Impressions from the 1st Athens e-learning expo

The exhibition was an overall great success. It attracted thousands of visitors. The August (!) weather was helpful. All discussions and events were overcrowded with people standing. Rooms proved out to be too small for the attracted interest.
The parallel sessions were very useful for the general public to understand the potential and aspects of e-learning implementation as well as to see some projects and services in action. There were events for enterprises, institute owners, trainers, k12 teachers, higher education.
The session on e-university as a solution for administrative procedures highlighted some good practices in greek universities. However, the lack of sharing & open mentality was highlighted as major problem.
Around 30 companies active in e-learning were present in the exhibition. Some other companies one would expect to see were missing.
Most international elearning vendors are building partnerships in Greece.
Several e-learning vendors and developers are based outside Athens, an encouraging fact.
Most e-learning vendors are active in e-learning 1.0 focusing on LMS, flash content etc.
However, there were some innovative e-learning products & services made in Greece which could go international.
For more insight about what happened, check out tweets about the event of the 1st e-learning expo in Athens under the twitter hashtag #athelexpo.
I had the pleasure to meet again not just with several of my (best!) students from train the e-trainer and other e-learning courses but also with friends and associates back from student & NGO days in NTUA.

My conclusions:

E-learning hunger: There is a huge interest for e-learning in Greece from various groups; teachers & trainers, private school owners, foreign languages trainers & schools, middle school tutors, higher education institutes.
After this event, e-learning (1.0) will become mainstream in Greece. Elearning infrastructure (for institutes) and e-tutoring skills (for individuals) are not going to be a privilege of innovators and early adopters, but a must.
E-learning content production is going to be very hot in the coming years.
The current e-learning field in Greece has still a lot of catching up to do to compete in international markets.