[Greg Boyd, SVP Revenue, Uvaro] Sounds good. Hello. Hello. We see some people joining in. We'll be getting started in just a moment or two. Thank you for being here. We're excited to start, Sheila. How are you feeling today?

[Sheila Fung, Director Member Programming, Uvaro] Feeling pretty good. I actually just noticed how stark the gap in this visual is on the slide deck. I'm enjoying that.

[Greg] Thank you AI, and thank you to friend and teammate Ian for his hard work to pull it together.

[Sheila] Absolutely. I like it.

[Greg] Well, well, Sheila, I think we should get ourselves started. We've got some folks who are here with us today. So, hello to everyone who's joined us. Thank you for diving in with us. We're going to spend some time today talking about how to fill the workforce skill gap. And Sheila

and I are going to be your facilitators today for this conversation. I will be introducing some content to get us started.

Sheila, are there ducks involved in today's call?

[Sheila] There are no planned ducks today.

[Greg] Ok.That's good to know. That is good to know.

But one thing that I've learned: So to those of you who are repeat viewers, welcome back. To those of you for your first time coming in: Something that I'd like to acknowledge is, let's be real, sometimes people join webinars just to take a little break in the afternoon. And if you brought some ducks in Sheila, I mean, that will get people engaged. Nobody would mind.

[Sheila] I could get one.

[Greg] Break with some of the norms. But whether you're here to fill some time in your afternoon, whether you're listening to us passively or whether you're dialed right in. We're

hoping to grab your interest and grab your engagement. Throughout the course of the conversation today, we're going to introduce some concepts and then run through an exercise, and in that exercise, leave you with some really practical ways to apply a lot of the material that we're introducing today so that you can take and use this approach in building out and designing your programs right away as soon as we jump off this call. And of course, give you an opportunity to connect with and engage with us further, should that suit your interests and be well suited to what you're trying to achieve.

So what I will do before we come back—and I'll introduce you more fully, Sheila—once we get into the second portion of the discussion, I wanted to just start by framing up what this concept is that we're here to talk about: this idea of "the long-tail," because it will set the foundation for what we're going to be discussing in terms of how to build a program and frame up a program for meeting today's workforce development needs. So let's start there.

Sheila, you ready to go?

[Sheila] Yeah. Ok, ready to rock, let's do it.

[Greg] We said 5 to 7 minutes. I'm gonna see how I do committing to that. You can do the countdown for me.

[Sheila] Do you want a timer?

[Greg] I don't want a timer.

[Sheila] OK. All right. I don't have a gong.

[Greg] But I do know I'll hear about this afterwards. So I do feel like I'll be held accountable to it.

So let's run through. It's a concept that gets us excited and something that we have been referring to, and we'll continue to refer to, as we go through our programming over time. We promise also to include a Taylor Swift reference because what would a webinar be without a Taylor Swift reference in 2024?

But let's get started! The idea of the long tail. It's a concept that we are talking about today and I'm going to take a few minutes to introduce the concept in broad terms. And it's one that is introduced by Chris Anderson around the 2000s, where a lot was changing at that point in time. And that is a big impact on the view of how economic theory applies with the emergence of the internet.

And if you have read the book, please keep me honest as we work through the conversation in our Q&A. And if you haven't read the book, I would encourage you to check it out. I will also give you the summary notes. So you can share some interesting facts with friends at the end of the session and maybe save you the time reading the book.

But I'll summarize some of the key takeaways from that. But I want to tie specifically some of the principles to this idea of workforce development and program development specifically as it pertains to building out these programs.

So fundamentally what Chris Anderson was talking about in this book was rooted in the idea that the way economics work, or the economic model of supply and demand, are the traditional forces are fundamentally changed when you remove the restriction of distribution.

So traditionally, you have these two binary lines, you have the idea of supply and you have the idea of demand. And notionally, the idea is supply is if it's infinite at some point, demand for that thing will go to zero. That is, people's willingness to pay for something will go to zero.

And when you factor in this idea of distribution, things need to get to market. And so there's always this notion of there being a constraint in supply for things that have economic value, there will be a point at which those two points interact. When something is no longer in demand, so when supply is too high, then that demand line goes to zero.

But what the internet fundamentally did, particularly pertaining to digital products, is it removed entirely this challenge or constraint of distribution.

You think about buying a CD versus downloading music on Spotify. It's a stark example of how the digitization of how we operate and work just fundamentally changes this notion of supply and demand. So rather than having two binary lines, those notions of supply and demand move to the axes, where demand is on the Y and supply is on the X axis in this situation or in this scenario.

And when we look at the long tail, you have a world where demand really never bottoms out. So if we zoom in to this, as you look over time at that long tail, supply is just moving out to the right.

If somebody creates a product, there's someone out there on the internet who's willing to buy it. So this idea is, supply, in this case, creates demand. And that's very different from the notion that if you have a large supply of something, demand will ultimately go to zero.

So it just flips things on its head really fundamentally, because instead of working in a world where scarcity drives economic value, we're in a world where abundance drives economic value, where we can create demand just by creating something new. Stop yelling at me, Google.

Yes. Bring it home to help it make sense. I did say I would bring it home with a Taylor Swift example. And I'm definitely borrowing from Chris Anderson here in that he uses music as a really helpful way to explain how this new economic factor has come into play.

