Gene Feldman: All right. Hello. Welcome everybody to our next episode of Neon Protocol. Tonight's a special episode for me. So besides me, Gene, we also have Dan and Mark, part of our Neon Protocol team. And then we have our special guest, is Kelly Zamboni, who is an old schoolmate of mine from way back in the day. We've known each other since sixth grade, but he's doing some really interesting things and has had some really good progress working with some of these tools with his employer. So Kelly, I'm rather than be be begrudged an introduction with you, I'd rather you introduce yourself. So please introduce yourself to all of us.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys, for having me on this evening and making time. Yeah, my name is Kelly Zamboni. I work at a really large bank in Kansas City. And I've been in learning development about 15 years in a variety of roles, primarily in the last couple of years working with IT folks, which has really opened my my mind to opportunities outside of just you know traditional training. And so working with developers, solution architects, you know, agileists and the like. And it's been a great experience. plus with the you know, with AI ever present. I've had the opportunity to work on some small emerging tech teams at work and trying to find ways to get AI infiltrated into our work streams.
Gene Feldman: Nice, I like how you use the word infiltrate. It's like you're sneaking in there.
Kelly Zamboni: It's hard. It's not easy. Yeah. you would think that people would adopt it, but we have some low adoption rates. you know, and I think there's some hesitation, right? you know, especially among certain you know, certain constituents. But I mean from an L and D standpoint, you know, our people, especially the people I work with in the ATD Cannes City chapter are hungry for it. And they're looking for ways outside of just like inputting into a large language model and getting output. And so that's really where my focus is right now. how can we leverage some more robust tools to help them in their day-to-day work?
Gene Feldman: No, which I think is great because that's one of the things that we've seen well with all this emerging tech is it constantly I always consider it like a velociraptor, hitting the fence, trying to find different ways to get it in. And over about the past three years, people really realize training and development is a huge opportunity. And for those of us that have been in training and development for years, we want this because we're tired of instructor led training. We're tired of the five minute e learnings that people can go through and write all the answers down and then Take it again. You know, this provides a lot of the key things. So, but, you know, so let me ask, what were the big differences between going from training, I guess, training the general public into now focused into the IT crowds? What were their different priorities? Because I think as we get into this emerging technology conversation, there's always that wall that seems to be up between IT and the rest of the world. But I think if we could find some similarities with them, we c it could actually help us. So I guess what are some of the training things that you've noticed?
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. But so what we notice is that the the the days of such a matter of expertise are gone, right? And so what we try to do is meet people where they're at. And so if you have, you know, a dev who is you know a mature dev who knows a great deal. you know they don't know everything. And so one of the things that we've tried to do is really get away from you know prescribing training and looking at the talent space and measuring skill, skill development. And so we use some applications to self-report. we also use like mentorship and some other you know ways to calibrate And then from there we can you know work with their manager, try to determine with their skill set, you know, where they're at their level of aptitude, and then make recommendations like learning pathways. And so it's really kind of a tailored approach. it's not all that exciting, but you know, it's something that it just works. I mean, it works well. and so whether it's that, communities practice, care programming, things of that nature. We're trying to employ everything versus hey go take a a five day class or hey go to Udemy or Coursera or any of those applications. And so I think it's it's really extremely important to meet our constituents where they're at, the folks that we're working with.
Gene Feldman: Nice. So is are there any tools that you're using now that you've found good progress in or that you've used, I guess, within like the past year? Because I think one of the things that people are listening to our podcast is for ideas for themselves. So if you're have you know meeting up their skill set, what type of tools are you utilizing to help meet them at their skill set? Because I know and the reason why I bring this up is because I know Articulate's really been pushing their new AI platform. talking about how L and D is completely changing. Well, before somebody jumps deep into that realm, are there other tools that have actually been utilized that we've found some success in? 'Cause for me it's virtual speech and the AI avatar. So I'd really love to hear what you what you found.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. Mm-hmm. We have just started working with some of those applic features of those applications, but really what I focus my attention on is cloud code. And it seems to be you know a a different approach. and so what I've been trying to leverage. Is not so much from the coding perspective, but leveraging markdown files to create analysis and then output and dashboards. And so what we're able to do is take a confluence of data and then run it through you know specific logic and then output real-time HTML dashboards for clients. and that's been really effective, whether that is you know internally at work or even externally with the ATD. We've been able to demonstrate and stand it up and say, hey. there's a better way for you to do analysis. It does not require you to necessarily purchase you know, some enterprise tool. and I know that's kind of out of the realm of like, hey, articulate, but you know, for me, that's that's you know the the untapped opportunity. you know, I can now with articulate, I can literally, you know, with with Rise, I can take my storyboard and input it and then it creates the course for me. Right. And then I can make I can dial it in, I can make changes to it. Sure, but am I really measuring the impact and is the training really working versus just you know an attestation pay the person's taking it?
Gene Feldman: No, yeah, because
Dan Meeks: yeah.
Gene Feldman: one of my big concerns always been I love the deep dive metrics that articulate or that e-learnings could always provide. for me, I
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah yeah.
Gene Feldman: always focus on time in question. I love that metric because so many
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: times people have said, Well, I didn't learn it. Well, you spent three seconds on that slide. There's no way you absorbed all the information.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Right.
Gene Feldman: So when you're getting into it, are you finding that these new tools are giving you better data point or even let's say a skills matrix where you can actually say, all right, here's here's a result of of all of our skills, where we're lacking, where we have opportunities,
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: all of that. I guess how does it help with the reporting? Because the reporting's only as good as what we can provide to the leadership teams.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. And to your point, a skills matrix type database, something that can, collect, curate, and export or report, very important. I think what we have to be mindful of is like that human in the loop. And I don't like that phrase, but it's important to be able to triangulate it. So self-reporting data, you know, you know, observation, whether like let's say again peer programming, you know, where we have empirical, and then also you know, like what is the manager observing? If we have those three points connected, typically the the data that we're getting, you know, the output from is much more it's credible, just much more credible, versus saying, hey, you know what, I'm a I'm an expert in my field. Not necessarily, right? we can only assume and it can be subjective.
Dan Meeks: I I like that you narrowed in on the self contained HTML. That's a
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: a a trick I started doing with one of my products. Because what what what
Kelly Zamboni: It's great.
Dan Meeks: I've happened what I've seen historically is that you you collect all this data and then you need a whole nother program just to load the data to display it. But
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Dan Meeks: if you can take that email, send it either on a on a disk or thumb drive or an email, then that thing always exists and it's able to move around. So yeah, interesting that you
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. It's I
Dan Meeks: have that.
Kelly Zamboni: it yeah, it's it's actually really it's great. we can create something that's engaging, interactive, that it can save your local memory, right? So bar in you clearing out your browser, don't do that. So, but other than that, it's something that we can easily stand up for someone and and at a low cost. I mean, you know, if you could do it at work and you have an account paid for, great. If not, twenty dollars a month. Yeah, to get access to clawed code is pretty inexpensive.
Gene Feldman: So how are you how are you finding clocks? I know because one of the conversations that we always bring up on here is the different AI tools, as as the new ones, and I guess, you know, because you were you said you work with a banking institution without getting into it, but banking has a lot of regulations, a lot of Yeah. So how are what's that like encountering AI with that type of amount of restrictions? do you have like a claw a closed, clawed environment or
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. It's very restrictive. Yeah. Can't get into the too many of the details, but I can say that a lot of my ex
Gene Feldman: Completely understand.
Kelly Zamboni: yeah, totally. My experience really started with just my home lab or my home computer, right? And you know, I was fortunate enough to work with some developers who were really into AI well before you know, it is currently. And they needed it for training. They're like, hey, would you make some training videos? Which isn't my next I'm like, okay, great. Yeah, I can scan up some training videos for you. And that's where I got my interest. And so probably in the last couple of years, really just working on my own, you know, whether it be you know, what is it his name? Matt Peacock, I think, or you know, looking at others out in the industry, just random videos. I'm a big Reddit fan, so that you know, as far as like subreddits. So you know, and looking for I'm a pragmatist, so just looking for ways that I can use it and leverage it and teach it. And so that's where you know the MB files have been you know interesting because again, I can do it all locally. There's no barrier to entry per se. right. I mean, I can do it, I can create it, doesn't require a full stack application. in order to create something
Gene Feldman: Nice. So w how has the how has the banking institution responded to it as far as the culture? Are they perceiving this as a value add, as hesitation?
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's a I think they are banking as a whole, finance as a whole is much more progressive than you you would think. because some of these tools can be leveraged, so you're always gonna have code reviews, you're always gonna have, those know, functionaries of the software development lifecycle in order to ensure that you're not having some like sideways injection. and so very open to it. It's just a very slow adoption, right? And so I think that's very characteristic of training professionals. if I if you go to a conference, you know, you have folks that are just, you know, they're living AI every day. And you have folks who are just, you know, getting in and they're like, you know, I'm just learning how to prompt. And like for me, prompt is like, you know, 2023, right? And I'm not an expert at all, but I think folks need to really look in and find out what they can how they can leverage other tools. other than just large language models.
Gene Feldman: no, I agree. But one of the things that makes it nice is so for those of us that have been in and in enterprises outside of banking, one of our biggest barriers is our finance people. Because, it they're watching
Kelly Zamboni: yeah.
Gene Feldman: every cent, they're watching every dollar. But for me, if I'm sitting here and thinking, okay, well, banking likes it and they're much more accountable to money than than our finance people,
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: that there could be this could be a I don't want to say a conversational argumentative point, but could be something that could support for those that are in enterprises to know that banking's actually looking at something like this.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And I mean I I think you know, just doing the research and looking at, you know, like who's utilizing it. I mean, there's a whole host of you know, industry experts. And you know, folks in banking finance that are leveraging construction's another, you know, huge area. where folks are leveraging AI in a multitude of ways. And so I just think it's finding the creative niche and you know, distinguishing yourself. you know, it it it's I mean, it's just I don't know. For me it's a force multiplier and it's opening up a lot of opportunities where there would have been a steep learning curve before and you have a short attention span, Gene. So for me it's great. I can actually, work on a project, learn something, do my own personal retro and be like, okay, great. pragmatist, how can I use this or leverage this? And going back to the HTML, it's just it's a it's a win. I can create an HTML presentation, I can capture data in real time, and have it saved. And there's just a whole host of things that you can do outside of just traditional training methodology or training, you know, executables or delivery.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. one of the things though that always I that kinda runs because I know you said, we don't need subject matter experts or anything like that, but I sit here and go,
Kelly Zamboni: One
Gene Feldman: AI is only as good as the information that's that's been inputted. And, you
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: know, I've had professors that when I was in the school of education, I know things
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: they shared with me are not in AI anywhere, but they have they have served my career well
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: in those little tidbits. And so That's where I think I think for me it's you don't need to be a subject matter in what you're teaching, but you still need to have some type of expertise on training in and of itself to ensure that the AI is presenting it in that way. Does that make sense?
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. No, totally, I agree. And you know, I don't want to deviate from, you know, like the Addy model or other learning models when I'm, you know, working with internal or external clients. I'm still gonna follow the same methodologies. I'm just gonna leverage AI, you know, and especially large language models to help me you know, meet their need much quicker.
Gene Feldman: I no, I agree. I sit there and go back. I remember the first time I was asked before audio were ever in e learnings and all of a sudden people
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: were like, We need an audio track. We need somebody to talk while it's
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: going. Okay, let this give me six months. Let me learn Audacity. Let me learn how to do vocal recordings, and I'll get back to you on that.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Love audacity. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: Whereas now, we use Riverside for this. It's it
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: It makes it so easy to where I can focus on the conversation and the content rather than focusing on the functionality of
Kelly Zamboni: Exactly. And that's how I always look at how do you value your time? Right. I mean, I only have so much time in the day. And at my current age, I don't plan on I had someone asked me, Do you want to be a developer? I'm like, and maybe in in a prior life, I would love to have gone back to school and done something like that. But now I'm just like, you know what? I try to align interests and hobbies that give me satisfaction. And so like I'm literally learning all kinds of stuff. Like I bought this off of AliExpress. It's a simple ESP thirty two, non touch robot and I learned how to install the Hermes AI agent on it. And so now I can, press it and ask it questions from Beep Seek. Like if you would have asked me to do that a couple of years ago, I'd be like, No, I can't. No. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: Well, I think it also helps to know that the tools are getting easier for us. Cause,
Kelly Zamboni: Yes.
