It seems that Laura Overton – head of Towards Maturity, the organisation that collects a great deal of learning technologies benchmarking data and industry trends – has started her own industry trend.

 

Speaking at a seminar held at BMA House, Tavistock Square, in London on 15th June and organised by Towards Maturity ‘ambassador’ LMMatters, Laura liberally interspersed her opening remarks with the word ‘actually’. In fact – or, perhaps, ‘actually’ – she noticed this trend in her speech pattern, remarked on it herself and then, unabashed, continued to use the word while revealing the results of Towards Maturity’s recent leadership and management development survey.

 

Disturbingly, when LMMatters’ Julie Ibbott took over at the podium – to outline the Harvard ManageMentor e-learning materials which are distributed by LMMatters – she continued the trend of saying ‘actually’ as frequently as possible during her presentation.

 

Were Julie and Laura having an unofficial competition to see who could say that word the most times during their respective presentations? Or has ‘actually’ become the latest in-word among the UK’s learning technologists?

 

Maybe Towards Maturity could conduct a survey of their members about the popularity and usage of certain ‘buzzwords’ within the learning technologies community in the UK. Actually, I’d actually be interested in the results.