I’ll admit it; I failed miserably at something this week. After having labored over a presentation, the elements of which I’ve been obsessing about and researching for more than a few days, I found I couldn’t tie them together into a cohesive vision. Without a vision, there was nothing to articulate in the presentation. Result? – failure; and in a way that I found disappointing after spending so much time thinking of ways to tie the elements together, coming up with a theme, and a presentation style.

In the course of work as an instructional designers, its routine to trawl the web constantly looking at ways people visualize ideas, concepts, processes. It’s an entire wonderland of variety out there on the inter-webs, in addition to the beauty one finds in various books on graphic design. Instructional designers then tend to be ‘inspired’ and apply those visualization techniques to whatever it is they seek to communicate.

Made it back from mLearnCon 2011 in San Jose in one piece, after a cooped-up 24 hours on a sardine can of a plane.

It was interesting to be at the event as an exhibitor, interacting with visitors to our stall and observing other products and technology at work with the other exhibitors.

Some trends seemed clear, while the direction in which mobile instructional technology is heading isn’t quite certain yet. The diversity in solutions and the ways organizations are leveraging them make for many forks in the road.

There is no better way to start a morning than to find not one, not two, but FIVE emails with congratulations written all over them. Earlier today, we received emails from Brandon-Hall Group letting us know that our best value LMS – UpsideLMS – has won 5 Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Awards (2010) awards. Last year, under the same awards, UpsideLMS had won 3 awards (across different categories). The only LMS to have won these many awards.

As in the previous year, this year too, UpsideLMS won awards in all the categories it was submitted in. In every category, Brandon-Hall announces Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners and UpsideLMS’s tally, for this year, stands tall and impressive with a list of 2 Gold, 2 Silver and 1 Bronze.

Last week we had an exhibition stand at CIPD’s HRD 2011 at Olympia London – our very first ‘outing’ in the UK. It turned out to be a great show for us with executives from several blue chip companies visiting our stand to discuss their performance and learning challenges.

I suppose a lot of meetings are to follow in next few weeks. This is a good beginning for our new Europe office which started a few months back.

I ran into this interesting infographic this morning about Augmented Reality marketing today. While it’s not completely relevant to eLearning or learning in general, it’s interesting to see that AR is making rapid strides in marketing. Also, the figures seem to suggest that while it’s gimmicky, it improves engagement and gets individuals to spend more time on those website that use AR.

Was tipped off about this interesting video on YouTube. A quick film/image montage give a glimpse of what students of XLRI which offers courses in social entrepreneurship experienced in several districts in the Indian state of Jharkhand.

2011 seems to be really big on events for us.

After a huge success at ASTD TechKnowledge 2011, April will see us participating in CIPD HRD 2011, an HRD conference and exhibition. Scheduled to take place on the 6th and 7th of April 2011 in Olympia, London, this event will see leading learning and organization development suppliers in a range of disciplines including training, L&D, OD, leadership, coaching and more, come together under one roof.

“There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

At Upside Learning, we believe that this is the right time to leverage mobile learning at the workplace. We worked hard, came up with ideas, criticized them, went back to the drawing board, and came back with better ideas. Upside2Go – our mobile learning solution, is the culmination of our innovation process.

Upside2Go is a novel platform for mobile learning. It is a solution that will not only help your training department reach out to your mobile workforce easily, but would also enable a mobile-based approach to real-time sharing and collaborating, within and outside a team.

Over the past 6 odd years, we have gained much more than experience and knowledge. We have grown quite well, from a 6 member team to 150+ professionals, today; from being just another provider of eLearning solutions to being a global leader in Custom eLearning Development, Learning Management System and Mobile Learning Solutions; and becoming a consistent performer with over 12 awards and recognitions.

It’s the time of the year when the air carries the happy jingle of Santa’s bells and the world celebrates the dawn of a new year! For us at Upside Learning, it marks a time to look back on the days gone by and celebrate the awards we won, heights we scaled and hurdles we overcame. But more than these, it marks a time to celebrate the relationship we share with you – our readers. It is a celebration that goes beyond the professional ties and the business conversations; beyond departments and designations; beyond regions and religions.

As a learning organization, we understand the importance of keeping our ears and minds open to new knowledge and ideas. And with our blog, this had been more possible than ever.

Over the period of 21 months, since the inception of our blog, we have not just shared our knowledge, but have gained much more in return. Through your comments, your suggestions, your answers – we have experienced ‘learning’ and beyond!