Upside Learning Appoints VP Sales For North America

As a part of its continued growth strategy, the company has recently appointed Jason Clymer as VP Sales- North America. Jason will be responsible for leading Upside Learning’s sales division for North America and will orchestrate the ongoing sales operations for the entire US market.

A sales professional with over 10 years of experience, Jason brings on board extensive eLearning knowledge and detailed understanding of the US market. Having worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies he has to his credit several LMS implementations for organisation of varied sizes, serving different business segments.

Jason boasts of a rare combination of technical knowledge and skills combined with professional sales experience. His key expertise lies in the areas of direct sales, consultative sales support and professional services in the enterprise software and consulting industries.

Speaking on the appointment, Amit Gautam, Director of Technology Solutions at Upside Learning, said, “We are delighted to welcome Jason to Upside Learning. Jason’s strong background in sales, coupled with his elearning understanding, will bring a unique depth of experience to this new position.”

Upside Learning Continues To Grow And Strengthen Its Team

Upside Learning has been experiencing consistent growth in the last few quarters. Its solutions portfolio has seen new additions, especially in the Mobile Learning domain, while its customer and partner-base has witnessed swift expansion with new associations in several geographies across the globe. To meet these growth demands, the company plans to increase its team by about 20% in the next quarter.

The company is currently looking to enhance its manpower at various levels in Project Management, eLearning Programming, Graphic Designing and Instructional Designing, Marketing and Sales.

Recently, the company appointed Jason Clymer as Vice President – Sales for the US region, to be present closer to its clients. It is looking to further enhance its local presence with contract positions for Instructional Designers and Learning Consultants in the US and the UK. Some of the other recent appointments have been in senior management positions to strengthen the development and delivery setup at the company’s development center in Pune, India.

The current job openings can be viewed on Upside Learning’s website – https://upsidelearning.com/careers/

EI Partners With Upside Learning to Assist Hospitality Industry Employees Prepare for the Role of Front Office Manager

With an aim to assist hospitality industry employees, who either have been promoted to or are preparing for the role of Front Office Manager, get ready for this challenging management role, the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (EI) has developed an interactive eLearning version of its online content on Front Office Operations Management. Given Upside Learning’s expertise and experience in developing rich learning experiences through its custom eLearning solutions, EI teamed with Upside Learning for the course development.

The Front Office Manager course includes ten content modules, each containing a glossary of terms, case studies, knowledge checks and quizzes to test understanding of the learners. Developed as a scenario-based course, it comprises a fictitious hotel that mimics the actual surroundings that the learners will be dealing with. The course is developed on a self-paced, discovery-driven approach that puts the user in control as he/ she explores each area of the hotel, and helps him/ her learn about each facet of the front office operation. The scenarios with realistic dialogues, as well as voiceovers, make the course very engaging, while the free exploration approach helps remove the restrictions of a linear course.

“As we continue to facilitate learners with effective and engaging learning formats, partnering with Upside Learning in repurposing our content was the right fit for this project”, said Robert L. Steele, III, CHA, president and COO of EI. “Our learners love the self-paced, discovery-driven approach that puts them in control as they explore each option. We are extremely impressed with Upside Learning’s instructional designing approach, the quality of the graphics and the project management process. The overall experience of working with them has been impressive.”, he added.

Amit Garg, Director of Custom eLearning Solutions, said, “To be associated with one of the leading training providers of the hospitality industry in itself is testimony to the quality of our custom eLearning solutions.”

About EI

Established in 1953 as a nonprofit educational foundation of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, the Educational Institute’s mission is to continue being the preferred provider to the lodging industry, hospitality schools, and related hospitality industries by developing and providing quality resources to train, educate, and certify hospitality professionals worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.ahlei.org

Upside Learning Launches Its Corporate Newsletter – Upside Learning Buzz

Upside Learning believes in a culture of sharing – one that enables it to have an open dialogue with its customers, other stakeholders and learning professionals in general. And strengthening this very belief further, it has recently launched its corporate newsletter.

