Having excelled in the role at the last three conferences, author and informal learning expert Robin Hoyle will act as conference chair across the two days. After Robin's opening address on day one, keynote speaker Rafal Szaniawski will take to the stage to tackle a subject at the heart of the conference: Curators vs enforcers: what's the future role of L&D?

Drawing on examples from his time at Barclays, RBS, and recently as Chief Learning Officer at Deloitte Switzerland, Rafal will examine what the concept of curating content instead of enforcing learning means for L&D. He'll explore how learning programmes can be more relevant and aligned with how people learn in today's fast-paced and digital environment, and how roles and competencies can be nurtured within the business. Rafal comments,

"I'm looking forward to engaging my audience to reflect on these crucial matters and to inspiring them to ensure that L&D can be seen; that we make ourselves visible by demonstrating value now and into the future."

Closing the first day of the conference is Di Macdonald, who has held senior roles in global organisations, including Head of Retail Training for EMEIA at Apple and Director of Learning at L'Oreal. In her keynote presentation, Making learning cool - challenging learner perceptions, Di will discuss the ever-decreasing attention span of today's digital learner and how L&D can tackle this. She'll challenge her audience to re-evaluate some of the practices she sees regularly being deployed and will address the differing learning needs of single and multi-location organisations.

Di comments, "There are still too many L&D functions building solutions based on how they want to deliver learning - not how their users want to consume it. L&D needs to acknowledge that we have to become audience centric; we need to listen to our users and start treating them like customers.

"I hope to accelerate my audience's own learning by sharing some honest examples of mistakes I've made along the way, as well as showing them how I've adapted approaches to learning and, crucially, what's made a positive impact."

Asma Shah, from You Make It, will give the first keynote address on day two of the Conference. Asma will offer a truly unique perspective on how to empower people to take control of their own learning and development, thanks to her leadership of a highly effective programme for young, working class women in East London.

Asma will reveal the practices that best facilitate members of the programme and will share tactics from her own holistic approach to leadership. She comments, "I hope to inspire my audience and to show them how they can implement similar practice in their companies and staff so that they can support their people to drive their own learning."

Closing the conference, Robin Hoyle will deliver the final keynote address, Fighting fatigue: what can L&D do to energise employees around learning? In his presentation, Robin will share practical examples of how to inspire employees to engage with learning in their daily work.

Robin comments, "I look forward to adding to the immense goldmine of knowledge and expertise that will have been shared during this exemplary conference as I discuss my own thoughts on how L&D can become more effective and more visible within the organisations we serve."

The World of Learning 2018 is held in association with the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning (iTOL).