Upside Learning has recently appointed James Rasmussen as Area VP Sales for Americas. James will be responsible for managing and growing Upside Learning’s sales operations and business development in the US region.

An experienced sales leader, James has more than 20 years of success in developing high performing salespeople, sales teams and sales channels in the eLearning and enterprise talent management space. Most recently, James was the Region Sales Leader at HRsoft, prior to which he was VP, Sales Development at Richardson and Senior Sales Director at Kenexa. Some of James’ key specialties include Enterprise Learning & Talent Management and Complex Sales Development. He has the ability to forecast, plan and execute in a dynamic market‒ a skill he has honed over the years in the Sales and HR domain.

Amit Gautam, Director and Co‒founder of Upside Learning, who also oversees the Sales operations in the US, commented, “James’ experience, perspective and leadership will be instrumental in growing Upside Learning’s business and presence in the US. I am confident that he will be able to steer our sales team in the right direction.”

Announcing its special expo offer for World of Learning Conference & Exhibition 2011 (WOL 2011), Upside Learning revealed today the prize to be won at the event. The company would be giving away a Kindle Reader (Wi-Fi version) absolutely free to a lucky visitor at the expo, to be held on 27^th and 28^th September at NEC Birmingham, UK.

The Kindle Reader offer will be held in conjunction with a survey on ‘Mobile Learning In The Workplace’. Participating in this short survey will make the visitor eligible for the expo prize. The final winner thereof will be selected via a random draw process and the announcement will be done post the event.

Besides this, attendees will get to experience Upside Learning’s entire range of learning solutions including its award-winning Custom eLearning Solutions, two time Brandon Hall award-winning, best value LMS – UpsideLMS, revolutionary platform for mobile learning – Upside2Go and other innovative Mobile Learning Solutions.

Upside learning’s representatives will be present at booth (# E100) throughout the event. To pre-arrange a meeting with a member of the Upside Learning team, send an email specifying your preferred time and date to sales@upsidelearning.com.

With a view to establishing closer communications with its clients and strengthening its reach in the overseas market, Upside Learning recently welcomed Alan Samuel, former head of UK operations at Tata Interactive Systems, as Director of Client Solutions for the UK & Europe. Alan will head Upside Learning’s offshore Europe and UK market to manage and promote the company’s award–winning suite of eLearning solutions and services.

With over 12 years of eLearning experience, Alan brings with him a wealth of knowledge and understanding of the use of learning technologies in the corporate, education and publishing sectors in the UK market. Prior to joining Upside Learning, Alan headed Tata Interactive Systems’ UK operations for almost 10 years and was a partner in The Learning Coach, a company specialising in building eLearning capability. He has hands–on experience of working with offshore environments and teams, and has helped a number of Fortune 500 companies to develop their eLearning strategies and build eLearning portfolios. Apart from these, Alan has also held senior roles in the fields of IT offshoring, hospitality, media and advertising.

A strong believer in the role of technology in improving and supporting business and individual performance, Alan holds a track record of excellent customer relationships, and is well known for being a leader with clear, direct and effective communication skills.

“I enjoy the challenge of marrying Technology and Learning to build solutions that add value and support people in the work place. The opportunity of being part of an eLearning company whose innovative products and services are helping organizations drive performance and business improvement is exciting!”, said Alan.

“We are pleased to have Alan join us in our journey towards providing the best eLearning solutions in Europe and the UK. His extensive experience in working with offshore teams and a clear understanding of eLearning will help us immensely in strengthening our relationship with our clients and developing effective eLearning strategies for them”, said Amit Garg, Director of Custom Leaning Solutions at Upside Learning.

The second edition of MobiMOOC has started on 8^th September, and will run until 30^th September. Of the many impressive weekly sessions lined up for these 3 weeks is the Corporate mLearning week starting from 24^th September. And facilitating this is Amit Garg, Co–founder and Director of Custom Learning Solutions at Upside Learning.

The entire week will see Amit sharing his expertise on mobile learning, and its role and necessity in the corporate world today. Some of the MOOC topics that will be covered by Amit include:

• The potential of mLearning
  • Why is Mobile unique?
  • What is Mobile Learning?
  • What can mLearning help a corporate in?
  • Why escaping mobile learning is impossible?
• Busting the myths of mLearning
• Getting started – Key elements in implementing mLearning in workplace

Below is the schedule for Amit‚s webinars during the Corporate mLearning week:

Webinar Topic : Understanding Mobile Learning

Date/Time : Monday, 24 September 2012 | 10.30 AM, Brussels time

Webinar Topic : How to implement mLearning in workplace

Date/Time : Tuesday, 25 September 2012 | 3.00 PM, Brussels time

Webinar Topic : Future of mLearning in workplace

Date/Time : Friday, 28 September 2012 | 3.00 PM, Brussels time

Through these webinars, participants will be able to understand and appreciate the potential of mLearning in the workplace, understand the key elements of mLearning implementation strategy, identify the myths related to mobile learning and learn how mLearning can actually be implemented in the workplace through examples.

Talking about his selection as a course coordinator for MobiMOOC, Amit Garg commented, “MobiMOOC 2012 has a very impressive faculty to conduct the weekly sessions on mobile learning and related topics. I feel absolutely honored to be included amongst them and I look forward to interacting and learning from the participants of these sessions.”

