More on the Vendor-Client Gap

With thanks to Jeff Cobb (Mission to Learn) for his comment and to the vendor representative who contacted me last week off-line, I’ve decided to spend a little more time with a statement I made in my “View from the Outside In” entry, posted as an observation of the recent eLearning Conference hosted by ASAE and The Center: 

It was clear to me that there’s a disconnect between the vendors and clients, between what’s perceived as important and what truly is, and between the often-used solution and the right solution.

First let me emphasize that the conference format was — essentially — an experiment,  a test to see if some of the benefits of a live conference would still result from an online format.  On that count, did it succeed?

In Favor of Caution

On a trip I took last week for association business, I toted along printouts of the chats and presentation slides from the ASAE and The Center’s recent online eLearning conference.  I highlighted comments until the green in my Bic Brite Liner went pale — comments about where to start with elearning, how to get buy-in from the “older members,” how to estimate budgeting, and other issues I generally categorize as “strategy.”

At the same time, I saw questions about what wikis are and how blogs can be used for learning (I’ll own up to that one), curiosity about Second Life and Facebook….

View from the Outside In

Jeff Cobb offered a great presentation at the recent eLearning Conference hosted by ASAE and The Center, and posts about trends in association elearning in his blog, Mission to Learn.

During my attendance at the conference — and I made nearly every chat and session –I was impressed by the range of what associations are doing educationally, online.  I was also amazed that there was so much talk and curiosity about the newest wave of online options — wikis, blogs, social networking, virtual worlds… especially Second Life, which I consider one of the leading-edge playspaces on the Web, populated primarily by geeks (I mean that in the most positive way, considering myself a “wannabe geek”) and entrepreneurs.

What surprises me about this is that from what I can tell, associations — by and large — are still struggling with the best ways to get buy-in from leadership to get into or expand online learning options, strategize those options, sort out the possibilities, figure out the budgeting, and then tackle the implementation of it all.