What Catalyst Club reminds us about bringing the people behind learning together in person
The thing that struck me most about this year's Catalyst Club wasn't on the agenda. It was who was in the room.
AI is reshaping every layer of L&D. How content gets built. How learners get matched. How programs get measured. The easy read is that the work is becoming less human. It isn't. The decisions that move learning forward are still made between people who trust each other. And trust is built in person.
That's why creating spaces like Catalyst Club matters more than ever. It's also why OpenSesame doesn't run it the way most companies do.
Most companies send their commercial team. OpenSesame brings the whole product. At a typical vendor event, account managers fly in, customers get a steak dinner, and the people who actually build the product stay home. OpenSesame works the other way. The Sales and Customer Success teams are there, and they've earned that. So are the Engineers and Product Managers behind the features customers rely on, the Partner Managers who untangle complex tech-stack integrations, the Recruiters who build the team, the Curators who decide which courses make it into the catalog, and the Operations folks who keep everything moving while the rest of us are in conference rooms.
When a customer asks about a feature roadmap, the person who can answer is standing right there. When a publisher wants to talk through content strategy, they get the Curator who'll be reviewing their submissions. That's the point. Customers don't trust a platform. They trust the people behind it.
The people here didn't just earn their spot by hitting a number. They earned it by contributing. By making the team think sharper. By helping a customer solve a problem. By pushing in the direction the industry is heading. That's a higher bar, and a different one. It's what makes the conversations worth having.
Here's the part many companies don't think to do. Every Catalyst brings a +1. Someone important in their life: a spouse, partner, parent, or close friend. The person who picks up the slack during a launch week. Who hears about the hard customer call over dinner? Who makes it possible for a Catalyst to be a Catalyst?
This isn't a perk. It's the company saying out loud that the work is done by humans with full lives, and the people who support them deserve to be there, too. It also changes the room. Conversations get deeper when +1s are at the table. People show up as themselves. That's where real connection happens.
The conversations are the point. Not the agenda or the presentations. The honest ones, about what's actually working, what's harder than it looks, and where learning is driving performance. People challenging each other, sharing opinions, walking away with something they can use.
The best of those conversations happen in the in-between moments. There are more ways than ever to connect remotely. None of them produces trust the way being in a room does. Trust builds through shared experiences, over coffee, walking between sessions. That's where you understand how others think, not just what they do. And when that happens, work moves faster.
The keynotes drove it home.
David Marquet, author of “Turn the Ship Around,” opened with intent-based leadership. When he took command of the worst-performing submarine in the Navy, he flipped command-and-control. Instead of asking "what should I do?" his crew said, "I intend to." Authority moved to the people with the information. Santa Fe went from worst to first and produced more submarine captains than any ship in the fleet.
Same logic behind bringing the whole team to Catalyst Club. When a customer asks about the roadmap, the answer comes from the Engineer who built it. No translation, no hedging. The conversation moves.
Melissa Stockwell came at it from a different angle. Four-time Paralympian, Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient, the first American woman to lose a limb in active combat. A roadside bomb in Baghdad, three weeks into her 2004 deployment. Four years later, she carried the flag for Team USA at the Beijing Paralympics. She's since won three paratriathlon world championships and co-founded Dare2tri, a nonprofit for athletes with disabilities and injured service members.
Her talk wasn't about what happened to her. It was about the choice that came after. A Paralympian visited her at Walter Reed and told her the Games were possible. One person, one door she didn't know was there. That's what the best learning does. It shows people what's possible and gives them a reason to go after it.
The Sesames set the standard. Customers building thoughtful, effective learning programs. Publishers creating content that learners come back to. Partners delivering experiences that work. They remind us that trust is earned through consistency and results.
Catalyst Club started as a way to celebrate success. It still is. It's also about something more lasting. Bringing together the people customers count on, the people who support them at home, and creating space where relationships deepen, ideas get challenged, and trust grows.
OpenSesame is expanding the room next year. Catalyst Club 2027 is in Cabo San Lucas. If you're a customer, partner, or publisher doing work that's pushing L&D forward, I'd like to see you there.
Learning has always been human at its core. That hasn't changed. Get the right people in a room. Bring the people who make those people possible. Set the right intent. You don't just share ideas. You build something stronger.
Thank you to this year's publishing sponsors, who made Catalyst Club possible: Mind Channel, SAI360, Seven Dimensions, The Jeff Havens Company, Traliant, Vector Solutions, and Vubiz.