Gene Feldman: you know, for years that was one of my biggest feedbacks to like the Unity team and a lot of the other teams was we I I love all the functionality you guys are adding to this, but we need a UI that enables anybody to be
Kelly Zamboni: Mm.
Gene Feldman: able to do this. without having all that background experience. meshy AI, I still think is way ahead of its time. And hopefully it doesn't get passed up. I
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Right.
Gene Feldman: know I could be I could be a a I I could that could be a very hot topic for some people, but the thing is is that these tools are getting to where we don't need to be a specialist at everything anymore. We can be a specialist in what we're doing and use the tools to help us. I'll go
Kelly Zamboni: No, no,
Dan Meeks: Well, I hate I hate having to spend half my day on Stack Overflow and trying to trying to solve a very simple question. but you know, just going through either mostly threads that have only like one person asking the same exact question that I have, which is the most frustrating. But the ones that really you boil down for like ten minutes
Kelly Zamboni: no.
Dan Meeks: trying to follow the logic, and then someone just gives up and says you need a computer science degree.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Mark G: Well, just to add to that, right? I'm gonna date
Dan Meeks: Yeah. Don't miss those days.
Mark G: myself of the early era of Unity where, to do anything in Unity, the best place to go is actually their forum because it was actually a real community. And it was a case where, you could go to their forum and be like, I wanna find an example of da da da, right? And then you just search for that topic and all of sudden somebody has a project posted. of exactly what you wanted, right? Now it's totally different. It's a case of it's like you just gotta deal with the aspect of there's no code maintenance compared to the good old days, but yeah, to your point, right? It's more about doing it instead of
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark G: learning to do it.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. And I think that's extremely important. So when we look at training in 2026, for me it's more about experiential, right?
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: I I need to again meet people where they're at, give them opportunities to learn in order to fail and in a safe place and then learn something from that. the days of I I remember years ago, s when I started training in a call center and we would print off, these binders of, you know, every state and their insurance. And that was it. Right? It was a mainframe application. We were in a classroom for eight hours a day, literally for three months. Can you imagine doing that now? It wouldn't happen, you know, for people in operations.
Dan Meeks: Well, Kel Kelly, you you you're touching on something that I'm I'm kinda curious about. You you've mentioned a couple of times meeting people where they're at. But
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: how do you maintain standards? Like s sometimes you got somebody that's just a
Kelly Zamboni: That's fair.
Dan Meeks: box of rocks and you know, their uncle's the boss and you gotta flunk unfortunately.
Kelly Zamboni: you that this is a great, that's a great point. I I don't I think it's again more of a consultative approach. sometimes it just that happens. you know, we don't, at least from my experience, which just want to perform work to do it. You know, we want to make sure that we're we're adding value, delivering value that's measurable. you know, I can create training, but it might be a performance issue. And how do we address that? And even with the headbutting, I think at the end of the day. the client respects it and just have a better experience. And they keep coming back.
Dan Meeks: Okay. Well and and also the on the s other side of that is having a consistent standard that that's applied to everybody. So you know that everybody got a fair shake. Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: Definitely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there are ways the yeah, there are ways to to implement, you know, fair standards or best practices, definitely.
Gene Feldman: Well, I think it also helps that because I assume because of the requirements, a lot of your trainings are mandatory. that they have to do it. And that I think that also helps sometimes too, because I I've been in a couple of places where the training cannot be used for job performance. So whether they're c whether they complete it or not is it it was great if they did, but not there was no accountability
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: on the tail end. Whereas if all your course if a lot of your courses are mandatory. that really that replaces that intrinsic motivation we're hoping the learners actually
Kelly Zamboni: Totally.
Gene Feldman: gain.
Kelly Zamboni: No, we used to work, I used to work at a civil engineering firm. And for boots to be on the ground, for somebody to go onto a job site, they had to complete X amount of safety training. Right. And it was it was just that. It was a completion report in an LMS. And it didn't measure if the person really was able to apply it. there's no way to do that without working in conjunction with the subject matter experts, right? Like safety. being on site, project lead. So there's some assumptions being made.
Mark G: one question I'd have is a lot of I work for a big brown company, right? So a lot of our standards are really actually based on our culture, right? Last two years they may not be as true, but generally the culture of the enterprise generally defines a lot of the direction you're given for standards. Was that sort s sort of the same feel for where you were in finance or no?
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right. Definitely. I think a lot of it's driven, you know, like key performance indicators, you know, like you said from the top strategy. we are beholden to a certain set of standards to deliver value that seems to be like ringing in my ear, you know, very corporate, deliver value. How are you measuring effectiveness? And so that's always something that we think about as far as a standard. So if I am in an engagement and I cannot make that happen, I probably won't perform the work, right? So that is that is a that is a measure of you know, will we engage with the client? If we can't we're just we we're not gonna do it if we can't measure success.
Mark G: So when you do engage with the client, do you measure part of that value based on the percentage of impact that you are doing to the customer?
Kelly Zamboni: yeah, and so that's a great question. So one of the characteristics of measurement that we'll use is like a baseline. So case in point, you know, we will baseline their level of skills, go through the training, and then we will reevaluate at the end and see if there's any improvement. you know, and typically using some sort of Likert scale, you know, predefined questions that we've worked with the subject matter experts with. And that seems to be quite powerful because Yeah, we're we're we're getting buy in from the stakeholders, right? We're working with them to define what that looks like, but then we're doing all the heavy lifting for them, right? and we're also helping define the training and provide the reporting at the on the back end. Yeah, yeah. It sounds cool, maybe not.
Mark G: Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's L and D nerdness. It's awesome. Yeah,
Gene Feldman: Well, I think to those of us in training and development. Yeah.
Mark G: yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: Is there in nerdness in L and D? I hope so.
Gene Feldman: I think so, 'cause especially when you're talking about Addy. So for those of you that aren't in the
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: training space, Addy is our scrum method, for lack of a better analogy. It it's how what?
Kelly Zamboni: Yes. It's waterfallish, don't you think? In a way. It's like waterf more like waterfall.
Mark G: Very well. Well everything's waterfall. Come on.
Kelly Zamboni: It is waterfall.
Dan Meeks: Well well, I got a question. It it
Gene Feldman: yeah.
Dan Meeks: is there is there a hierarchy of of knowledge that should be retained? Coming coming from my background, if you didn't know safety stuff, that's what really dinged ya. So if you didn't know where all the fire extinguishers were on the aircraft, the crash axes, if if you got that run wrong, you're you're done, I don't
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Yeah. Right.
Dan Meeks: know if that's the same kind of level or or if there's the same kind of hierarchy of you really need to know this stuff. If you don't
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Meeks: then there's something really off yeah. You know.
Kelly Zamboni: There's sometimes a a correlation like Maslow's right, but that's that's where we start getting into you less corporate and more academia. you know, typically we're looking at what's called a blooms taxonomy. So we're creating learning objectives based on you know, is this just like knowledge comprehension? All right, this is the the geek and the nerd Ben diagram, right? And learning somewhere in there. where you're you're looking at, you know, what are the objective? What are you trying to accomplish? What, you know, is it something that is just you know comprehension or it's something that someone has to actually act on. and then from there we're gonna start to go through I tend to go through a more iterative process and look at an MVP. So what are you trying to accomplish? Objectives, start working to subject matter experts, excuse me, to create the training and then try to deliver an MVP. And that might be foreign to them, but that way, we position it as okay, great. You talked about maintenance. Well, a year or two years from now, we can make changes to it and we can modify it, based on you're encountering in, the next fiscal year.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, and I've also found some really good success besides the the the names the name drops that you put in, Kelly, which I I completely agree. I am a I am a Blooms fanatic. but
Kelly Zamboni: Totally. Love it.
Gene Feldman: Eric Erickson's psychosocial development, of looking
Kelly Zamboni: Mm.
Gene Feldman: at what it because to me I think that helps us with the generations, of looking where they are in that level of of social development, because that can give us a read on that how that generation's gonna respond. You know, because you know, one of the things as we start which I think is great about these tr using these tools is okay, if I know I've got half the class is Gen X, the other half is I don't want to say millennial because people get upset with that, but when the other half's millennial, okay, that I could potentially use the tools to create two learning paths based on, and this kind of goes back to your meeting the student, that what would have taken me days to and not even think about trying to create two courses out of it.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Correct.
Gene Feldman: that I could actually now create two that are tailored to those ty how those generations respond to that information.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, it's all about context. So if I was going to deliver a storyboard, I could do that in a large language model, making sure that's contextually accurate, in my in my prompt. I typically will do is just brain dump into it and have it create the prompt and then build off of that and have it create a storyboard and then you know provide it to a client and say, Hey, you know what, let's start from here. And they're they're they're stunned. They're like, my gosh, this is great. Because in their mind, they're like, we just need to get this out the door, right? We just need to get this done and get it into whatever tool that they're using, traditionally LMS, but not always, right? And they want to be able to track it. And having the conversation that we could do, multiple you know, different trainings like you said, pathway built it in. If it's inarticulate, you can you can create that. And you know, I've done stuff like that before for different domains. if a person is a just an end user versus an admin, and they do some pretest and then, they'll based on how they've tested, go into their perspective you know, learning pathway.
Gene Feldman: Nice. Yeah, I I've done a little experimentation
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: trying to do it, trying to break out the different learning styles. So whether they're visual, auditory, and try to try to give a course
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: that would really give address them. But even going back to something that you said too, creating the experience, that we are the result of the YouTube learning generation.
Kelly Zamboni: Totally.
Gene Feldman: that we can go watch a video and we learn as we go. You know, it's very much the do it yourself generation.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: I guess is the best way to put it.
Kelly Zamboni: So I so I learned to change my tire when it blew, my dad wasn't around, so I'm literally out there with YouTube and my early iPhone, learning how to take the lug bounce off. and I feel like a complete, Brian, never,
Dan Meeks: Yeah, I can never hold the flashlight just right. So I I didn't learn a lot either, so
Gene Feldman: Well, you you I learned a very extensive catalogue of vulgar words. That's what I learned.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: me too. Yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: And unfortunately, I have passed that on to my children and I told them, I'm like, this it this is the legacy that you must now carry on.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. I love that. It's like a Christmas story. The furnace is blowing, you know, and you share all the vulgar words.
Gene Feldman: But it well, it really is. think about how we all grew up. majority of us on the call are all Gen X. And Kelly, you and I had the same education system. You
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Totally.
Gene Feldman: know, at the time that if we had a question, we didn't we all we had to go to was Encyclopedia Britannica. That was it.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. I remember going I remember going to the library and they had these pull-out drawers where they the librarians would cut out quotes or information based on certain subjects. I would spend hours just spinning my wheels. And I I'm a mildly dyslexic. So that was like a nightmare for me. And so AI and all of these tools that have come out have just been amazing. I'm like If I had this when I was in school, I would have definitely been much further along.
Gene Feldman: no, I I I would agree with you on that. I I would my social calendar would not have a j upset my school calendar. But now getting with AI, let's let's talk a little about this because with entering development right now we've been talking about all the strengths about AI. And over
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: the past couple weeks there's been a couple interesting conversations that have been happening with AI, and I I would love to kind of pose it to the group and kind of get as we're talking about this, because I don't want people to listen and say, yeah, that's all no, we we try to look at everything very practical and pragmatic. So as we're talking about all this beauty of AI, we're starting to see though that it you know, that people are that are on the job hunt because of all the issues that have been going on, well, because of Black October is I think what they're referring it to it now in the tech world.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: People are using AI to write their resumes and HR firms and HR teams are using AI to accept those resumes. So we're having a this AI conundrum happening, you
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: know, and as much as we want to say, okay, it helps. So as and reason why I'm getting into this is as you're using AI, what are some of the things that you look for from the AI report out to make sure that it's You're not just trusting it at face value. Does that make sense?
