ECLO 2009 – Den Bosch, NL

Fantastic event in Den Bosch, NL this year, interesting and thought-provoking discussions – for a superb write up on the conference itself, see Joe Lafferty’s blog post at http://www.joelafferty.com/blog/2009/06/19/a-learning-conference/

This years’ winners of the coveted ECLO Speakers Awards are:

ECLO Academic Award

• Winner – Rene Brohm (University of Amsterdam)
• Worthy of Mention – Gabor Kismihok (University of Corvinno, Budapest)

ECLO Practitioner Award

• Winner – Judy Nix (Ericsson)
• Worthy of Mention – Ton Bruining (KPC Groep)

ECLO Impact Award

• Winner – Anita Pickerden (Bournville College)
• Worthy of Mention – Jill van de Kerkhof & Marene van den Enk (Oasen)

Plans for next year are already underway – venue to be announced shortly so we hope to see you there – maybe you will be the next winner!

YOU CAN NOW FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Take a look also at our picture gallery on Flickr from this conference and our previous conferences http://www.flickr.com/photos/eclo2/sets/

Feel free to comment using the link below, your learning from this event and what you would like us in ECLO to address in the future.

Keep up to date with our projects via our website

Just a few days to go…

In just two days we start our 16th Annual ECLO conference in Den Bosch and teh team are really excited and eager to drive forward this approach to organisational vitality and innovation.

We will publish pictures and blog entries following the conference.

Keep up to date with all of our activities on our website

Netherlands here we come!

The ECLO possey are off to The Netherlands for our 16th Annual Conference which will be held at the HQ of the KPC Groep in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands on June 18/19, 2009.

Our subject this year:

“Vitality In Organisations – Fit Until The Finish”

We have speakers from 11 different countries and two internationally renowned keynote speakers in Coen Free, President, Koning Willem I College, The Netherlands and Anton Zijderveld, Emeritus Professor of Sociolgy at Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

We will post up key learnings and insights on this blog throughout the conference.

We are also disseminating the results of two EU-funded projects:

1. Using Wireless Technologies for Context Sensitive Education & Training
2. VISIBLE – Competencies for Project Managers in Regional Development Agencies around Europe.

More soon …

Keep up to date with our projects via our website

Higher Education

For almost 30 years the German Workshop for Improvement of Higher Education exists. As a student I joined – and I kept my membership all those years. With my recent sabbatical from my business career, I attended the Annual Conference of the organisation which was relabeled last year to German Association of Higher Education.

The organisation is well alive, though struggling with financial deficits. – The organisation of engaged individuals is the enigne behind the change in perspective in Higher Education in Germany.

It originally initiated activities at many universities – and now at all universities there are centers for improvement of the quality of teaching, in most career plans at universities didactical and andragogic knowledge is required to get promotion … – and the membershift is now shifting from individuals to institutions.

I just mention this history here, since ECLO is looking backward on a similar paths.  In this case ECLO was founded by some individual learning and development executives in major global companies in Europe who felt uneasy with a simple adoption of the Peter Senge’s simplified systems dynamics approach.

In the beginning there was a balance between executives representing companies and individuals from the consulting and academic researching and teaching scene. With the promotion of the concept of the learning organisation and organisational learning, the interest in the organisation lost momentum, though a few continued to keep up the idea of never-ending prioneering new thoughts and approaches into the field (we were among the first to sponsor the knowledge management move in Europe … which took up speed and influence ever since).

The current ECLO team of active members is now both, a thinktank with a past track record of influencing the conceptualising of change and transformation on organisational, national, regional, and cross-border levels respectively, as well as spear-heading the next moves …. – with the annual conference usually being the culminating point of common thinking where most of the energy is focussing.

Executive Board

We have just come back from a superb Board meeting in Veervoode, near Brussels, in Belgium at which we made some exciting decisions about our forthcoming conference in The Netherlands in June and a new collaboration with a Training Institute in UK.

More soon, but for now, check out our new Photo page on Flickr

Welcome to “ECLOG”

We are the longest surviving Community of Practice based here in Central Europe, though our membership now reaches far and beyond our European boundaries.

ECLO stands for European Consortium for the Learning Organisation and you can read about our history on our website and this is our very first blog from us at ECLO – hence the name “ECLOG”.

We are going to add new information about the activities of the ECLO network here as well as links to pictures from our events across Europe.

So come back soon to read more and post your comments.

If you want to contact us then use the details below:

Jim Jack:   ECLO HQ    jim.jack@eclo.org

Marc Alen:  ECLO President    m_alen@arboth.com

Józefa Fawcett:  ECLO Secretary-General   jozefa@learningvoice.tv