L&D DOESN’T HAVE A LEARNING PROBLEM. IT HAS A PERSUASION PROBLEM.

Let’s be honest. Most learning initiatives fail not because of bad design, but because no one bought into them in the first place.

In this provocative keynote, Caner takes a blowtorch to traditional L&D mindsets. He explores why logic and data alone don’t convince stakeholders, and how behavioral economics, influence tactics, and a little bit of strategic mischief can make your ideas actually land.

This session is for anyone tired of being ignored, overruled, or brought in too late.

Take-aways:

• Why stakeholder 'resistance' is often just a framing failure
• How to use psychological biases like anchoring and loss aversion to your advantage
• Tactical scripts to steer bad training requests into real solutions
• How to position L&D as a business partner without begging for a seat at the table

STOP DESIGNING CONTENT. START DESIGNING LEARNING.

What does it take to move from well-crafted content to real learning impact?

Too often, workplace learning gets reduced to slides, quizzes, and checklists. But content ≠ learning. In this session, Srishti shares how she brings a design mindset to learning - shaping experiences that change how people think, feel, and act. She'll unpack how context, constraints, and creativity can lead to powerful learning design.

Expect practical tools, unexpected stories, and a clear invitation to rethink how your team approaches learning - whether you're designing for scale, behavior change, or belonging.

Key takeaways:

• Shift from content to outcomes: Why learning must focus on what people do - not just what they read or watch
• Designing in constraints: How resource-limited settings can unlock innovative, learner-first design
• Think like a learning designer: Simple tools to go from fuzzy goals to impactful experiences
• Make learning matter: A practical lens to design learning people care about - wherever you work

OPEN THE DOOR AND LET THE LEARNING IN: How to Create a More Intrinsically Motivating Learning Environment

Saying you want to motivate your learners is easy to say and impossible to make happen. To be more precise, to say you want to intrinsically motivate your learning is impossible to do. You can certainly pay them off, threaten them, guilt them into showing up, etc. But, to cause your participants directly… explicitly… to be excited and passionate is not something you can MAKE happen.

Sorry to have to tell you so...

In other words, you cannot effectively 'motivate' people to learn-- although you can certainly 'demotivate' them. However, you do have tremendous influence over a learner’s 'environment'.

What does that mean? It means you can affect the tools and resources one has to learn new tasks and skills. You can provide effective activities and content as they learn and practice. You can use assessments and evaluations that give the learner proper, informational feedback so they know what to do to improve. You can demonstrate and facilitate comprehension of the meaning and purpose your learning experience (workshop, course, program, etc.) offers. You can provide options for how one engages with your course within the constraints of proper learning science and instructional design. You can foster relationships and peer learning when appropriate and frequently involve learners in their own learning process. And, so much more.

Motivated learners don’t equal learned learners. But fostering more intrinsically motivating learning environments enables learners to enter the learning space, engage in the work needed to learn, and hopefully continue to do the work required for mastery after the program. This presentation will provide principles, tips, and techniques for supporting all of the above as you strive to meet and satisfy the motivational needs of your learners.

By the end of this presentation, you will:

• Be more equipped to discuss the role of motivation in the learning context
• ⁠⁠Understand the impacts and consequences that rewards and reinforcement systems have on learners
• Identify the components of motivation, or the basic psychological needs, that include needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness
• Receive a checklist for supporting those three basic psychological needs that affect one's motivation to learn
• ⁠⁠Ultimately, maximize the likelihood you engage, rather than disengage

LEARNING IS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AND BUSINESS IMPERATIVE

We in learning and development know we can be more effective, we hate being order takers, and we hate that we don't have a seat at the table. But how can we empower ourselves and gain the trust of senior leaders? How can we maximize the effectiveness of our learning and performance interventions? A new idea emerges—we must aim to create a competitive advantage for our organizations, our learners, and ourselves. In this keynote, Will Thalheimer, author of the book The CEO’s Guide to Training, eLearning & Work: Empowering Learning for a Competitive Advantage, will describe seven powerful tactics we can use to create a competitive advantage. With new goals, you and your team will have practical guidance to speak the language of the business, break through resistance, and empower yourselves to improved learning outcomes.

Key takeaways:

• Too often we have been stuck in a long tradition of frustration, unable to be as effective as we know we can be.
• We need a breakthrough. A new opportunity for us is to focus on how we can create a competitive advantage for our organizations.
• Underlying this work, we must align with the science of learning, build practices and tools that nudge our own effectiveness, and evaluate our work to create virtuous cycles of continuous improvement.

AI in L&D: THE WORK IS CHANGING, SO MUST WE

AI is no longer a future trend — it’s reshaping work today. And as it does, L&D teams find themselves at a critical juncture: will they use AI simply to optimise existing workflows, or to redefine their role in driving business transformation?

This session draws on Egle’s latest research into how organisations are actually using AI in L&D — from common applications to frontier cases that reimagine upskilling, performance support, and the very role of L&D. Along the way, a widening gap is emerging between teams who are using AI to streamline tasks, and those using it to step into a more strategic, future-facing role.

But beyond the data lies a deeper question: what sets leading L&D organisations apart and what will it take for others to catch up, as AI not only changes learning, but rewrites the rules of work itself?

You’ll walk away with:

• A map of today’s most common — and most advanced — AI use cases in L&D
• Insight into the conditions that enable strategic, transformative use of AI
• A glimpse into the emerging futures of L&D and its role in an AI-transformed world

Ashley will bring us:WHY L&D IS FAILING - AND HOW MARKETING WILL SAVE IT

Let’s face it - L&D is failing. Programmes aren’t landing, engagement is stagnant, and the business is losing patience. But the issue isn’t always your content. It’s your approach.

In this provocative session, Ashley Hinchcliffe exposes the critical gap between learning and business impact - and why a marketing-led mindset is the key to fixing it. You’ll learn how to stop being the team that delivers learning and start becoming the team that drives behaviour change.

Ashley will share the People Impact Loop®: a practical, five-phase framework that helps L&D teams align with business goals, captivate employees, and prove their value with every initiative.

Key Takeaways:

• Why traditional L&D strategies fail - and how marketing thinking closes the gap.
• The People Impact Loop® explained - a five-phase approach to drive learning impact and business alignment.
• Audience-first mindset - how to understand, position, and sell your initiatives internally.
• Campaign thinking for L&D - practical tips to design irresistible learning activations.
• Measurement with meaning - how to move beyond vanity metrics and prove business value