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. No, totally. hallucinations are real, right?
Gene Feldman: 'Cause I hate to say it 'cause I think some peop I think some people are putting their job information and just accepting whatever AI gives them and starting to send it to employers. And employers are
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: just trusting whatever the AI. So I guess the trust factor with AI, how
Kelly Zamboni: People are doing that in education. I have a friend that teaches, interesting when you mentioned that, an OD organizational development course. And we were talking about that today, that you know she's seen you know more students submit work that is 100% generated by AI, giving no attribution to it, not mentioning it at all, and then they get caught and then given opportunities to come clean and they don't. Or they're like, well, I was just using to, coach or scrub. And so I I I think that it's important that you know you still have humans in the loop and that you leverage your critical thinking. I can't overstate that enough. you know, it yes, I use I I don't remember all the my phone numbers and yes that I use Google or you know maps, any any map the app as a on on my phone to get to the end destination, but I'm still aware of my surroundings and have a basic understanding of where I'm going. and I try to map it out. And so credibility is extremely important. and so for me, you know, I'm gonna fact check, I'll go, I'll question AI because, you know, large language models are just they are predictive in nature. They're trying to give me the answer that they think I want and not necessarily need. And so it's important to perform your due diligence.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. And I think also on the flip side of that too is don't always assume it's AI. And the reason why
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: I give that is I'll actually give a scenario. So I recently had met with an employer for a potential role. And they ended up passing over me, but one of the feedback items they give is they they they thought they are like we we suspect AI coaching was used during the conversation. I've been in training and development for twenty five plus years. this what I s I'm going to use the buzz buzzwords because I was around when they were created, And so we also have to be careful that when you're talking to somebody with a lot of experience, don't assume it's also AI. It could be that what what they've said is what was put into the language model in the first place.
Kelly Zamboni: No correct. And I think that's important that there's it's such a large amount of AI slot. And it you know, people are questioning it, whether it be media, you know, whether it be you know, me looking at LinkedIn Posts and I'm like, Okay, obviously that by AI, there's a hyphen, right? every other sentence, there's just some characteristics. so I think people need to have much more situational awareness nowadays and just be cautious. It's not all real.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. 'cause I know I always point out that the word intersection, which is not a normal
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: word in our vocabulary, you see that, But yet we have Lucky who attends who's part of the Neon protocol team. And I've noticed that since we've started calling it out, he started he started using the word intersection in his daily speech to counteract it. And so, but yeah, I mean, and like we know and Laura Lee pointed out a couple weeks ago that if you see a fireplace in an image More than likely that was AI derivative because for some reason AI likes to put fireplaces and everything. You know.
Kelly Zamboni: you have to be aware. I did a a simple video in Gemini recently. it it's great for creating media, Gemini Pro, and but there were certain elements of the video that I'm like, it just assumed, right? And I didn't put a lot of context into it in order to produce the media I was looking for. And this is just a ten second video. Quite realistic, by the way. It's amazing. Crazy.
Gene Feldman: some of the stuff they're doing, I have to give my hats off to the people that are doing these Star Wars forbidden the lost stories
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: of Luke Skywalker. I am thrilled by watching them. but yet you even have which Neon Protocol, we gotta talk about the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart, because you know what, Star Trek, I think to all of us it holds a very special place for a lot of us. you know, us tech nerds, but you know, even Marvel has come out and said that the character is now officially retired.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: They will not use AI to recreate Patrick Stewart in any shape or form. And you know what? I I I I appreciate that because he was the character. He will, I mean, we all we all all of us grew up with him. You know, of course,
Kelly Zamboni: Definitely. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: I still remember him from Excalibur and absolutely loved him in it.
Kelly Zamboni: And that's an important thing. I think people are gonna really want authenticity real and you're gonna see, you know, a return to, you know, touching the earth, touching the grass, just a I mean, for reality. it's it reminds me a lot of during the pandemic where we would just go walking around the lake, here in Kansas City was great, no media, the the earth was healing, all that stuff if you want to call it that. But just a return to to being around people, sentient beings.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. You know, I mean, I can actually honestly see this kind of returning some instructor led training back because j I mean, the amount yeah,
Kelly Zamboni: It's interesting you mentioned that. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: I mean, because just the amount of information that an instructor is able to get through nonverbal communication of their class
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: is unbelievable as far as comprehension and understanding. That, you know, sometimes they may not have the right answer, but the way they're explaining it, they are so close that just to tell
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: them they're wrong. Would defeat the purpose. Let's get them to that
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: finish line.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. And I think it's a go ahead. Yeah.
Dan Meeks: Well, also it's just keeping the students awake. I when
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: I taught my my my schooling was a comedy act. So I d I don't know if an AI can really pull off the jokes or not, but
Kelly Zamboni: It can't, not really, no.
Mark G: Well, and also to the point of when you're teaching new students, right? The biggest thing from my days of just software development and game development, right? It's just just finish the damn project, right? How many students don't? They go ninety percent of the way and then they're like, Yeah, no, I gotta get back to work and you know, blah blah blah blah I'm like, you're totally missing that ten percent rush of completion of what you're trying to do, which is like the whole point of the course.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. I mean, for me it's it was always the critical thinking, you know, of cause an AI can push you so far, but eventually it's gonna take you to the next step. Whereas, you know, Kelly and I had a teacher, his name was Mr. Yuri, and I mean he was our history teacher. His favorite question was why? That was his favor and I got to actually do some of my student teaching with him. And so I got to spend a semester picking his brain. And he's like, that's he's like, yeah, I remember what was Socrates' magic. He asked why. You know, and that's what we do by asking why. And to me, it served me so great because it helped me understand the root cause analysis, the five Y bro, all the coaching methodologies that it really forces this the learner to think critically, and the teacher it now becomes the the true facilitator.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Definitely.
Gene Feldman: Of gaining the knowledge rather than facilitating the class, if that makes sense.
Kelly Zamboni: We're still humans and we need human connection and you know and that's great and that's important to remember that you know during training. We're seeing people, especially as return to office, it has become more prevalent, wanting to meet in person. Like I'll have I'll have people, you know, you know, you know, dating myself at 20 years my junior like, hey, let's go meet. I'm like, really? You know, I'm like, in person? They're like, Yeah. I'm like, great. You know, I mean it's just you know, it it
Gene Feldman: Ha ha ha.
Kelly Zamboni: became so customary just to be like teams call. Great. Where are you? I'm in the aisle next to you. okay. Yeah, and so you know, working from home is fantastic, you know, it it it affords a lot of flexibility. But there's something about yeah, that human connection that that AI can't replace.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. Well, there was a study earlier this year that they were talking about how not saying Gen X failed, but because we were so excited to be able to work from home, we didn't have to go anywhere, we didn't have to do anything. But without us in the office, how are the younger generations going to learn that social etiquette or that work culture that we always refer back to? the things that aren't trained in the class, you know, that all right, if
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: you see this person storming down the hallway. Walk the other way. those little key pieces. As
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: much as I hate water cooler talk, they are essential for some workplaces because they give
Kelly Zamboni: Mm. Definitely.
Gene Feldman: that break, that c that communication avenue.
Kelly Zamboni: even clusters,
Mark G: Well I
Kelly Zamboni: people being around, making sure that they're working in squads or quadrants. the abilities to work, pods,
Mark G: Mm. Pods or whatever it is, yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: yes.
Mark G: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and to that point too, also, my XR lab is also known to be what we call the the water cooler now. Where people like joke and they're like, Where's the
Kelly Zamboni: Hey.
Mark G: Keggerator? Because, you know, they're coming into the lab 'cause they're like, I need to de-stress. Give me, you know, VR golf. Give me, you know, something. And I'm like, I'm like, here you go, dude. Sit down in that chair over there. Just relax. Let it go, you know?
Kelly Zamboni: Okay, that's awesome.
Mark G: 'cause yeah, there's just so much pressure right now. shareholders key and, you know, let's forget about the employee that actually creates the value. It's kind of that mantra, you know, so that's the thing, is that now it's we're back in
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Mark G: the office and those mantras have less value because, hey, you know, who's really doing the work? It's the employee, it's the person. Not the, you know, statistical dashboard that was generated by
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark G: AI that Anyone could, huh?
Kelly Zamboni: Right. That and I I think it's important. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. Because we can have AI generated, but nobody can interpret the information. And I
Mark G: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: think that's where the human element comes into it is we, for me, I speak in analogies. That's how I get people to understand and I interpret that whatever AI came out with into something that makes it relevant. It's we're talking all learning learning buzzwords. It's the wiffle. What's in it for me? Which is one of the most vital things for any learner to have.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's basic stuff. I mean, when you look at like persona-based learning, and I mean this in the sense of that you have three types of learners. You know, folks that learn because they want to, you know, they're just like intrinsically motivated. Folks that do because, you know, it's changing. So you know, new you know, new software, for example, and then You have folks that have no desire to learn and this is what they do and this is all they're going to do. And the there's a tendency to focus on that smaller percentage and really we need to, hone our skills and invest in the folks that have a desire to learn or a pension to learn as things change, you know, they're what's it for me, right? Okay, I get it. You know, it's changing, let's
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: start adopting.
Gene Feldman: But it's also that parent conundrum too, that you're the kid the squeaky wheel the squeaky kid or the squeaky wheel gets all the attention. The good kid gets forgotten in in the mix of things. You know,
Kelly Zamboni: Right. totally. Totally.
Gene Feldman: and like I've always found that, you know, to you know, for that type of training, that's where that's one of the things where I do like AI and why I've I've really been
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: zoning in on the whole AI avatar simulations because it can really account to anybody. All all they have to do is go in and start the conversation and they'll they can learn whatever they want. They actually take ownership of that type
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: of of their training.
Kelly Zamboni: And I think you're gonna see a move. I've seen people do it. I don't know how successful it's been, but moving away from articulating others and making web based training, you know, the question of like hosting it, you know, that's that's you know, I'm I'm not really sure how they're gonna host it, but there's opportunities for learning designers, if you want to call them that, or instructional designers, whatever, to make a much better product a much more polished product that's engaging with the tools that are are you know readily available.
Gene Feldman: yeah, I've been seeing the new title of Learning Experience Manager rather than training and development manager.
Kelly Zamboni: That's different.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, so it's it it that whole trend of going to that experiential and the experience. Well, and for those of us that that
Kelly Zamboni: ja
Gene Feldman: don't have the background in it for our listener, the true the true definition of learning, I'm gonna drop I'm gonna drop a ton of buzzwords right now, but is any change of behavior that results directly from experience? That is what lear that is the definition of learning. And so by creating experiences, that's how we create those learning opportunities. And you know, I I think that's where that where this technology is, it's is going to be able to give us those opportunities because
Kelly Zamboni: Okay.
Gene Feldman: like for me, you know, I I always go back to the the hollow deck. Imagine being able to put somebody in an environment that didn't require any travel, didn't require this, and that could
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: actually be catered to that learning experience that could put actual digital simulator.
Kelly Zamboni: I think it would be amazing. And, you
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: know, a tailor go ahead, I didn't mean yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: No, I was just gonna agree with you.
Kelly Zamboni: Not at all. think it's great. I to your point, I I can see less enterprise, wide training, and much more tailored approaches because the barriers to entry are being broken down. And, you know, if folks can learn, you know, how to, you know, there's a lot of AI tools, but the strong will survive. And when the dust settles, what you're gonna see is you know, it I think you know a divergence of skill sets and people need to find out, you know. what that looks like for me. It's been using Clog Code to enhance, my experiences and find different ways to leverage it. you know, at home and, you know, we been working with the ATD Kansas City and finding ways to demonstrate how we can stand it up and, you know, you know educate our our learning professionals that it's not taboo. You just have to find creative ways to use it.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. And you never know what's gonna happen with, w I we were talking before the call, about some of these code these jailbreaked software programs that AI has been doing. imagine
Kelly Zamboni: Mm
Gene Feldman: somebody jailbreaks the mighty articulate and you know, now all of a sudden there's this homegrown entity that can do some of the things that we wish articulate could have done without the price tag. Yeah, I I I I'm not yeah, I'm
Kelly Zamboni: It'll be interesting, yeah.
