eLearning DevCon 2007 Issues Call for Presentations

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Thursday, December 7, 2006; 03:05 AM

Rapid Intake, Inc, the organizer of eLearning DevCon, the annual e-learning developers conference, has issued a call for presentations for the 2007 conference. Rapid Intake will be accepting presentation proposals immediately for the August 2007 event.

While there are many other e-learning industry conferences, the e-Learning DevCon was the first conference to focus exclusively on e-learning development tools, techniques, and training targeted at e-learning developers. It is also the only conference to receive a 4/4 star rating from Training Media Review.

"We are e-learning developers ourselves," says Steven Hancock, conference co-organizer, "so we organized a conference that we would want to go to. Many of the conferences in our industry don't go into the depth that developers need. Specific development techniques are usually treated far too lightly."

"The people that attend this conference are here to learn techniques that will help them get their jobs done," says Garin Hess, conference co-organizer. "They aren't interested in lots of theory or fluff." With this focus in mind, Rapid Intake encourages potential presenters to submit presentations that go deeper than general overviews of a particular authoring tool or environment. Hess further states "We need beginner, intermediate, and expert level presentations to accommodate the many different levels of skill and experience that our participants bring to the conference. Once they have decided to attend, they can choose the level that best suit them with our multiple track format."

Rapid Intake takes a unique approach to organizing the conference. Instead of being held at an expensive hotel, the conference is held on a university campus in Forest Grove, Oregon (near Portland, Oregon), where attendees eat in the cafeteria and have the option of staying in the campus dorm rooms or nearby hotels.

"When we have attended other conferences, we've often felt we didn't really get a lot of bang for the buck," says Hancock. "At most events, when you count the expensive registration fees, lodging, and food costs, you can easily spend a couple of thousand dollars or more. Consequently, it is usually managers, not developers, who get to attend those conferences. At e-Learning DevCon you can get a pass to the conference, lodging, and all of your food for less than the registration fee alone charged by most other conferences."

The university setting and the focus on development and developers has apparently been a success with those who have attended in the past. One participant who attended put it this way, "This was the best conference I've attended out of 10 conferences I've attended in the last four years, a great conference." Another stated, "I really enjoyed the 'learning' format of the conference. I've gotten much more information in the first couple of days than I've gotten in the last 2 'conferences' I've attended."

While presentation proposals will be accepted through April 2007, conference organizers suggest presenters submit proposals by the end of 2006. While any topic will be considered, topics in the following areas are recommended: Flashform, Articulate, Flash, Swish, Breeze, Captivate, Lectora, Instructional Design, Project Management, Mobile eLearning, Games in eLearning, Simulation Building, Dreamweaver, CourseBuilder, Database Connectivity, LMSes, new tools on the market, SCORM, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Section 508 Compliance, W3C Standards, JavaScript, ActionScript, ASP, Fireworks, Illustrator, Case Studies, Visual Design, Wiki, Web 2.0.

Potential presenters can find more information at http://www.elearndevcon.com.