Social Learning and AI's Impact on Behavior with Mark Britz
In this episode, I sit down with Mark Britz and discuss the evolving landscape of social learning and importance of human interaction. We talk about the impact of technology, and strategies for getting the most out of a L&D conference. We also chat about how social behaviors are fundamental to learning and how organizations can foster better collaboration in the age of AI.
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Transcript
Luke
Mark, welcome to the podcast.
Mark Britz
Hey Luke, great to be here and see you in person. It's been a while.
Luke
I know. I know. It's it's crazy because we've been talking for so long online and now being able to do this, I really can't wait to have this conversation with you because also it's very timely to talk about social learning nowadays, which is like the day and age of AI, but also there obviously needs to be like human interaction and how does that work with learning? So I can't wait to have our our conversation today. But before I get ahead of myself, Mark, would you just mind introducing yourself to the audience and tell us more about who you are and what is it that you do?
Mark Britz
I'm Mark Britz. I'm a husband and dad. Let's start there, right? That's what it is. But I'm the director of event programming and content at the Learning Guild. And we, as you know, put on events like Learning Leadership and DevLearn, and we have a lot of online events and media and resources available to learning professionals. So my team and I focus on developing all of that content in different forms for our events and for our community at large. So Been in this space for well, I've been with the guild for about 10 years doing this, but I'm a longtime-learning professional, as many people who follow me probably know. Got my start in public education. I was a history and special education teacher before moving into e-learning, and we were just chatting about the fact that journey started for me in Arizona when I joined a company called SmartForce, and we were developing e-learning simulations, immersive simulations. And so the journey started there and has continued to this day.
Luke
Very cool. Like I was saying, today's topic is all about social learning. And I know from doing my research, just knowing you over the years, that you have your own kind of philosophy and ideas around social learning. So when we use that actual term, some people might think about it as like social learning theory and going back to like the 1970s and 1960s and the whole like cognitive theory kind of revolution boom and things of that nature. And a lot of people might think, too, about social learning as in discussion boards. Group projects, communities of practice, but in that context with that term, what does this actually mean to you?
Mark Britz
Yeah, so I think technology kinda commandeered the idea of social learning a while back. You know, we started to see obviously with the advent of of Web 2.0 and we started to see Enterprise 2.0 and all the tools you're familiar with, from going back to Yammer to Teams to Slack, it all became about that and that's what how people saw social learning. So we kinda lost the narrative, I think. And I like to do this. Like you're you're a new dad, aren't you, Luke? Relatively.
Luke
Yeah, she is fifteen months in like four days. So yeah. Yes.
Mark Britz
So I don't know if you're there yet. I mean I'm a I'm a little bit further along the the journey of of of fatherhood, but are you teaching your child how to use a spoon?
Luke
She yeah, yeah. She's already
Mark Britz
But I
Luke
well advanced. She's she's using utensils and everything, yeah.
Mark Britz
So I think back to that time too, and that's really social learning in a lot of ways. And I was talking to my wife about this one day, and I said, Do you remember sitting with our kids and showing them how to hold a spoon or a fork? And she's like, No, I don't. And it was like they picked it up, right? They watched us. We were modeling for them. They mimicked our behavior. And that's a big piece of social learning. So it's not just the chat rooms, right? It's not just the enterprise tools. But it's the idea that, you know, number one I'd start with that social learning to me is how we learn through and with others, regardless of the context. And I would go on to say it's much, much more than just conversation. It's much, much more than chat. It's observation. It's feedback, right? It's like I said, it's mimicking, it's practice with others. So it's a broader thing. So I definitely say as we look at technology alone, we're kind of missing the narrative on what social learning is and can be.
Luke
I mean it's so it's so interesting and this is why I wanted to talk about this on this podcast is because I know for me, when I think nowadays about with social learning, obviously social media of course is like playing into that with the same type of like naming convention and whatnot. And I'm not sure, did you see what Gary Vaynerchuk said the other day about how we are no longer living in a day and age of social media because now it's gone? 'Cause we're not social anymore online. Everything is driven by influencers. The algorithm. So now he calls it interest media. Which I thought that
Mark Britz
Yes, I can see that.
Luke
was interesting. So whatever you're interested in, the algorithm feeds you. And that's now essentially like what we have with Instagram and stuff. And I was just like, you're
Mark Britz
True. Yep.
