The conference takes place on Monday 11 October 2010
Panagiota Alevizou is a post-doctoral researcher at the Open University's Institute of Educational Technology working on the Open Learning Networks project (Olnet). As part of her research she has been engaging with numerous stakeholders and projects in the OER community to develop working framework on the nature of openess and collaboration that characterizes the mediation of open resources, while addressing the opportunities and challenges relating to participatory interfaces, emerging pedagogies, adoption and (re)use.
As a member of a small team, she has recently completed a project funded by the Higher Education Academy, the aim of which was to develop a review of the research literature and numerous cases studies on: The uses of Web 2.0 in higher education.
Panagiota's broader background is in media and communications with a particular emphasis on new media, knowledge systems, learning and literacy. Her interest in open source/ open content communities and collective intelligence was sparked while working on her PhD and has informed her teaching and research at the universities of Sussex and London School of Economics and Political Science. For more information visit her departmental profile.
Sonita is the co-founder and non-executive director of cross-platform media production company Somethin' Else, which she established in 1991. Sonita is also chair of the national arts charity Sound and Music. A board member of the BBFC, she sits on the UK Culture Committee for UNESCO. She is a member of the London Skills and Employment Board and chair of the Radio Sector Skills Council and Islington Arts and Media Trust. She was a non-executive director at the DCMS 2000-2005 and in 2007 was a member of the DCMS 2012 Culture and Creativity Advisory Group. Sonita won the Carlton Multicultural Achievement Award for TV and Radio in 2002 and is a Fellow of The Royal Society of the Arts and the Radio Academy. She was awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2003.
Lyn has run her coaching practice since 2002, specialising in the film and television industry working with producers, directors, writers and actors. Having worked in various operational roles, including Human Resources Director, within the financial services industry, her philosophy on management has always taken a coaching bias. The Magic Key Partnership's clients include emerging talent as well as Bafta winners, film makers with micro or multi million pound budgets and those established within the industry and freelancers. Lyn is Vice Chair of Women in Film & TV, the premier membership organisation for women working in creative media in the UK and part of an international network of over 10,000 women worldwide. She is Chair of WiFT's very active Events Committee.
Peter Butler was, until the end of August 2010, Director of Learning, BT Group for six years. He chaired BT's Learning Council, the purpose of which is to maximise the ability of individuals, teams and the organisation as a whole to grow and transform in pursuit of the company's strategic goals and objectives. Peter's goal for Learning and Development in BT was to improve and transform radically the workforce's performance and competence, of both individuals and teams.
Peter delivered a single, global, enterprise-wide Learning Management System for the company and his many responsibilities included BT's skills agenda as the organisation transformed to ‘Software Services’. Peter supported the work of e skills UK in the development and launch of a National Skills Academy for the IT Sector. He was also at the forefront of development of collaborative and networked social learning platforms.
Peter was previously Head of the Learning Consultancy practice in RBS Group and has a wealth of HR experience in the UK.
Ben Chambers has over ten years' experience in HR, working in a variety of fields including L&D, Talent Management and Organisational Development. He has worked on large scale development programmes across the globe for organisations such as News Limited, Coca-Cola and Pearson. Ben holds a BA (Hons) in Management Studies from The University of Leeds and a Master's Degree in Human Resource Management from The University of Westminster. Ben is a member of CIPD. He is qualified in a range of psychometric tools including Lominger and HBDI.
Donald Clark was CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group plc, the leading company in the UK e-learning market floated on the Stock Exchange in 1996. Describing himself as ‘free from the tyranny of employment’, he is now a board member of Ufi LearnDirect (Government agency delivered e-learning to 2.6 million learners), Caspian Learning (learning games tool provider), LearningPool (content provider), Brighton Arts Festival and is a school governor. Donald has won many awards for the design and implementation of e-learning, notably the Outstanding Achievement in e-learning Award. He has advised on e-learning for HEFCE, IVIMEDS (Worldwide Medical Schools Consortium) World Bank, United Nations and many other public and private sector organisations. He is a regular (and controversial) blogger on e-learning!
Lincoln Coutts has worked in the HR industry for the last nine years. His early career started in the public sector. He then moved into recruitment, helping start a boutique firm and working in high street recruitment. A regular speaker at conferences and business schools (including Henley Management College and Insead UK) on the topic of social media, he works with clients ranging from FTSE board members to more junior staff across various industries including financial services, FMCG, retail, technology, media, public sector and professional services.