So if we think again about this long tail concept, another idea that he introduces in the book is this idea that in this world of a long tail economic model, there are clear winners. There is only one Taylor Swift. And yes, we've all heard of Taylor Swift. What the idea is though is that Taylor Swift, althoug she may be well known and some of us probably like some of her music, very few of us, if we're being totally honest, would say that Taylor Swift is our favorite artist. And if I offended anyone, I apologize.

I saw you kind of nudge there, Sheila. Like yeah, she's alright.

[Sheila] I actually prepared an essay for exactly this moment. But no, go ahead.

[Greg] Yeah. Can we mute that? But what's interesting is many of us actually prefer and have more niche tastes. It's this cool thing about music. This is my preferred artist, Hiss Golden Messenger. And that's the type of music that I would describe him, MC Taylor, as being my favorite artist. What this whole idea of the long tail introduces is this idea that these niche artists, these niche players, can produce something, and I have a means to access it. I have a means to buy it and that was never available before.

What's really cool about these niche players and these niche artists is you can get to know them, you can meet them. And whereas in the past when our parents only had a handful of record stores they could go to, a handful of radio stations they could listen to. There are only a handful of artists that our parents generations know. And that's why we have these epic artists that have carried on from generation to generation. It's just different now because if you produce it, somebody will likely want it.

What Chris talks about that is a fundamental shift, is that if you were to add up all of the Hiss Golden Messengers that exist for all of our favorite artists from a musical perspective, if you add them all up, a total number of the total demand for all of those artists would eclipse what Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber represents.

There's so much more demand for all these niche players than what exists for those clear winners, even though clear winners are there and do show up. So if there's a delivery mechanism to get supply to market, demand will always exist, because supply creates demand. And this changes everything [not just] in terms of economic theory, but the long tail impacts everything in our lives.

So let's tie that now to skill development. Supply generates demand. Our economic model is entirely changed. How does that apply to this idea of skill development? Going back to before, in, sort of, our parents' generation. For some of us—this might be true of some of us on the call, for when we started our careers. It was for mine. So it's true for many of you as well that there's certain skills that are those clear winners, in the past, when skill sets were more static. Economic models are a little bit more static. You would have clear winners that were skills that would evolve and change progressively over time.

There weren't a lot of these sort of niche skills that you might need and you might introduce some now and again, to improve the way you're doing your job.

What's happening though is with the introduction of new technologies and with skills—like, I mean, I'm good at social media. I can use that in my job. Like our ability to work from home, and now do so many different things, and making everything digital that fundamentally changes the skills we can bring to the workforce.

We're creating a new supply of skills and that's creating demand for those skills.

So even if you're not changing the job that you are looking to work in, if you're not shifting careers, effectively, the jobs that we do are fundamentally changing because of the introductions of new technologies and the change in what the demand is for what I would do in my job.

To the tune that what I'm doing today, 65% of it, I will likely just be able to throw away and I'll need to re-invent that, just to do the job that I'm doing now, six years from now. That's a pretty radical thing. It really does mean there's a rapid amount of change.

So in the skills development context, how do we build skills, approach workforce development, in a way that embraces this notion that we don't just need to build those in-demand skills. We need to be monitoring all the different skills that we may need to provide in order for people to perform economically in their jobs.

How you do that and how you approach developing those in demand skills and then those less critical skills, requires a different approach. And it's one that we've employed. And this is this long tail style approach to developing skills that we're gonna talk about today, this idea that skill development is a constant circle that is going to continue to evolve and need to be revisited time and time again.

It involves getting training and skill development, getting some experience or exposure so that I can apply those skills in a work environment. It's coaching, it's skill development for how I just go about developing my career and having a network that I can lean upon in order check in and verify that those skills that I have are still of value in the job I have and in the job I might be building toward over time.

The final point on this Sheila before we move into our conversation is if we focus on a world where there are in demand skills, those clear winners, and we focus on the technical skills, we're missing so much of the picture because building specific technical skills is like picking a lottery number. I pick the right one skill, and that happens to be the one that's in demand and evolves over time and continues to be in demand. That's a winner.

As we just saw the skills that I'm gonna need are going to rapidly change. Those technical, very specific skills. When we think about skill development, it not only needs to be ongoing, continuous, but we need to think about the skills in the context of technical skills. But also then what we call traditionally soft skills or durable skills and the digital skills that I need to employ the technical skills.

And then we need to consider to what extent or what depth do I apply those skills in my day to day work?

So we're gonna dig into this a little bit today. And just to summarize what we talked about, the mechanics of supply and demand, the economics of the world we work in have fundamentally changed. Supply creates demand, the introduction of technology which we're all very aware of, and we won't delve too deeply into today. But we use as an example, technology and the emergence of new skills that a new supply of skills creates demand for those skills in the workplace.

And then finally, building technical skills is not where we need to put our focus only. We need to think about a continuous approach, skill development that enhances durable skills, digital skills, and then develops the technical skills over time. So that's helpful as a starting point to set the table for our discussion.

This long tail concept is one that does change the way we need to approach program design. And that's why we want to have the conversation we're having today.

In order to have this conversation—Sheila, we're gonna kick it off. However, we wanna make sure that everyone is awake, we wanna make sure everyone has an ability to interact. So as I said, at the start, webinars might be a time when you tune out a little bit, there might be an opportunity to multitask. I can hear the clicks of people shifting back to this page right now. Virtually, going "What? You about to ask this question?" I am!