Luke
right. And I realized that like one of the reasons for why I like LinkedIn is that I still see real people. So I still see you posting about things and I still see other friends and colleagues and I'm like, this is really the reason for why you know we we still want to be able to use this platform and to learn from one another. And the what I'm seeing from people is that the more that they are now using AI nowadays, the more they are really craving human interaction because they just miss people instead of just seeing this stream of text 24-7 with whatever ChatGPT or Claude is giving you. Have you noticed this trend as well of people trying to just be social more in different types of unique ways outside of
Mark Britz
I think it's emerging, and I say that because I mean we came out of the pandemic and a lot of social behaviors kind of changed during that time. I mean, you know, we s we saw a lot of the distancing kinda remained in a lot of ways. A lot of like you know, I know locally we have this huge thing called the New York State Fair. It's right here in Syracuse, New York, right? And it used to be massive and the amount of people who attended this. And after COVID it just has it never really bounced back. And so I think there's this slow emergence of getting back to that. But I'm gonna go a little further and say, I think one thing is we're we're built for social interaction. I mean, I'm I kind of subscribe to something I'm not sure if you've heard about it. It's called media naturalness theory. And it comes down to like
Luke
Mm. Yeah. Tell me more.
Mark Britz
this was a study that was done, I think it was around email mostly, around the 1970s and 1980s. And they were looking at the fact that the further we get away from physical face-to-face conversation with others, communication breaks down, trust breaks down. Even this conversation we're having right now, Luke, I see you from you know your chest up. I can see your expressions, I can see your eyebrows move, I can see your body language, your hands. But there's a lot missing too, right, in in this. I might not pick up on certain social cues like I would if we were face to face. So I think deep down inside we do crave, you know, being together. And I do worry that AI will pull us, you know, into that. I mean, let's let's face it, a lot of the generative AI is chat based. You know, and there's a reason for that. We're very comfortable using our phones to text with. And so it's kind of builds a it builds a kind of comfort level that's maybe maybe not all that healthy long term because if we are if we are constantly engaging with AI that way, like you noted, you know, are we gonna pull away from each other? But I would argue then too is like face to face events like things like DevLearn and learning leadership. I mean people are going to want those experiences to be with their community in the same meat space. Because again, it's part of our evolution. You know, if you look at media naturalness theory, we we have to do this. I mean, human beings were a lot around a long time before this modern era. It's kind of in our DNA. So I do suspect we're gonna see more of that. And we've seen it already too with like, you know, distributed work. A lot of you know, I work from home, I've worked from home forever. I never actually get in the same space but with until I'm at events with my own team. So we're never physically there. But when we get together. It's like, we just pick up where we left off, you know what I mean, online in those engagements.
Luke
So it's interesting that you bring that up because one of the things that happened at MIT, which has been both good and bad in a number of different ways, was the return to office policy. So that happened and of course a lot of people went up in arms to say like, Well, how many days and how long and what are we doing? And and of course someone like myself who is, you know, two hours away from campus, I'm like, Hey, I do miss interacting with friends and colleagues, like absolutely, but also like how many days am I Doing this because I did that for years and it was not great going into basically just living in traffic for a while. And that was not a fun time. So I kind of rejoiced when we had this option of doing things remotely. But once again, I I do understand. And one of the reasons though for why our head of open learning was saying, like, no, I want to come back, was actually because of this idea around really with social learning. It was that we need this. To be able to come back with things that I think it's kind of interesting, which is my question for you, is like, what are we misunderstanding the most about how people are-learning socially at work? Because that has like a different angle to me compared to just talking about some of the other things within like the educational space.
Mark Britz
I think I think the key thing is context really matters, you know, in in the environments that we're in. And I think too, it's like, again, as I noted before, it's like social behavior is inevitable. And one of the things is, if you follow me, I talk about a lot, is that our workplaces sometimes design out social interaction. And I don't mean necessarily like, you know, that there's the cubicles and the hallways and the physical space. But we sometimes build rules, processes, and protocols in the work that we do that separates us, right? It creates kind of a distrust. It can create an us and them. We can lose psychological safety. And so the workplace piece is really important because if we don't think more consciously about how every the pinnacle, let's put it this way, the pinnacle of a successful workplace. In my mind comes from the ability of people to collaborate. Because through collaboration, we get innovation, we get creative solutions. I mean that's that to me is the cutting edge for every company. That's what they want. They want to stay ahead, right? But so you need that collaboration. But if you don't have the base level of that, let's say it's like a pyramid, if you don't have that base level of conversation happening, right? Where people can easily share without feeling the burden of being criticized or maybe not having enough time to do so because the way the work is structured Then we lose the next layer, which is kind of what we call cooperation, where people are sharing information and resources. And without sharing information and resources, you don't get to know somebody very well about what their work is and how it relates to your own work, and that makes collaboration all that much harder. So I always look at the organization and I say, you know, some of those social technologies we you know, we noted at the front end of this is, you know, they're kind of the social infrastructure of an organization. But what I'm talking about more is the social architecture. And that is, you know, how work is conducted can actually impact positively or negatively if people will connect, share, and get to that pinnacle of collaboration, which is good for an organization and it's extremely healthy for people to work in.