Gene Feldman: not dismissing what articulate does. Articulate
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-mm.
Gene Feldman: It it's it's been our bread and butter in training and development for years. But, you know, it's it is one of those established software companies that it does have the the price tag that comes with the software matches the value of the software, I think is the best way to put it. But, you know, I'm at
Kelly Zamboni: Right, right. Yes. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And they're changing their value crop, they're they are switching their business model to focus on subject matter experts, where it used to be the instructional designer. Now it's folks that okay, great, anybody can use it, right? In theory.
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: So with the AI functionality built in, you know, you can take that institutional knowledge and create training and then modify it on the back end.
Gene Feldman: which I think is great. for me, I think where I think it the most value is assessment writing. Because for the
Kelly Zamboni: totally. Overlooks.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, because when you write assessments yourselves, you have to monitor your bias so much
Kelly Zamboni: Mm.
Gene Feldman: and then you and then randomizing the answers is always a a challenge. And I and for me I've always hated multiple choice questions because I
Kelly Zamboni: I do too.
Gene Feldman: hate the rule that okay, two are completely obvious. And two are so close they're bound to make a mistake. I think it's setting them up for failure when you just give the four various options that it could be. And I've got
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah. And I don't I it if they're not using it to measure anything and just to, you know, a lot of times I've seen with online training is that they add that, you know, this called skills reinforcement, the multiple choice after a section, just to do it, versus are they using that data to actually measure, you know, retention or measure capability? And many times, you know, we're not. And that's a failure on our part.
Gene Feldman: Well yeah, and I also hate, when you in the old days when you'd have your those type of check your understandings, that if they got it wrong, you just you just gave them
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Yeah, attestations. Okay.
Gene Feldman: a little blurp of what was wrong rather than, you
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: know what, if they got the entire check your understanding wrong, let's take them back to the beginning
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: and present it a different way. Or are we really solving the pro gaps as we're identifying them? You
Kelly Zamboni: It is.
Gene Feldman: know, rather than having a full assessment because, you know, I mean, some people could just be Terrible assessment takers.
Kelly Zamboni: totally. there's a whole community of neurodivergent. It's an old different topic, but just if just because you're not a good test taker, doesn't mean you're incapable. it's just unfortunately sometimes on it it's a bad rap, but online training is just one component at 10%. we're you know, we use a a 10, 20, 70% learning model. Very simple. Ten is you know, typically traditional training. you know, the the twenty percent is more social and then seventy the bulk of it is experiential. And that's where that tailored approach that comes in, working with a client to find out what their needs are to develop a tailored approach. But traditionally it's taken a lot of effort, like so with the new tools that reduces that that labor and we can we can drive better results.
Gene Feldman: Nice. So let me ask you a question. This is hypothetical, but kind of
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: saying I love your take on it. See as we're talking about, you know, the human interaction of this or that. So let's say, and for those that may encounter this, AI gives you the the the course, you know, based on your prompting. The customer loves it. However, you're looking at going, you know what? The order something's not fitting with this scenario. What could be the best approach to disagreeing with AI in a way that will not interfere with the confidence that the customer may have on the output?
Kelly Zamboni: if I was going to approach that, I would want to look for other sources to you know sort I'm looking for. I was going to do it personally.
Mark G: So so so you're looking for the historical, the historical methods or the historical way of how they would do something?
Kelly Zamboni: Know would I'm I'm looking for traditional ways to justify my position, right? Where there's credibility. And so, if I look at training, for example, and and safety training, which is significant, there's a lot of bodies or institutions that are accredited, so I could reference them, right? And so that would be one way to go about it. Same thing with even learning development, I could reference the ADD, ATD. there's the ODN, the organizational development network, there's shroom for HR professionals. There's a lot of white papers that they produce that can justify that position. and again, you know, you don't want to just give it to AI because then that's undermining your credibility. I feel like I said credibility like a like fifty times, but that's the important piece because you know whether it's internal And I'm working at a large enterprise or I'm a I'm a consultant with my own business, I want repeat business down the line, right? And you know, if I if I create a learning intervention and it and it it's it's not credible and they're not gonna come back. Right.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, but I think credibility, I think, is at the heart of this because for me, it took us years to get over it. It's on the internet, so it must be true. How long is it gonna take us to overcome AI said so so it must be true?
Kelly Zamboni: I e when when Michael Jackson unfortunately, when he he died, I remember this person came up to me and they're like, T Z reported years ago, you know, Michael Jackson died. I'm like, T Z is not a credible source. I go was it on CNN? And it's just like, I don't know. Lo and behold, I get home, TMZ reported it and it was you know, is it was authentic source, you know, and I and you know, I had to, you know, come back the next day and I'm like, you're correct in the same face and come back and and just be like, you know what, you're right. So credibility has morphed and and evolved and matured. And just because it's on on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, does it's it's credible, it still requires you know, personal research to validate. Mm-hmm. Definitely.
Gene Feldman: I look at it r it requires the critical thinking of the end user. It which I think is one of the things that we we forget about this in the ease of it, because if it's us to make our life easy, okay, if I've gotta stop what I'm doing and think critically about something for ten minutes, I know that's brain power that's just gonna give me a headache. but
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right.
Gene Feldman: I think that's a vital part of the process that can that can't be excluded because if you if you constantly put information out that's wrong, you're going to lose that credibility where people are just going to they'll listen to you, they'll humor you, but they don't care. And at
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Totally. Right. Correct.
Gene Feldman: an emplo as a trainer in an organization, that is to me the the worst case scenario because you're
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: supposed to be the one person that that Warforce can come to to answer the question. You are a lack of a better thing, you are
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: the Encyclopedia Galactica. You are the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for them.
Kelly Zamboni: I never thought about that. I'll be using that tomorrow. Hopefully that's not trademark. But I I mean, I also think it it it it's a matter of cost center, right? I mean, most training shops are for the most part, you know, a nice to have. And you know, we are not revenue generating unless you're in like some sort of like enablement position. But you know, knowing that that's why I say we have to justify the work that we're doing and not just do any jobs or perform any requests that come our way.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. As well as we need to have those conversations, not trust just trust AI. even when I, started using AI, I still like having those conversations of let's go
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: through the time, the place, and the audience. Those are there are several things that we need to talk about because that will directly impact which direction we're gonna we're gonna go with from there. And I
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right.
Gene Feldman: I don't think AI can always AI is going again, predict what we've done in the past, but
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right. Discomfort.
Gene Feldman: If we've tried doing instructor led six times and it's never worked, why even entertain a conversation to do instructor led again? You know, let's move to something different.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. people get comfortable and complacent and sometimes they want you to think outside the box within the walls of that institution. And going back to, the point of culture sometimes dictates those standards. It's our job to, work with them and sometimes we have to repeat ourselves multitude of times. But if we're producing really quality if we're producing quality work that you know demonstrates you know change can't happen, that's measurable. Yeah, we're getting less anecdotal but more empirical evidence, then it builds reputational gains.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. Yeah, 'cause I yeah, I agree with you. 'Cause I often said we're trying to quantify the unquantifiable. We're trying
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: to measure how people learn and they they learn in such different variations.
Kelly Zamboni: I have I have yet mastered that from a knowledge, standpoint. so if you learn, let me know if you find your way.
Gene Feldman: I I I think we're I we're 2,000 years deep into it from Socrates. I think we're still trying to figure it out.
Kelly Zamboni: That's true.
Gene Feldman: You know, but yeah, it's how do we do it? I mean, for me, the metric I've always I've always had great luck with the speed to proficiency because the well the number one task for training development that we that falls on all of our shoulders all the time is onboarding. So can we show that we can get them up to speed faster with greater confidence?
Kelly Zamboni: Hmm, there you go.
Gene Feldman: So, but yeah, and if if you're listening and you have a great idea on this, please put it in the in the LinkedIn, share it with us. we would love to hear about it. So, we are getting near the end. So, Kelly, first off, thank you so much for joining. This has been a blast. So, and K and
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.
Gene Feldman: Kelly's been one of our biggest supporters since we started. So, it's so great getting a chance to have you on on.
Kelly Zamboni: Thank you.
Gene Feldman: A chair is always open for you. So as we have our vital
Kelly Zamboni: I appreciate it.
Gene Feldman: our sit live system checks, we'll set we send invites to all of our past guests. As well as if there's anything new that you want to share or you just want to be like Dan and just join every call and live with us from now on, you're more than welcome. Yeah. I I
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Dude, I would love that. I've learned I've learned that I have much to learn. And that's the great thing, I think, you know, from a learning perspective is that take a risk. You know what it might be intimidating. and you three are on some level intimidating to this learning professional because you could just you are. I'm like, I have a lot to learn. And that's the great thing about technology. There's always opportunities.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. And I love this. This will be one of the first ones that I've been able to use all the buzzwords I know because of training and development. So it's
Kelly Zamboni: I said Kirkpatrick.
Gene Feldman: it's been fantastic for me.
Mark G: G Gene loves his buzzwords. Loves the buzzwords, yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: Sheen is a well of information.
Mark G: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: yeah, I Maria Burnett, who used to be she used to was at Meta and Microsoft for a while. I can't remember where she's at now, she actually introduced me one time as the human version of chat GPT.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, mm-hmm. Whoa.
Gene Feldman: I was like, and coming from Marie, who she intimidates me like crazy. but it's honestly, it's but being able to have conversations with everybody and you know, getting a chance
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, totally.
Gene Feldman: to share. And so, but yeah, if you want to be a part of them, you're more than welcome. I never want to inundate you with emails, but you're more than welcome to join us.
Kelly Zamboni: my gosh. No, I'd be honored. Yeah, I think it's great.
Gene Feldman: But then the last thing we usually like to ask our guests is for a final protocol that if there's a piece of advice or something that you can share with somebody that maybe is getting started or listening, what would that one piece of advice would be be?
Kelly Zamboni: you know what, take the risk to learn. There's so much information and it's a deluge, but you know, try to find interest that align and you're intrinsically motivated and you'll get some enjoyment out of it. I mean, for me, I'm a very tactile person. I like to work with my hands and I love working on projects. And so selfish an example, you know, 3D printings become a passion. And if I can marry that into hardware software, then I'm actually starting to learn and I can share it and I can enjoy it. I don't necessarily need to create something from the the bottom up, but I can improve something that someone's already created. I can fork the repo, I can flash the software, I can go through the the the process of my own personal software development lifecycle to add additional features onto that. And that to me, I get excited, you know? So my advice
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: is just take the risk.
Gene Feldman: And I'll say those little Bluetooth speakers that you've been making lately are very, very retroally cool. They are very retroally cool.
Kelly Zamboni: Okay, that's fun. Yes. Yes. They it you know what? And it's amazing. if you would have said create that ten, fifteen years ago, it would have been it would not have been worth the, the the juice wouldn't have been worth the squeeze. But all of those parts are easily available and there's, you know, it's like anything. There's a fifty thousand deep sub of you know, inter people who have the same interests. And so if you know if you're missing a resistor, which I was. Great, someone dropped a link into it and I was able to solve it and fix it. And so there's still a need for human intervention. There will always be a need.
Gene Feldman: absolutely.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: No, awesome. So yeah, so we are at our time. So thank you everybody
Kelly Zamboni: Thanks.
Gene Feldman: for joining. Thank you for listening. Please feel free to share, like, and follow our LinkedIn page, as well as if you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas for future guests, please feel free to
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: share them. we are coming up near the end of the year, so we've got about two more guests that we're gonna have, and then we'll do we'll end up the year with a nice good live system check. so thank you for joining and listening and we really appreciate all the support. So with that guys, I I will say goodnight.
