I find it amusing when I hear people talk about going to conferences and getting excited about all they ‘learned’. It is equally as fascinating to hear that these conferences we about ‘innovation’, ‘new view’, ‘differently’ and ‘creativity’ and yet nothing changed.

 Taking in data and information is not learning. Similarly, training is not learning. Without movement there is no learning.

 The accumulation of content is not learning. Even passing an exam on that content is not learning.

 Yet we hear the word ‘learning’ used so easily and flippantly, but nothing moves, these no change in doing and so, there is no learning.

 It was Paolo Freire who called the accumulation of knowledge ‘banking’ (Pedagogy of the Oppressed). Putting information in and taking information out is not learning.

 I don’t care how many slogans you absorb in a training day, or how many new concepts you hear, if there is no change in method, there’s been no learning.

 What happens most often is, the excitement of the conference on Friday is lost in the return to work on Monday. Back to the same systems, same methods, same ‘performance’ and no change. Ideas without movement is not learning. Slogans without method is just noise.

 Most often the excitement I hear about conferences are about the networking, back slapping, being with like minded people and comforting agreeable people. Some even speak about being ‘challenged’ but they are not ‘troubled’, ‘disturbed’ or motivated to change. There’s no movement on Monday, and so we wait to the next conference for the next injection of comfort, and no change.

 Is this your experience of conferences? Maybe you’re even a conference ‘junkie’ caught in a cycle of comfort paraded as ‘learning’. Maybe you make sure not to seek sources of learning where change is expected? After all, if you are disturbed or troubled by an approach that causes cognitive dissonance, you might have to change what you do.