ASTD Expo - Useful Vendors

This conference is interesting in terms of marketing. I suppose they derive a good deal of income from the expo vendors - so on monday they allow over two hours where the only thing going on is the EXPO - you almost have no choice but to visit the vendors. Strange compared to chemistry conferences... however, I did get a couple of good leads (and a lot of junk collected - some will be fun for my kids).

Mimeo.com was the major sponsor of the conference. It is a printing solution where they will print and bind course materials and can send them via overnight anywhere in the world. They are mainly out of the US at the moment but will have a european printing operation soon as well (germany?). Apparently the prices could be good. One sales rep told me that Pfizer has started using them for training materials and the cost through mimeo is better than their internal facilities. He couldn't quote me a price yet - apparently they do individual company quotes and it seems to depend on how much business they are expecting from you. I think he mentioned that the first time they just want to get you started so it is cheap or free (hard to believe free - must be just one copy). Perhaps we should give them a try considering the ridiculous prices we have been paying for printing color books. I don't think they are too big of a company yet but this was quite a marketing blitz here so they must be expecting to increase business through these marketing activities.

Qwizdom alternatives abound... I don't know what was available when you bought qwizdom but seems like there may be better choices now. Maybe we should think about buying a different one next time. I particularly liked the one by Turning Point. The remotes are relatively SMALL and the receiver is just a USB stick size. The whole package is compact and is easily carried around (unlike qwizdom!) total size of 40 remotes plus receiver is like the size of a larger camcorder bag and. It is completely powerpoint embedded (like actionpoint) but the real bonus is that IT WORKS WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF POWERPOINT! This would be a big advantage for us since we could use it off any of our computers. The software is on the usb receiver stick but can also be installed on as many computers as you like - no extra licence required. The initial cost is $695 for the receiver, etc plus $89 per controller. Sounds similar to qwizdom. I would worry about two competing technologies within our group but if this is better (and it does seem to have big advantages), it may be better than continuing with qwizdom. We could arrange a web demo if before deciding to buy more qwizdom units. There were other options as well but didn't look as appealing or of good quality.

Another interesting vendor was Atlantic Link. They have a great looking LMS system that includes tools similar to Captivate. It is all-encompassing. The real value seems to be that it can automatically format your PP or other content to a flash version that can be rolled out to mobile devices. This seems like the future of mobile learning. The sessions can contain questions as well and all the images are retained. The beauty is that you can make changes in the original document or elearning module and it is automatically updated in all versions (even the flash mobile version) without extra effort or additional techincal inputs. Seems great but how much? Best I could get is that it sounds like >30K. Seems pretty visionary though - I requested the documentation be sent so we can look it over. Expensive, yes but maybe innovative and forward-thinking.

Most of the rest of the EXPO was stuff that I didn't see immediate value in but some marginally interesting ones will be sending more info (propaganda) via mail.