Called ‘Upside Learning Buzz’, this monthly newsletter, which is targeted at learning professionals and other stakeholders, is steeped in news and findings from the learning industry. Besides this, it also includes major activities and events happening within the organisation to keep the stakeholders and other parties updated with the latest information.

Upside Learning Buzz will be published every month and will be sent to a dynamically growing subscriber base, which currently stands at around 2500. The newsletter will also be published on the company’s website. Additionally, all previous issues of the newsletter will be available in newsletters archive section on the website.

“We are delighted and excited to launch Upside Learning Buzz. This newsletter will serve as another channel for us to stay connected with our customers, prospects and other stakeholders. I am confident that this will help us in spreading news and information about our company as well as the learning domain.”, commented Amit Garg, Director of Content Solutions at Upside Learning.

To subscribe for Upside Learning Buzz, please log on to – https://upsidelearning.com/newsletters/

Upside Learning To Showcase Its Innovative Mobile Learning Solutions At mLearnCon 2011; Will Deliver A Master Class Session Too

mLearnCon 2011, an annual mobile learning conference and expo organised by eLearning Guild, will be held in San Jose, CA from 21^st June to 23^rd June. And participating here is Upside Learning, a globally recognised leader in training outsourcing, Custom eLearning Development, Learning Management System and Mobile Learning Solutions.

The event will comprise of a conference and an exposition. The conference will cover a range of topics from mLearning management strategies and best practices to content and design considerations for tablet and smartphone technologies, while the expo, scheduled on 21^st and 22^nd June, will have as many as 30 leading industry suppliers eager to share their mLearning tools, technologies, products, and services.

Upside Learning will be showcasing its entire range of innovative mobile learning solutions that include micro courses, quizzes, games, mbooks, videos, Augmented Reality apps and mobile apps for smartphones, non-smartphones and other mobile devices, spanning various platforms like Symbian, Android, Blackberry OS, iOS etc.

Visitors can also experience Upside Learning’s newly launched revolutionary platform for mobile learning, Upside2Go. It is a solution that will not only help training departments to reach out to the mobile workforce easily, but would also enable a mobile-based approach to real-time sharing and collaborating, within and outside a team. Amit Gautam, Director of Technology Solutions at Upside Learning, will be present at the booth to explain the nuances of the system.

Also on display will be the company’s award-winning custom eLearning solutions and its two-time Brandon Hall award-winning, best value Learning Management System – UpsideLMS. Besides, there will be exciting offers for people visiting the booth.

To help people understand the wide array of mLearning tools, technologies, products, and services available for implementing mLearning in their organisation, Upside Learning will be holding a Master Class session at the expo. This session, titled ‘Mobile Learning and Performance Support with Upside2Go’, will be held at 12.45PM on June 21^st.

“With the unprecedented growth of mobile technologies coupled with the growing penetration of mobile devices, Mobile Learning is emerging as the ‘future’ of learning. For us at Upside Learning, mLearning is not just another delivery mode; it’s a whole different way of looking at learning itself.”, said Amit Garg, Director of Content Solutions at Upside Learning. Further, talking about mLearnCon, Amit Gautam, Director of Technology Solutions at Upside Learning, added, “We are confident that mLearnCon would be a perfect platform for us to showcase our mobile learning solutions. Besides, given the 100+ focused learning activities spread across the event days, it would be 3 days of new learning, new connections and new ideas.”

Upside learning’s representatives will be present at booth (number 316) 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.

Click here to register for the expo.

One Lucky Winner To Win A Kindle Reader At Upside Learning’s Booth At mLearnCon 2011

Attendees at mLearnCon 2011 can look forward to winning a Kindle Reader at Upside Learning’s booth (#316). This is a part of the company’s special expo offer for the event, which will be held between 21^st and 23^rd of June in San Jose, CA.

To be eligible for the offer, visitors would need to register at Upside Learning’s booth. One winner will be chosen via random draw, and announcement of the winner thereof will be done post the event. The company’s representative will contact the winner personally via email.