Luke
Hmm. Did you notice that when people went back to work coming out of the pandemic that the way that they interact via on like Slack and with Zoom is one way? And then when they actually see each other face to face it's different. Cause that was the first so one of the things that I noticed that I had to work on again, which was kind of odd, was keeping and maintaining direct eye contact.
Mark Britz
Hmm.
Luke
I noticed that because of Zoom, where it's just like my eyes are constantly like looking over here and like this is going off so I'm constantly getting bombarded by messaging and like even right now talking with you, like in yes, my phone is like it's face down, it's that way. I literally took off my Apple watch so that that way I'm not distracted and I'm just focusing on you and nothing else. And I was actually watching my colleagues like as we're coming back into our pods and working together and I was just like, we do things differently now. Like it's Not it's not what it once was, which is fascinating. Like it's so interesting to me. Yeah.
Mark Britz
It is, yeah. The technology and and the impact it can have, for sure. Right. It changes our behavior.
Luke
Yeah, it's so interesting. And now what we're finding out, what I'm like when I'm seeing and I'm talking to other people, especially within the the AI space, and two colleagues of mine have a new book that's coming out on how to use AI for team building that is getting published through through Harvard Business Review. And what was interesting with like hearing about what they were thinking of was that they asked me was that when I have a meeting nowadays on Zoom or Or if we are going to be in person and we're Zooming somebody in, and no matter what, like there's obviously a recording, there's a transcript, there's something. They were asking, well, how are you actually using that to then take your ideas that you had and then follow through with them, using it as
Mark Britz
Mm. Right.
Luke
a tool during meetings? I was like, I don't. Like, you can summarize the transcript, like whatever, but I don't think about then saying, like, hey, can you actually give us like exactly what each team member should be doing once this meeting is done? Or
Mark Britz
Hmm.
Luke
should you give us a new type of an idea that we said all these ideas, but is there something else that perhaps we didn't talk about in the meeting and we really should have and we missed out on some opportunity? And now it's kind of like using AI to help with everything? It's it's fascinating to me. Like it's a
Mark Britz
I Yeah, I agree with you. I think that's a that's a very novel way of thinking about the use of the technology. And I think it's, again,, it's baby steps, right? We're really at the early stages of this. So these conversations and these ideas will become more mainstream, you know, as we go forward. But the idea of having that forethought to say, How can I use this tool not to separate us? How do I use this tool to bring us together differently, better, efficiently? A hundred percent.
Luke
What do you think we'll lose if we just keep on turning to technology instead of asking a colleague about something? 'Cause now I'm finding that it is so easy where I go like to give you like a real example, I want to talk with one of my colleagues, I give them a call, they're not there, and I'm like, what does Claude think? Fire away at Claude, and I get an immediate answer, and I'm like, Okay, and I can then bring that back to my colleague and see. What they think, but like I'm not going to a person first for double checking, bouncing ideas off of. Now I'm using AI first. So like what, perhaps, if this is dangerous territory, maybe, I don't know. What might we actually lose if we just go to AI first instead of like our colleagues first?
Mark Britz
I mean, the thing that comes to mind first for me is camaraderie, that piece, and trust, right? Because Trust at work is very different than trust in in another state. Like do it, do I trust, you know, do I trust Luke to watch my kids is one thing. You know, do I in a workspace I'm going, do I trust this person has the right knowledge, has the right experience? Can they give this information to me in a timely manner, right? So all of a sudden, if we have these disconnects all the time, we don't build that, that relationship with other people over time about what they know, what they do, how they can provide for what I'm doing. And we will I think that the fear I have is that that becomes an uncomfortable space because it's much more comfortable to lean into the AI.
