation coming out of Ireland. The days were packed with networking activities, workshops and interactive client presentations on emerging trends such as mobile learning and social media.

Check out the blogs written real-time by our HCMS invitees on their Facebook page.

Look for more posting coming from attendees and the Enterprise Ireland global team members later this week!! Let us know if you are interested in attending our 2010 Irish Learning Showcases.

-Philip

Looking forward to the most global Irish Learning Showcase (ILS) to date!!

The ILS is scheduled for December 1st – 3rd, in Dublin, Ireland. We are preparing to share highlights of the ILA research into technologies such as Social Media and Mobile Technologies and their impact on the commercial world – your businesses; to the attendees! ILA member companies will also present case studies, best practices and industry related topics.

Lots to do with a little over a week remaining (and the US holiday Thanksgiving will ‘eat’ up some time At this event we will host senior executives from the US, UK, Benelux region, Australia and Dubail. Look for their feedback to be posted directly ON THIS BLOG in the upcoming weeks!!

- Sharon

We just returned from a fabulous, informative and valuable Learning 2009 event.

Listed below are a few top line impressions and observations from Elliott Masie (pls note: these are partial quotes – for more information go to the Learning 2009 web site):

• Video: There is a strong interest and deployment of video in the world of learning
• Capt. Sully: Our time with Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger was fascinating. I am still thinking about his comments about the need to balance Teamwork, Trust, Shared Work Process Expectations and Learned Procedures.
• Social Media, Twitter and Back Channel Learning: Interesting to have a Twitter Scan going on in back of some of our keynote speakers. … The conversation is contiuning on #L2009 if you search on Twitter for comments and contributions.
• Virtual Leadership Skills: Lots of focus on how to add Virtual Leadership to the skillsets of new and existing leaders. How to build Digital Rhythm and More.
• Deconstructing Content: A number of speakers talked about reducing the investment in formal content and harvesting more of the content from Open Source or existing corporate content.

The ILA presented a very interactive presentation on ‘our journey’ in learning and how to leverage Irish investments. We will blog more on that and share with you the outcomes of our dialogue. Take a quick look at these first few photos:

Capt. Sully not only signed books (of which I have one) but also KINDLES. Here is a photo of us proudly displaying our ILA logo at the ILA stand including; Jonny Parkes, Jackie Stanforth from MindLeaders – who are now Masie Consortium Members, myself, Amy Martin from Interactive Services, and Declan Dagger from Empower the User. We also had strong representation from Intuition (missing from the photo) who had a very well attended presentation on thier success and best practices in Mobile Learning!

Look for more Learning 2009 blog postings – until then – to our US readers; Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello everyone -

We just returned from the CLO Event a few weeks ago and what a great week of networking!

I started the week out – before the conference even started – early on the Monday morning; sharing a tour of the Cheyenne Mtns with other CLO attendees (you can see them on the photo!) – on horseback. Must say it was a bit cold and very early; but it really set the tone for the conference that week – a lot of social networking -with and without the technology!

We then went into a full schedule of sessions, keynotes and events. Must say the networking, as always, was some of the best parts of the week.

You can see in the photo we all grabbed a delicious meal and shared great company/conversation on the Wednesday evening.

At our ILA session Jonny Parkes discussed the highlights of the ILA ELITE research regarding the technologies such as social media, mobile technologies and virtual worlds and how they impact the commercial world — your businesses. We shared the good times and the ‘challenges’ – as we are just at the beginning of this journey and we are still learning!

Our ILA member colleagues -Philip Payne from MindLeaders (in photo with Jonny and I) as well as Glenn Kenny from Interactive Services (who was obviously still networking when our photo was taken) helped us with our session. If you would like to see the presentation – it is located on the download section of the website.

We look forward to hearing from you in regard to our presentation – and if you were at CLO Symposium, if have some great networking photos from the event and comments – please send them on to us!

- Sharon

We are pleased to be able to offer some more video clips from Dr. Tony O’Driscoll’s talk at our New York event from earlier this year on “The Evolution of The Web”. We hope you enjoy them!

On Digital Natives

On The First 5,000 Days of The Web

The ILA is delighted to once again this year be sponsors of Elliott Masie’s Learning 2009 confernce in Orlando, FL on 8th-11th November, 2009. We are looking forward to having the opportunity for our members to meet with you, their customers and learning professionals from around the world.

As part of the pre-conference activities, I was recently interviewed by Elliott on a variety of topics including the impact of the current economic crisis on learning, how social learning is changing the corporate world and future trends.

The full interview is now available for you to listen to on the Learning 2009 web site. Take a listen and please let me know what you think.

I hope to see you in Orlando in November.

On the 27th of May, Enterprise Ireland had the honor of hosting the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese and Doctor Martin McAleese at a business reception in Boston, Massachusetts.

The lunch reception was held overlooking the beautiful views from the 36th floor of the Boston College Club. Over 100 hundred business professionals, Enterprise Ireland clients and key regional contacts attended the impressive event.

PulseLearning and ThirdForce-MindLeaders, ILA members, were in attendance with their key local clients. The President of MindLeaders, Paul MacCartney and his guest Rick O’Coin from the Learning Network at UNUM, had the honour of meeting President McAleese and Dr. McAleese.

The President of Ireland with Enterprise Ireland's Boston staff

The President of Ireland with ThirdForce-MindLeaders Executives

To check out all the photos from the event please visit our Photo Gallery.

Keep a close eye on our blog for our next regional event!

As part of our research and investigation on eLearning, innovation, learning … we took to the streets of NYC —- on St. Paddy’s Day!

Please check out some more of our videos and others to come will be the definitions of innovation, learning, where Dublin is located, the internet, social media, why Guinness is dark in color and a lot more…..

Check out the videos below – you may see someone you know! Or learn something you didnt know before….

Can you see a common theme in all of these videos? If yes – email me

– Sharon

The Irish Learning Alliance at the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2009:

Irish Technology Showcase 2009 Attendee Feedback:

We had a fantastic turnout for our Irish Technology Showcase event in New York city recently.

Not only did An Taoiseach Brian Cowen (the Prime Minister of Ireland) open the event but we also had Tony O’Driscoll from Duke University, Al Johnson from Bersin & Associates and a CEO Panel from some of Ireland’s leading e-Learning companies.

We have created a series of YouTube videos of the event, as well as some filming we did the following day during New York city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We hope you enjoy them.

Irish Technology Showcase 2009 Highlights:

Opening Remarks by An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen:

History of the Irish Learning Alliance: