2021 Virtual Conference, Nov 2-3

CEdMA Conference, Virtual, November 2-3, 2021

Agenda with recordings

Welcome and Day 1 Keynote: Train Software, Not People plus deck

Milind Gurjar, CEdMA President, welcomes attendees to the conference and introduces the Day 1 Keynote Speaker, Wayne McCulloch, Chief Customer Officer, Walk Me.

Wayne will talk about how learning and enablement is changing with SaaS solutions and the new Digital adoption solutions that are now available. He will also talk about the strategic role of Education in Customer Success and share some advice on how Education professionals and leaders should view their role.

Best Practices to Impact Corporate Success - Key Findings of the 2021 CEdMA Business Survey

Dirk Braune, Area VP Education Strategy, Development & Delivery at BMC Software

Education managers at all levels and topics are continuously under pressure to justify the performance of their teams and demonstrate their impact to the overall organization. How are education teams setup and performing in 20/21 and what can we learn in terms of best practices, especially to drive corporate results like customer satisfaction, license sales or renewal rates. The results of the CEdMA 2021 Business Survey will help answer these.

Building and validating in-demand Cloud skills with Google Cloud skill badges and certifications

Magda Jary

Global Lead, Google Cloud Certification & Digital Badges GTM, Google

A lack of technical practitioners with skills in the cloud is one of the biggest barriers to entry for companies considering the shift. But with the right knowledge, companies that take full advantage of cloud environments are proven to be more efficient, reach more of their goals, and overall, be more successful. Google Cloud learning offerings empower practitioners and companies to learn new skills, put these skills into practice, and achieve their objectives. These training courses focus around job roles in the cloud.This session provides a deep dive into some of the specific learning offerings Google Cloud provides: skill badges and certifications. A skill badge is a digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of an individual's cloud proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests their ability to apply that knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Skill badges can be earned along the learning journey towards a certification. A certification exam validates an individual’s expertise in a particular cloud role, and tests the full set of skills employers expect job candidates and employees to have to successfully build, deploy and manage Google Cloud solutions.

Scaling Certification Programs with Online Proctoring

Rajnish Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Verificient Technologies and Rahul Siddharth, Verificient Technologies

Online proctoring advances using AI have made it possible to offer traditional certifications at scale. However, the opportunity to scale comes with the risk of diluting the value and trust of certification programs. How can we use AI to achieve scale while adopting project-based evaluations and other testing methodologies that can preserve the trust and value of the certificates being offered? With so many different types of proctoring options to choose from, how to find the right balance between customer experience, certification integrity, and the cost? Join this presentation and learn some interesting real world case studies to be prepared to scale your certification program with confidence

Secrets from World-class Customer Education Programs plus deck

Daniel Quick, VP of Learning Strategies, Thought Industries

Effective customer education programs change the game for the businesses they serve. They alleviate the burden of “wash, rinse, repeat” training, freeing time for strategic conversations that build true partnership. They allow companies to meet their learners in their moment of need, with answers tailored to specific problems and situations. Often, they measurably improve product adoption, customer retention, net new revenue, and long-term loyalty.

Lessons Learned: How We Integrated a Strategic Hands-on Training Solution in Days plus deck

John Durkin, Director of Education, StreamSets, Michael Jaindl, Chief Revenue Officer, Strigo, and Saad Patel, CEO, GreenMusk

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, our customer education team at StreamSets needed to rapidly move to 100% virtual hands-on training. We'll share the process we went through to find the right virtual platform, the lessons learned while integrating Strigo (it only took two days!), and explain why we quickly made it an inherent part of our training strategy for customers, partners, employees and prospects alike.

Shoot. Edit. Repeat. Again! Training Videos at the Speed of SaaS in the Age of Covid

Alex Matheson, Code42

Come learn how Code42 Education Services “cracked the code” on producing high-quality / high value on-demand video content. We'll disclose the full details of how the program started and the workflow we use to operate at scale with minimal resources. Not only that, we’ll share how we converted our entire operation to work remotely in the Age of Covid without skipping a beat.

The future of CEdMA - a discussion with the CEdMA Board and deck

The Customer Education space seems to be evolving at the speed of light. CEdMA is not looking to just keep up, but instead, lead the pack. Come meet the board and participate in a discussion on CEdMA today, and CEdMA in the future. We want to hear from you.

Welcome and Day 2 Keynote: Building Advocacy to Drive Transformation and deck

Milind Gurjar, CEdMA President, welcomes attendees to Day 2 of the conference, and introduces the Day 2 keynote Speaker, Amy Regan Morehouse of Salesforce Trailhead.

