This blog post comes from LTG’s CEO Jonathan Satchell, who recently attended the NOAH Conference 2015.
I was delighted to be invited to speak at the NOAH Conference 2015 in Berlin in early June, especially given this was an event focused on the digital economy. It was an honour to be joining a lineup of speakers including Eric Schmidt from Google, Arianna Huffington from The Huffington Post and Oliver Samwer from Rocket Internet.
The NOAH Conference has been going for seven years in London, and is hugely popular with investors and digital entrepreneurs. 2015 marked its first appearance in Berlin, with 2,200 delegates over the two days. The conference was insightful for me, as I was unaware of the quantum of the burgeoning digital economy in Germany’s capital.
The presentations
Arianna Huffington speaking at the NOAH Conference speakers’ dinner in Berlin
Before the conference got started, I attended the speakers’ dinner, during which Arianna Huffington spoke about her new book, ‘Thrive’. ‘Thrive’ is all about how entrepreneurs should strive to achieve a healthy work-life balance to avoid burning out. With some of technology’s biggest innovators in attendance, Arianna’s points resonated with a captive audience, and gave us all something to think about ahead of the two-day conference.
On the first day of the conference, I gave my plenary speech, which can be watched above or found here, about how LTG is a challenger in the disruptive learning space, and how the innovative use of learning technologies can be used to move learning to the heart of business strategy, as pioneered by our subsidiary LEO. Other education challengers such as Lecturio’s CFO Stefan Wisbauer, Babbel’s CEO Markus Witte and Bettermarks’ Arndt Kwiatkowski also spoke about disrupting learning with technology, and it was interesting to hear the commonality of the views about how digital learning is making a profound difference in how we teach our children and how we train employees in corporate environments.
Highlights and key themes
I particularly enjoyed the Connected Car panel discussion, involving companies such as Porsche, Ford and BMW. This session highlighted the incredible rate of progress in car technology, and it is clear that this is going to be a fascinating area to watch in the coming years. LTG’s global learning technologies firm LEO has worked extensively with automotive clients, and it is always exciting to see the innovative ideas coming out of this sector. The accelerated speed at which change is happening in all aspects of technology shows that it is vital to stay on top of the latest developments, whether this is in engineering, sports or learning.
WPP’s Martin Sorrell’s presentation from NOAH Conference 2015
Another highlight was Sir Martin Sorrell’s keynote. The CEO of WPP joined the conference by video link, and delivered a session on the key global trends we’re seeing in the world today. This included the exponential rise of the web, the acceptance of social responsibility and, aptly, industry consolidation – which was the reason for the creation of Learning Technologies Group in 2013 within a highly fragmented learning technologies industry.
Networking and conversations
The NOAH Conference has always been renowned for its fantastic networking opportunities, and I certainly found this to be the case. There were many interesting people at the event, from the other speakers to the delegates, and it is clear there is a great appetite for technology-fuelled change among digital champions and challengers alike.
NOAH Conference 2015 in Berlin
In summary, the NOAH Conference 2015 was a vibrant, well-attended event, attracting some of the world’s brightest and best digital innovators, and I am looking forward to seeing how some of the ambitious ideas from the challengers and champions in attendance unfold over the coming years.