We exhibited at the World of Learning and the Learning Technologies Autumn Forum

What an October the team at First Media have had! We went on tour, like, around the country on tour. We were exhibiting in Birmingham and London at both the World of Learning Exhibition and the Learning Technologies Autumn Forum. Both events were fantastic and the venues were hustling with excitement when the doors opened at 10 AM. Spirits were high, stand designs had once again stepped up and we saw some truly awesome ways of creatively displaying content. We were excited to get chatting to attendees and showing off our bespoke eLearning and live demos. What were the highlights of the shows, I hear you ask, well:

Alan gave a seminar!

We will be writing a blog specifically for this but it would be wrong not to mention that our very own instructional designer, Alan Mumby gave a seminar at the Learning Technologies Autumn Forum on the Art of Great Instructional Design.

It was absolutely fantastic and had some fun elements throughout. Alan is a bit of a wordsmith so it was no surprise there were so many people who attended in the end. We will be including the full video of Alan's seminar in the next blog, so do keep an eye out, you’ll certainly learn something from it.

Then just to be that bit bougie like proper First Media fashion, we got a film created during the World of Learning exhibition. The video gives an insight into who First Media is and what makes us unique in the eLearning market, check it out below and see some familiar faces and our front man Shane, whom you may remember from the Learning Technologies Exhibition in May where he gave a seminar on ‘The Art of Great eLearning’ and what goes into creating truly engaging and innovative digital courses! You can read our blog about it here.

VR got P-O-P-U-L-A-R 

If you are a fan of First Media then you know that we attended the Learning Technologies Exhibition in May (Check out the blog). When we were there we noticed one or two stands with VR headsets but that was it. Little did we know that by the time October came around this would significantly change within the eLearning exhibition halls. We saw a mass uptake in VR headsets at stands both at the World of Learning and the Learning Technologies Autumn Forum. We love technology and the rising popularity of Virtual Reality certainly has us excited.

After exploring these stands a little more, we discovered.. The VR world isn’t just for gaming. Over the last couple of years a lot more time has gone into the mechanics behind continuing our daily working lives on a more digital basis, and with the hybrid working approach here to stay, there is a lot in the digital world that companies can do to help improve their staff and client experience. Stornaway.io were showing off their wares in the virtual world with the ability for clients to create their own games not just on mobile, laptop and tablet devices but also in the virtual realm.

Then we have the Raisethebar stand which was fantastic both in look and design! They offered interactive workshops in the metaverse for business leaders and managers. Allowing them to meet and interact from any part of the world, which we thought was pretty cool!

There were many other stands with VR headsets offering similar services. Which got us thinking, How long until the metaverse is overcrowded, or is that even possible? All in all though it was great to see such an uptake in new types of interactivity within the world of eLearning.

Merch, Merch, MERCH!!

Once again we saw many stands going above and beyond with their merch and we loved it! Although cuddly plushies are cute, it was nice to see this year some practical freebies like the career card games. 

The Transperfect team really hit the nail on the head with their stand. Not only did it look great but they had multi device chargers, notebooks and pens readily available for attendees (I was lucky enough to get one too). We saw more of this in the stands with useful takeaways that attendees could benefit from many times over. Though don’t get us wrong, we absolutely loved the more random side of this too withBridge giving away ‘Fish and Chip’ socks and Sponge giving away little pieces of sponge, which we thought was just hilarious in the best way. 

Bridge had a lovely little card game that helped shine a light on skills development, career opportunities and how to excel at achieving their goals.

Then we have the food aspect and I mean that really is the smartest way to go, with some stands offering hot waffles, branded sweets and tray bakes and even freshly popped popcorn! The smell in the exhibition centre was heavenly as you could imagine. Stands didn’t just stop at merch though. We saw many interactive ‘games’ at different stands which created that friendly competition among attendees.

Mental Health & Wellbeing

A growing (and important) trend in the corporate world at the minute is Mental Health and Wellbeing, and we hope it’s here to stay! This topic has been catapulted into the spotlight with organisations dedicating time and resources to ensure staff’s mental health and wellbeing is no longer overlooked.

We were glad to see this as a number of the courses we have developed focused on equality and making the working environment positive for everyone showing there are waves being made to better the future for everyone. The First Media team have developed a number of courses for clients that focus on Equality, Inclusion and Well-being. You can check out these case studies below and get an idea of our design, graphic and illustration styles and more:

Group 1 Automotive - The Big Idea module
Breast Cancer UK - Everyday life module
EFL - Playing for Inclusion module

It was refreshing to see that the World of Learning had a ‘Mental Health and Wellbeing zone’ hosted by Jigsaw, that ran seminars across the two days, and every time we looked they were packed out. We also saw this approach adopted by exhibitors with many focusing on what could make staff happy, both in career and personal life. Here's a technique we learned:

‘At the end of the day write down 3 things that give you a little bit of happiness. If you can’t choose 1 or 2 and if you can’t think of any, go and do something that makes you happy.’

Then we have Liggy Webb. Liggy wrote ‘The BiteSized Book Series’ that ‘’provides accessible, uplifting and practical content that is straightforward to navigate and easy to apply’’. The books were freely available at the World of Learning and we must admit, her stand never emptied over the two days. Showing again that there is such a hunger for this type of information in the corporate world.

All in all, if you haven’t been to one of these exhibitions, you got to go!! and if you do, come say ‘hi’ to the First Media team and pick up some freebies from us. I mean who doesn’t love freebies, right?

We loved exhibiting at the World of Learning and Learning Technologies Autumn Forum this October and hope everyone that attended enjoyed it too! And remember, if you’re curious about eLearning, Instructional Design or Learning Management Systems, or if you have some dated training or induction courses, then get in contact with us, we’d be happy to help.