Conference Agenda and Breakout Sessions

Time

 Event Location Summary
7:00am-8:00am Registration and Breakfast Lobby/Main Conference Room  
8:00am-8:15am Welcome and Introduction Main Conference Room  
8:15am-9:15am Keynote: Megan Torrance Main Conference Room What does it take to lead learning when change refuses to wait?
9:25am-10:25am Breakout Session 1    
  From Course Catalog to Capability Academies: Scoring Where You Are

Marcus Cazier and 
Will Stephens		 Room 209 Most capability academies get built on enthusiasm and audited on nothing. Teams launch learning paths, badge them, market them internally, then can't answer the question a CFO eventually asks: is this doing anything?  Bring your academy. You'll score it live against a six-dimension maturity model, find your binding constraint, and leave with a baseline you can rerun in six months.
  Even-Achieving: The Key to Sustainable High-Performance

Erika Coleman		 Room 213 Most companies teach people how to survive high performance. Even-Achieving teaches them how to sustain it.
Organizations invest heavily in developing leaders, strengthening culture, and driving results. Yet many unintentionally reward a pattern of overextension by asking their highest performers to carry more, push harder, and solve every problem. While this approach can produce short-term wins, it often leads to inconsistent performance, reduced innovation, and cultures that depend on a few exhausted heroes.
Even-Achieving offers a different path.
Grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and performance science, this program equips leaders with a practical framework for developing the mindset, habits, and self-leadership skills that create sustainable high-performance. Participants will discover how to build individual and team capacity, strengthen adaptability, and create cultures where exceptional performance isn't fueled by sacrifice—it's sustained through capability.
  Play with Purpose: Designing Games for Learning and Engagement

Daniel Burleigh		 Room 220 What does it take to design a game that supports meaningful learning? Drawing on game initiatives he led at Microsoft, eBay, and Flex, as well as his current dissertation research and nonprofit work serving youth and alumni of foster care, Daniel Burleigh will explore how games can support learning, participation, and resilience. Through practical examples, including successes, missteps, and lessons learned, participants will examine design principles, discuss choices that shape the learning experience, and leave with resources and practical questions to guide the use of games in their own talent development work.
  Learning Agility: Knowing What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

April Bennett		 Room 224 What do you do when you are facing a new problem, the stakes are high, or your usual approach no longer works? Learning agility is the ability to learn from experience, adapt, and apply what you know in new and unfamiliar situations. In this interactive session, participants will explore the behaviors that strengthen learning agility, the habits that derail it, and a practical framework for learning, unlearning, and responding more effectively when they do not yet know what to do.
10:30am-11:30am Breakout Session 2    
  Guaranteed steps to get promoted!

Travis Umpleby		 Room 213 I hate to say it, but you won't get promoted for doing your job well.  You get promoted for helping your boss do their job well.  Organizations are not developed to promote employees, they are developed to make money.  In this course we will learn to link our effort to their financial performance.  That’s who gets promoted.
  Human vs Machine

Rich Vass		 Room 220 In an age defined by accelerating AI capability, the legend of John Henry offers a powerful lens for reimagining the role of human skill in a machine‑driven world. This session explores how the “human in the loop” is not a nostalgic safeguard but a strategic necessity—where judgment, empathy, creativity, and ethical discernment become the differentiators that machines cannot replicate. Rather than racing against the algorithmic steam drill, today’s learning leaders must design systems where human strengths and AI capabilities amplify one another. Participants will leave with a practical framework for building AI‑enhanced workflows, cultivating human‑centered competencies, and ensuring their organizations thrive through partnership rather than competition.
  From Tool to Talent: Scaling Employee AI Literacy