Luke
It is really too easy to just fire off a message now and then to get an immediate satisfaction of things where it's just like no, I should be going to the person who has the internal knowledge who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, but obviously Claude doesn't know how Professor Nino works. He doesn't know who he is, where my friends do and colleagues do. I can ask you and especially within a large place like MIT, where if I'm trying to lead an initiative and get it across to the finish line while yes I might get a good idea from AI about what to be able to do, the actual people know the other people and what it takes to network to be able to build that coalition, to be able to win that support of other people and what to do. That you know, technology just doesn't have yet. But it's just so interesting to me to see about like, well, what if you're on a really small team? You're on a team of one, you're a team of two, and then now you got a new sidekick and in one way, great. And on another way, as you were saying, well now we're losing kind of like what makes us human, basically. So it's just I don't know.
Mark Britz
And then it goes back to the point of like early on and they'd say, you know our desire and our ability to connect with other people is built into us, right? This is who we are. It's part of that DNA piece. It's going to reveal itself at some point 'cause it has to. It's almost inevitable that we will do that. The question is how effective will it be? And how much will we, you know, lean into the the AI more than the other individual. Now you can make the case too, is You know, AI, which, you know, if you had an internal, let's say, LLM that really understood all the communications happening, people's calendars, all the emails that are transpiring between people, all of a sudden doesn't it also make it easier for me to find the expert because now I see what they've been engaged in, right? I see how in a sense you could see in the written forms and anything they've created as an asset that this person knows what they're doing. So the potential long term is there. In the short term, we're gonna have some pain.
Luke
Mean, and it's so it's do you know of any companies right now 'cause I do, of like they have AI embedded like in Slack, in Zoom, in Outlook. Like it's just in every social technology, it's already there. And what I've heard from some people, which terrifies the daylights out of me, is that they basically are just watching the AI talk to the AI about everything. And they're just sitting there and they're like, All right, I'm gonna read the summary of the notes that you gave me at the end of your crazy long AI conversation. I was like, what are we doing? It's just like we've totally missed the mark here if that's what we think is innovative nowadays. It's like, yeah, let's let it do it all, then tell me what I should do at the end of it. It's like Come on, man. So anyway, one solution to this that what I have been finding personally is that I have now been craving going to conferences more. I am trying to find more people. I just went in July. I did four conferences in four weeks. That was truly hell.
Mark Britz
I heard about that.
Luke
I don't want to ever do that again. It was way too much. Every conference that I was speaking at or wanted to attend just happened to all be in July. And that was not so great. So anyway though, but beyond That's the obviously the next big conference that I'm looking forward to is DevLearn because I'm going to be there and I know I'm actually doing something with you and and a
Mark Britz
You.
Luke
few other different types of sessions. I know I have three on November 5th I believe for that one. So that is something that's obviously if there is a conference that is coming about and you want to be able to connect with people, clearly these are the ways that we we should be doing and thinking about this. But when we're thinking about conferences, I know that for most of the time what people find valuable is really like the conversations that happen in the hallways, at lunch, or you're grabbing coffee with somebody and maybe you don't expect to have this awesome conversation and then that's what naturally kind of pops So I know to me that a successful conference in my eyes is that when I meet with people, I exchange phone numbers, I add them on LinkedIn. Like that to me is just like, okay, this was worth it. I'm glad I made the trip. I'm glad I took the time out of work to come and go do this. And it's just like, yay, all is well and good. And when I do that, I feel like I don't miss out on things. And that's a very long way of saying that it's not just like the conference itself is valuable, but it's having those interactions with people that I really find to be the most meaningful when I attend a conference. So with you being the social learning guy, why do you think that those interactions really are so meaningful and relevant to us to have these different types of side conversations that really bring the best out of it?
