FLASH Sun Buys ISOPIA - LMS Company

TechLearn TRENDS normally does not carry merger news, but this one just
came off the wires and we thought that it was interesting in terms of Sun
Microsystem's entry into this field:

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- June 19, 2001 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:
SUNW) today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire ISOPIA,
Inc., a privately held company located in Toronto, Canada. ISOPIA is the
developer of an industry-leading Integrated Learning Management System
(ILMS) that enables the delivery of online training and end-to-end
management of training products entirely through the World Wide Web.
Sun's
training arm, Sun Educational Services, is already recognized as one of
the
top IT training solutions organizations worldwide. Sun expects that this
acquisition will further enhance its position in the IT and broader
corporate education world by enabling it to consistently provide
enterprises
worldwide with complete learning services.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sun will acquire ISOPIA in a stock and
cash transaction. This acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase,
and
in-process R & D charges are expected to be immaterial. The closing of
the
acquisition is subject to governmental and ISOPIA stockholder approvals,
as
well as customary closing conditions. Following completion of the
acquisition, Sun plans to make ISOPIA a part of Sun Educational Services,
reporting into Vice President and General Manager, Dr. Bill Richardson.

"The acquisition of ISOPIA will complement Sun's vision of using the Web
to
deliver services," said Richardson. "ISOPIA's industry-leading ILMS
system,
combined with Sun's education consulting, courseware, eLearning program
and
professional certifications, will help Sun's enterprise customers better
deploy new Net technologies in their IT organizations and better manage
all
of their corporate learning programs."

206 - My Experiences with an e-Coach; Streaming Video as a Classroom Takeaway

1. My Experiences with an e-Coach: Over the next few months, you will hear a bit about my experience with an e-Coach. In order to continue to get healthier (code word for loose weight and exercise more), I have hired an e-Coach. This person is located in Texas and is coaching me on a daily (and often twice a day) basis on my eating patterns and exercise activities.

As you can guess, I am curious how coaching will be experienced from the recipient side, so I am making myself the subject. For the past few weeks, my coach and I have been getting to know each other and are
establishing ways of working together. We have had a few telephone calls, but most of the contact is through instant messenger and email. I am keeping a real time database of food consumption and exercise activity, which she can monitor on a real time basis.

Learnings so far include: The continuous nature of the counseling
relationship is awesome. Rather than check in once and a while, I feel as though I have true on-going support. The sharing of data through a shared database is a lot easier than “reporting” my eating patterns verbally. And, the instant messenger process has made me feel very focused on my goals and this important life change. Figuring out how to pay someone for this process has been interesting. And, I am eating much better, exercising almost every day and have lost a few pounds. Stay tuned for more.

We believe that e-Coaching will be a big part of blended learning in the future. I am working with Marshall Goldsmith, one of the leading
management coaches in the world, to help define new models of e-coaching. Marshall will demonstrate actual senior level remote e-coaching live from London during TechLearn 2001 in October. (www.techlearn.com)

2. Streaming Video as a Classroom Takeaway: When you take a class at The
MASIE Center, you now get a complete stream of every moment to take away,
the moment the class is over. We have been experimenting with capturing
and compressing every minute of our Skills for e-Trainers courses. We use
4 robotic cameras to create the video. It is then streamable for all
alumni, who can replay any segment of the event. If someone comes in
late, we hand them a CD a few minutes later with all of the session to
date. It is intriguing to see how students value and use the streamed
content. One person in the last class send the URL for a specific segment
to their boss to view at the end of the first day so that he could get
feedback and ask me a very specific question at the start of the next day.
The classroom opens up to become a capture and publish environment as
well as a teaching space. (Future sessions of Skills for e-Trainers are
scheduled in June and September: www.masie.com)

3. Dublin e-Learning Event Focuses on Global Trends: In a few weeks we
will be holding our second annual e-Learning Europe briefing in Dublin,
Ireland. We are pleased to announce that a major segment of this session
will focus on TRENDS around the world in adoption of e-Learning. As we
look at each country and region, the pattern of implementation changes,
often influenced by the history of how people learned in their earlier
days as students. We will address the Global Trends in e-Learning
adoption on July 9 and 10th in Dublin, Ireland. Go to www.masie.com for
details.

205 - Special Report: I'm A Digital Visitor to a Trade Show

*** Elliott Masie's TechLearn TRENDS ***
e-Learning, Training and e-Collaboration Updates
Published by The MASIE Center http://www.masie.com
Host of e-Learning EUROPE - Dublin, Ireland - July 9 & 10
Skills for e-TRAINERS: Monthly Sessions
TechLearn 2001 �" Oct 28 to 31 Orlando, Florida

(Special Report: I'm A Digital Visitor to a Trade Show)

As I am typing this, people are watching me concentrate in Orlando. I am sitting in my “flash studio” in our new e-Lab building in Saratoga Springs, connected via video-conference to a MASIE Center booth at ASTD's trade show.

Lately, with all the e-Learning conferences popping up around the country, I decided to not travel to them, but attend a few in an e-Fashion.

Hooked up via an ISDN connection, using a portable video conference
device, I am sitting in my little studio, with a weatherman’s blue screen chormakey in back of me. I am projecting various backgrounds (from an outside shot of our building or even a great view of Hawaii.)

It is fascinating to see people's surprise at being able to talk with me, over the distance. Perhaps even more surprising, as they are standing in a huge trade show floor all about e-learning and distance learning. Ironically, we are one of the few booths where people are actually presenting using the tools. Most are talking about e-Learning.

Some of the key questions that folks are asking from the trade show floor:

- How do I actually blend together e-Learning with classroom and other
informal learning processes?
- How do we author quickly, and still keep the instructional design values in e-Learning?
- How do we conduct due diligence to check out if suppliers are likely to be around in the future?
- What should we do about implementing standards such as SCORM and IEEE?
- What is real and what is hype?
- When will content be highly compelling and much more interactive?
- Do we need a Learning Management System (LMS) and/or Content Management System (CMS)?
The marketing blitz continues at an incredible rate at these shows. The size of the booths are huge and the give aways and promotional parties are lavish. Ironically, we did not see many of the senior managers from large companies, as these key decision makers tend not to attend trade show events. And, as many of our e-Learning Consortium members tell us, the issue is not to find out what products are services are available but rather to figure out how to deploy e-Learning strategically in their organizations.

It is fun to be a virtual attendee! I am wearing shorts (which are below the camera line), doing email and writing notes (including this one) and sleeping in my own bed at night. A few old friends actually sat in front of the camera and screen at our booth and we had a lengthy catch-up call.

When someone asks a question, I can access a slide or picture for
explanation. In some ways, we have had folks be more honest and open in this situation, as they drop their voice to whisper.

At TechLearn, we will be bringing in a host of e-Coaches to work with
attendees in this fashion, in small booths to provide coaching and advise from locations about the world.

Ironically, video-conferencing is still underused and under-innovated. In the past week, PictureTel, the largest provider was purchased by Polycom, so it will be interesting to see where this technology goes. I am using videoconferencing almost every day or two, providing over 40 keynote speeches a year via ISDN and doing one or two consulting assignments a week in this format. At last, I can talk about e-Learning without traveling to make the speech.

Well, I will get back to the video booth duties. Thanks for listening.

MASIE Center Services & Events: www.masie.com


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