Sarah Jester		 Room 224 Simply providing an AI tool is not enough; L&D must develop the AI talent required for employees to wield it effectively. Join Sarah Jester from Lucid for an action-oriented round-table discussion focused on the specific role L&D plays in increasing AI literacy in the workplace. We’ll learn how Lucid is empowering its employees to learn AI, explore L&D's role in this transformation, and learn from one another. Come prepared to discuss your role in the AI shift and leave with practical ideas for upskilling your own organization.
11:30am-12:30pm Lunch / Vendor networking Main Conference Room  
12:30pm-1:30pm Keynote: Scott Provence Main Conference Room The Decision Bottleneck:
Rebuilding L&D for a world of infinite answers.
1:40pm-2:40pm Breakout Session 3    
  AI Is Not a Silver Bullet: Using AI Without Sacrificing Learning Quality

Katie Kormanik		 Room 213 Generative AI can now turn a stack of source documents into a polished-looking online course within minutes. The resulting course may contain paragraphs, flip cards, quizzes, audio clips, and neatly formatted screens. But a course that looks complete is not necessarily a course that helps people learn.  Too often, AI-generated learning experiences simply repackage information. They deliver the instructional equivalent of processed food: fast, convenient, and superficially appealing, but lacking the substance learners need to understand why the content matters, retain key ideas, and apply them in their work.  Great learning design requires more than summarizing source materials. It requires a clear understanding of the business problem, the learner’s reality, and the behaviors the training is intended to change. It requires prioritization, storytelling, judgment, and creativity. It may begin with a real-world problem, a compelling question, or a moment when something went wrong. It must help learners connect information to decisions they will actually make.  In this session, I will explore where AI-generated course platforms fall short and how learning professionals can use AI similarly to how they would manage a team of creatives rather than a one-click replacement for instructional design. Participants will leave with a practical framework for combining human judgment with AI tools to create learning experiences that are not merely faster to produce, but meaningfully more effective.
  Developing People, Delivering Results: A Framework for Strategic Performance Partners

Naomi Lee		 Room 220 Organizations rarely suffer from a lack of information. More often, they struggle to turn information into action quickly enough to meet changing demands. As learning professionals, we have an opportunity to expand our influence beyond content development by becoming strategic performance partners who help solve business problems, improve workforce readiness, and accelerate organizational performance. Drawing on examples from public health, organizational consulting, government workforce readiness initiatives, and healthcare technology environments, this session introduces a practical framework for diagnosing organizational capability gaps and selecting interventions that extend beyond formal training. Participants will explore how onboarding, performance support, knowledge management, process adoption, and change enablement can work together to improve organizational outcomes. We'll also demonstrate how AI can accelerate analysis, content development, and performance support, allowing learning professionals to spend more time delivering strategic value. Participants will apply the framework to a real-world case, receive a practical job aid they can use immediately, and leave with actionable strategies for aligning learning initiatives with business goals, strengthening organizational capability, and driving measurable results in complex, fast-changing environments.
  Hands-On With Vibe Coding: Create AI-Powered Learning Solutions in Minutes

Jeff Batt		 Room 224 “Vibe coding” is a term that’s quickly gaining attention in the world of AI-assisted development, but what does it actually mean—and how can it be applied in learning and development? In this session, we’ll cut through the buzz and give you a clear understanding of vibe coding, the tools that make it possible, and the core concepts you need to know to use it effectively. You’ll learn how tools like Lovable and Cursor turn natural language prompts into working prototypes, while gaining a practical vocabulary that will help you confidently explore this emerging space. More importantly, this session is hands-on. You won’t just hear about vibe coding—you’ll practice it. Together, we’ll walk through real use cases and build custom learning solutions that address real challenges, from checklists and dashboards to training trackers and interactive tools. By the end, you’ll walk away with working solutions you’ve created yourself, plus the knowledge and confidence to continue building with vibe coding long after the conference.
2:50pm-3:45pm Conference Reflection and Networking activity (“Netflection”) Main Conference Room  
3:45-4:30 Conference Close, Awards, Raffle (winners must be present to win) Main Conference Room  


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