All at Sea in Aberdeen
When I landed in Aberdeen, Scotland two days ago, in preparation for the All Energy Show 2010, I could have been forgiven for thinking that I had landed in a slightly spruced up version of Fort McMurray, Canada (sorry Fort McMurray). If you have never been to Fort McMurray (or Aberdeen for that matter), then what I mean is that they looked virtually the same…of course. Aberdeen is the Oil and Gas boom town of Scotland; Fort Murray the same of Alberta. Petite provincial airports full of Oil and Gas workers to’ing and fro’ing, a distinct feeling of ‘industry’ in the air and Oil and Gas advertising everywhere you look.
But that is where the similarities stopped. Aberdeen is approximately 4 times the size of Fort McMurray with a population of circa 250,000. It is on the Eastern seaboard of Scotland and serves the offshore North Sea Oil and Gas industry. All Energy 2010 was the 10th such show, which is dedicated to all Energy production other than conventional Oil and Gas and is dominated by the Renewable Energy sources. Now if you don’t know anything about Renewable Energy sources you are likely to at least identify Solar, Wind, Wave, Tidal and Biomass as renewable sources. This year however seemed, to me at least, to be the year led by the Wind Power producers, like Trillium Wind Power Corporation of Canada.
Wind Power appears to have incredible potential to provide a significant portion of the power that we have and all with zero emissions. There are plans afoot for large Wind Farms in the North Sea, off the East Coast of the USA and in the Great Lakes in Canada. One of the attractions is that this part of the industry can tap existing skills from the traditional Oil and Gas sector. The positioning and placement of Wind Turbines draws on skills that are deployed to position off shore rigs and the power transmission lines are not dissimilar to those of Oil and Gas pipelines. One of the best things I learned at the Show was about Liquid Ammonia but I won’t go off into that here, but if you get a minute you might want to Google it. See what you can learn?
You may, at this juncture, be wondering why on earth Emerge Learning would choose to be at a Renewable Energy Show? Well we have an idea to produce electricity from Learners by making them walk on specially engineered treadmills that produce electricity whilst they are engaged in eLearning. Of course I am kidding. We were invited to join the Canadian and Alberta governments Show stand as part of the Canadian delegation attending the show. Having just expanded our Canadian company into the UK this year it was a good opportunity.
In fact it was a great opportunity as it turned out because the show was full of potential clients like the ones we service in Calgary, all of whom have new and growing businesses that require people. Even better we were the only Learning company on site and that made us stand out. Now it remains to be seen if we will gain any new clients from the opportunity but there are at least 25 companies that have now heard of us, that hadn’t before and that can’t be bad.
The other thing that amazed me was a contact that was made by an Eastern Canadian organisation. You may think that is not very surprising considering we are a company Head quartered in Canada and we were stood on the Canadian stand. Well the reason it was remarkable is because the contact came from the organisation that was not at the Show and here is how they learned about us. As a company who loves to leverage technology for learning, my colleague, Simon Hester, and myself were providing regular video logs from the exhibition for our own team back in Calgary. Our team then loaded these videos to You Tube and ‘tweeted’ about them on Twitter using something called a hash tag. The organisation was following the All Energy Show on Twitter, watched our video logs and our infomercial about who we are and what we do and then contacted us by Twitter. Remarkable. The power of social media continues to impress me for how it can raise your profile and get you known to people who ‘may’ just be looking for someone just like you to help them.
So we leave All Energy 2010 for this year and head back to our offices in the UK and Canada with a new perspective for a developing part of the Energy world and who knows, maybe a new sector for us to develop and deliver Outstandingly Wicked Learning for?
Natalie@emergelearning.ca
Nearly 2 years ago I interviewed with Rob & Shelly – I think they would have offered me the job as a sales rep, but I’d accepted another position with another company. I’ve followed your progress, website and frequently paid a visit to your site – because, I really loved everything about your organizatoin. I enjoy the case studies, stories, innovation and creativity – plus a point many folks in your direction.
I have since chosed a different career path and not a loss control coordinator…what you offer are training tools of every shape and size. Sometimes I wish I had accepted the role – to be a part of such an amazing team…keep it up and I’m still spreading the word about Emerge Learning!
That is some inspirational stuff. Not in the least knew that opinions could be this varied. Thanks in the course of all the enthusiasm to propose such reassuring knowledge here.