I’ve used my Elluminate email here to make sure I’m being up front about my association with LearnCentral–I’ve been hired as the social learning consultant at Elluminate, in large part because of my http://www.classroom20.com network.

I think there are two ways to look at LearnCentral. One would be, as you state, that it’s a marketing strategy. There’s no question that a commercial company, like Elluminate, that depends on revenue from its core products looks carefully at every project as part of its design to grow use and market share.

At the same time, I think we’re seeing opportunities for new levels of transparency and authenticity in business because of Web 2.0 that allow for a second perspective. I’d like to suggest that LearnCentral represents the kind of project where a company feels that by doing something “good” and significant–and by being open about about motives–that this work will reflect well on the company and that those who purchase their product will feel even better about doing so.

In order for Elluminate to provide a quality service, it needs to charge for its services and to make money. At the same time, we stand on the precipice of an amazing new world for educators, where the ability to connect with each other both asynchronously and synchronously holds the promise of bringing incredible opportunity and engagement for them in their careers and for their classrooms. So what contribution can Elluminate make that still supports its business model but also helps to encourage this historic change in communication? LearnCentral, we hope, is part of the answer to that question.

We’re imagining all of the educators who have specialty curricular interests, many or most of whom will not be part of an institution that has an account with Elluminate–but who, if given the opportunity to use Elluminate to gather or meet with other educators with the same interest, will be able to have the kind of rich sharing and co-discovery that has typically happened only at conferences. This “long tail” of interests, and their ability to gather together and work on them, could potentially be “mined” by someone as a source of revenue, but even that might hinder the incredible potential that exists right now. So the distinction between public, recordable sessions and private, fee-paying uses allows (we hope) for an incredible flowering of opportunity for educators while still (openly) preserving the financial value of Elluminate to its paying customers.

We don’t think this will impact the high-quality instruction opportunities available for educational institutions, as currently we see LearnCentral as a professional development tool. However, the concern is well-noted and will, I’m sure, be the subject of some discussion for us.

Hopefully, instead, the freedom to hold large public sessions will provide for the very “spontaneous” transformations you (and) we believe can be so powerful.