Amy Regan Morehouse, SVP of Trailhead, Salesforce

Customers need to drive digital transformation in their organization now more than ever. Plus, the pandemic has forever changed the way we work and now all companies must bring their teams along through this time of immense change. Providing learning pathways is the new must-have item in the overall corporate transformation strategy to engage employees and increase productivity and as never before. As learning providers, we need everyone skilled up and & job-ready to take on what's ahead. While new learning modalities will help bring about modern learning experiences (social cohort learning, video, VR) we must also focus on developing learning advocates to create a true culture of learning to sustain customer success across the lifecycle. Join this session where we will get a glimpse into solutions to support the entire customer lifecycle and create Trailblazers everywhere.

How we grew our customer community by 115% by combining formal and informal learning

Rachel Griffith-Boyes, Head of Community Services, Totara Learning

How do you engage your customers as an extended enterprise business, and ensure customer success with your products? One answer is to build a high-quality customer learning community. In this session Rachel Griffith-Boyes, Head of Community Services at Totara, the award-winning talent experience software company, will share their journey from separate, underused Community and Academy sites to a combined learning community which has more than doubled in size over three years, and is now used by 75% of their customers.

Drive Engagement and Recognition with Digital Credentials and deck

Katie Sievers, Customer Success Manager, Credly and Susan Manning, Chief Success Strategist, Credly

You've built a great customer education team and you're making a difference for your organization and your end users. What steps can you take to make even more of an impact? Digital credentials, tied to knowledge and skills, might be the solution. In this session, we'll share how successful organizations use digital credentials to recognize learning, increase enrollment and completion, build brand identity, and ensure that learners can use their credentials to further their careers.

Never let a crisis go to waste. Seize the opportunity when disaster strikes

Andrew Caldwell, CEO, Invigulus, Debbie Smith, Sr. Manager, Smartsheet University and Benjamin Hunter, VP of Sales, Caveon

In this interactive panel discussion, we’ll cover how to maximize success when disaster strikes. Many organizations in the certification space were unable to seize the opportunity when COVID hit and had to reduce or put their certification programs on hold. Because of this, they missed the opportunity for market penetration and increased certification revenue. Walk away with the information you need to develop a certification program that’s revenue-generating, even in the midst of disaster. The impact of certification programs is enormous. Research indicates Certified staff achieve a three-year return on investment of 403%.

Evolution of a practical certification program

James Adair, Sr Manager, Global Tech Enablement, Pegasystems

A practical certification program has been in place for 10+ years at Pegasystems which represents a significant milestone for advanced Pega developers. The program has evolved throughout the years to adjust to significant factors such as 20% YOY company growth, corporate certification requirements and candidate availability. Several solutions which have been introduced throughout the years will be discussed along with the benefits and limitations for each.

Keeping up with an ever-changing learning world

Bart Kruitwagen, Director of Sales, ReadyTech and Cynthia Stegall, Senior Director, Learner Experience, Software AG

A joint presentation and conversation a successful 12 year partnership. The learning world has changed a lot during the last decade and in particular in the last 2 years. Keeping your learning technology up to date is more important than ever and we will discuss what SoftwareAG and ReadyTech have done to make that happen.

Seize the Opportunity - Stay current with learning and drive measurable results

Vivek Bhide, VP, Learning and Development, Emmersive /Xoriant

With the new normal of hybrid working models there are new opportunities emerging that would result in generation of learning content as soon you release software to your end users. We will cover various different approach and processes resulting in generating the learning content along with your software development process.  How product engineering and support can contribute towards these efforts. Reducing the lag time between release of your new software features and the learning content. We will also look at how measurable goals would help streamlines levels of your content development priorities.

The CEdMA Certified Technical Training Manager (CTTM) plus deck

Mike Dowsey, Executive, CEdMA Europe

In 2019, CEdMA Europe published “Technical Training Management” covering everything you need to know about setting up and running a commercial technical training organization. Following on from the book, in mid-2020 the CEdMA Certified Technical Training Manager Program (CTTM), a self-guided accreditation based on digital badges, was launched. It includes a free foundation module, 19 knowledge modules distributed within six training paths, and finally a high stakes certification exam. All CEdMA Europe members and all CEdMA US company members have received CTTM bundles which include the softcopy book, access to the online materials and an exam voucher. So far, 148 individuals from 34 member companies have been involved in the program. 12 have completed the Technical Training Manager Role badge and eight people from companies including Alteryx, Ceridian, Google, Palo Alto Networks and AppDynamics have received the credential badge.

CEdMA Conference 2021 - Closing Comments

Milind Gurjar, President, Talent-Ed