Rachel is passionate about learning and development at all levels and believes that an ever-present, on-going commitment to people development is an integral part of being an empowered and successful creative business. Her approach is facilitative and collaborative and she believes that understanding both the culture of an organisation and the needs of its people are vital when finding viable, effective solutions to any challenge they may encounter. She works to ensure that group sessions are a safe, fun and a dynamic experience. She is a qualified trainer, facilitator and coach as well as a Myers Briggs practitioner. Her clients include: Channel 4 News, Top Shop/Top Man, ASOS.com, Comic Relief, Glue Isobar, Wieden + Kennedy, Nokia, OneDotZero, Cultural Leadership Programme & Sony Music.
Jane has been working for over 25 years helping organisations understand how new technologies can be used to improve education, training and business performance. With the emergence of powerful social media tools she now focuses on helping organisations to understand what it is to be a social business. Jane regularly presents at conferences and events, both in the UK and internationally as well as globally online.
Tim's background is a bit unusual for somebody who now works in personal development. He has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering and is a chartered Mechanical Engineer. He started his career in engineering and then moved into buying and selling guided weapons as a project manager for BAE SYSTEMS. When he left at the age of 28 he was the project manager for an £800M defence project. He left the job with little idea of what was going to happen but knowing he was in the wrong job. Unlimited Potential was created at the end of 2004 with a vision to give everybody the opportunity to make the most of their time at work - hence “we develop people - they develop your business”. Tim is passionate about helping all individuals grow into their roles and have the confidence to own the role that they exist in. He is particularly interested in how young people are going to develop as the world changes.
Craig Jones joined Barclays Wealth as Global Head of Diversity in 2008 after a 20 year career in the Royal Navy. At Barclays he leads a strongly commercial diversity agenda, which focuses on developing diverse teams for a growing diversity of clients.
Between 2000 and 2008 he led groundbreaking work to help integrate gay men and women in the Armed Forces and became an MBE in 2006 for service to equality and human rights. He continues to work closely with the Michael D Palm Centre of the University of California Santa Barbara in the campaign for a more inclusive personnel policy for the US Armed Forces.
In addition to his role at Barclays he has worked as principal advisor to the Equality and Human Rights Commission on equality in the Armed Forces. He is a Board Member and Trustee of Employers Forum on Disability, a member of the DWP's Ethnic Minority Advisory Group and was a founding member of the Prison Service Race Equality Board.
Laura Overton is Managing Director of Towards Maturity - a not for profit organisation that provides research and online resources to help organisations deliver effective learning intervention at work. She is a founding ambassador for Next Generation Learning @ Work, a UK wide initiative backed by Becta to promote the effective use of technology in learning, training and development in the workplace, colleges and schools. With over 20 years' experience of implementing learning technologies in the workplace, she works with government policy makers, representing employer interests. She has contributed to initiatives associated with the European Commission, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and Becta. She is a Fellow of the Institute of IT Training and of the British Institute of Learning & Development and is a popular industry commentator. Her publications include Driving Business Benefit, Towards Maturity and Linking Learning To Business.
Following stints as CEO of a learning technology organisation and the Specialist Schools Trust, Head of Science Year and Head of People Development at the BBC, Nigel Paine is now working with companies on their development and talent strategies.
Nigel is a great communicator and profound thinker about what makes contemporary workspaces tick and what businesses need to do to survive in the 21st century. He specialises in developing leaders; building learning organisations; getting the best out of staff and developing strategies for retention and development of key people within organisations.
A coach, mentor, writer, broadcaster and keynote speaker of international acclaim, he is currently working in Europe, the US, South America and Australia on a variety of assignments making work more creative, innovative and aspirational and making workplaces more conversational, team-based and knowledge sharing.
Claire is a freelance project leader and consultant with 23 years experience in the broadcasting industry. Claire currently works with the BBC Academy, leading on business engagement, evaluation and strategy development. She worked on the BBC’s Network Supply Review and in 2007, following a series of editorial breaches, oversaw the BBC’s Safeguarding Trust training programme - delivered to 17,000 staff inside the BBC and available online to the wider broadcasting industry.