We're using Google Folks. This is not Zoom. Everyone knows how to use Zoom to interact. This may be a new tool for you to use. So what I'd like to invite everyone to do is take a moment, go down to the bottom of their screen and you're gonna see in the bottom right corner, you're gonna see a triangle, a square and a circle. If you hover over it, it says "activities." If you click on that button, it's gonna pop up a screen, you'll see beside it the different ways you can interact with us throughout this conversation that Sheila and I are gonna kick off, and we're gonna look to have with each one of you. You see an option there, just that "Q&A."

If you click on that Q&A button, if I could invite everybody to just put a thumbs up, an OK, a "here", some indication that you are with us, you're alive, you're tuned in and that it's working. Found it. Perfect. I saw a hand go up. This is great. Hello, Inna. Hello, Anonymous. Hello. Hello. Perfect.

So we've got it. This is where as we go through the conversation, this is where you will have an opportunity to interact with us. I'll be monitoring it. Our colleague Toya will be monitoring it to surface some of the questions as we go through and we're going to look to get you involved to some degree in this conversation and keep it relatively organic.

But surfacing key insights into how you can build programs that embrace this notion of the long tail. Before I do that, Sheila?

[Sheila] Yeah?

[Greg] Could you tell us for a moment, I'd love... It's a thrill to welcome you and have you in this conversation. Thank you for making the time to be here. It's been a long time since we've been on a call like this together and I'm just thrilled to be here with you. So if I could put you on the spot to give a quick introduction, we're colleagues here at Uvaro, but we do some different things and I think it'd be helpful for you to give a quick bit of context, who you are, and then we can dive into some of that conversation.

[Sheila] Yeah. And I will. I'm obsessively clicking the thumbs up on everyone who said they were here in the Q&A because it's incredibly gratifying.

[Greg] Feel free.

[Sheila] Before I introduce myself, I'm gonna throw an ask to everyone who has found the Q&A and it's gonna feel weird because I'm asking you a question and you'll be posting an answer as a question, but it's gonna work. I picked up the registrant list and I know that there is based on numbers, a mixed bag in terms of people who are here from higher ed, people who are here from business and people who are here from nonprofit. And what I'm always curious about is the audience that you are developing programs for.

If you can throw into the Q&A, who your primary audience is, would be very helpful for me. As we're moving forward into this content, it will just allow me to take things in directions that are most relevant.

So as I'm introducing myself, the ask is, please let me know what audience you're serving. And then Greg, I will answer your question. Sorry for that. The divergence.

You talked about time frames and economic models. And as you were talking, I was thinking through the actual time frame of when I was going through my education.

I did my master's degree back in 2010 and I realized as I'm saying that that nobody should do any math right now, totally dating myself. But at the time I was studying adult learning and I was hyper-focused on globalization and social welfare with that program. And ironically that master's degree was not a direct line to employment, which is something that I think is relevant and we'll talk about as we get into this content.

And I'll say my path was not linear at all. I took a few detours, things like business ownership. I had a couple of kids. And the whole time I found myself repeatedly being pulled into the situation of creating, delivering and then managing programs for a very wide range of adult audiences over a wide range of topics.

And just some examples: Self defense for survivors of domestic abuse, that was for the RCMP, and it was delivered with victim services, not something I planned for, just kind of things that happened along the way.

Mental health programs for at risk youth. So as I'm describing these audiences, when I was looking through the registrant list, I was like, OK, so there's some crossover here in terms of the demographics that I think our attendees are serving.

Anyway, I mentioned it wasn't linear and eventually found myself here at Uvaro where we're online providing a wide range of programming for, again, a very wide range and diverse audience. So I'm glossing over a lot, but what I will say is that the primary theme is a slightly less than conventional path toward pretty awesome outcomes which actually feels on brand for we're talking about today. So there's an overview of where I'm coming from.

Key take away: Nonlinear, but what we're doing now is a heck of a lot of fun. I'll pass it back to you Greg.

[Greg] Yes. And to bring it to the work that you do specifically here at Uvaro and driving the development and delivery of our programming and ensuring that it stays relevant and ensuring that our instructors are engaging the audience as we serve in the best ways possible. So I think it makes you an authority on the topic. I mean, I think you and I both, we should probably say it explicitly, you know, all the stuff that we're doing, the background, the "why" for me remains with Uvaro just witnessing the path our members take and how life changing the outcomes can be.

And we've both seen it play out in a lot of different ways and I know we could, we could talk about that for a long time, but I won't do that to you.

Well, let's dive in then to some of the questions that we promised our audience to explore and with that fabric of this long tail concept as a foundation for some of the discussion, the question that I had to kick us off was how can long-tail program design enhance skill development, training, and workforce resilience?

So I'll say it again. How can long-tail program design enhance skill development, training, and workforce resilience? As a starting point for our conversation.

[Sheila] What a starting point! Did you get a chance to check out the audiences that we have represented in the room?

[Greg] I did.

[Sheila] Yeah.

[Greg] And as you're responding to that, and I think — have you seen it too? I think we've got nonprofits, business audience. We've got a talent acquisition in the tech space, which is very interesting. Not that the others aren't, of course, but interesting that we've got such a wide range of people who are participating.

