Learning in the age of
knowledge on demand Tim O’Reilly Founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media

2 Tim O’Reilly Founder &
CEO O’Reilly Media oreilly.com @timoreilly Introduction • Providing learning for almost 40 years – books, events, online • Trends pioneered – Commercial Internet, Open Source, ebooks, Web 2.0, Maker movement, Big data • 500+ employees • 5,000+ enterprise clients, 2.5m platform users globally • Offices in US, Canada, UK, Japan, China • 17 global technology events serving 20,000 individuals and 1,000 sponsor companies

3 “The Knowledge” vs the
GPS

4 Here’s How Hard It
Is to Gain “The Knowledge” “The examination to become a London cabby is possibly the most difficult test in the world — demanding years of study to memorize the labyrinthine city’s 25,000 streets and any business or landmark on them.” The New York Times, November 10, 2014

5 Was the answer better
training?

6 Knowledge is embedded in
the interface

7 Drivers learn the city
by driving it

8 Learning in the course
of work

9 I learned this trick
by following a video But after doing it a few times, I don’t need the video any more.

10 The Internet is a
great resource for simple skills like tying knots, or trying out new recipes

11 Or even refreshing yourself
on a bit of math or physics you’ve forgotten

12 How does this all
apply to IT learning?

13 There are prerequisites even
for Uber Knowing how to drive Knowing how to use a smartphone app Knowing how to read a map Good communication skills Good work habits Basic business skills

14 They are far greater
for software development Use a computer effectively Have a logical problem-solving mindset Know the programming language – it’s not always your choice Know specific environments – the web, iPhone or Android, Windows, AWS or Azure Know how to use the latest developer tools Have UI-design sensibility Know where to find specialized code libraries and how to use them …

15 “Structural literacy” – knowing
enough to learn more in the flow of work

16
Software boot camps everywhere

17 But developers constantly need
new skills

18 Linear learning: Curated content
to learn something new On demand learning: Answers to help you do your work

19 STRUCTURAL LITERACY HIGH-LEVEL KNOWLEDGE
LOW-LEVEL KNOWLEDGE CONTENTSTRUCTURE Professional Skills Development Framework PROFICIENT/HIGH PERFORMERS Use self-directed discovery for problem solving and nonlinear instruction to acquire new skills. Require high-quality, relevant content with depth and breadth. NEED THE FUNDAMENTALS Learn basics through comprehensive, sequential (linear) instruction. Require structured, highly curated content. Fluency Awareness Identification Non-Linear Learning Linear Learning

20
Live Online Training

21
Live In-Person Events

22 Sessions available for review
on the platform

23
30,000 hours of video

24
45,000 books

25 Case Studies extend the
marketplace model

26
Expert Playlists

27 But what about when
you’re searching for answers?

28 Linear v. Non-Learning Behavior
on the O’Reilly Platform Non-linear 42% Linear 58%

29 Search-driven non-linear learning is
one kind of learning in the flow of work… but there are opportunities to go deeper, with environments that support safe experimentation

30 What happened when Richard
Feynman was asked to critique an elementary physics textbook "I stuck my finger in, and I started to read: “Triboluminescence. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed…” I said, “And there, have you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You haven’t told anything about nature—what crystals produce light when you crush them, why they produce light. Did you see any student go home and try it? He can’t. “But if, instead, you were to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.” ’ Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.”

31 Jupyter Notebooks • Open
Source tool for “narrated computations” • Created by Fernando Perez and Brian Granger • 2-3 million users http://jupyter.org

32 A Who’s-Who of top
companies and universities

33 Not just a learning
tool, a working tool https://www.kaggle.com/surveys/2017 A Kaggle survey of ~8,000 data scientists identified Jupyter as the 4th most used data science tool for work.

34
“Narrated computation”

35 “An Active Learning Experience
That Works” - Lorena Barba GWU “My experience with Jupyter notebooks is that students engage with the material in an almost tactile way. Manipulating a piece of code, experimenting with parameters in a problem, then reflecting and discussing the output makes for an active learning experience that works. The best results occur when students start creating their own notebooks....” Lorena Barba George Washington University

36 Jupyter on the O’Reilly
Platform Jupyter-enabled • Live trainings • Books • Video (Oriole)

37
An executable, explorable explanation

38
Interfaces that teach

39 Executable task-specific documentation is
the infrastructure of specialized on-demand learning

40
Full circle…