Mark Britz
I I think, you know, 'cause I engage in all that too. You know, in addition to, you know, helping build DevLearn and learning leadership for the Learning Guild, I attend a ton of conferences. And you're kind of get more conscious of those experiences when you do that, when you're in this space, when you're in this industry. But I think a lot of times it's, you know, those hallway conversations, those receptions you join other people at, right? The ice cream socials that take place, let's say, in the expo hall. They're context building. You know, you came out of a content session that might be rich and your mind is just stirring with the thoughts and the ideas and the approaches that you could take back to work. And all of a sudden you bump into some other folks who are either in that session or or another session, you start having those conversations. So it it builds context around it. It can become very affirming of your knowledge and understanding, right? It becomes almost a reflective practice. And I'd also argue, too, it's benchmarking. A lot of times people are wondering, like, hey, we aren't doing it quite like this. We're doing it like this. What do you think? And so it becomes this natural opportunity. And it's a critical, critical piece of the whole-learning puzzle in my mind, right? Because Charles Jennings, I don't know if you ever know Charles Jennings. So Charles Jennings is in the UK. He, a big one in the area of 70-20-10, which you're probably familiar with, the 70-20-10 quote unquote model. I wouldn't call it a model, but we'll just say model. And he once said to me, he's like, Y'all, real learning is experience, practice, conversation and reflection. He said, those four elements, if they're there, we're gonna have this deeper learning that takes place. Arguable, whatever, but each of those pieces is extremely important. And when you look at a conference, if you do it right, you you're designing for that, right? You're you're you're putting experiences for people to like walk in and observe, right? We talked at the front end. What is, you know, social learning? It's like it's more than just texting. It's this idea of observing things, right? So you can have those experiences where you're immersed in something. You can have chances to chance to practice, right? So I know at DevLearn we we offer our BYOD sessions. They're hands-on, right? So let's build something, you know, let's walk away with an asset. Let's create something using a new technology. And then of course, you know, I would say the latter part of that is the conversation and reflection, which we were just talking about. Creating the space for meaningful conversation. Inside and outside of the sessions themselves, right? And then reflection takes a couple forms. It can be independent, you know, I'm doing it myself. I'm thinking about what I have. I took a lot of notes, I'm writing them down, but I'm also gonna have a chance to talk to my colleagues, right? And that's a reflective practice as well. So I think a really good event really keeps those things in mind. And that's how to like really kind of exploit I think those social learning opportunities.
Luke
I love the fact that you actually have like real design sessions 'cause most conferences don't. Especially once again for higher ed, which is my world, it's just like hitting you with like theory, theory, theory, theory. And I'm like, all right, man, but like great, I understand this is important. But also, how do I translate that into the real world? And that always drives me up a wall. And whenever I was hearing from a aspiring instructional designer and they're like, Well, what conference should I go to to actually like really get something out of? It and I like well I at DevLearn you will literally build something so if you want to add it to your portfolio or to talk about something or work through it with somebody like that is the place to go to which I find funny because I have yet to go to DevLearn. This is my first which is insane because I've been recommending it for years and I'm like I really should go huh? It's just it's never been like the right one.
Mark Britz
You really should.
Luke
There's like there was a wedding before there was having the baby there was it was it was never the right time and now I'm like finally the right time to be able to go. And I know I've gone to a lot of conferences and you talked about like for how people have like made mistakes before in the in the past and things of that nature. Because I made a lot, especially when it comes to going to different types of conferences. And my biggest mistake that from thinking of all the years I'm going to them was that the first year I really started to attend conferences, I did not try to find people beforehand. I would just show up and it'd be like, Who do I know? And like walk around and like maybe I'll find someone. And you know, but they're already they're completely booked because they already made plans. And I was like, I should really make plans first with people before going so that that way I have a sense of my schedule and I'm not just like wandering around aimlessly hoping that I bump into somebody. So if I'm an instructional designer and I'm going to a conference for the first time, how should I approach things differently to get the most out of like social learning opportunities rather than just sitting in session after session?
Mark Britz
I would I mean the the the point you said on the front end is really really important and that is like yeah I mean we have an app obviously like most conferences do and you can see you can see who the other attendees are so you can see who's coming to this and you can obviously see a little bit of the profile so you can identify maybe those people you want to connect with and use the app to to do that. It's one way to do it on the front end. And I think the other thing is is just talking in terms of like DevLearn, you know, my team and I really kind of kept three pillars in mind when when developing the conference and that is There's content, and then we want to build for connection, and then we want to build for contribution. So when you look across the environment, those three factors really matter to people to have a really rich experience at an event. So at DevLearn, I would say if you're a new instructional designer, just be mindful. I mean, you're obviously as an instructional designer, you're very observant, right? You're analyzing, you know, a particular situation or the context. But we have practitioner-led sessions. I mean, the vast majority of our sessions are led by people who are actually doing the work in the field. I mean we have consultants who are presenting too and many of them we are bringing clients. So you're seeing an actual product, a solution that they did and implemented in there. We have our hands on sessions like I talked about. So taking advantage of that, that ex you know, again, that's the practice element I talked about with like 70-20-10. We have diverse session times. Like people here need to know themselves well. I mean, conferences can be exhausting, it's a long week. So we have sessions in certain blocks that are like 45 minutes long. We have things that are 30 minutes long, 60 minutes long, so you and 90 minutes long for a deeper dive. So that gives you a chance to kind of know yourself, know where you want to be at a certain time and what kind of time frame you have to put into that session. The other thing is like when I talked about is like the whole thing about connection too, is like it's not just in the hallways to have conversations. We're actually building sessions that are like literally the room is round tables and the session is designed to be not necessarily content led, but conversation led. With content following and supporting that. So these are like what we call our leadership exchange sessions. So it's much more dialogue about key ideas, problems, and challenges that people solve together in the room. Again, another example of things you can take advantage of. So it's a it's a real rich and diverse experience, but it's like mapping that out in advance, you know, like laying out your schedule, knowing yourself, knowing your goals first and foremost, what do you want to walk away with? And you'll find it all. Because the way it's been set up for us is to set up for you, for the attendee, is to more or less have an immersive experience that that speaks to you as an individual learner and we try to meet all those needs.