[Sheila] and because of that, I will answer your question. I'm being—you don't tell me—I don't mean to do this. I'm not doing it on purpose. I will answer your question.

But first I'm gonna ask: We have a really wide range of expertise represented in this room. So instead of jumping to how the long tail programming can help with this, I wanna just stop, we'll take a quick pit stop to this idea of resilience in the workforce. I think it bears, maybe not pinning down a definition, but at least aligning on how everybody in the room interprets that.

So if you can all jump into the Q&A and just share briefly, what does resilience in the workforce mean to you? And you can feel free to ground it in the context of your audience or not. I just want to get a feel for what that means. Help me determine how deep to go with this one because it's easy to jump to the long tail programming and how it ties in. But without that shared understanding of resilience, I think it'll be uncomfortable. So we'll start there. I'll give it a second and then I'll turn it to you as well, Greg. I'm gonna ask you the same question when you hear resilience, what do you think?

[Greg] Sure.

[Sheila] Are Google best practices the same as Zoom? I think we're supposed to wait a full 20 to 40 seconds to allow them to answer.

[Greg] I think so. In webinar context, we might be breaking with some of the convention, where some of our friends joining us today are irritated at the desire for collaboration. But I'm appreciating the opportunity to get some engagement and we're getting some coming in now, which is wonderful, so great to see this.

[Sheila] OK. Bouncing back stronger, no matter the setback.

Yeah, a general working definition of resilience. I like that. A workforce that's adaptable to shifts within the workplace. Tom, yes, this is all gonna tie together and in terms of general definitions within the education space, we're on the right track here. Thank you.

Grow and change to continue. I even like the reference to growth mindset as a—I mean, it underpins it, and I think it's a nice set up when we think about this need for skill development to be continuously happening. We tie in this idea of resilience. I mean, growth mindset is something that could be so simple in appearance. But when it comes to work and how do you maintain that in the work context? It's a really powerful thing.

Mhm. Ok.

So there's a good surface level starting point here. Keep moving forward even if situations affect you. Yes.

Ok. I like that qualifier at the end. Not not moving forward because it's affecting you. Thank you, Finha.

This is good. We're getting a bit of nuance in here. I know we have at least one person in talent acquisition. So I'm wondering, yeah, we'll spend some time on it.

In general, the definition of resilience in the workforce very deliberately has to include a feeling of security and safety, a feeling of belonging, a feeling of well-being. And you know, it means that the diversity piece is huge. And when you think about this idea of access to education and who we're designing programs for based on who's in the room. When we talk about resilience, it has to mean yes, this ability to bounce back and change and adapt, bu  also it has to be delivered in a way that allows for, maybe even is tailored for a diverse audience.

Moving forward despite—yes! Oh OK. Work account, Work Prep, perfect.

OK. So with that in mind, Greg, when you think about the question of "how does long-tail programming serve to create a resilient workforce?"

The reason I wanted to start there was because I think that clear understanding maybe gives us the potential to take this in a few different directions because there's the obvious, right? There's like the wide range of offerings. The fact that traditional course design, traditional program design doesn't necessarily always serve a diverse audience. It doesn't work for everyone. We don't all learn the same, like not even talking about or thinking about neurodivergent learners.

There's so many different directions we could take it. Which is why I wanted to start here. Jeff: Reframing challenges as opportunities. Yes. OK.

So, the short TL;DR answer to your original question of how the programming ties in? We're talking about not just using one form or structure in order to address whatever skills gap it is that we're trying to, we're thinking through the wide range of learning options that we're providing and making sure that they're tailored to a diverse audience. And it can be the same topic taught in so many different ways, restructured and reformatted for so many different audiences.

Even within the same program—I'll pause there because I see your thinking face. Did you wanna poke at any of that? Or did it—what jumped to mind for you?

[Greg] There's resilience implied in the concept of long-tail program design as you were alluding to and that circular notion that the concept of things being a continuous loop means that you have a robust system in place. So that workforce or skill development is a thing that is constantly happening and you're designing a program that enables and allows for that.

Traditionally, we've seen development programs designed in such a way that we have a requirement or obligation to hit 50% completion or we have in the case of some of the people who are joining us today who are in, let's say, private sector and nonprofits, who are saying, well, you know, I get funding for getting a certain number of people through. So that's, that's all I have to do. And there's, there's an implied lack of resilience in the design of that programming.

When I asked the question, it was really aimed at how do we build the resilience of the person taking the program? But I'm seeing that there's two paths that we can take. So I'd actually love for you to speak to a little bit of both if you're comfortable to do that.

[Sheila] I think they're directly related. And I know we're framing it as two potential paths, the individual in the room versus how we're, you know, designing the programming. But I think through a one to many online synchronous course, so you're all meeting at the same time, you're all in the same room. Inevitably, the people who are willing to come on camera and engage immediately with the instructor are typically the ones that have the most influence in what direction the content goes. Right.

This is fairly straightforward. We're here. I'm on camera, I'm talking, I can ask my questions.

The instructor, you know, inevitably will start tailoring their questions, their comments, they'll be directing them towards the people who are visible, engaged. There's a fair bit of literature talking about the people who are not comfortable in a room turning on their camera in that kind of learning scenario, typically the underserved, underrepresented, the minorities in the room, anybody dealing with any sort of disability, it's just a different, night or day, experience.