Organised by Inge Ignatia de Waard, and already running in its second week, MobiMOOC 2012 is divided into three weeks with each week covering different course topics related to mLearning. A unique initiative exclusively on mobile learning, it invites industry experts to share their knowledge on mobile learning and embark discussion and open dialogue between the audiences. All the courses conducted on this open platform are freely available to everyone.

Interested individuals can register for MobiMOOC 2012 by becoming a member of the Google group.

Consistently surpassing its past achievements, Upside Learning has won a Bronze for Best Extended Enterprise Learning Program under the 2012 Brandon Hall Excellence Awards in Learning.

The company’s winning entry, a range of custom learning solutions, has been developed for VoCollect, the number one developer and manufacturer of voice solutions. Called the VoCollect University, the courses offered include VCT, WBT and ILT; and ranges from technical to sales training. The primary goal of the VoCollect University was to provide all individuals using Vocollect products and services (namely the employees, partners and end–users) the required training to use the products safely and efficiently. The delivery of this training was carried out in various forms, and its programs can be best described as holistic blended training programs carefully designed and delivered for maximum learning impact.

The judging panel for the awards consisted of several veteran, independent senior industry experts along with Brandon Hall Group’s Sr. Analysts and Executive Leadership. The winning entries were selected based upon different criteria’s, which included: fit to the need, design of the program, functionality, Innovation, and overall measurable benefits.

“This years’ winner should be very proud of their achievements especially based on the rigorous judging process all submissions underwent,” said Mike Cooke, Chief Executive Officer of Brandon Hall Group, Inc. “We are honored to recognize the award winners who exemplify a high standard of performance in their organization and demonstrate clear, measurable business results through these innovative programs.”

In its 18^th year now, the prestigious Brandon Hall Excellence Awards in Learning are held annually to acknowledge best technologies, innovations, strategies that deliver astounding results in the learning domain.

About Brandon Hall Group

Having worked with more than 10,000 clients globally and after 20 years of delivering world–class solutions, Brandon Hall Group is the preeminent research and analyst organization focused on developing research–driven solutions to drive organizational performance for emerging and large organization. Brandon Hall Group has an extensive repository of thought leadership, research, data and expertise In Learning and Development, Talent Management, Sales Effectiveness, Marketing Impact, and Executive Management.

To learn more, visit www.brandonhall.com

In today’s multi-device world, one of the major challenges is the wide range of devices on which eLearning needs to be supported. Different browsers, manufacturers, models and sizes, operating systems, connectivity modes and platforms further add to this challenge. To ensure that eLearning works properly on multiple devices, thorough testing is essential on actual primary devices and configurations. But not all organisations are equipped with the required resources in terms of manpower, testing tools and devices, nor can they afford to invest their time to thoroughly test eLearning on different combinations.

Upside Learning’s recently launched Multi-device Testing Lab service aims to help such organisations by testing and delivering high-quality learning projects that run consistently across device, browsers and operating systems.

The company has made robust investments in its infrastructure and is equipped with a variety of devices with screen sizes between 240 x 320 and 1280 x 800 pixels, as well as some high-DPI variants. For testing on larger displays, it has Windows PCs, Macs and laptops, while tablets and smart phones, running iOS, Android and Windows, cover the smaller ones. Tools such as Adobe Edge Inspect and Ghostlab are employed for quick and accurate turnaround.

The Testing Lab services team includes highly-experienced quality testing specialists with a cumulative experience of over 50 years in the eLearning testing domain. A meticulously planned rigorous testing process that runs through five broad stages ensures an error-free project with a fast turn-around.

The Brandon Hall Group’s Human Capital Management Excellence awards are a testament to Upside Learning’s expertise in developing custom content and engaging learning solutions that deliver real outcomes to help organizations achieve performance improvements aligned with business objectives.

This year’s winning entries under the Learning and Development category were submitted jointly by Upside Learning and its clients. The details of the awards are as below:

Best Use of Mobile Learning:

Bronze: Qatar Airways and Upside Learning Solutions developed a stand-alone, responsive eLearning program called “Crew Transport Policy”. The program is about the Qatar Airways Transportation Department’s Crew Transport Policy for Drivers, Passengers, Dispatchers, and Transport Operations Management (TOM). Designed using a rapid authoring tool, the program makes use of sketched illustrations for impactful learning. With a natural and fluid tone of content delivery and engaging visuals, the program presented the policy content in a simple, yet effective form.

Best Learning Team:

Bronze: Upside Learning and ISS group won the award for their strong partnership. The associations between the two involves: Unified Platform – UpsideLMS Deployed as ‘MyLearning’, Multi-Device Support Using FRED, Stronger Training Management, Better Learner Engagement through rich animated eLearning scenarios, Enterprise-Wide Delivery of Flagship Service Training and more.

The Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards program recognizes achievements in the performance improvement domain. This prestigious award is presented annually by the Brandon Hall Group, a leading research firm that empowers excellence in organizations. The program invites entries from solution providers with innovative programs, cutting edge technologies and services that have helped organizations improve their performance and achieve measurable results.