She began her career as a radio and TV journalist – at 26 she was the BBC’s youngest ever radio station Editor, launching what is now BBC Southern Counties Radio. She was Head of Editorial Standards for BBC Production for three years. In 2001 she looked after the launch of the BBC’s digital radio networks before joining the board of BBC News as General Manager, overseeing a major culture change programme and helping to steer News through the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry. Claire has also worked with Comic Relief and Help the Aged on strategy development, communications and change management.
Myles joined the BBC Academy in May 2010 as Head of Online to help shape the online strategy across all Academy operations for internal and external users and to develop the content and products to further these objectives. Since 1995 he worked in and around the internet, the web and interactive projects, variously as a strategy consultant, research analyst, user interface manager, strategy director and general manager for Andersen Consulting, BBC Online in the late 1990s, a dot.com bubble adventure and Ask.com. He rejoined the BBC in 2008 as the Head of Interactive Learning in BBC Vision, managing the teams across schools, teachers, innovations and adult learning.
Nick started out as a psychology lecturer, teaching a mix of mature and immature students and publishing psychology study guides. An interest in technology and its application to learning brought Nick into the corporate world, where he has led the development of online learning strategy, content and delivery and now manages Online & Informal Learning at the BBC. His teams have won several awards in areas including online content development, staff development strategy, innovation and more recently for their pioneering work in the areas of rapid development and social networks for learning. Nick also runs the 5,000-strong ‘e-learning professionals’ Facebook group, blogs at aconventional.com and tweets as shackletonjones.
Julie has over 20 years experience of teaching and training across a wide variety of industry sectors in both the UK and Europe. With particular focus on IT related learning and change management, Julie specialises in the practical application of learning technologies in the real world, helping organisations, trainers and learners to learn and work more smartly.
Richard Wilkes is a Founder Director of Steps. He has extensive experience designing inspiring programmes, helping organisations to get across key messages and developing the personal skills individuals need for their organisation's competitive edge. Richard is particularly interested in how people 'work with difference' and has designed and led many programmes on diversity, engagement, cross-cultural working and effective communication.
Steps is a global leader in drama-based training with over 18 years’ experience. It inspires people to act differently by developing facilitated, interactive training and innovative learning solutions, covering a spectrum of individual and organisational development issues.
Tina Wilson is a researcher in the Technology Enhanced Learning group within The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology in the UK. She has experience of teaching in both face to face and distance learning modes. She has developed and managed evaluation studies for a number of educational projects from initial ideas through to design, data gathering, analysis and write up. She has been the principal investigator on several research projects about the educational use of online resources, systems and tools. Her recent work is on Open Educational Resources. She has worked on several major projects including the OU's Open Content Initiative ‘OpenLearn’, the Project on Open Content for Knowledge Exposition and Teaching (POCKET) and Curriculum and Pedagogy in Technology Assisted Learning (CAPITAL). She is a member of the steering committee for the OER Languages Open Resources Online (LORO). Her current post is as researcher on the Open Learning network project (OLnet). Tina's MSc is in Information Technology from Coventry University and her PhD in Computing is from The Open University.
David Wortley is responsible for the development of the Institute as a global thought leader on the application of immersive technologies (which include video games, virtual worlds and social networking) to serious social and economic issues such as education, simulation, health, commerce and climate change. Working with academics, regional development agencies and leading computer games companies, David aims to make the SGI a focal point for games based learning, simulation and immersive 3D virtual environments and an engine for innovation and social and economic regeneration. David is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). His career has embraced the converging and emerging technologies of telecommunications (Post Office Telecommunications), computing (IBM), digital media and community informatics (Mass Mitec - rural SME) and the creative industries (De Montfort University). He is a serial entrepreneur and innovator with a passion for applying technology to social and economic development.
Comments from the 2009 conference
To get a flavour of the 2009 conference and hear more comments from delegates and speakers go to Youtube.
Helen Witt, People Manager, Virgin Media Television
Colin Ramsay, Learning & Development Advisor, Global Radio
Clare Hasler, HR Adviser, Chello Zone
Cliff Fluet, Partner, Media, Brands and Technology, lewissilkin
Barry Woolven, ex-eLearning Business Development Manager, CEGOS
Alan Samuel, Head of UK Operations, Tata Interactive Systems
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