So something that simple, right? Designing your programs in a way that accounts for that, providing multiple formats of learning, multiple opportunities, maybe it's not a synchronous course, maybe content is digested asynchronously and then maybe there's a 1 to 1 setting that you can be connecting with an instructor with, just, you know, different formats making that available, that alone produces the beginnings of a relationship and the psychological safety that is required to start engaging at depth.

So, the person who we're talking about building their resilience, I don't think it's fair to expect to be able to do that without the connection. And if the connection can't be built because your programming is designed in a way to exclude—where are we gonna go? And I know as I'm saying this, anybody in the room who's thought through diversity, access to education, people from a higher-ed context understand where this is going. So I don't think it's as simple as like here's how we're gonna make this single person more resilient and that's going to apply to everybody in the same room. We have to be able to consider the range of our audience members and account for that in the range of learning opportunities that we make available to them. I think I brought it back around.

[Greg] You did! And the other aspect of it is, if we think about the the content and how we think about programming for this, this idea of resilient programming and resilient individuals: How do you see the the connection Between— let's call it the content being taught and the demand from a workforce perspective, from employers connecting back to the design of the program?

[Sheila] I think it comes back to your Taylor Swift example. Yes!

[Greg] The thing is, it was useful, and for the recording, for everyone watching, we were, we're thrilled that a Taylor Swift reference is being used in a workforce development context.

[Sheila] Yeah, I think if programming, using a long-tail basis, the assumption is not going to be that one single skill is the thing that's gonna make the difference. And yeah, there's an in-demand skill and it's gonna grow, it's gonna change. But associated with that, there's the multifaceted way that manifests for whoever is in your audience, there's the different ways that that kind of learning should be approached.

So I think, I'm just gonna say that the two things are so directly tied. It seems like a clear path.

The needs are not singular, the needs are niche, the needs are varied, the needs are broad. And when I say needs, I mean, the skills that were required to be adapting with. So I think that the two things are directly associated.

[Greg] Right? So it's in a way, I mean, the program itself has to be connected to the real world, the real world experiences of the individuals as it pertains to what they need in their jobs.

[Sheila] Yes! What they need in their jobs and then what the individual employers, industry, segments of whatever space we're looking at, what their needs are as well. Which, when you go back to the wheel that we're looking at, the employer involvement, the work integrated learning, the opportunity to actually immerse and be part of it. I think it's all part of the whole picture.

[Greg] Okay. Well, why don't I try to summarize some of that a little bit and see if we can bring it—because I know we wanna go a couple levels deeper just to give some clear takeaways. So, as a reminder to those—Thank you, everyone, already for contributing to the Q&A as we continue the conversation. If there's a question that I'm not asking that you would like asked, please feel free to chime in. We have—we're gonna go a little bit deeper on this topic, but at the end of each of these segments of the conversation, we're gonna try to summarize some key takeaways that are useful to you.

You're giving us your time and we value that, we're going to look to summarize.

This is not just a conversation we're having for fun. We're trying to drive it to some real insights that you can take away and apply. So, well, if there's a question, you'd like to go deeper on, please use that Q&A and let's put Sheila or I on the spot to help get to that outcome that will be useful for you.

But from what you were saying there, Sheila, just to summarize: What is resilience? We had some great definitions and they anchored on this idea of belonging, safety, of reframing challenges as opportunities. And I think we also teased out this notion of program design, and the need of the individual being met through the delivery of that program as a key underpinning of what resilience is.

This last point that we spoke about there was the necessity of tying learning to the workforce, the inherent need to make sure that the learning itself is connected to what the need is in the workforce, and then finally, evolving the learning experience to the needs of the individual. And you spoke— I think you spoke to this idea of resilience in the delivery and the framing of a program is one that meets the individuals who are in that program, where they're at.

Is there anything you'd add to that summary?

[Sheila] Not add, I'm just excited where this conversation is going because that piece of tying it all together to create both programming but also learners who are able to adapt and change. Yeah.

[Greg] OK. Well, let's take it a step deeper and start to talk about—because we, at the end of that summary, of the framing, there is some conversation about this idea that it's not just about the technical skill development. But it went a little bit deeper into this need to work through and develop different types of skills in order to meet those needs.

So if we think about—but there's a very practical need. And I saw a question that just came in which I think will tie into this a little bit, which is: "OK, that's all nice about resilience in designing programs to meet that need. But in the case that we're in right now, we're needing to build programming that overcomes disruptive new technologies?"

There's this hyper focus on building programming that is aimed at technical skill development. How do you start to factor in building a resilient program? A long tail style program that is gonna try to help people overcome disruptive technologies?

[Sheila] Yeah, so I know the direction I want to take this conversation in. I am curious to hear from everyone and I will tie this back to the—I keep doing this to you and I will tie this back too. I'm sorry!

[Greg] This is why we don't get on calls together anymore, Sheila! You just never answer the question!

[Sheila] I'm sorry! When we say disruptive technology, where does everyone's brain go?

[Greg] Please answer the question that Sheila just asked too, but I'm also grabbing that question, "Work Prep", which is a very unique name, I will say. I grabbed your question so we don't lose track of it as well.

But please, what is your notion? Where does your head go when we say disruptive technology?

