As the title suggests, Tony Bates summarizes the 2013 LINQ conference. Speakers featured Bates, Rory McGreal, Fred Mulder and Jay Cross, among others. What comes out of the conference is that Europe has a serious labour crisis and is attempting (as we are here) to match skills development to employer needs. Toward this end, open resources, and especially high quality resources, are advanced as part of the solution.
To a certain degree I agree with this, and this is the sort of thing educators provide, so that's where we should be aiming. But the employment crisis will not be solved though education alone. At a certain point we have to look at the distribution of wealth in society - jobs are drying up because the money is no longer in the hands of people who spend it, but rather in the hands of bankers and investors, who hoard it (or do things like spend it on this week's ridiculous $12 billion acquisition of Shopper's Drug Mart). At a certain point, education may have to become more about thriving and surviving outside the traditional employment market, rather than trying to cram more and more people into the few jobs that remain within it.
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