Luke
Mm-hmm. All that is great ideas for everything. The one thing that I didn't realize from coming at it from like a social interaction perspective is the need to take breaks to recharge my social batteries and don't just run through that brick wall. And it's just like and you'll see like if you see me at the at DevLearn, I will absolutely have a monster or a Red Bull in my hand because I don't stop and I'm like, it's fine, push through the pain. And eventually at nighttime, I just crash, man. I'm like, Whew, that was a lot. And I'm an extrovert. I love people. I love talking. But after a while you're like, whoa, that is just like you just come down.
Mark Britz
Yes. A hundred percent. You gotta map it out. And like I said, you gotta know yourself. And like and again, I would argue too is like if you're exhausted, you're probably not learning like you should. So there's just should be those moments to step aside, grab that cup of coffee, sit down for a minute, get off your feet, recharge and go.
Luke
Yeah, they are they're very much needed for those types of breaks or something. Cause I think like the the thing that a lot of instructional designers, at least who I know personally, have like the fear of missing out of everything. But they're like, but I want to go to this session. This one's at the same time, but it's followed up by this, and it's in a different room down the hall, and I've gotta sprint, and it's just like great, but like prioritize which ones, because you can't be everywhere at once. It's just not possible. And if you miss something, which will happen, don't attempt both at the same time. Like I've always found that if I message the person presenting later on or find their email and I'm like, hey, can we connect later, talk about it? I have never been shut down. Like sure. Here's the slides. Or the video was recorded or you want to chat sure. Like it's so you know.
Mark Britz
Yeah, and that's a really good one because that's something we're doing different this year. We used to have something called our morning buzzes and there would be topical conversations and you'd pop in and maybe have something on video and media and and anybody interested in a topic would pop in that room with a cup of coffee and very casual. What we've done is kind of kind of flipped the script. So you just mentioned something really important because a lot of times at the end of a session, your mind is like, I gotta ask that presenter about X, Y, and Z, right? And yet you're four back in a line of people who want to do the same thing and you're looking at your watch because you gotta make it, you know, to another session or you want to go to this experience that's happening, and you you leave and you don't get that chance. So what we did is we put our buzz sessions on the back end of the day. So what we're gonna have by track is so for example, again, maybe you're into video and media, all the speakers that day who were in that track on video media will be in one room and you can go and join them and have that time that you didn't have at the end of the session. To get those questions answered that you want to do. So that seems to fill in that little hole that you were talking about.
Luke
Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. I love that 'cause it is like it it like just eats away at you to be like, I really wanted to ask my burning desire question and I can't. And you're like, no, like it's it's okay. So no, it's awesome. I I love that. I love that. Well thinking about all the things that you go to a conference and you have all these ideas now and you're like you want to be able to do everything, but then of course the big thing is that you would then have to transfer all of this energy and all these great ideas literally back into your organization and perhaps Perhaps those folks didn't attend with you, and you now need to be the one who's kind of spearheading that charge for things. How can people successfully bring ideas back with them? And especially if they're like technology-facing, and the other people didn't get the chance to actually see them. Like, how do they bring these ideas back into the organization and make sure that they can actually pull off these new types of changes that they want to do?
