London, UK January 3, 2006 Neil Lasher, the UK-based e-learning guru and managing director of Trainer1, has been elected to the post of president of the UK chapter of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD)s Global Network for 2006. He takes over from Neville Pritchard, formerly of Barclays and now of the INL Consultancy, who becomes immediate past president; while Mark Harrison, formerly of Epic but now with the consultancy, Kineo, becomes president-elect.
Lasher begins his ASTD presidency by joining a panel at the Learning Technologies conference, in Olympia, London, on January 25th /26th, to debate what skill does the ideal learning and development manager need? Other panel members are David Coleman, global learning manager at Unilever; Marie-Pierre Gouaux, learning and development manager at UK Atos Origin, and Jonathan Kettleborough, managing director of Corollis.
Lasher commented: As the ASTDs UK chapter president in 2006, my intention is to forge much stronger links between the ASTD and the British Learning Association (BLA) and the eLearning Network (ELN), the UKs foremost professional association of users and developers of all forms of e-learning. The memberships of these organisations need to have a greater awareness of the ASTD, its values and aims, as well as the benefits of cross-membership in all these organisations.
It is important, for the future wellbeing of the learning industry in the UK, that all the relevant professional bodies including the Institute of IT Training (IITT) collaborate in promoting the benefits of learning to the wider world of business and commerce, Lasher added.
Among the ASTD_s UK chapter plans for 2006 is a two day conference, being held at Cambridge University on March 14th and 15th.