As the sun set on the 15th annual Adobe Learning Summit this October, attendees found themselves caught between waves of nostalgia and surges of excitement for the future. The three-day event, held from October 1st to 3rd, 2024, at Resorts World, Las Vegas was a testament to how far we’ve come in the world of digital learning – and a tantalizing glimpse of where we’re headed. Here’s a quick recap of the key highlights that made this year’s summit unforgettable.

DAY 0 | October 1st: Pre-Summit Certification

The air buzzed with focus and determination on October 1st as 130+ eager participants dove into an intensive Adobe Captivate training session. At the end of the day many of them took the online certification exam to become an Adobe Certified Professional on Adobe Captivate.

DAY 1 | October 2nd : Summit Kick-Off

The second day of the Adobe Learning Summit began with excitement and anticipation as attendees gathered for the official kick-off. The day was packed with an insightful keynote, power packed sessions and networking opportunities.

1. A Walk Down Memory Lane

Dr. Allen Partridge, a familiar face to many Adobe Learning Summit attendees, kicked off this year’s summit with a brief look back at the event’s history. His retrospective on the 15 years of Adobe Learning Summit highlighted key milestones and changes in digital learning industry.

The “15 Years Montage” video that followed provided a visual journey through the summit’s evolution. It showcased how the event, has grown and adapted over the years.

2. Keynote Address: Sal Khan Takes the Stage

The keynote by Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, set an inspirational tone for the summit. His vision for the future of education in the age of AI was both challenging and exhilarating:

“AI will provide all these opportunities. But it’s also going to provide massive dislocation. The traditional labor pyramid – a lot of jobs are going to collapse. And all of you are in that position to make sure there are skills that can keep up with tech as it evolves. What if we can use that same tech for all of us combined to navigate that dislocation. The most romantic application in my mind is what all of you are doing – that is figuring out how you can use AI to improve HI i.e. human intelligence and human progress.”

Khan’s words were a call to action, reminding us of our crucial role in shaping the future of learning and human potential. The audience was left energized, ready to tackle the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

3. Tailored Learning Journeys: Four Areas of Focus

This opening set the stage for the rest of the summit, reminding attendees of the progress made in the field while looking forward to the innovations yet to come. Following the keynote, the summit opened into four parallel tracks:

1. Learning Strategy
2. Adobe Captivate
3. Multimedia
4. Learning Design

These diverse tracks ensured that attendees could delve into areas most relevant to their interests and professional needs, fostering a rich and varied learning experience throughout the event.

DAY 2 | October 3rd: Sneaks, Innovations, and Continuing the Learning Journey

The day was filled with exciting revelations, focusing on two main areas – Product Sneaks and GenAI innovations.

1. Product Sneaks

The Adobe Digital Learning Solutions team kicked off the session with a tantalizing glimpse into the future of their core products, unveiling a series of innovative updates and upcoming features that promise to transform the digital learning landscape.

a) Adobe Captivate 

The Adobe Captivate team kickstarted the Product Sneaks, showcasing updates and upcoming features with a focus on the web version.

Adobe Captivate showcased exciting developments specifically for Captivate Web. The team revealed a set of upcoming features that promise to transform the web-based authoring experience:

1. Create, preview, & publish functionality: This functionality brings robust course creation capabilities directly to the browser. All the power of the desktop tool will now be available on browser.
2. Collaboration (Review & Edit): New tools to streamline teamwork in the course creation process.
3. File Storage: Improved solutions for managing assets and projects online.

