Adapter’s Advantage Podcast: Episode 15 Featuring Jon Tota

Welcome to Adapter’s Advantage: Breakthrough Moments that Lead to Success. In episode 15, entrepreneur, producer, and podcaster Jon Tota shares how he built several successful businesses, including one of the first online video training platforms.

Tota is the founder of Syntax + Motion, a media production company, and the host of Learning Life, a podcast focused on business trends and learning strategies. He started his career as a screenwriter, then went to Wall Street and found his way into computers in the late 90’s.

As co-founder of Edulence in 2002, he created Knowledgelink, one of the first video training platforms in 2004. Knowledgelink enables experts and corporations to deliver training videos to employees and customers anywhere.

In 2020, Edulence was acquired by eLearning Brothers to make Knowledgelink the LMS platform for one of the most trusted brands in the Learning & Development space. This successful exit allowed Tota to launch Syntax + Motion, his new media production company, to create innovative client work and a collection of episodic shows.

Corporate training must be more agile to meet the demands of a new generation of employees. Technology is evolving to give learners choices and create a better workforce. Listen to this episode as Tota discusses the pros and cons of user-generated content, insights for improving user adoption, just-in-time training, and how AI will drive the next generation of learning solutions.

Episode 15: Building Next Gen Training Solutions | Jon Tota

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“If you can show a new hire—or any employee at your company—that there’s a specific learning path that’s going to move them forward on their career track to get them where they want to be, professionally and personally, then they’re going to electively jump in and engage with that content.” — Jon Tota

From This Episode

Host Mark Magnacca: “What do you believe the next generation of learning solutions is going to become?”

Jon Tota: “I think the big change is going to be in the area of artificial intelligence learning. The technology is there. And, as you know, managers don’t need more work to do. What we’ve created now with all of these platforms is they’re getting more training content coming in, more that they have to review, more that they have to give feedback on.

“And so this promise of a more intelligent learning platform that can start checking off some of the boxes for managers, giving feedback to users, moving them along that path, and learning and getting better at it because of the data that’s been collected through the hundreds of thousands or millions of users that are coming through a platform. I think that’s going to be the big push forward.

“When you think about this first wave of curation, what everyone’s excited about is the ability for users to bring content into a platform. I think that’s nice. But machine-generated curation, where because you read this book and you bought this, we think you might like these three things, to the point where your learning path can learn the way that you learned, the types of content that work better for you, and then start suggesting and giving you feedback without a manager having to do it manually, that’s where I think we’ve got to go.

“And I think the technology is there to some extent, but it needs a certain amount of data before it could be intelligent enough to make those recommendations, so it’s probably another few years.”

About Adapter’s Advantage

Our podcast features leaders from sales, training, and industry who share their personal journeys of transformation and how they are adapting to an ever-changing environment. As your host, I’ll introduce you to some of the most interesting and inspiring people I’ve met over the last twenty years.

The conversions dive into the ups and downs of their journey. Our guests focus on inflection points—the aha moments that, in retrospect, had a critical impact on their success. These interviews will leave you with practical, real-world advice that you can apply to your life.

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