What a challenging question. There have been so many talks that I’ve attended in person and watched online over the years both about edtech and beyond. I mean, here I could list any of the keynotes that Audrey Watters has given, and graciously shared on her website. They are always so thought provoking and inspiring. Following her work, some conferences came to mind, but nothing quite stood out like her work. Then I thought about all of the Creative Mornings talks I’ve been to (luckily even some international ones). There are plenty of great talks from all over. One in particular that always sticks with me and that I’ve listened to several times was meant for designers (in more traiditonal design roles) but I felt a lot of resonance with: F*ck You, Pay Me by Mike Monteiro. What might be an even better talk than that one though, is the follow-up talk he did after the Creative Mornings talk.

What Clients Don’t Know (and Why It’s Your Fault) by Mike Monteiro – An Event Apart Austin from Jeffrey Zeldman on Vimeo.

This talk also really resonated with me and I think there is a lot folks who work in edtech, ID, and ED roles can learn from it.

As for a favourite event, here I could list any conference or even the ETAD Summer Institute that used to run here, but I think Helsinki Summer School still takes the cake (quite literally too, because Helsinki has a great cake shop called Kakku Galleria which has a cake buffet option). This year there was an announcement that HSS is being discontinued, which broke my heart a bit. I had hoped to return for another summer at one point and now that option seems to be off the table. If you’d like to find out more about my time at HSS, you can check out the posts I reclaimed from an old blogger site I wrote while I was there.