I mentioned last week I was going to the World of Learning event at Olympia in London. I only attended the exhibition and had a plan to learn, discover, interact, and network. How did I get on?

Networking was the winner. It always is at events like these with the opportunity to catch up with connections and meet new people. I went on the second day when it was a bit quieter but that gave me more time to speak with people and find out what they were doing.

I interacted with a few exhibitors. I am regularly underwhelmed at exhibitions as I see the same organisations pushing the same things they’ve always done. I know events like these are essential for lead generation but have conversations. I saw a few organisations who were new to me and did have some meaningful chats with some good people.

Innovation remained undiscovered. I wrote a piece at the start of the year for People Management magazine which said:

A careful use of budgets will persist, as organisations start demanding even clearer evidence of ROI for L&D initiatives. I would expect to see more nil/neutral cost learning as resources are shared, borrowed and built from existing stockpiles of content. The skill of editing, taking out what’s unnecessary and creating discrete and bespoke support, is going to come to the fore in 2025 much more. With so much ‘stuff’ now available, spending time on the right thing at the right time becomes much more important.

What lies ahead for the L&D profession in 2025?

This budget-conscious approach to innovation was reflected by a number of speakers and a lack of ‘new’ approaches. The AI content creation piece still exists but the users and buyers I spoke with away from the booths weren’t especially enamoured with it and were asking why we want to automate human connection. Quite.

Lastly, what did I learn? My target was to find out what’s working right now in business terms. I was looking for where the business benefits and performance metrics were. Sadly, I didn’t see much, if any. I know this is a trade show for L&D people but if we can’t translate what we do into business impact and demonstrate it to people at an event like this, we’re on the back foot.

As always, it’s great to be out and about but it felt like that slack tide I mentioned a while back is still there. Was it just me? Did you think differently? Let me know in the comments.