You know how when you create something, you’re never quite sure how it’s going to change? You know necessary changes will happen, but you’re not sure how, when, or in what form they will occur. You throw yourself into your project with love and hard work, so focused on creating that you miss what’s forming behind you. Suddenly, you look up and everything you worked towards doesn’t feel the same anymore. It doesn’t reflect what you’ve been building every day. That’s what happened to us, at ELM Learning.
This is our story. One day, in the midst of exciting opportunities being made, our staff growing, and our expertise becoming refined, we started to look ahead into our future and we realized just how far we had come in 5 years. Unfortunately, we didn’t look like ourselves anymore. On the inside, we had developed into this young, bright, colorful community of artists and professionals, while on the outside we looked stiff and dated. We knew it was time for a change.
On the inside, we had developed into this young, bright, colorful community of artists and professionals
Our first realization was a familiar one: “What’s in a name?” we asked ourselves (promoted by the Bard). “Are we accurately representing ourselves by being known as eLearning Mind?” Like every industry, the corporate training world is constantly evolving. With change comes a new way of understanding the work done within the industry; where elearning once gave the impression of something done via a search engine on a desktop, the term slowly came to pass with the death of Internet Explorer. Now the internet is almost everywhere. Where once confined to public spaces and the familiar dial-up tone, you can now follow trends, answer email, join meetings and, dare we say, keep up with the Kardashians everywhere, even 50,000 feet in the air.
Once you realize the limitless applications of wifi, an open invite to everyone to learn about anything, anywhere, you will see how a mere term, a single vowel, can age a concept 20 years. All this to say, we looked up from our cutting-edge work to realize that while we were embracing the newest learning techniques, we were holding ourselves back, seemingly unevolved. It was then and there we changed our name to ELM Learning. It is a name as sleek and relevant as we are.
Like a tree, an elm tree specifically, ELM Learning is a growing company. We hold the elm tree as a symbol of our growth; as it grows older, the branches spread further, grow stronger, become able to bear more weight, weather stronger storms. We’ve seen our fair share of turbulence, made our fair share of honest mistakes, and we’ve definitely done our fair share of growing up. Learning lessons is not always easy, but we’ve been grateful for the experiences, for the chances to renew ourselves, for the chances to grow.
Learning is an evolving concept and it has been since the beginning of time. However, there are traits, thousands of years old, that still holds true. The famous philosophies of Aristotle, which we read today, were once lecture notes taken by his students. In other words, Aristotle believed in instructor-led training. When you read history, you come to see how impactful learning has been. After all, a love and cultivation of the art has been observed from Madame Pompadour to Benjamin Franklin to Einstein into Bill Gates; learning is timeless.
This is, again, why we did away with elearning to be come ELM Learning; in an ever moving yet timeless age of learning, we didn’t want something as simple as a single letter to hold us back, to date us while we’re moving forward.
But we didn’t stop there. While our name is a huge part of who we are–and how people will identify us–we knew the second part of our development needed to be more visible. Over the course of the last 5 years, we’ve been cultivating a hub of talented, passionate artists and animators who take pride in their ability to create something beautiful as well as specific. When we thought of the beautiful creations we deliver to our clients every day, we looked at our website and saw, dully, how inaccurate it was. It didn’t represent what we saw as our creative core. So we updated and evolved.
Our new look represents who we are as a company and who we are as people–we are diverse, we are colorful, and we are creative problem-solvers and…we like to think, magicians. We’re wizards at crafting the perfect solution to whatever challenges arise ahead of us–dragons to battle, product knowledge to transfer, or technicians to train. We’ve consistently been told that our work is magic–how we create it, and its impact on our partner companies. Our new site celebrates the fun and joy in the work we do–bringing the magic of learning to companies who are looking for an empowering learning experience.
Learning is a constant. It’s as ageless as time itself, yet it’s always expanding, pulsing, jumping, wriggling into new forms to be consumed by learners as we evolve past colosseums, blackboards, and powerpoint. We aim to be a part of the long journey that has been learning, pushing ourselves to deliver more engaging, effective, and relevant training to companies and hungry learners everywhere. Welcome to the new ELM Learning.
I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma. - Eartha Kitt
Author: Andrew Fayad, CEO