[Sheila] AI. AI! Customer-facing AI.

[Greg] I knew it.

[Sheila] Yeah. Hooray! That's where I was hoping we'd go. I'm glad that everybody's brain jumped to the same space just because it is, I think the current most disruptive scenario other than my children.

Different ways we can approach this question: when I think about long tail programming,  education in general, the workplace. AI, as it started to grow and expand, you'll probably remember, responses varied all over the place. You've got people who are immediately early adopting head-first, like this is the future. It's the way that we're going and then depending on the industry that you're in or the level of management or contribution within a business, there's a feeling of threat that comes around and it's not a new feeling.

It's the same, you know, when the internet started changing things, it's just it's a very normal response to new technologies. But if you think back to the last question that we just dove into, this idea of resilience requires a feeling of security and well-being.

So if you've got a workforce that is, you know, now, the ways of doing work are adapting every day, they're changing every day. There's different expectations in terms of:

Should we be using it?

Are we allowed to use it?

Are we going to be taught to use it?

And just different levels of adoption. Again, related to where you are, the need for skills training in this becomes obvious and apparent.

So a couple of people jump to AI. I am curious how many people in the room are currently using it in their day to day in their work. I've run a few workshops for different audiences. Most recently, one for a group of marketers in the B2B SaaS space. And the question came up, how many of you are using AI in your roles? And there wasn't a single person in the room who wasn't actively using this.

There were people who were working for early stage teams and using AI to basically be a marketing team. Like it's very—where you are in the workforce will of course, directly relate to and influence how much adoption has already taken place. But it becomes very clear when you have these discussions that there's a need for upscale, which is a really great topic to dig into.

Even, you know, within our own team, we see different levels of adoption and different approaches to it. So I won't suggest that AI and where it sits in terms of disruptive technology, I won't suggest that it's a new concept to have, to adapt education and programming around it. I think it's pretty standard, right?

But I think in education that it's a thing that's always got to be factored in, where it sits, you know, institutions have to decide when and where they're gonna be adopting.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked when I'm just thinking about the different places that AI sits. But, when it comes right down to it, it's not like we're reinventing the wheel when it comes to figuring out how to fold new technology into existing systems, existing processes already. It's just that this one is currently so top of mind for everyone.

I don't know if that answered your question, Greg. Which direction did you want to take it from here?

[Greg] I think if we consider the fact that disruptive technologies are effectively going to be the the new norm, there's gonna be continuously this set of new technologies that we're going to need to equip the workforce for. How do you approach program design in such a way to make people that we're trying to equip ready to embrace new change, as opposed to making people ready to use AI?

[Sheila] Right. So beautifully, it dovetails with this idea that long tail programming needs to account for diverse learner needs. And you've got this tool that—it's not, it's not a separate bucket of things to be taught when we're talking about skills programming. But more, it's a tool that we can teach through and use to reinforce the other parts that remain important.

Like it's not like we can replace entire segments of programming with this ChatGPT or AI or whatever tool it is that you're using. But you can use those tools to drive home the important pieces that you've already built out along the way.

I find that fun and exciting and I can talk for—I'm happy to go this way, if you want to, with just some examples of how we're folding it into existing programming, and then outcomes that we're seeing with that, that's exciting.

I know we've also got another question in the chat. So which direction should we take it from these two?

[Greg] I actually think you started to—I worked to interpret some of what you're saying there into a way to summarize that question. And then I would love to address the other question that came in. Because I think it's highly relevant, it's not just about designing programs. It's, "OK, I think there's some belief in what we're talking about. How do we get funders on side with that?"

So I wanna move to that question in a moment, but just to summarize, some of what you're covering there, Sheila, the way I characterized how you responded was this idea of considering, in the design of a program, that when we introduce net new technologies into the workplace, it's—just by its definition—it's impacting the resilience that we have, and we feel threatened by that. And so now you're telling me, I have to learn about this thing that might take away my job?

As an example.

The second piece was this idea— so we had to embrace that first point and embrace resilience in that design, and talk about—openly —how this new technology isn't just a thing you need to learn or you're gonna fall behind but embrace this notion of, hey, you, you may not be feeling safe right now. Let's have that conversation as part of delivering the program.

And we don't leave space often for that part of the conversation.

The second piece that I picked up there is just this is a new standard. It always has—we've always seen—the introduction of new technologies, but it just is a more rapid rate of change as we're on the cusp of—and not really, we're beyond that now, but AI and engagement with AI is changing everything and it is going to for the next 5, 10 years.

And then just embracing that as a norm and, I mean, using existing skills. I think Regina Work Prep came in and suggested that we're already using AI. Well, let's let's bring that into the classroom, right? Let's actually, in the delivery of our program, let's not introduce it as if it's this new thing. We can evolve others and make the program more effective by welcoming the perspectives of people who are actually using the technology.

And I've seen you do this so many times as an instructor, not being threatened by the knowledge of the class that you're teaching.

[Sheila] Oh my gosh, yes.

[Greg] So powerful. Let's get the insights from the group and in adult learning, that is a thing that we fail to incorporate into the design of the program.

[Sheila] Hmm. So I love this example. Regina Work Prep, using it for interview prep, career exploration, like amazing. What a powerful way to augment your learners. And I think that word augment is one that whenever, whatever these conversations about AI and the feelings of threat and the, like, is it gonna replace me?

