I noticed something in the room that was palpable.

The capabilities demonstrated were solid, impressive, and the presentation (and presenter) good. Yet, en masse- the audience fell into a couple camps with a pretty wide berth between them. The passionate and wonderful geeks who shared vocabulary, and the rest of the room. Mike, our passionate leader, made a good effort to translate to the nontechnical folk in the room, but it didn’t work. The tools work great and are at the beginning of what will fast unfold in the open source world of Java, but the talking about the tool…

The trainers in the room were lost when the technical vocabulary overwhelmed. Connected, interested, giving up a night with their families committed to bringing collaborative virtual training to their organizations, but definitely not tracking the vocabulary. The programmers get it. Use it. Adapt it.

I loved the conversation and watched the respect and genuine attempts to bridge the gap, but they really do speak 2 different languages. They can connect, but it’s with effort.

At least that’s what I noticed. What can we do to better translate so that business really can build the kind of affordable and triumphant virtual team work and training environments that are available? I know at GroupONE Solutions we are  moving more of our collaboration and virtual team training to Just-In-Time modules that can be team train or self-paced, synch or asynch. I’ve wanted to do this for years, but customers have still been  committed to classroom training. As more teams become virtual and geographically dispersed, as travel budgets stay tight, and as onboarding happens through rolling entry…. the time has come for virtual training to be another equally viable option.

It seems to me it’s also time to up the design and engagement quality of much self-paced online instruction. The tools are here, including Sun’s Project Darkstar and Project Sun and others. But will nontechnical users easily migrate into the virtual world? Didn’t see it in that room tonight. It’s too bad, because it’s easier to use than ever.

What do you think? Do you agree that there remains a digital divide within the computer-savvy population? Developers and nondevelopers? Geoffrey Moore nailed it when he wrote Crossing the Chasm. There is a huge gap between early adopters and early majority users who are progressive but more cautious.

What I saw tonight, though, was a little different. I saw an invitation to dialogue and partner, on both sides. But at least some of the nontechnical audience members who most want and need simple and engaging virtual training solutions got lost in the vocabulary.

I got lost in the vocabulary, and I’m more familiar with the virtual world and collaborative software space.

What do you think? How do we bridge that gap? I ask because I’m curious, because I know a whole lot of people in that room want to find ways to work together, and because, honestly, I want to make sure any content conversion I do with GroupONE’s virtual work training and other solutions meets the needs of all who need it.

It’s exciting stuff… if only it weren’t so hard to teach us old dogs new tricks….