David Smith

  • Global Managing Director
  • DS Virtually

Profile

David Smith is a globally recognized virtual working expert, author, and keynote speaker on developing people for the digital workplace, he has become a regular webinar and conference speaker on the subject of moving training from the traditional face to face classroom into both digital and virtual forms, how to engage the modern learner, as well as how technologies change the way in which we communicate, connect and collaborate.

Question and Answer

Today’s digital world brings HR and Learning new challenges that the traditional approaches of the past are not sufficient – we are asking our talent to work in new ways with collaborative technologies, the modern learner needs a more agile learning experience, learners can find the knowledge just by asking Google, so it’s less about helping develop the knowledge and more about helping learners process and apply that knowledge that is key!

  1. Knowing what the business needs from the talent pool, building HR and learning to meet those business needs
  2. Responding to learner demand for learning to be more than just providing knowledge, more experiential, hands-on, practice and role play will help the learner more than just more e-learning
  3. Staying up to date and working with the new technologies, not staying traditional in our approach to learning

  1. Move towards more personalised learning, being challenged with how best to serve learning content and still achieve results
  2. More discussion around what vehicles/systems we use to deliver learning – again a break from more traditional F2F and being more creative with apps and digital/virtual learning
  3. How learning analytics and AI can support the design and construction of more personalised learning

These all have the potential to truly transform our ability to construct and deliver learning that will make a difference to our talent pools and more importantly to the business – if the learning does not cause an impact in the ability of the learner and the business sees no result then we have failed, we are now starting to harness these newer technologies to assist us in getting closer to more targeted learning, with the one caveat we have to have the expertise to leverage them – whether we have that internally or seek external support.
About David Smith:

David Smith is a globally recognized virtual working expert, author, and keynote speaker on developing people for the digital workplace, he has become a regular webinar and conference speaker on the subject of moving training from the traditional face to face classroom into both digital and virtual forms, how to engage the modern learner, as well as how technologies change the way in which we communicate, connect and collaborate.

Since 2008, when David began working full-time both remotely and virtually using online virtual platforms such as Adobe Connect, WebEx, GoToMeeting and Skype for Business, he has trained, coached, upskilled, and mentored thousands of professionals in how to engage invisible audiences, design and deliver highly effective virtual events, and take advantage of the web conferencing technologies that help us work globally.