Mark Britz
Yeah, that's a good question. And I think it's always gonna be based on, you know, the individual's own situation and team and what they learned. I think it starts at the front end. I mean, I think, you know, here here you are, Luke, you're coming to the event and you need to be thinking about all that you wanted to learn. What are your goals? What do you wanna, you know, what do you wanna, you know, partake in and who do you wanna meet and what do you want to learn? Now, if you worked in an organization, you might be thinking not only about yourself and what how you want to improve. But you also probably should have those conversations with people back in your organization. I'm going to this event, I'm going to DevLearn. These are all the things that I could learn while I'm there and the people I can meet. Help me help you by identifying, you know, what are the things that I can pick up while I'm there. So I think you set the stage early, and that's the best way to kind of bring that forward. And everybody's got a different trick. I remember back in the day, do you remember a tool called Yammer? Yeah, so Viva
Luke
I do. I do. Yeah.
Mark Britz
Engage. It was called, then it was changed to Viva Engage after Microsoft bought it. I went to an event with my team before I was with the guild this a long time ago. And we used Yammer while we live blogged while we were at the event. So we were basically sending back screenshots with a, you know, hashtag to track it and all that kind of thing back to the event live while it was happening. Little did we know that you know, everybody's phone and and desktop app was blowing up and they were extremely annoyed. So we didn't do that again, I can tell you that. That is one way to use some technology to get it back almost immediately.
Luke
that's awesome. That's awesome. It's it's so fascinating to me that we still have not cracked the code yet on when it comes to trying to pass information back and forth in a fast manner for something like this. So it's just like I att you know, the conference starts on a Monday. I don't get back to my actual work until probably maybe next Monday, because there's traveling or whatnot. And then it's just like, all right, let me now do a brain dump with you. And share with
Mark Britz
Mm.
Luke
you everything that like I experienced of what I went through and go through. And it's just it doesn't capture that same essence unless if you really, really try to make sure that you are putting in that same level of energy and going back into something. And then of course you have to be able to rally the troops and get them supported with everything for the new ideas. And there's just some things where I'm like, there's gotta be a better way of c of c of capturing the essence and the energy that you feel at a conference and in the room. And and bringing that back with you. Like it's I know it's tough to do, but it's like I hope we crack that nut someday to actually have that.
Mark Britz
Yeah, and you know, if we think about what we talked about earlier about AI and its use. I mean the idea of whatever you capture and document while you're there, could AI be a useful tool to summarize that, put that in different forms for people to use back in the office that fits their particular context and their particular needs. Food for thought.
Luke
I mean, it's it's something that I know that I have done where whenever I bring an idea to the table, I've now found that if I want to be able to then provide a visual that goes with that idea, so that way I can like I can see people's wheels are turning and they're like, Well, what would that actually look like or do? And I was just like, Forget
Mark Britz
I am right, right.
Luke
about it. I built the prototype. And they're like, So like we held a we held the conference at MIT the other day and for this it was like a two day crash course for our senior level leaders who have taken a bunch of our programs lately and I wanted to build out a website for them and typically speaking we never had one it was just like we're coming to this event so you have the agenda those types of things and I was just like well why can't I just use Claude to build out a fully functioning website that will tell you about the best places to eat, give you a campus map, the faculty bios, details about the sessions, where to be able to find and connect with other people and it was just like and I was like here you go. So when I told the team I was just like I want to start making websites and apps For our different types of events on campus, and they're like, yeah, but it might take time, it could take you know, XYZ budget. And I'm like, I built it. Your thoughts? It was just like, it's now the conversation goes from being like, I don't know if we can do it, Luke, to Ben saying, like, can you just change this section or like I don't like how you did this? Can we make it like that? And it's like, yeah, we can. So it is it's really interesting to think about it from that perspective. And especially just thinking about it too from our field at large, where, you know, now kind of going back to the the AI conversation of how we can create the everything, you know, basically, if we want it to be of course it's not good. Unless you, the human in the loop, really do actually make it a superior quality product is always going to need that back and forth and such of things. But from today's conversation though, around with everything for social learning and trying to bring this back into everything, the future of what we do.
Mark Britz
Mm.
Luke
Do you think we're going to now harp more on that human connection more than ever for trying to get like the right conditions for people to learn from one another?