Mark G: Night everybody.
Kelly Zamboni: Thanks guys.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys, for having me on this evening and making time. Yeah, my name is Kelly Zamboni. I work at a really large bank in Kansas City. And I've been in learning development about 15 years in a variety of roles, primarily in the last couple of years working with IT folks, which has really opened my my mind to opportunities outside of just you know traditional training. And so working with developers, solution architects, you know, agileists and the like. And it's been a great experience. plus with the you know, with AI ever present. I've had the opportunity to work on some small emerging tech teams at work and trying to find ways to get AI infiltrated into our work streams.
Gene Feldman: Nice, I like how you use the word infiltrate. It's like you're sneaking in there.
Kelly Zamboni: It's hard. It's not easy. Yeah. you would think that people would adopt it, but we have some low adoption rates. you know, and I think there's some hesitation, right? you know, especially among certain you know, certain constituents. But I mean from an L and D standpoint, you know, our people, especially the people I work with in the ATD Cannes City chapter are hungry for it. And they're looking for ways outside of just like inputting into a large language model and getting output. And so that's really where my focus is right now. how can we leverage some more robust tools to help them in their day-to-day work?
Gene Feldman: No, which I think is great because that's one of the things that we've seen well with all this emerging tech is it constantly I always consider it like a velociraptor, hitting the fence, trying to find different ways to get it in. And over about the past three years, people really realize training and development is a huge opportunity. And for those of us that have been in training and development for years, we want this because we're tired of instructor led training. We're tired of the five minute e learnings that people can go through and write all the answers down and then Take it again. You know, this provides a lot of the key things. So, but, you know, so let me ask, what were the big differences between going from training, I guess, training the general public into now focused into the IT crowds? What were their different priorities? Because I think as we get into this emerging technology conversation, there's always that wall that seems to be up between IT and the rest of the world. But I think if we could find some similarities with them, we c it could actually help us. So I guess what are some of the training things that you've noticed?
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. But so what we notice is that the the the days of such a matter of expertise are gone, right? And so what we try to do is meet people where they're at. And so if you have, you know, a dev who is you know a mature dev who knows a great deal. you know they don't know everything. And so one of the things that we've tried to do is really get away from you know prescribing training and looking at the talent space and measuring skill, skill development. And so we use some applications to self-report. we also use like mentorship and some other you know ways to calibrate And then from there we can you know work with their manager, try to determine with their skill set, you know, where they're at their level of aptitude, and then make recommendations like learning pathways. And so it's really kind of a tailored approach. it's not all that exciting, but you know, it's something that it just works. I mean, it works well. and so whether it's that, communities practice, care programming, things of that nature. We're trying to employ everything versus hey go take a a five day class or hey go to Udemy or Coursera or any of those applications. And so I think it's it's really extremely important to meet our constituents where they're at, the folks that we're working with.
Gene Feldman: Nice. So is are there any tools that you're using now that you've found good progress in or that you've used, I guess, within like the past year? Because I think one of the things that people are listening to our podcast is for ideas for themselves. So if you're have you know meeting up their skill set, what type of tools are you utilizing to help meet them at their skill set? Because I know and the reason why I bring this up is because I know Articulate's really been pushing their new AI platform. talking about how L and D is completely changing. Well, before somebody jumps deep into that realm, are there other tools that have actually been utilized that we've found some success in? 'Cause for me it's virtual speech and the AI avatar. So I'd really love to hear what you what you found.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. Mm-hmm. We have just started working with some of those applic features of those applications, but really what I focus my attention on is cloud code. And it seems to be you know a a different approach. and so what I've been trying to leverage. Is not so much from the coding perspective, but leveraging markdown files to create analysis and then output and dashboards. And so what we're able to do is take a confluence of data and then run it through you know specific logic and then output real-time HTML dashboards for clients. and that's been really effective, whether that is you know internally at work or even externally with the ATD. We've been able to demonstrate and stand it up and say, hey. there's a better way for you to do analysis. It does not require you to necessarily purchase you know, some enterprise tool. and I know that's kind of out of the realm of like, hey, articulate, but you know, for me, that's that's you know the the untapped opportunity. you know, I can now with articulate, I can literally, you know, with with Rise, I can take my storyboard and input it and then it creates the course for me. Right. And then I can make I can dial it in, I can make changes to it. Sure, but am I really measuring the impact and is the training really working versus just you know an attestation pay the person's taking it?
Gene Feldman: No, yeah, because
Dan Meeks: yeah.
Gene Feldman: one of my big concerns always been I love the deep dive metrics that articulate or that e-learnings could always provide. for me, I
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah yeah.
Gene Feldman: always focus on time in question. I love that metric because so many
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: times people have said, Well, I didn't learn it. Well, you spent three seconds on that slide. There's no way you absorbed all the information.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Right.
Gene Feldman: So when you're getting into it, are you finding that these new tools are giving you better data point or even let's say a skills matrix where you can actually say, all right, here's here's a result of of all of our skills, where we're lacking, where we have opportunities,
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: all of that. I guess how does it help with the reporting? Because the reporting's only as good as what we can provide to the leadership teams.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. And to your point, a skills matrix type database, something that can, collect, curate, and export or report, very important. I think what we have to be mindful of is like that human in the loop. And I don't like that phrase, but it's important to be able to triangulate it. So self-reporting data, you know, you know, observation, whether like let's say again peer programming, you know, where we have empirical, and then also you know, like what is the manager observing? If we have those three points connected, typically the the data that we're getting, you know, the output from is much more it's credible, just much more credible, versus saying, hey, you know what, I'm a I'm an expert in my field. Not necessarily, right? we can only assume and it can be subjective.
Dan Meeks: I I like that you narrowed in on the self contained HTML. That's a
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: a a trick I started doing with one of my products. Because what what what
Kelly Zamboni: It's great.
Dan Meeks: I've happened what I've seen historically is that you you collect all this data and then you need a whole nother program just to load the data to display it. But
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Dan Meeks: if you can take that email, send it either on a on a disk or thumb drive or an email, then that thing always exists and it's able to move around. So yeah, interesting that you
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. It's I
Dan Meeks: have that.
Kelly Zamboni: it yeah, it's it's actually really it's great. we can create something that's engaging, interactive, that it can save your local memory, right? So bar in you clearing out your browser, don't do that. So, but other than that, it's something that we can easily stand up for someone and and at a low cost. I mean, you know, if you could do it at work and you have an account paid for, great. If not, twenty dollars a month. Yeah, to get access to clawed code is pretty inexpensive.
Gene Feldman: So how are you how are you finding clocks? I know because one of the conversations that we always bring up on here is the different AI tools, as as the new ones, and I guess, you know, because you were you said you work with a banking institution without getting into it, but banking has a lot of regulations, a lot of Yeah. So how are what's that like encountering AI with that type of amount of restrictions? do you have like a claw a closed, clawed environment or
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. It's very restrictive. Yeah. Can't get into the too many of the details, but I can say that a lot of my ex
Gene Feldman: Completely understand.
Kelly Zamboni: yeah, totally. My experience really started with just my home lab or my home computer, right? And you know, I was fortunate enough to work with some developers who were really into AI well before you know, it is currently. And they needed it for training. They're like, hey, would you make some training videos? Which isn't my next I'm like, okay, great. Yeah, I can scan up some training videos for you. And that's where I got my interest. And so probably in the last couple of years, really just working on my own, you know, whether it be you know, what is it his name? Matt Peacock, I think, or you know, looking at others out in the industry, just random videos. I'm a big Reddit fan, so that you know, as far as like subreddits. So you know, and looking for I'm a pragmatist, so just looking for ways that I can use it and leverage it and teach it. And so that's where you know the MB files have been you know interesting because again, I can do it all locally. There's no barrier to entry per se. right. I mean, I can do it, I can create it, doesn't require a full stack application. in order to create something
Gene Feldman: Nice. So w how has the how has the banking institution responded to it as far as the culture? Are they perceiving this as a value add, as hesitation?
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's a I think they are banking as a whole, finance as a whole is much more progressive than you you would think. because some of these tools can be leveraged, so you're always gonna have code reviews, you're always gonna have, those know, functionaries of the software development lifecycle in order to ensure that you're not having some like sideways injection. and so very open to it. It's just a very slow adoption, right? And so I think that's very characteristic of training professionals. if I if you go to a conference, you know, you have folks that are just, you know, they're living AI every day. And you have folks who are just, you know, getting in and they're like, you know, I'm just learning how to prompt. And like for me, prompt is like, you know, 2023, right? And I'm not an expert at all, but I think folks need to really look in and find out what they can how they can leverage other tools. other than just large language models.
Gene Feldman: no, I agree. But one of the things that makes it nice is so for those of us that have been in and in enterprises outside of banking, one of our biggest barriers is our finance people. Because, it they're watching
Kelly Zamboni: yeah.
Gene Feldman: every cent, they're watching every dollar. But for me, if I'm sitting here and thinking, okay, well, banking likes it and they're much more accountable to money than than our finance people,
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: that there could be this could be a I don't want to say a conversational argumentative point, but could be something that could support for those that are in enterprises to know that banking's actually looking at something like this.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And I mean I I think you know, just doing the research and looking at, you know, like who's utilizing it. I mean, there's a whole host of you know, industry experts. And you know, folks in banking finance that are leveraging construction's another, you know, huge area. where folks are leveraging AI in a multitude of ways. And so I just think it's finding the creative niche and you know, distinguishing yourself. you know, it it it's I mean, it's just I don't know. For me it's a force multiplier and it's opening up a lot of opportunities where there would have been a steep learning curve before and you have a short attention span, Gene. So for me it's great. I can actually, work on a project, learn something, do my own personal retro and be like, okay, great. pragmatist, how can I use this or leverage this? And going back to the HTML, it's just it's a it's a win. I can create an HTML presentation, I can capture data in real time, and have it saved. And there's just a whole host of things that you can do outside of just traditional training methodology or training, you know, executables or delivery.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. one of the things though that always I that kinda runs because I know you said, we don't need subject matter experts or anything like that, but I sit here and go,
Kelly Zamboni: One
Gene Feldman: AI is only as good as the information that's that's been inputted. And, you
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: know, I've had professors that when I was in the school of education, I know things
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: they shared with me are not in AI anywhere, but they have they have served my career well
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: in those little tidbits. And so That's where I think I think for me it's you don't need to be a subject matter in what you're teaching, but you still need to have some type of expertise on training in and of itself to ensure that the AI is presenting it in that way. Does that make sense?
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. No, totally, I agree. And you know, I don't want to deviate from, you know, like the Addy model or other learning models when I'm, you know, working with internal or external clients. I'm still gonna follow the same methodologies. I'm just gonna leverage AI, you know, and especially large language models to help me you know, meet their need much quicker.
Gene Feldman: I no, I agree. I sit there and go back. I remember the first time I was asked before audio were ever in e learnings and all of a sudden people
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: were like, We need an audio track. We need somebody to talk while it's
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: going. Okay, let this give me six months. Let me learn Audacity. Let me learn how to do vocal recordings, and I'll get back to you on that.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Love audacity. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: Whereas now, we use Riverside for this. It's it
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: It makes it so easy to where I can focus on the conversation and the content rather than focusing on the functionality of
Kelly Zamboni: Exactly. And that's how I always look at how do you value your time? Right. I mean, I only have so much time in the day. And at my current age, I don't plan on I had someone asked me, Do you want to be a developer? I'm like, and maybe in in a prior life, I would love to have gone back to school and done something like that. But now I'm just like, you know what? I try to align interests and hobbies that give me satisfaction. And so like I'm literally learning all kinds of stuff. Like I bought this off of AliExpress. It's a simple ESP thirty two, non touch robot and I learned how to install the Hermes AI agent on it. And so now I can, press it and ask it questions from Beep Seek. Like if you would have asked me to do that a couple of years ago, I'd be like, No, I can't. No. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: Well, I think it also helps to know that the tools are getting easier for us. Cause,
Kelly Zamboni: Yes.
