LTEN 2026: What We Took Away

LTEN 2026 was one of the best we’ve attended in years. The energy was high, the conversations were substantive, and the attendance reflected just how much the commercial learning and development community has grown. We came back energized, and with a lot to think about.

AI Is Everywhere. Direction Is Harder to Find.

The biggest theme of the conference was impossible to miss: AI. It was on the main stage, on the exhibit floor, and in almost every hallway conversation. We understand why. Leadership attention and budget are moving in that direction, and commercial learning teams are under real pressure to keep up.

But our honest takeaway was that many attendees are still searching for a purposeful direction. One person told us her VP had given a simple directive: 30% of everything she did had to involve AI. Not 30% of a specific initiative, just everything. That kind of mandate captures where a lot of teams are right now: real urgency, but not yet a clear model for where AI actually belongs.

That matters because learning and development is a deeply personal field. So is sales. So is coaching. AI can surface signals in coaching data that are hard to catch manually, and it can support content delivery and practice at scale. But it doesn’t replace the first-line manager watching a rep handle a tough objection and helping that rep get better. If anything, the AI moment raises the bar for what good coaching needs to look like, and makes it more important, not less, to have a clear coaching system in place.

Our Workshop: Grateful for Great Partners

We had the privilege of presenting a session on coaching quality alongside Dan Listemann of Botanix Pharmaceuticals and Ted Power of iCoachFirst. We’re genuinely grateful for their partnership, both brought sharp perspectives and real credibility to the conversation, and the session was better for it. If you weren’t in the room, the slides are worth a look: [Download the Coaching That Counts workshop slides here].

The Moment That Stayed With Us

Keynote speaker Suneel Gupta asked attendees to write down a personal or professional challenge on a card, then pass it around the room. If a challenge resonated, you marked it. If you thought you could help, you added your email. The cards ended up pinned to a board for everyone to see.

In a conference full of AI demos and platform announcements, that board was a useful counterpoint. Commercial learning teams need tools and data. They also need peers who understand the pressure of developing people while expectations around technology and performance keep rising. Both things are true at once.

We’ll see you at LTEN 2027.