Is there security in my future ifI take this path or am I gonna be replaced by AI?

That comes up a lot when we're talking about wayfinding. And when we're, you know, taking a group of learners through a program designed to help them career switch, they're like "how future proof is this?" every single time. And it doesn't matter if we're talking about AI, it's the economy, it's whatever's going on in the news today. So it comes up.

But this idea that a tool and a piece of technology or in this case, a powerful tool can be used to augment what it is that you're doing in your day to day translates directly into education. Of course, the tools can augment how we're teaching and allow us to augment our learners in a way that— it does drive things home in a way that's, it's… "Entertaining" is the wrong word.

It's great to be a part of it when you see it happen in the classroom and you've got a person in the room who's looking to upskill their soft skills but is already enrolled and using them daily, and then other parts of their job come up: Here's an AI solution that will help you do this a little bit faster, and it's like a moment of, "oh my God, this is gonna end."

We've had stories like that happen where we do something in class, they take it to their workplace and holy crap! They've just filled their pipeline in two days as opposed to the months it would have taken previously because of the incredible research tools that are available out there.

So, I saw Jeff threw that question in there too about overcoming emerging technology or preparing for emerging technology. We touched on it, this idea that it's folding it in and using

it to reinforce things. And in the example that's thrown into the chat here, you know, creating an advantage that's only gonna drive outcomes.

So this ties back to the funding question, we can go that way now, if you'd like.

[Greg] I'd love to, and I put some very quick notes up on screen. We're a little off the direct line, but I think everyone's quite interested and every webinar that we've hosted, every conversation we've had, has welcomed and embraced this notion of long tail approach.

The question always comes back and I, I know you're on here, we have some funders on the call. And so this is a great question to say, "but how do you get a funder on board with this approach?" And thank you to the funders who are participating in this conversation and listening to the dialogue because this is part of it. But when we're not in a room, we're not all together for those of you who are seeking funding, how do you, how do you take that approach? Do you have a place you want to start with this?

I put a couple of notes in here. But this idea of how do you convince funders of that, or quantify this notion of building resilience into your programming for funder reporting?

[Sheila] Let's start with data collection. We've been talking about this in a few different contexts. It ties into the way we think about learning as well. So I mentioned outcomes previously and just how we're bringing it all around full circle. But I also know Greg that you've been doing great work with your team when it comes to data collection and bringing and presenting things in a way that funders are very receptive to.

Could we take a bit of time to talk about that? Just the different ways we think about what we're tracking. And then what we do with it. I'm not sure how deep you want to go on this. But I would love to hear your approach in that framework.

[Greg] I would love, to just double down on this one point. And I will, not go too deep, but I would love for everyone whose ears perk up and say, how do we think about framing data in a funder conversation, in a conversation with a funder, either a current funder or a potential funder, in a way that will make your initiative or program stand out?

I'm not gonna go too deep, but I wanna give everyone—there's four pieces to how you should represent that data, and I'll put it in the summary, but I'm gonna speak to it first. And I'll pull off my screen share just so it's you and I here and then we can put that note up on the screen afterward.

If you want to frame your data in such a way that is compelling to funders and compelling to outside stakeholders, what we have found, what I found repeatedly at multiple organizations, places where I've consulted as well is a four-level approach to organizing your data.

The first level: So level one is very basic data about interest or interaction with your training service. So let's imagine this is the number of people who sign up the number of people who click on your page. This is about interest. This is foundation. I'm trying to get funding for 200 people to go through a program or 50 people to go through a program. Your level one data point says I could get to 100 or 150 individuals to express interest in this training or this program that I'm looking to deliver. That first level is just the interest piece.

Level two. The second level is engagement. I'm now getting engagement in that training. How many sessions are people attending? What's my participation rate in class? What's my completion rate? Typically a lot of the reporting asks from funders are gonna focus in on like the interest and then the outcomes and there's this gap in between. And so by organizing it into these levels, we can say level one, this is how much interest we had. Level two, this is how much engagement in the course of the program.

The third level is what I would call then behavior change or application of that knowledge. How do we expect—it's gonna answer the question—how do we expect to see people applying what they learn to get the outcomes they're striving for? Many programs in the context of workforce development are all about helping people get new jobs.

This is the data that says how many job applications have taken place. How many people are interviewing? How many people are receiving job offers? Not necessarily getting hired, but how much activity is happening where we had interest at level one, we had engagement at level two and we have the application of that learning at level three?

Then your fourth level, level four is the actual outcomes themselves. And that is how many people end up getting a job, how many people ended up growing in their job, getting a new career up, effectively, the outcome that the funder is looking for. As I was saying before, often, when funders approach the market for a program, there's this huge gap. We wanna see that there's a lot of interest and we wanna see these outcomes as a delivery partner.

As an audience holder, if you come and say, look, I can build this story for you that it was level 1, 2, 3, 4, to get this number of outcomes. I'm gonna need this much interest. Here's my conversion along the way, a month in two months into a six month long program and you can start to show, well, this is how much interest we got. So we're on track for level two and on track for level three and on track for level four.

And by proactively delivering the data that you have at each step along the way, the conversation becomes less about you reporting at the end of the program and crossing your fingers and hoping for the best and a lot more about you managing step by step, the results that you're striving for.