Besides participating in the offer, attendees can experience Upside Learning’s entire range of innovative Mobile Learning solutions including its newly launched revolutionary platform for Mobile Learning – Upside2Go. Visitors can also take a look at the company’s award-winning Custom eLearning solutions and its best value Learning Management System – UpsideLMS.

The company’s representatives will also be delivering a Master Class session titled ‘Mobile Learning and Performance Support with Upside2Go’ on June 21^st at 12.45PM.

Upside learning’s representatives will be present throughout the event and can be found at booth no. 316. To pre-arrange a meeting with a member of the Upside Learning team during the conference, drop a mail at sales@upsidelearning.com

Upside Learning Wins Two Apex Awards of Excellence (2011)

Upside Learning, a recognised leader in training outsourcing, Learning Management Solutions, Custom eLearning Development and Mobile Learning Solutions, has been declared a winner in the Apex Annual Awards for Publication Excellence Competition (2011) in two categories, namely Electronic Media & Video category and Brochures, Manuals & Reports category.

APEX 2011- the 23^rd Annual Awards for Publication Excellence – is an international competition that recognises outstanding publications from newsletters and magazines to annual reports, brochures and Web sites. Sponsored by the editors of Writing That Works, a newsletter published by Communications Concepts, Inc., the Apex Awards are presented annually to recognise excellence in graphic design, editorial content, and the ability to achieve overall communications excellence. This year, there were 11 major categories and 122 sub-categories. The Awards of Excellence recognise exceptional entries within these sub-categories.

Upside Learning’s entry in the Electronic Media & Video category had been in the Web Videos sub-category, while that for Brochures, Manuals & Reports was in the Books and eBooks sub-category. For the former, Upside Learning had submitted a one and half minute introductory video of its revolutionary platform for mobile learning – Upside2Go. The latter consisted of a 44-page eBook titled ‘LMS for Training Companies – Then & Now’ giving a comprehensive overview of the LMS from the perspective of training companies.

The Upside2Go video, called the ‘Revolutionary Mobile Learning Solution – Discover Upside2Go’ video was developed to act as a curtain raiser for Upside Learning’s mobile learning solution – Upside2Go. The video provides a brief introduction to Upside2Go, highlighting the various possibilities and scenarios without spelling out the actual features. This was done to help pique the viewers’ interest. It was used to launch Upside2Go in the US market at ASTD TechKnowledge 2011 and was later on added to the company’s website as well.

The eBook, ‘LMS for Training Companies – Then & Now’, was targeted not only to the people in the training industry, but also to others in the Learning Management domain. Analyzing the requirements of training companies from an LMS during the recession hit period to today, the book gives a detailed view of the various features and tools that have evolved inline with the evolving needs of the training companies. It also gives a sneak peak into the future by making predictions about the changes that one can expect in the LMS in the coming period. Users can download a free copy of the eBook by registering on the website.

According to the APEX 2011 judges, “The awards were based on excellence in graphic design, quality of editorial content and the success of the entry in conveying the message and achieving overall communications effectiveness.”

Upside Learning Receives An Overwhelming Response at mLearnCon 2011; Announces Winner of Its Special Expo Offer

eLearning Guild’s mLearnCon 2011, a mobile learning conference held from June 21^st to 23^rd in San Jose, CA, proved fruitful to Upside Learning. The company experienced an overwhelming response for its entire range of mobile learning solutions.

With more than 600 attendees, 55% more than the previous year, mLearnCon 2011 was successful in providing a platform to vendors for showcasing various mobile learning tools, technologies, products and services.

Visitors at Upside Learning’s booth (number 316) were able to experience the company’s entire range of innovative mobile learning solutions including micro courses, quizzes, games, mbooks, videos, Augmented Reality apps and mobile apps, spanning various platforms like Symbian, Android, Blackberry OS, iOS etc. Amongst all the solutions exhibited, Upside2Go emerged as the star product continuing to win appreciation for its innovativeness and effectiveness, specifically in addressing needs of mobile workforce, from some of the biggest corporates in the US and other markets.