In addition to these web-centric updates, the Adobe Captivate team highlighted powerful migration capabilities. First up, was the much-awaited migration of courses from Adobe Captivate Classic to all-new Adobe Captivate. Users will be able to easily migrate their legacy courses from the classic version to the new version and make edits to them. The type of assets that can seamlessly migrate include:

• Text, images, auto shapes, buttons

• Audio, video

• Captions, timelines

• Quiz slides, quiz pools

• Interactions

Lastly, a new PowerPoint (PPT) Import feature was introduced. This is a huge improvement to the earlier PPT import feature in Adobe Captivate Classic, which used to import the slides as images. The new and improved PPT import allows users to bring in:

• Text, images, audio, video

• Auto shapes

• Order of objects, animations

These enhancements to Adobe Captivate demonstrate Adobe’s commitment to making powerful e-learning authoring tools scalable and accessible directly through web browsers, potentially revolutionizing how instructional designers and educators create content.

b ) Adobe Learning Manager

Adobe Learning Manager (ALM) highlighted both recent and upcoming enhancements. Key updates include improved data handling for search, reporting, and compliance, as well as a UI refresh and native extensibility for the Teams App. The roadmap promises in-product compliance features and further UI refinements, with considerations for advanced skills import and tagging capabilities.

c) Adobe Connect

Adobe Connect balanced newly released features with exciting upcoming additions. Recent updates include UI improvements, enhanced broadcast control, and innovations like video backgrounds and recording transcripts. Adobe Connect users can anticipate features such as video pop-out, new reaction options, and improved engagement analytics for training sessions. The platform is also expanding its capacity and integration capabilities, including a 3K capacity upgrade option and an Outlook Add-in.

2. GenAI Innovations

The session seamlessly transitioned from product updates to GenAI innovations, and the excitement in the room was palpable. It truly felt like unwrapping presents on Christmas morning, with each reveal demonstrating how Adobe is thoughtfully integrating GenAI to provide an end-to-end solution to Create, Manage and Deliver digital learning content.

a) Adobe Captivate: Empowering Content Creation

Sharath, our Sr. Learning Evangelist took the stage to showcase an amazing lineup of Adobe Captivate’s groundbreaking capabilities:

1. AI assistant for text, image, and assessment creation
2. AI Copilot for Course Creation
3. AI Voices
4. AI Video Demos

By the time Sharath was done, the room erupted with loud cheers and whistles. The audience’s reaction was a clear indicator of just how game-changing these new Adobe Captivate features were perceived to be. From text-to-video capabilities to AI-powered course generation, it was evident that Adobe Captivate was pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in e-learning creation.

b ) Adobe Learning Manager: Transforming Learning Management

Dr. Allen Partridge, Director of Evangelism for Digital Learning Solutions presented the latest developments for Adobe Learning Manager (ALM). He introduced a GenAI copilot for learning management, complete with a conversational assistant. This AI-powered tool is set to streamline learning administration tasks, provide personalized learning recommendations, and offer on-demand support to both learners and managers. The demonstration showed how this technology could make learning experiences more intuitive, personalized, and effective. 

c) Adobe Connect: Enhancing Collaboration 

The GenAI session by Alistair Lee unveiled Adobe Connect’s latest innovation: GenAI Article Generator, designed to create comprehensive summaries from online sessions and virtual meetings. 

3. Continuing the Journey: Day 2 Deep Dives

Building on the foundation laid in Day 1, the second day of the summit continued to offer tailored learning experiences across the four key areas of focus:

1. Learning Strategy
2. Industry Practices in eLearning content creation
3. Multimedia
4. Learning Design

Day 2 saw attendees diving deeper into their chosen tracks, with sessions that built upon the insights and innovations unveiled earlier.

Looking Back, Moving Forward 

As the Adobe Learning Summit drew to a close, there was a palpable sense of both accomplishment and anticipation. We had come so far from those early days 15 years ago, yet the horizon of possibilities seemed more expansive than ever.

The GenAI innovations showcased throughout the summit weren’t just product features – they were glimpses into a future where learning is more accessible, personalized, and impactful than we ever dreamed possible.

The 15th Adobe Learning Summit wasn’t just a celebration of how far we’ve come. It was a launchpad for where we’re going next. As we return to our respective roles – whether as instructional designers, learning managers, multimedia specialists, or education technology innovators – we carry with us not just new tools and insights, but a renewed sense of purpose and community.