So again, level one is interest.

Level two is engagement.

Level three is application and level four is the outcome.

And to that question, if it's, hey, I've got challenges collecting that data, please reach out to us afterward. It's not exactly what we anticipated the follow up would be, but we have a framework and a way you can apply that model and it's available for free from Uvaro, from me, to have that conversation because it's critical to how you organize. And you do have that data, you just may not have put structures in place to organize it just yet.

Sorry for that geek out, but it gets me very excited.

[Sheila] No, I get it and I love how directly it applies to that last piece there. The question from anonymous, the training and having difficulty finding funding for training that doesn't explicitly focus on technical skills development. I'm not intending to, to suggest that we should be abandoning the technical skill piece, but that with any technical skill, there are other buckets that have to be considered when we're developing the programming.

And we talk about the technical skill, the digital skill associated with actually being able to learn that technical skill as well as the soft durable skills that make that whole package happen. So factoring all of those three buckets in and then considering the depth of learning at three different levels as well.

There is a chunk of content we aren't gonna have time to get to. I'm just realizing as we're talking about this, that we won't be able to take the group through this exercise.

But I will revisit this concept on a screenshare that I'll record and share, Greg, and we can get this out to attendees so that they know where I'm going with this. Because I think if you take the technical skill that whatever funder is looking for and consider it with the long tail approach and include those three buckets of the digital piece, the soft durable piece, and then map it out with your depth of learning.

And then also use the framework that we just talked about with the data collection. You've got a very powerful package there and it's one that allows you through the delivery process to be aware of what is and isn't working the whole time, which allows you the agility to create and produce new offerings if needed along the way.

Because we've talked about you've got a diverse audience. If you've pulled funding specifically to serve a diverse audience, there's extra pieces involved and sometimes it means outsourcing parts of the delivery to people who specialize in working with this audience so that you can still consider all three buckets of your skills, skill development, your digital pieces as well as the soft.

I would happily geek out on this for quite some time, Greg.

I know that we're coming up to the place we we're going to open it to the audience. Were there other pieces you want to touch on before we do that? Where are we at?

[Greg] So here's what I'm gonna propose to do, just to summarize. And thank you for the question. I think we've had more, more engagement to everyone's credit here than I, than I think we accounted for or expected, which means we're hitting on something that is resonating with the audience. And I wanted to just thank everyone for chiming in with your questions, for driving the level of engagement that we've had in the conversation and just provide that summary back.

If you reach out to us after or if you've registered for the webinar, you're watching the recording, you will have access to the slides to the recording so you can just digest some of the concepts we've discussed. But I think summarizing the conversation is helpful. And so, and we just walked through it. I won't restate it, but the question teed up a really good point of discussion that I think it brings us to those insights.

And I'm gonna bring us actually Sheila to conclusion, and I'm gonna ask for you to do that thing, which is to record that follow up so that we have an opportunity for this group to benefit from your expertise and experience and actually walking through the approach that you take to developing, designing a program.

So this is the exercise that we'll have everyone work through. But Sheila will cover this in a follow up video that we'll look to send to all of you who have attended today and taken the time to join us. We're grateful that you're here and that you've spent the time with us.

So please watch for that exercise from Sheila, walking through the development of a program, I'd like to thank you for the questions that you've asked in the course of the conversation to make this so dynamic and fluid. It's been just a great experience and it's wonderful to have the opportunity to spend this time and space with you again, Sheila.

These are the key takeaways that we wanted to just frame up from the conversation earlier today.

The concept of the long-tail supply, the supply of new skills, the emergence of new skills creates the demand for those skills. So this ironic challenge that we get ourselves into and those skills create demand in the workforce when we build programs. And I think the point of resilience was the perfect example for it, to say, we don't just build the technical skill, we need to evaluate how we develop the other skills along the way as well.

If you're interested to learn more from the conversation today, you'll get the exercise from Sheila, from us. You have access to the slides to get some of those insights and the information.

But if something resonated with you today that you'd like to continue the conversation, have a conversation on how you're organizing your data. If you're a funder and you're saying, all right guys, you know, we're interested but we've got to rethink how we develop or designed the program, then we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to us at partners@uvaro.com .

The exercise will give you a template that you can use, if you're designing programs to get going today. But as always, we're not done.

We have other webinars, other conversations that we're looking to have that are, that are coming up in the next few weeks. So please keep in touch with us, look for and keep an eye out for more content coming your way.

Whether it's you and I Sheila or conversations we'll be having with other partners. We're looking to bring voices from the field into these discussions so that we can represent those perspectives more broadly.

So we're gonna wrap up with that for today. But again, the commitment to get that example out to each of you, but I'd like to say, Sheila, to you, thank you so much for the time and space and the way you approached the conversation today.

To have more engagement than I've ever seen in the history of a webinar.

[Sheila] The history of all! Amazing!

[Greg] The history of all time! So, thank you.

[Sheila] I really enjoyed it. I should have had a duck waiting. This would have been the perfect moment. Next time!

[Greg] I know, I feel like the time raced by too much for us to even fit it in.

But to everyone who dialed in today. Thank you for being with us. We look forward to seeing you again soon. Reach out to us. We will also look to get in touch with you and share more  information about the work we have ahead of us. Thanks so much, everyone.

[Sheila] Thank you!

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