We attended the 2023 Learning Impact Conference in Anaheim expecting the usual: a curated whirlwind of vendor demos, institutional keynotes, and big promises about the future of learning. We didn’t expect to leave with quite so many questions still buzzing in our bones.
Some of the sessions felt like déjà vu—talking points wrapped in fresh acronyms. But others surprised us. They invited more than strategies and metrics. They asked something of us. Not just as professionals, but as people navigating the messy in-betweens of change, uncertainty, and systems that don’t always serve the learners—or the Earth—as they should.
What stayed with us wasn’t a product pitch or a PowerPoint. It was the pauses.
Like the quiet moment after a panel on data ethics when someone asked, “But what happens when our systems know more about our students than we do—and still don’t listen?”
We left with a shared sense that the real work of transformation doesn’t happen in keynotes. It happens in the discomfort of not knowing, in the hallway conversations where someone says, “Yeah, I feel that too,” and in the small acts of refusing to pretend we have it all figured out.
This wasn’t a conference that gave us clarity. It gave us reflections. And we’re still working on that.