Mark Britz
I do. I do think that. I think you know, like again, like if we go back to the earliest part of this conversation, it is gonna be a necessity to to build our environments better for people to connect and collaborate. Better for them personally, for employee engagement, let's put it that way, if I'm talking about a context like a corporate setting, but also for the corporation itself. We want that cooperation, we want that collaboration because again that leads to the creativity and innovation. And I think instructional designers, if you step aside for a second and think, well, it's not about building courses. I mean, that's one product that can be created. You know, it's that core skill set that's in there that, you know, helps you understand how people learn, how the context impacts how people learn in their environments, how to do upfront analysis, you know, of a situation. So we can design more formal social learning, which I think is like mentor programs, coaching programs. How to support communities of practice inside the organization. I think people who have a strong background in understanding of learning theory, strong background in instructional theory, are, you know, finely tuned to support that in organizations.
Luke
Mm-hmm. Makes sense. I think we overthink.
Mark Britz
Hmm. Do you have?
Luke
That's my that's what I think our our real problem is that they're like, my god and then whenever I hear from somebody I was talking with a a person yesterday and they were asking about like, Well, if AI can do literally everything, why can't the SME just go fire off something in Gemini and go do all of that and I was like, I have seen people try to do that. It is pain. Straight pain to watch them attempt to do something and then they get a result and then they show it to me and they're like, This is what I have and I'm like, Great, we have to get rid of like ninety percent because it's All pretty much just garbage in, garbage out. And if you don't know how to do that, and then you just quit, which most people tend to do if this is not their jam or their world, they quit after the first output and they're like, yeah, it's not good enough. I'm like, well, like, there's a different way of using it that you're not,
Mark Britz
Uh-huh.
Luke
but you don't know how to do that. So you now need me more than ever to make sure that your stuff is not just straight AI slop, which is kind of now funny of being like, no, I'm I'm now like the the AI police. Like how did that happen as a part of my job? Like, well, like it's kind of a weird
Mark Britz
It is.
Luke
thing, but like, okay, sure I can help you with this. It's just so odd to see that.
Mark Britz
And also Luke, I'll just say this too, is like I think we suffer sometimes too from something I call presentism. Like we we look at the current situation of how AI functions right now and we anticipate that's how it's going to be. So my role is to do this. I'm gonna be the AI police or whatever it might be, right? But the reality is AI is evolving fast. We need to be thinking about how it'll change down the road. So what you're focused on now and how people might use it or might use it wrong might not be an issue. In six months. I mean, just think. I don't know, was it 18 months ago that people were putting prompt engineer on their profile on LinkedIn and it's it's not a thing. And and that's how rapidly
Luke
yeah. It's not a thing anymore. Nope.
Mark Britz
things are changing. And I think that's what's gonna happen in our workforce too is we have to remember that it's not just about Gen AI, it's gonna be agentic AI and how that'll change processes, possibly eliminate processes, change jobs, job functions. I mean we've got great examples from history to look at to say If this happens, where does that leave some of the talent we have and what they could do better or differently in their organizations?
Luke
Yeah, and hey, people don't change. People are people. So if you work with a very stubborn SME, doesn't matter how much AI they know, they need you. Whether they like to admit it or not, you you gotta really guide them to that North Star for what goals you want the learners to do, man. It's it's that has never changed after the last decade I've been doing this and it's just like, nope, it's still Still really going to focus on those people's skills more than ever now. You're just now more of the technology guru than you probably thought you were going to be, but that's just kind of where things have ended up.
Mark Britz
I can see it.
Luke
yeah, let's see it. Well, Mark, thank you so much for coming on today and talking about
Mark Britz
Yeah, great.
Luke
for everything. Where can folks go to learn more about you, your work, dev learn, everything of a sort? Please feel free to plug away.
Mark Britz
Yeah, so my friend and colleague James Tyre and I wrote we wrote a book a couple of years ago called Social by Design, which talks more about how our organizations help or hinder social connections. You can check out that book online. It's on Amazon if you want to buy it. I have my own blog on markbritz. Com. You'll find me on LinkedIn. But if you want to see me in person, I'll be with Luke coming up in November. So I'll be at Learning Leadership November second and third and rolling right into DevLearn. On the fourth, fifth, and sixth of November. So Luke, I hope obviously we'll have time to talk a little bit more about all of this when we're there.
Luke
You will definitely not be tired in any way, shape, or form. Speaking of running
Mark Britz
no, me? No.
Luke
through a brick wall and needing energy drinks, best of luck to you for that. But I love it. It's clearly your passion and I'm so thrilled to be able to finally meet up with you in person and being able to do these things. But yeah, Mark, once again, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Mark Britz
All right, Luke, see ya soon.