Gene Feldman: you know, for years that was one of my biggest feedbacks to like the Unity team and a lot of the other teams was we I I love all the functionality you guys are adding to this, but we need a UI that enables anybody to be
Kelly Zamboni: Mm.
Gene Feldman: able to do this. without having all that background experience. meshy AI, I still think is way ahead of its time. And hopefully it doesn't get passed up. I
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Right.
Gene Feldman: know I could be I could be a a I I could that could be a very hot topic for some people, but the thing is is that these tools are getting to where we don't need to be a specialist at everything anymore. We can be a specialist in what we're doing and use the tools to help us. I'll go
Kelly Zamboni: No, no,
Dan Meeks: Well, I hate I hate having to spend half my day on Stack Overflow and trying to trying to solve a very simple question. but you know, just going through either mostly threads that have only like one person asking the same exact question that I have, which is the most frustrating. But the ones that really you boil down for like ten minutes
Kelly Zamboni: no.
Dan Meeks: trying to follow the logic, and then someone just gives up and says you need a computer science degree.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Mark G: Well, just to add to that, right? I'm gonna date
Dan Meeks: Yeah. Don't miss those days.
Mark G: myself of the early era of Unity where, to do anything in Unity, the best place to go is actually their forum because it was actually a real community. And it was a case where, you could go to their forum and be like, I wanna find an example of da da da, right? And then you just search for that topic and all of sudden somebody has a project posted. of exactly what you wanted, right? Now it's totally different. It's a case of it's like you just gotta deal with the aspect of there's no code maintenance compared to the good old days, but yeah, to your point, right? It's more about doing it instead of
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark G: learning to do it.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. And I think that's extremely important. So when we look at training in 2026, for me it's more about experiential, right?
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: I I need to again meet people where they're at, give them opportunities to learn in order to fail and in a safe place and then learn something from that. the days of I I remember years ago, s when I started training in a call center and we would print off, these binders of, you know, every state and their insurance. And that was it. Right? It was a mainframe application. We were in a classroom for eight hours a day, literally for three months. Can you imagine doing that now? It wouldn't happen, you know, for people in operations.
Dan Meeks: Well, Kel Kelly, you you you're touching on something that I'm I'm kinda curious about. You you've mentioned a couple of times meeting people where they're at. But
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: how do you maintain standards? Like s sometimes you got somebody that's just a
Kelly Zamboni: That's fair.
Dan Meeks: box of rocks and you know, their uncle's the boss and you gotta flunk unfortunately.
Kelly Zamboni: you that this is a great, that's a great point. I I don't I think it's again more of a consultative approach. sometimes it just that happens. you know, we don't, at least from my experience, which just want to perform work to do it. You know, we want to make sure that we're we're adding value, delivering value that's measurable. you know, I can create training, but it might be a performance issue. And how do we address that? And even with the headbutting, I think at the end of the day. the client respects it and just have a better experience. And they keep coming back.
Dan Meeks: Okay. Well and and also the on the s other side of that is having a consistent standard that that's applied to everybody. So you know that everybody got a fair shake. Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: Definitely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there are ways the yeah, there are ways to to implement, you know, fair standards or best practices, definitely.
Gene Feldman: Well, I think it also helps that because I assume because of the requirements, a lot of your trainings are mandatory. that they have to do it. And that I think that also helps sometimes too, because I I've been in a couple of places where the training cannot be used for job performance. So whether they're c whether they complete it or not is it it was great if they did, but not there was no accountability
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: on the tail end. Whereas if all your course if a lot of your courses are mandatory. that really that replaces that intrinsic motivation we're hoping the learners actually
Kelly Zamboni: Totally.
Gene Feldman: gain.
Kelly Zamboni: No, we used to work, I used to work at a civil engineering firm. And for boots to be on the ground, for somebody to go onto a job site, they had to complete X amount of safety training. Right. And it was it was just that. It was a completion report in an LMS. And it didn't measure if the person really was able to apply it. there's no way to do that without working in conjunction with the subject matter experts, right? Like safety. being on site, project lead. So there's some assumptions being made.
Mark G: one question I'd have is a lot of I work for a big brown company, right? So a lot of our standards are really actually based on our culture, right? Last two years they may not be as true, but generally the culture of the enterprise generally defines a lot of the direction you're given for standards. Was that sort s sort of the same feel for where you were in finance or no?
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right. Definitely. I think a lot of it's driven, you know, like key performance indicators, you know, like you said from the top strategy. we are beholden to a certain set of standards to deliver value that seems to be like ringing in my ear, you know, very corporate, deliver value. How are you measuring effectiveness? And so that's always something that we think about as far as a standard. So if I am in an engagement and I cannot make that happen, I probably won't perform the work, right? So that is that is a that is a measure of you know, will we engage with the client? If we can't we're just we we're not gonna do it if we can't measure success.
Mark G: So when you do engage with the client, do you measure part of that value based on the percentage of impact that you are doing to the customer?
Kelly Zamboni: yeah, and so that's a great question. So one of the characteristics of measurement that we'll use is like a baseline. So case in point, you know, we will baseline their level of skills, go through the training, and then we will reevaluate at the end and see if there's any improvement. you know, and typically using some sort of Likert scale, you know, predefined questions that we've worked with the subject matter experts with. And that seems to be quite powerful because Yeah, we're we're we're getting buy in from the stakeholders, right? We're working with them to define what that looks like, but then we're doing all the heavy lifting for them, right? and we're also helping define the training and provide the reporting at the on the back end. Yeah, yeah. It sounds cool, maybe not.
Mark G: Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's L and D nerdness. It's awesome. Yeah,
Gene Feldman: Well, I think to those of us in training and development. Yeah.
Mark G: yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: Is there in nerdness in L and D? I hope so.
Gene Feldman: I think so, 'cause especially when you're talking about Addy. So for those of you that aren't in the
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: training space, Addy is our scrum method, for lack of a better analogy. It it's how what?
Kelly Zamboni: Yes. It's waterfallish, don't you think? In a way. It's like waterf more like waterfall.
Mark G: Very well. Well everything's waterfall. Come on.
Kelly Zamboni: It is waterfall.
Dan Meeks: Well well, I got a question. It it
Gene Feldman: yeah.
Dan Meeks: is there is there a hierarchy of of knowledge that should be retained? Coming coming from my background, if you didn't know safety stuff, that's what really dinged ya. So if you didn't know where all the fire extinguishers were on the aircraft, the crash axes, if if you got that run wrong, you're you're done, I don't
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Yeah. Right.
Dan Meeks: know if that's the same kind of level or or if there's the same kind of hierarchy of you really need to know this stuff. If you don't
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Meeks: then there's something really off yeah. You know.
Kelly Zamboni: There's sometimes a a correlation like Maslow's right, but that's that's where we start getting into you less corporate and more academia. you know, typically we're looking at what's called a blooms taxonomy. So we're creating learning objectives based on you know, is this just like knowledge comprehension? All right, this is the the geek and the nerd Ben diagram, right? And learning somewhere in there. where you're you're looking at, you know, what are the objective? What are you trying to accomplish? What, you know, is it something that is just you know comprehension or it's something that someone has to actually act on. and then from there we're gonna start to go through I tend to go through a more iterative process and look at an MVP. So what are you trying to accomplish? Objectives, start working to subject matter experts, excuse me, to create the training and then try to deliver an MVP. And that might be foreign to them, but that way, we position it as okay, great. You talked about maintenance. Well, a year or two years from now, we can make changes to it and we can modify it, based on you're encountering in, the next fiscal year.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, and I've also found some really good success besides the the the names the name drops that you put in, Kelly, which I I completely agree. I am a I am a Blooms fanatic. but
Kelly Zamboni: Totally. Love it.
Gene Feldman: Eric Erickson's psychosocial development, of looking
Kelly Zamboni: Mm.
Gene Feldman: at what it because to me I think that helps us with the generations, of looking where they are in that level of of social development, because that can give us a read on that how that generation's gonna respond. You know, because you know, one of the things as we start which I think is great about these tr using these tools is okay, if I know I've got half the class is Gen X, the other half is I don't want to say millennial because people get upset with that, but when the other half's millennial, okay, that I could potentially use the tools to create two learning paths based on, and this kind of goes back to your meeting the student, that what would have taken me days to and not even think about trying to create two courses out of it.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Correct.
Gene Feldman: that I could actually now create two that are tailored to those ty how those generations respond to that information.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, it's all about context. So if I was going to deliver a storyboard, I could do that in a large language model, making sure that's contextually accurate, in my in my prompt. I typically will do is just brain dump into it and have it create the prompt and then build off of that and have it create a storyboard and then you know provide it to a client and say, Hey, you know what, let's start from here. And they're they're they're stunned. They're like, my gosh, this is great. Because in their mind, they're like, we just need to get this out the door, right? We just need to get this done and get it into whatever tool that they're using, traditionally LMS, but not always, right? And they want to be able to track it. And having the conversation that we could do, multiple you know, different trainings like you said, pathway built it in. If it's inarticulate, you can you can create that. And you know, I've done stuff like that before for different domains. if a person is a just an end user versus an admin, and they do some pretest and then, they'll based on how they've tested, go into their perspective you know, learning pathway.
Gene Feldman: Nice. Yeah, I I've done a little experimentation
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: trying to do it, trying to break out the different learning styles. So whether they're visual, auditory, and try to try to give a course
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: that would really give address them. But even going back to something that you said too, creating the experience, that we are the result of the YouTube learning generation.
Kelly Zamboni: Totally.
Gene Feldman: that we can go watch a video and we learn as we go. You know, it's very much the do it yourself generation.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: I guess is the best way to put it.
Kelly Zamboni: So I so I learned to change my tire when it blew, my dad wasn't around, so I'm literally out there with YouTube and my early iPhone, learning how to take the lug bounce off. and I feel like a complete, Brian, never,
Dan Meeks: Yeah, I can never hold the flashlight just right. So I I didn't learn a lot either, so
Gene Feldman: Well, you you I learned a very extensive catalogue of vulgar words. That's what I learned.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: me too. Yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: And unfortunately, I have passed that on to my children and I told them, I'm like, this it this is the legacy that you must now carry on.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. I love that. It's like a Christmas story. The furnace is blowing, you know, and you share all the vulgar words.
Gene Feldman: But it well, it really is. think about how we all grew up. majority of us on the call are all Gen X. And Kelly, you and I had the same education system. You
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Totally.
Gene Feldman: know, at the time that if we had a question, we didn't we all we had to go to was Encyclopedia Britannica. That was it.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. I remember going I remember going to the library and they had these pull-out drawers where they the librarians would cut out quotes or information based on certain subjects. I would spend hours just spinning my wheels. And I I'm a mildly dyslexic. So that was like a nightmare for me. And so AI and all of these tools that have come out have just been amazing. I'm like If I had this when I was in school, I would have definitely been much further along.
Gene Feldman: no, I I I would agree with you on that. I I would my social calendar would not have a j upset my school calendar. But now getting with AI, let's let's talk a little about this because with entering development right now we've been talking about all the strengths about AI. And over
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: the past couple weeks there's been a couple interesting conversations that have been happening with AI, and I I would love to kind of pose it to the group and kind of get as we're talking about this, because I don't want people to listen and say, yeah, that's all no, we we try to look at everything very practical and pragmatic. So as we're talking about all this beauty of AI, we're starting to see though that it you know, that people are that are on the job hunt because of all the issues that have been going on, well, because of Black October is I think what they're referring it to it now in the tech world.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: People are using AI to write their resumes and HR firms and HR teams are using AI to accept those resumes. So we're having a this AI conundrum happening, you
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: know, and as much as we want to say, okay, it helps. So as and reason why I'm getting into this is as you're using AI, what are some of the things that you look for from the AI report out to make sure that it's You're not just trusting it at face value. Does that make sense?
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah. No, totally. hallucinations are real, right?
