Learning in the age of knowledge
on demand
Tim O’Reilly
Founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media

2
Tim O’Reilly
Founder & CEO
O’Reilly Media
oreilly.com @timoreilly
Introduction
• Providing learning for almost 40 years –
books, events, online
• Trends pioneered – Commercial Internet,
Open Source, ebooks, Web 2.0, Maker
movement, Big data
• 500+ employees
• 5,000+ enterprise clients,
2.5m platform users globally
• Offices in US, Canada, UK, Japan, China
• 17 global technology events serving
20,000 individuals and 1,000 sponsor
companies

3
“The Knowledge” vs the GPS

4
Here’s How Hard It Is to Gain “The Knowledge”
“The examination to
become a London cabby
is possibly the most
difficult test in the world
— demanding years of
study to memorize the
labyrinthine city’s 25,000
streets and any business
or landmark on them.”
The New York Times,
November 10, 2014

5
Was the answer better training?

6
Knowledge is embedded in the interface

7
Drivers learn the city by driving it

8
Learning in the course of work

9
I learned this trick by following a video
But after doing it
a few times, I
don’t need the
video any
more.

10
The Internet is a great resource for simple skills
like tying knots, or trying out new recipes

11
Or even refreshing yourself on a bit of math or
physics you’ve forgotten

12
How does this all apply to IT learning?

13
There are prerequisites even for Uber
Knowing how to drive
Knowing how to use a smartphone app
Knowing how to read a map
Good communication skills
Good work habits
Basic business skills

14
They are far greater for software development
Use a computer effectively
Have a logical problem-solving mindset
Know the programming language – it’s not always your choice
Know specific environments – the web, iPhone or Android,
Windows, AWS or Azure
Know how to use the latest developer tools
Have UI-design sensibility
Know where to find specialized code libraries and how to use
them
…

15
“Structural literacy” – knowing enough to
learn more in the flow of work

16
Software boot camps everywhere

17
But developers constantly need new skills

18
Linear learning:
Curated content to learn something new
On demand learning:
Answers to help you do your work

19
STRUCTURAL
LITERACY
HIGH-LEVEL
KNOWLEDGE
LOW-LEVEL
KNOWLEDGE CONTENTSTRUCTURE
Professional Skills Development Framework
PROFICIENT/HIGH PERFORMERS
Use self-directed discovery for problem solving and
nonlinear instruction to acquire new skills.
Require high-quality, relevant content with depth and breadth.
NEED THE FUNDAMENTALS
Learn basics through comprehensive, sequential (linear) instruction.
Require structured, highly curated content.
Fluency
Awareness
Identification
Non-Linear Learning
Linear Learning

20
Live Online Training

21
Live In-Person Events

22
Sessions available for review on the platform

23
30,000 hours of video

24
45,000 books

25
Case Studies extend the marketplace model

26
Expert Playlists

27
But what about when you’re searching for
answers?

28
Linear v. Non-Learning Behavior
on the O’Reilly Platform
Non-linear
42%
Linear
58%

29
Search-driven non-linear learning is one kind of
learning in the flow of work…
but there are opportunities to go deeper, with
environments that support safe experimentation

30
What happened when Richard Feynman was
asked to critique an elementary physics textbook
"I stuck my finger in, and I started to read: “Triboluminescence.
Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are
crushed…” I said, “And there, have you got science? No! You
have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You
haven’t told anything about nature—what crystals produce light
when you crush them, why they produce light. Did you see any
student go home and try it? He can’t. “But if, instead, you were
to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a
pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some
other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The
phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.” ’ Then someone
will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.”

31
Jupyter Notebooks
• Open Source tool for
“narrated computations”
• Created by Fernando
Perez and Brian
Granger
• 2-3 million users
http://jupyter.org

32
A Who’s-Who of top companies and universities

33
Not just a learning tool, a working tool
https://www.kaggle.com/surveys/2017
A Kaggle survey
of ~8,000 data
scientists
identified Jupyter
as the 4th most
used data science
tool for work.

34
“Narrated computation”

35
“An Active Learning Experience
That Works”
- Lorena Barba
GWU
“My experience with Jupyter notebooks is that
students engage with the material in an
almost tactile way. Manipulating a piece of
code, experimenting with parameters in a
problem, then reflecting and discussing the
output makes for an active learning
experience that works. The best results occur
when students start creating their own
notebooks....”
Lorena Barba
George Washington University

36
Jupyter on the O’Reilly Platform
Jupyter-enabled
• Live trainings
• Books
• Video (Oriole)

37
An executable, explorable explanation

38
Interfaces that teach

39
Executable task-specific documentation is the
infrastructure of specialized on-demand learning

40
Full circle…