David Preston

In 2004 David left management consulting and teaching at UCLA to teach at one of the nation’s ten largest high schools in Los Angeles. That meant a shift from supercharging small, highly motivated teams of smart, talented people to managing 173 direct reports who couldn’t do jobs they didn’t want in the first place. David’s students included gang leaders, teen parents, and suicidal introverts. No one carried a book. Over the next few months, David and his students transformed their experience from a converted auto shop filled with trash into a global think tank brimming with great ideas. This is how Open-Source Learning was born. For nearly 20 years now the Open-Source Learning culture has become a tradition that has led to all sorts of adventures. In “Learning to Fly” David shares the core principles of Open-Source Learning, along with stories about joining students on explorations through the internet, Yosemite, Mongolia, and even the backseat of an airplane with a student who learned to fly.

Leadership is a very popular word that means something very different than what most of us think, because most of us first learned about leadership in school, where there often isn’t any. David flips the script: in Open-Source Learning there are no administrators, managers, or teachers. Everyone is an active learner. Lead learners act as stewards, guides, and mentors who model the art of learning and transparently practice what they preach. In this keynote every audience member becomes an active participant who acquires new leadership skills, masters new concepts, and curates their learning journey in ways that immediately create value. This talk includes a working demonstration — every audience member will master and demonstrate at least one new leadership practice and tell their story online. Success is a rush — the inspiration and motivation that Leadership Learning creates is through the roof!

Your most valuable asset and your most treasured talent is your ability to learn. Supercharge it! Students, executives, entrepreneurs and community organizers have all used Open-Source Learning to build their individual capacities and their teams to achieve amazing results. In “Build Your Open-Source Learning Network” David provides the Open-Source Learning framework, entertaining examples, hands-on activities, and a step-by-step guide to help you create your own road map for success.

Every election cycle promises education reform, but every week seems to bring a new crisis. School raises more questions than it answers. Between the test scores, the abuse, and the campus shootings, what the heck is really happening in school these days? What’s coming next? Most importantly, how can we support young people and guide graduates as they recover, rebuild, and chart a learning course for the next chapter of their lives? In “We the Learning People” David answers these questions with the Five Fitnesses of Open-Source Learning. David’s research and experience-based insights from his work as a teacher, professor, management consultant and journalist give audiences hope — along with practical strategies and tools for improving our selves, our communities, and our organizations.