What I Love About #DevLearn: Nancy Reyes

To help celebrate the 10th Annual DevLearn Conference and Expo, we’ve invited members of the Guild community to share what they love about DevLearn, and why they return to the conference year after year.

Today we welcome Nancy Reyes, Associate Director of Training Innovation & Workforce Development at ComplexCare Solutions, Inc., as she shares her thoughts about the conference.

People.

For me, that is the single most amazing part of DevLearn – the people. Since the first days of my career, I have worked in isolation. Small companies, large companies, academia; it didn’t matter the industry – I was always the only person doing my job. No one spoke my language, no one had my passion, no one shared my vision for the present or the future, and no one backed me up when I argued the value of approach A over approach B. It was a lonely, frustrating existence.

Then I attended DevLearn, and everything changed.

I met some of the most amazing people. Shawn Rosler is right – the people at DevLearn are “the most brilliant people I’ve ever associated with (professionally or personally).” The people walking the halls, standing at the front of the room, and sitting next to me at lunch challenge me to push myself to the next level, encourage me to actively pursue a deeper understanding, to make new connections, and push me to contribute my own thoughts, ideas, successes and failures to the conversation.

Four years later, I have the privilege of calling some of these amazing people “friends”. I look forward to DevLearn every year, not just to attend the great sessions, absorb the wealth of knowledge being shared, peek into the future of learning, or to be challenged to become a better eLearning professional, but to strengthen the connections with people I met before and to make new connections. The connection to these people will sustain me until the next DevLearn.

While I still sit at my desk by myself, I am no longer alone. I am part of a large community of people who speak my language, have my passion, share my vision for the present and the future, back me up when I argue the value of approach A over approach B, and ask me if I have considered approach C.

It is a beautiful thing.