Gene Feldman: 'Cause I hate to say it 'cause I think some peop I think some people are putting their job information and just accepting whatever AI gives them and starting to send it to employers. And employers are
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: just trusting whatever the AI. So I guess the trust factor with AI, how
Kelly Zamboni: People are doing that in education. I have a friend that teaches, interesting when you mentioned that, an OD organizational development course. And we were talking about that today, that you know she's seen you know more students submit work that is 100% generated by AI, giving no attribution to it, not mentioning it at all, and then they get caught and then given opportunities to come clean and they don't. Or they're like, well, I was just using to, coach or scrub. And so I I I think that it's important that you know you still have humans in the loop and that you leverage your critical thinking. I can't overstate that enough. you know, it yes, I use I I don't remember all the my phone numbers and yes that I use Google or you know maps, any any map the app as a on on my phone to get to the end destination, but I'm still aware of my surroundings and have a basic understanding of where I'm going. and I try to map it out. And so credibility is extremely important. and so for me, you know, I'm gonna fact check, I'll go, I'll question AI because, you know, large language models are just they are predictive in nature. They're trying to give me the answer that they think I want and not necessarily need. And so it's important to perform your due diligence.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. And I think also on the flip side of that too is don't always assume it's AI. And the reason why
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: I give that is I'll actually give a scenario. So I recently had met with an employer for a potential role. And they ended up passing over me, but one of the feedback items they give is they they they thought they are like we we suspect AI coaching was used during the conversation. I've been in training and development for twenty five plus years. this what I s I'm going to use the buzz buzzwords because I was around when they were created, And so we also have to be careful that when you're talking to somebody with a lot of experience, don't assume it's also AI. It could be that what what they've said is what was put into the language model in the first place.
Kelly Zamboni: No correct. And I think that's important that there's it's such a large amount of AI slot. And it you know, people are questioning it, whether it be media, you know, whether it be you know, me looking at LinkedIn Posts and I'm like, Okay, obviously that by AI, there's a hyphen, right? every other sentence, there's just some characteristics. so I think people need to have much more situational awareness nowadays and just be cautious. It's not all real.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. 'cause I know I always point out that the word intersection, which is not a normal
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: word in our vocabulary, you see that, But yet we have Lucky who attends who's part of the Neon protocol team. And I've noticed that since we've started calling it out, he started he started using the word intersection in his daily speech to counteract it. And so, but yeah, I mean, and like we know and Laura Lee pointed out a couple weeks ago that if you see a fireplace in an image More than likely that was AI derivative because for some reason AI likes to put fireplaces and everything. You know.
Kelly Zamboni: you have to be aware. I did a a simple video in Gemini recently. it it's great for creating media, Gemini Pro, and but there were certain elements of the video that I'm like, it just assumed, right? And I didn't put a lot of context into it in order to produce the media I was looking for. And this is just a ten second video. Quite realistic, by the way. It's amazing. Crazy.
Gene Feldman: some of the stuff they're doing, I have to give my hats off to the people that are doing these Star Wars forbidden the lost stories
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: of Luke Skywalker. I am thrilled by watching them. but yet you even have which Neon Protocol, we gotta talk about the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart, because you know what, Star Trek, I think to all of us it holds a very special place for a lot of us. you know, us tech nerds, but you know, even Marvel has come out and said that the character is now officially retired.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: They will not use AI to recreate Patrick Stewart in any shape or form. And you know what? I I I I appreciate that because he was the character. He will, I mean, we all we all all of us grew up with him. You know, of course,
Kelly Zamboni: Definitely. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: I still remember him from Excalibur and absolutely loved him in it.
Kelly Zamboni: And that's an important thing. I think people are gonna really want authenticity real and you're gonna see, you know, a return to, you know, touching the earth, touching the grass, just a I mean, for reality. it's it reminds me a lot of during the pandemic where we would just go walking around the lake, here in Kansas City was great, no media, the the earth was healing, all that stuff if you want to call it that. But just a return to to being around people, sentient beings.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. You know, I mean, I can actually honestly see this kind of returning some instructor led training back because j I mean, the amount yeah,
Kelly Zamboni: It's interesting you mentioned that. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: I mean, because just the amount of information that an instructor is able to get through nonverbal communication of their class
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: is unbelievable as far as comprehension and understanding. That, you know, sometimes they may not have the right answer, but the way they're explaining it, they are so close that just to tell
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: them they're wrong. Would defeat the purpose. Let's get them to that
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: finish line.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. And I think it's a go ahead. Yeah.
Dan Meeks: Well, also it's just keeping the students awake. I when
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Dan Meeks: I taught my my my schooling was a comedy act. So I d I don't know if an AI can really pull off the jokes or not, but
Kelly Zamboni: It can't, not really, no.
Mark G: Well, and also to the point of when you're teaching new students, right? The biggest thing from my days of just software development and game development, right? It's just just finish the damn project, right? How many students don't? They go ninety percent of the way and then they're like, Yeah, no, I gotta get back to work and you know, blah blah blah blah I'm like, you're totally missing that ten percent rush of completion of what you're trying to do, which is like the whole point of the course.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. I mean, for me it's it was always the critical thinking, you know, of cause an AI can push you so far, but eventually it's gonna take you to the next step. Whereas, you know, Kelly and I had a teacher, his name was Mr. Yuri, and I mean he was our history teacher. His favorite question was why? That was his favor and I got to actually do some of my student teaching with him. And so I got to spend a semester picking his brain. And he's like, that's he's like, yeah, I remember what was Socrates' magic. He asked why. You know, and that's what we do by asking why. And to me, it served me so great because it helped me understand the root cause analysis, the five Y bro, all the coaching methodologies that it really forces this the learner to think critically, and the teacher it now becomes the the true facilitator.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Definitely.
Gene Feldman: Of gaining the knowledge rather than facilitating the class, if that makes sense.
Kelly Zamboni: We're still humans and we need human connection and you know and that's great and that's important to remember that you know during training. We're seeing people, especially as return to office, it has become more prevalent, wanting to meet in person. Like I'll have I'll have people, you know, you know, you know, dating myself at 20 years my junior like, hey, let's go meet. I'm like, really? You know, I'm like, in person? They're like, Yeah. I'm like, great. You know, I mean it's just you know, it it
Gene Feldman: Ha ha ha.
Kelly Zamboni: became so customary just to be like teams call. Great. Where are you? I'm in the aisle next to you. okay. Yeah, and so you know, working from home is fantastic, you know, it it it affords a lot of flexibility. But there's something about yeah, that human connection that that AI can't replace.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. Well, there was a study earlier this year that they were talking about how not saying Gen X failed, but because we were so excited to be able to work from home, we didn't have to go anywhere, we didn't have to do anything. But without us in the office, how are the younger generations going to learn that social etiquette or that work culture that we always refer back to? the things that aren't trained in the class, you know, that all right, if
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: you see this person storming down the hallway. Walk the other way. those little key pieces. As
Kelly Zamboni: Right. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: much as I hate water cooler talk, they are essential for some workplaces because they give
Kelly Zamboni: Mm. Definitely.
Gene Feldman: that break, that c that communication avenue.
Kelly Zamboni: even clusters,
Mark G: Well I
Kelly Zamboni: people being around, making sure that they're working in squads or quadrants. the abilities to work, pods,
Mark G: Mm. Pods or whatever it is, yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: yes.
Mark G: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and to that point too, also, my XR lab is also known to be what we call the the water cooler now. Where people like joke and they're like, Where's the
Kelly Zamboni: Hey.
Mark G: Keggerator? Because, you know, they're coming into the lab 'cause they're like, I need to de-stress. Give me, you know, VR golf. Give me, you know, something. And I'm like, I'm like, here you go, dude. Sit down in that chair over there. Just relax. Let it go, you know?
Kelly Zamboni: Okay, that's awesome.
Mark G: 'cause yeah, there's just so much pressure right now. shareholders key and, you know, let's forget about the employee that actually creates the value. It's kind of that mantra, you know, so that's the thing, is that now it's we're back in
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Mark G: the office and those mantras have less value because, hey, you know, who's really doing the work? It's the employee, it's the person. Not the, you know, statistical dashboard that was generated by
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark G: AI that Anyone could, huh?
Kelly Zamboni: Right. That and I I think it's important. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. Because we can have AI generated, but nobody can interpret the information. And I
Mark G: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: think that's where the human element comes into it is we, for me, I speak in analogies. That's how I get people to understand and I interpret that whatever AI came out with into something that makes it relevant. It's we're talking all learning learning buzzwords. It's the wiffle. What's in it for me? Which is one of the most vital things for any learner to have.
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's basic stuff. I mean, when you look at like persona-based learning, and I mean this in the sense of that you have three types of learners. You know, folks that learn because they want to, you know, they're just like intrinsically motivated. Folks that do because, you know, it's changing. So you know, new you know, new software, for example, and then You have folks that have no desire to learn and this is what they do and this is all they're going to do. And the there's a tendency to focus on that smaller percentage and really we need to, hone our skills and invest in the folks that have a desire to learn or a pension to learn as things change, you know, they're what's it for me, right? Okay, I get it. You know, it's changing, let's
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: start adopting.
Gene Feldman: But it's also that parent conundrum too, that you're the kid the squeaky wheel the squeaky kid or the squeaky wheel gets all the attention. The good kid gets forgotten in in the mix of things. You know,
Kelly Zamboni: Right. totally. Totally.
Gene Feldman: and like I've always found that, you know, to you know, for that type of training, that's where that's one of the things where I do like AI and why I've I've really been
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: zoning in on the whole AI avatar simulations because it can really account to anybody. All all they have to do is go in and start the conversation and they'll they can learn whatever they want. They actually take ownership of that type
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: of of their training.
Kelly Zamboni: And I think you're gonna see a move. I've seen people do it. I don't know how successful it's been, but moving away from articulating others and making web based training, you know, the question of like hosting it, you know, that's that's you know, I'm I'm not really sure how they're gonna host it, but there's opportunities for learning designers, if you want to call them that, or instructional designers, whatever, to make a much better product a much more polished product that's engaging with the tools that are are you know readily available.
Gene Feldman: yeah, I've been seeing the new title of Learning Experience Manager rather than training and development manager.
Kelly Zamboni: That's different.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, so it's it it that whole trend of going to that experiential and the experience. Well, and for those of us that that
Kelly Zamboni: ja
Gene Feldman: don't have the background in it for our listener, the true the true definition of learning, I'm gonna drop I'm gonna drop a ton of buzzwords right now, but is any change of behavior that results directly from experience? That is what lear that is the definition of learning. And so by creating experiences, that's how we create those learning opportunities. And you know, I I think that's where that where this technology is, it's is going to be able to give us those opportunities because
Kelly Zamboni: Okay.
Gene Feldman: like for me, you know, I I always go back to the the hollow deck. Imagine being able to put somebody in an environment that didn't require any travel, didn't require this, and that could
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: actually be catered to that learning experience that could put actual digital simulator.
Kelly Zamboni: I think it would be amazing. And, you
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: know, a tailor go ahead, I didn't mean yeah, yeah.
Gene Feldman: No, I was just gonna agree with you.
Kelly Zamboni: Not at all. think it's great. I to your point, I I can see less enterprise, wide training, and much more tailored approaches because the barriers to entry are being broken down. And, you know, if folks can learn, you know, how to, you know, there's a lot of AI tools, but the strong will survive. And when the dust settles, what you're gonna see is you know, it I think you know a divergence of skill sets and people need to find out, you know. what that looks like for me. It's been using Clog Code to enhance, my experiences and find different ways to leverage it. you know, at home and, you know, we been working with the ATD Kansas City and finding ways to demonstrate how we can stand it up and, you know, you know educate our our learning professionals that it's not taboo. You just have to find creative ways to use it.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. And you never know what's gonna happen with, w I we were talking before the call, about some of these code these jailbreaked software programs that AI has been doing. imagine
Kelly Zamboni: Mm
Gene Feldman: somebody jailbreaks the mighty articulate and you know, now all of a sudden there's this homegrown entity that can do some of the things that we wish articulate could have done without the price tag. Yeah, I I I I'm not yeah, I'm
Kelly Zamboni: It'll be interesting, yeah.
