Berlin

That's where I am right now. There is going to be a huge birthday party (my dad's 50th) tomorrow.

It's been busy busy busy... A quick update to what happened in the past days. I have been away on a project meeting of OBELFA Yesterday morning, I wrote some news for the slconference website, prepared speaker requests for this event and wrote the today published press release about the Berlin Round Table taking place at the slconference the first event evening (September 16). Besides that, I am in contact with potential speakers and translate various document related to that...so I will stay a busy bee and continue.

For all those who not have yet heard about the Second Life conference taking place in Berlin this September, have a look here. I am part of the slconference 2007 team, responsible for the marketing and texts published. I have already started last Thursday reviewing the Topics description of the website, writing the Invitation. I continued with the speaker invitation letter (for those interested click on it and read!! ) and the sponsorship letter. I finalized the first press releases in English and German and started to publish them on several PR websites. If anybody is interested, you can include banners and logos on your website. You find them all here.

Here is a short summary of the wiki & blog session at online educa from friday Dec, 2. The room was to small and in front of the doors were waiting a huge amount of people trying to enter the session!
For me it was i sign, that the topic slow by slow is coming to germany.

Dr. Yael Ravin, IBM Learning Technologies, USA
Trends in the next 4 years.
- Collaborative
- power to the learner
- embedded learning in the worktime
- learning from others
Technologies:
- Instant Messaging,
- Web conferencing
- Expertise locators
- Blogs
- Wikis
If a company has 300.000 employees (like IBM) it is not easy to find the experts or the right person!

e-learning in the CIS countries.

Prof. Yuri Rubin, The Moscow University of Finance and Industry (MIFP), Russia
The Status of E-Learning in CIS Countries:
- about 400 universities are changing the paradigma of learning.
- the relations between universities and business are close
- he describes eLearning as Extreme Learning.

Prof. Valery Ovsyannikov, Education Ministry of the Republic of Belarus.

Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Content!
What does this mean in practical terms?
What, for example, are the organisational issues to overcome in making content freely available?

Susan D'Antoni, Head of the Virtual Institute, International Institute for Educational Planning, UNESCO, France
Open Source and Open Content: Creating International Communities. They build a virtual University!
http://www.unesco.org/iiep/virtualuniversity/
It is hard to look behind the scenes of this project in her presentation, but it looks quite good. They talk a lot with different countries, they use forums to discuss. They use open source software.

in the session during my presentation
It was exciting for me because we were three speakers.
- me
- Prof. Pierre Dillenbourg
- Joel Brazil, MEDMG WW Channel Services, Microsoft, UK & William Bush, Via Training Ldt., UK http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/

The NGO view, the university view and the business model.

the online educa has 1862 participants from 73 countries. About 50 people come from russia. In the exhibition are 120 exhibitors.

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KEYNOTE;
At the moment Professor Riccarda Petrella, President of the Group of Lisbon, Economist and Political Scientist, Belgium is talking.
[i]Auf Initiative von Riccardo Petrella arbeitete eine internationale Expertengruppe 1992-95 an einem Dokument.
Zentrale Aussagen:
ungezügelter Wettbewerb zerstört die Weltzivilisation; deshalb benötigen wir neue globale Sozialverträge.
Wirtschaftlicher und politischer Wettbewerb ist wichtiges Grundprinzip unserer Gesellschaftsordnung.

I arrived straight in Berlin. The Online Educa takes place at the Intercontinental hotel in Berlin. The exhibition is open and I am strolling around. There is a free wifi access and the exhibition is opened. At 7:30 pm is a speakers meeting. I am very impressed. It is a very international flair.