How times change! This conference, when held at the Business Design Centre in Islington over the last two years was enormous; hundreds of stands, a packed conference programme and large numbers of visitors. This conference, run by Venture Marketing, was the first really big e-learning conference in the UK when it was launched.

This year the conference moved from central London out to Wembley, which is a more remote site for those who need to travel from the city. It is therefore more difficult to attract last minute visitors, and is not a site for passing trade. Even so, Venture Marketing laid on shuttle buses from the nearest Tube station and expended a large amount of marketing effort prior to the event to attract people to Wembley.

2002 is very different story for an exhibition of this type compared to previous years. Even the major vendors are cutting back on marketing budgets, and many have decided that they are not going to do much in the way of standard exhibitions this year. There were about 60 stands at the Wembley conference, and many of the vendors chose to wait until the last minute to secure their places. Oracle and the sponsors ebc had large stands, but most of the others were smaller and functional. Some such as SABA shared stands. There were quite a few newcomers, most selling e-learning courseware. Development tools for e-learning solutions were also conspicuous, as people are looking at ways of developing cost-effective solutions for internal use.

Despite the smaller exhibition space most of the vendors felt that it had been worthwhile, and this conference is still seen as one which attracts the right kind of people who are seriously interested in doing business.

The keynote speech was given by Nick van Dam, Chief Learning Officer of Deloitte Consulting. He emphasised the value of blended learning, and the true integration of learning into the business processes and measurement of people performance. The breakout sessions that followed were categorised by level of experience of the audience and ran in two parallel tracks. They covered topics including planning, implementation, content, the financial sector, as well as two IT seminars. Attendance varied in the sessions, as in any conference.

This conference is no different from any of the others this year – smaller, more focused and needing to look to the future to ensure that it is attractive and profitable.