ASTD TechKnowledge

Sunday I hop on a plane for Denver, the locus of ASTD's TechKnowledge conference. In the past, this was generally an introductory conference, with lots of very basic material. It was perfect for newbies.

This year's TechKnowledge looks to be more sophisticated. Elliott Masie delivers one keynote, Ray Kurzweil the other. If you read Internet Time Blog, you already know I'm a tremendous fan of Ray's work. His notion of the acceleration of time is enough to rattle any of our cages. The radical changes we will experience in the next decade underpin my plea that organizations adopt more natural, informal, flexible approaches to learning. Get this: in the 21st century, we will experience the progress not of a hundred years, but of 20,000 1999-style years!

On Tuesday the 31st, I'll be talking about informal learning and how I'm designing the Unworkshops we announced yesterday. Our first unworkshop focuses on using blogs, wikis, and other web tools to improve learning effectiveness, so participants will create a blog, start a wiki, give a podcast, and so on: learning by doing. Forgive the self-promotion; I'm excited about the unworkshops and really looking forward to hearing what Ray has to say. Please say hi if you see me wandering the aisles in Denver. Or do they say "Howdy" in Denver?