Breaking new ground


My first TACT meetings were at the Ecclestone Hotel, Victoria. The hotel was dirty, meeting room functional and lunch occasionallyinedible. But TACT was hungry for knowledge, not food, and wanted to keep the costs of acquiring that knowledge low.


Then, TACT lived a frugal, hand-to-mouth existence. Roger Kreitman, head of a company called Mantissa, was Treasurer and the finances always attracted eagle-eyed attention from a principled, tenacious and, sometimes, not-so- genial giant of a man called Jeff Oliver, whose untimely death saddened all of TACT.


In November 1995, TACT moved its meetings to The Society for Chemistry and Industry in Belgrave Square and enjoyed not only better presentation facilities in the lecture theatre but also extremely delicious lunches!


Abbey National’s CBT department, based in Baker Street, was well represented. One of its number, Anne Hogan, took over the TACT chair when Richard Haycock stepped down. The group later received a much-needed financial stimulus, under the chairmanship of Jonathan Kettleborough, by merging with the TenCORE User Group and its funds.


TenCORE was an authoring language which grew from PLATO, the first CBT system, developed in the 1960s for green screen, mainframe computers. PLATO spawned not only TenCORE but also IconAuthor and even Lotus Notes. In less than 25 years all these tools have come and gone. But not the eLN!


Setting course for the future


The change of name to the eLearning Network – now the eLN – saw TACT move from printed to virtual newsletters. Members received a detailed report of each meeting by email. This practice continued regularly until


2006 and sporadically after with some short reports published in various magazines. The final report related to the November 2008 meeting.


Today the eLN has over 6,000 associate members and is run by unpaid volunteers and a part-time administrator. Member benefits include access to the eLN’s popular mentoring scheme, face-to-face events and workshops and the eLN Market Place.


So, for the last 25 years, whatever you’ve needed to know about learning technologies, you’ve tended to hear it first at TACT and eLN!


Bob Little


‘Perspectives on Learning Technologies’ (e-book; ASIN: B00A9K1VVS) by Bob Little is available from The Endless Bookcase and Amazon. It has over 200 pages of observations on issues in learning technologies, principally for learning & development professionals.


“Without TACT you can learn nothing”


– Benjamin Disraeli 9


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