Pluralsight Live Europe 2019
The Event #PSLIVE19
The event was held on 13-14 May, 2019 at Park Plaza, London Riverbank. The sun was shining.
Expectations
I'll admit that I was desperate to attend this conference and a bad cold the previous week was not going to stop me getting there, even if I had to cough my way through it (sorry folks).
I really needed to re-align and re-energise my thinking so that I could bring home the bacon to our Digital Delivery Group (DDG) and keep up the drive to fully embrace continuous learning and establish that elusive "learning culture".
Over and over in my DDG Capabilities Lead role I have to remind myself that I can't be successful on my own and so this was going to be a major opportunity to reach out to others for help. Whatever help or expertise might be on offer, I was ready to receive it and a "truck load" would not be a problem!
I really wanted to know what people had tried and whether it worked (or was working) or not.
Sessions I Attended
There were others but I attended the following sessions:
- Workshop: Aligning Skill Development with Real Business Goals
- Workshop: The Path to Skills: Engagement on the Pluralsight Platform
- General Session + Keynote from Pluralsight founder Aaron Skonnard
- Breakout: More than the sum our skills
- Breakout: Best practices for improving tech skills across your organisation
- Breakout: Digital Transformation & Other Dangerous Buzzwords
The last session was "mandatory" for me as I work in a department called the "Digital Transformation Centre" and have done a fair few of "them" in my time. Great presentation by @digital_lindsay.
I also browsed the cloud technology booths and spent a fair while "ear wigging" on different people groups as they asked their questions and received various demonstrations of the Pluralsight tools from the resident Pluralsight gurus. Very informative and helpful.
Benefits Of Attending
We Are Not Alone And Help Is Out There
A major benefit for me was reinforcement of the notion that we are not alone in facing the significant challenges of seeking to build a learning culture. There are plenty of others striving for that too and finding it equally as difficult (though not impossible). But there are also people out there who want to help and they have tools and expertise to share. Yay!
Guest speaker Ben Hammersley put it well in saying "it's an infinite game where you never really win but just aim to keep playing as long as you can". (We intend to win and we don't intend to take forever to achieve it although Ben may still have the last laugh.)
Cloud Skills
All things "Cloud" is a big part of our strategy so it was good to see the major cloud vendors at their booths and working in close alliance with Pluralsight making course content available and promising more. (Sure there are other things we are interested in too but "cloud" is #1.)
Competition Aside
Throughout the conference, corporate competition was put aside for the greater good of everyone wanting to learn more about being successful at helping others to learn. There was an openness amongst attendees of sharing what had been tried, what worked and what didn't and I listened hard and wrote loads of notes which I plan to sift through and thoroughly digest.
Key Learning
Before I sift and thoroughly digest my notes, here's a summary of my key learning from the conference:
- Pluralsight remains a mighty tool in the toolbox and is getting even better.
- Skills projects are projects too! Treat them likewise.
- Learning curves never arrive individually. All skills have adjacent skills.
- Change comes more from managing the journey than announcing the destination.
- Technical skills are strategic. Every company is now a "Tech company".
- The Pluralsight Technology Index can help with your technical skills strategy.
- Have a roadmap. (Pluralsight call it a "success plan". Like it!)
- Agreements are better than expectations.
- Protected learning time works.
- Easy access to learning is key.
- Pluralsight can now help measure role qualification level with roleIQ.
- Pluralsight can help identify skill gaps.
- Technology, society and culture are all inter-related. Changing one changes the other.
- Start meetings with learnings.
Future Roadmap
Before leaving the event we met briefly with our Customer Success Manager and enthusiastically agreed we had a lot of work to do together if we were to come back next year with an awesome success story. (That's our plan and we've penned a fair few words already!)
Nostalgic Moment
My first encounter with Pluralsight was back in 2009 when two of my best developers shocked me by announcing that they had each personally (not Capgemini) spent what seemed like an extortionate amount of money for a Pluralsight license. They showed me what they were studying and I was in awe. We birthed our "Learning Cinema" concept on watching content together as a team. Very powerful back then, equally so today.
Pluralsight was a great product then and it's way better today. It's part of the toolbox for me and so glad that Capgemini and many more agree. The two developers who shared it with me back then are "10X" developers and still at the top of their game a decade later and still using Pluralsight. (No names because you would try to recruit them.)
The Pluralsight Technology Index is also a great tool (check out their methodology - seems pretty sound to me) and I'm sure will help you with your technology skills strategy.
Looking forward to putting some of my learning to work ... stay tuned.
Thank you for liking this page.
Tim Simpson
17th May, 2019
#LifeAtCapgemini