In view of the growing interest and importance of mobile learning in the business landscape, Upside Learning also conducted a master class session titled ‘Mobile Learning and Performance Support with Upside2Go’. The session focused on the various ways in which corporates could benefit from Upside2Go, harnessing it for delivering learning on the go, at the time of need.

Earlier this week, the company announced one lucky winner for its mLearnCon 2011 Kindle Reader offer. Sam Rogers of Snap Synapse was selected from a random draw carried out from over 40 registration forms received during event.

Upside Learning Develops Augmented Reality Cover For Elearning! Magazine

The July/August issue of Elearning! Magazine featuring a cover story on Augmented Reality (AR) for Learning officially hit the news stands on July 14^th, 2011. What makes this remarkable is the fact that it is the first-ever eLearning magazine to feature an interactive ‘augmented reality’ cover page. And making this possible is Upside Learning, a global leader in Custom eLearning, Mobile Learning solutions and Learning Management System. Upside Learning has been instrumental in the complete development process of the application from conceptualisation to implementation.

Upside Learning has constantly strived to address the multifarious platforms in the technology space, with Augmented Reality being one of the most important ones. For some years, the company has been exploring this technology and finding the best ways to utilise it in the learning domain. It has successfully developed AR applications like Pune Layar, an augmented reality application for mobile phones developed first time for an Indian city; and AR Street Racing, a simple racing game.

Given Upside Learning’s experience, understanding and capabilities of AR technology, Elearning! Magazine approached the company for its special issue focusing on Augmented Reality. The main idea was to develop a cover for the magazine that introduced the readers to the real world uses of AR. It was also important that it illustrated the accessibility of AR in learning programs. Being an eLearning company, with a focus on emerging technologies, Upside Learning considered this as a perfect opportunity to showcase its learning and technology capabilities.

After initial discussions between the publication team and Upside Learning’s team, comprising Abhijit Kadle, Sr. Manager-Instructional Design, and Shivaji Babar, Associate Lead Developer, it was decided to create a simple marker that could be printed on the magazine cover. This marker when held up to a computer camera, on recognition and registration thereof, enabled the AR demo. As the cover story was to highlight various disciplines wherein Augmented Reality could be used as a value add in effective learning, the final demo was developed to showcase three videos demonstrating practical AR applications in Manufacturing, Medical and Recruitment.

Designed for both Windows and Mac, the AR cover is clearly inline with the cover story demonstrating how Augmented Reality can blend real world learning with digital technology with components like exploration, learning and entertainment.

Amit Garg, Director of Custom eLearning Solutions at Upside Learning, said, “We are excited to see an AR application developed in-house being featured on the cover page of Elearning! Magazine. Reaching thousands of readers, it is an excellent way to showcase our technology capability while keeping learning as a focal point.”

Upside Learning Augments Its Partnership Program; Opens Channel Partnership

Less than two months after introducing a comprehensive partnership program for its two-time Brandon Hall award-winning Learning Management System – UpsideLMS and its recently launched revolutionary platform for Mobile Learning – Upside2Go, Upside Learning announced, today, a much awaited extension to this program. The new addition of the channel partners ushers in a network of partners who share the same strategic vision.

The Channel Partners Program is designed to help organisation capitalize on Upside Learning’s market leadership in the eLearning solutions domain. Channel partners can take advantage of the many benefits that come with the program, including technical and marketing updates, training guides, marketing materials and more. Besides this, timely product information and pre-release access to new software and product updates ensure that the channel partners have a distinct sales advantage. One of the distinct benefits of the program is that the end customer belongs to the partner and as such the partner holds all rights over the customer.

Any independent company that provides eLearning services and/or products to appropriate customers with proven ability to independently sell applicable products can apply for the program. Upside Learning’s Channel Partners Program provides qualified partners with all the resources and support necessary to help capitalize the business opportunities in the marketplace. As a result, partners can look forward to expanding their portfolios and increasing revenues.