Gene Feldman: not dismissing what articulate does. Articulate
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-mm.
Gene Feldman: It it's it's been our bread and butter in training and development for years. But, you know, it's it is one of those established software companies that it does have the the price tag that comes with the software matches the value of the software, I think is the best way to put it. But, you know, I'm at
Kelly Zamboni: Right, right. Yes. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And they're changing their value crop, they're they are switching their business model to focus on subject matter experts, where it used to be the instructional designer. Now it's folks that okay, great, anybody can use it, right? In theory.
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: So with the AI functionality built in, you know, you can take that institutional knowledge and create training and then modify it on the back end.
Gene Feldman: which I think is great. for me, I think where I think it the most value is assessment writing. Because for the
Kelly Zamboni: totally. Overlooks.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, because when you write assessments yourselves, you have to monitor your bias so much
Kelly Zamboni: Mm.
Gene Feldman: and then you and then randomizing the answers is always a a challenge. And I and for me I've always hated multiple choice questions because I
Kelly Zamboni: I do too.
Gene Feldman: hate the rule that okay, two are completely obvious. And two are so close they're bound to make a mistake. I think it's setting them up for failure when you just give the four various options that it could be. And I've got
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, yeah. And I don't I it if they're not using it to measure anything and just to, you know, a lot of times I've seen with online training is that they add that, you know, this called skills reinforcement, the multiple choice after a section, just to do it, versus are they using that data to actually measure, you know, retention or measure capability? And many times, you know, we're not. And that's a failure on our part.
Gene Feldman: Well yeah, and I also hate, when you in the old days when you'd have your those type of check your understandings, that if they got it wrong, you just you just gave them
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Yeah, attestations. Okay.
Gene Feldman: a little blurp of what was wrong rather than, you
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: know what, if they got the entire check your understanding wrong, let's take them back to the beginning
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: and present it a different way. Or are we really solving the pro gaps as we're identifying them? You
Kelly Zamboni: It is.
Gene Feldman: know, rather than having a full assessment because, you know, I mean, some people could just be Terrible assessment takers.
Kelly Zamboni: totally. there's a whole community of neurodivergent. It's an old different topic, but just if just because you're not a good test taker, doesn't mean you're incapable. it's just unfortunately sometimes on it it's a bad rap, but online training is just one component at 10%. we're you know, we use a a 10, 20, 70% learning model. Very simple. Ten is you know, typically traditional training. you know, the the twenty percent is more social and then seventy the bulk of it is experiential. And that's where that tailored approach that comes in, working with a client to find out what their needs are to develop a tailored approach. But traditionally it's taken a lot of effort, like so with the new tools that reduces that that labor and we can we can drive better results.
Gene Feldman: Nice. So let me ask you a question. This is hypothetical, but kind of
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: saying I love your take on it. See as we're talking about, you know, the human interaction of this or that. So let's say, and for those that may encounter this, AI gives you the the the course, you know, based on your prompting. The customer loves it. However, you're looking at going, you know what? The order something's not fitting with this scenario. What could be the best approach to disagreeing with AI in a way that will not interfere with the confidence that the customer may have on the output?
Kelly Zamboni: if I was going to approach that, I would want to look for other sources to you know sort I'm looking for. I was going to do it personally.
Mark G: So so so you're looking for the historical, the historical methods or the historical way of how they would do something?
Kelly Zamboni: Know would I'm I'm looking for traditional ways to justify my position, right? Where there's credibility. And so, if I look at training, for example, and and safety training, which is significant, there's a lot of bodies or institutions that are accredited, so I could reference them, right? And so that would be one way to go about it. Same thing with even learning development, I could reference the ADD, ATD. there's the ODN, the organizational development network, there's shroom for HR professionals. There's a lot of white papers that they produce that can justify that position. and again, you know, you don't want to just give it to AI because then that's undermining your credibility. I feel like I said credibility like a like fifty times, but that's the important piece because you know whether it's internal And I'm working at a large enterprise or I'm a I'm a consultant with my own business, I want repeat business down the line, right? And you know, if I if I create a learning intervention and it and it it's it's not credible and they're not gonna come back. Right.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, but I think credibility, I think, is at the heart of this because for me, it took us years to get over it. It's on the internet, so it must be true. How long is it gonna take us to overcome AI said so so it must be true?
Kelly Zamboni: I e when when Michael Jackson unfortunately, when he he died, I remember this person came up to me and they're like, T Z reported years ago, you know, Michael Jackson died. I'm like, T Z is not a credible source. I go was it on CNN? And it's just like, I don't know. Lo and behold, I get home, TMZ reported it and it was you know, is it was authentic source, you know, and I and you know, I had to, you know, come back the next day and I'm like, you're correct in the same face and come back and and just be like, you know what, you're right. So credibility has morphed and and evolved and matured. And just because it's on on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, does it's it's credible, it still requires you know, personal research to validate. Mm-hmm. Definitely.
Gene Feldman: I look at it r it requires the critical thinking of the end user. It which I think is one of the things that we we forget about this in the ease of it, because if it's us to make our life easy, okay, if I've gotta stop what I'm doing and think critically about something for ten minutes, I know that's brain power that's just gonna give me a headache. but
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right.
Gene Feldman: I think that's a vital part of the process that can that can't be excluded because if you if you constantly put information out that's wrong, you're going to lose that credibility where people are just going to they'll listen to you, they'll humor you, but they don't care. And at
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Totally. Right. Correct.
Gene Feldman: an emplo as a trainer in an organization, that is to me the the worst case scenario because you're
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: supposed to be the one person that that Warforce can come to to answer the question. You are a lack of a better thing, you are
Kelly Zamboni: Right.
Gene Feldman: the Encyclopedia Galactica. You are the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for them.
Kelly Zamboni: I never thought about that. I'll be using that tomorrow. Hopefully that's not trademark. But I I mean, I also think it it it it's a matter of cost center, right? I mean, most training shops are for the most part, you know, a nice to have. And you know, we are not revenue generating unless you're in like some sort of like enablement position. But you know, knowing that that's why I say we have to justify the work that we're doing and not just do any jobs or perform any requests that come our way.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. As well as we need to have those conversations, not trust just trust AI. even when I, started using AI, I still like having those conversations of let's go
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: through the time, the place, and the audience. Those are there are several things that we need to talk about because that will directly impact which direction we're gonna we're gonna go with from there. And I
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right.
Gene Feldman: I don't think AI can always AI is going again, predict what we've done in the past, but
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Right. Discomfort.
Gene Feldman: If we've tried doing instructor led six times and it's never worked, why even entertain a conversation to do instructor led again? You know, let's move to something different.
Kelly Zamboni: Right. people get comfortable and complacent and sometimes they want you to think outside the box within the walls of that institution. And going back to, the point of culture sometimes dictates those standards. It's our job to, work with them and sometimes we have to repeat ourselves multitude of times. But if we're producing really quality if we're producing quality work that you know demonstrates you know change can't happen, that's measurable. Yeah, we're getting less anecdotal but more empirical evidence, then it builds reputational gains.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. Yeah, 'cause I yeah, I agree with you. 'Cause I often said we're trying to quantify the unquantifiable. We're trying
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: to measure how people learn and they they learn in such different variations.
Kelly Zamboni: I have I have yet mastered that from a knowledge, standpoint. so if you learn, let me know if you find your way.
Gene Feldman: I I I think we're I we're 2,000 years deep into it from Socrates. I think we're still trying to figure it out.
Kelly Zamboni: That's true.
Gene Feldman: You know, but yeah, it's how do we do it? I mean, for me, the metric I've always I've always had great luck with the speed to proficiency because the well the number one task for training development that we that falls on all of our shoulders all the time is onboarding. So can we show that we can get them up to speed faster with greater confidence?
Kelly Zamboni: Hmm, there you go.
Gene Feldman: So, but yeah, and if if you're listening and you have a great idea on this, please put it in the in the LinkedIn, share it with us. we would love to hear about it. So, we are getting near the end. So, Kelly, first off, thank you so much for joining. This has been a blast. So, and K and
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.
Gene Feldman: Kelly's been one of our biggest supporters since we started. So, it's so great getting a chance to have you on on.
Kelly Zamboni: Thank you.
Gene Feldman: A chair is always open for you. So as we have our vital
Kelly Zamboni: I appreciate it.
Gene Feldman: our sit live system checks, we'll set we send invites to all of our past guests. As well as if there's anything new that you want to share or you just want to be like Dan and just join every call and live with us from now on, you're more than welcome. Yeah. I I
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm. Dude, I would love that. I've learned I've learned that I have much to learn. And that's the great thing, I think, you know, from a learning perspective is that take a risk. You know what it might be intimidating. and you three are on some level intimidating to this learning professional because you could just you are. I'm like, I have a lot to learn. And that's the great thing about technology. There's always opportunities.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. And I love this. This will be one of the first ones that I've been able to use all the buzzwords I know because of training and development. So it's
Kelly Zamboni: I said Kirkpatrick.
Gene Feldman: it's been fantastic for me.
Mark G: G Gene loves his buzzwords. Loves the buzzwords, yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: Sheen is a well of information.
Mark G: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: yeah, I Maria Burnett, who used to be she used to was at Meta and Microsoft for a while. I can't remember where she's at now, she actually introduced me one time as the human version of chat GPT.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, mm-hmm. Whoa.
Gene Feldman: I was like, and coming from Marie, who she intimidates me like crazy. but it's honestly, it's but being able to have conversations with everybody and you know, getting a chance
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah, totally.
Gene Feldman: to share. And so, but yeah, if you want to be a part of them, you're more than welcome. I never want to inundate you with emails, but you're more than welcome to join us.
Kelly Zamboni: my gosh. No, I'd be honored. Yeah, I think it's great.
Gene Feldman: But then the last thing we usually like to ask our guests is for a final protocol that if there's a piece of advice or something that you can share with somebody that maybe is getting started or listening, what would that one piece of advice would be be?
Kelly Zamboni: you know what, take the risk to learn. There's so much information and it's a deluge, but you know, try to find interest that align and you're intrinsically motivated and you'll get some enjoyment out of it. I mean, for me, I'm a very tactile person. I like to work with my hands and I love working on projects. And so selfish an example, you know, 3D printings become a passion. And if I can marry that into hardware software, then I'm actually starting to learn and I can share it and I can enjoy it. I don't necessarily need to create something from the the bottom up, but I can improve something that someone's already created. I can fork the repo, I can flash the software, I can go through the the the process of my own personal software development lifecycle to add additional features onto that. And that to me, I get excited, you know? So my advice
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Kelly Zamboni: is just take the risk.
Gene Feldman: And I'll say those little Bluetooth speakers that you've been making lately are very, very retroally cool. They are very retroally cool.
Kelly Zamboni: Okay, that's fun. Yes. Yes. They it you know what? And it's amazing. if you would have said create that ten, fifteen years ago, it would have been it would not have been worth the, the the juice wouldn't have been worth the squeeze. But all of those parts are easily available and there's, you know, it's like anything. There's a fifty thousand deep sub of you know, inter people who have the same interests. And so if you know if you're missing a resistor, which I was. Great, someone dropped a link into it and I was able to solve it and fix it. And so there's still a need for human intervention. There will always be a need.
Gene Feldman: absolutely.
Kelly Zamboni: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: No, awesome. So yeah, so we are at our time. So thank you everybody
Kelly Zamboni: Thanks.
Gene Feldman: for joining. Thank you for listening. Please feel free to share, like, and follow our LinkedIn page, as well as if you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas for future guests, please feel free to
Kelly Zamboni: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: share them. we are coming up near the end of the year, so we've got about two more guests that we're gonna have, and then we'll do we'll end up the year with a nice good live system check. so thank you for joining and listening and we really appreciate all the support. So with that guys, I I will say goodnight.
Mark G: Night everybody.
Kelly Zamboni: Thanks guys.
