Diary
Article Type: Diary From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 26, Issue 5
Global Mindset Development in Leadership and Management Conference
21-22 September 2012, Ontario, California, USA
Conference on global leadership and management in areas of finance,accounting, human resource management, international management, educational administration, technology management, public administration and other areas.
Northwest eLearning Conference
17-19 October 2012, Portland, Oregon, USA
About NWeLearnOur mission: Establish and promote a community of faculty,administrators, and support staff in educational institutions in the Pacific Northwest to share ideas and provide mutual support in the use of technologies,tools, and techniques for the advancement of electronic teaching and learning.
Our methods: Share best practices in pedagogy, instructional design, system and program management in electronic environments. Collaborate on use of learning technologies.
Provide feedback and ideas for improved functionality to product developers. Gather participants for face-to-face collaboration, learning, and support in an annual conference.
Our governance: A steering committee of representatives from the user community governs activities. The membership has input into that steering committee each year, during a business meeting at the annual conference. The following positions comprise the steering committee. This pattern is designed to balance the need for stability and continuity with the need for input and fresh leadership from across the region.
Chair: Responsible for organizing meetings and providing group direction. Chairmanship begins following the annual conference, on or about November 1.
Chair-elect: This person will be chair in the following year. The chair-elect is also the secretary of the organization.
Past chair: The retiring chair from the previous year.
Treasurer: Appointed from the Steering Committee. This may be an ongoing position to facilitate smooth business transactions.
State representatives, up to two for each state (WA, OR, ID).
Elected or affirmed by the membership at the annual meeting.
One-year term, no term limit.
At-Large representatives, who simply have an interest in serving.
Steering committee members must be current faculty or staff at an educational institution in the states of Washington, Oregon, or Idaho.
Organizational Learning Conference – Middle East and North Africa
21-22 October 2012, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Conference Theme – It’s Time to Learn
The concept of organizational learning is known to most of us as the ability of an organization to make solid, rational internal changes to adapt to its ever changing external environment. Learning organisations do not rely on serendipitously stumbling across a learning opportunity but rather actively promote learning through a variety of tools, techniques and initiatives. The importance of organisational learning is inherent in almost all international standards and models today, be it in the subtle requirement of review in the fundamental ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management, or the more intricate non prescriptive guideline of assessment and refinement dictated by international excellence models.
The recession which resulted from the 2008 global financial crisis has seen many economies and organisations resorting to ad hoc “solutions”to aid them in maintaining operations throughout the crisis; some of which have succeeded, while others have failed. The theme of this conference revolves around how organizational learning has played a role for some organisations to safely emerge out of the global financial crisis, and how it can provide the building blocks for business continuity for all other sorts of external changes which may have either detrimental or positive effects on the organisation.
