Following the official welcome of the Portuguese hosts, the conference started with the opening plenary on the delivering of the Lisbon Agenda. For Claudio Dondi, President of Scienter and moderator of the session, the link between eLearning and the Lisbon 2010 agenda is very present. He said, "ELearning is not a name in itself, but a powerful instrument." Dondi added that even though mistakes had been made in the past, he believed that the conference would be a turning point. Furthermore, he contended that learning must be connected with innovation change, and the learning individual is considered the focal aspect. His speech concluded, "We have to focus on the why of eLearning".

During the session, Claudio Dondi sought his co-presenters' opinions about what has not worked well in delivering the Lisbon 2010 Agenda so far, as there are only three years left to fulfill the goals. Moreover, he asked them for proposals that need to be discussed further.

For Paul Lefrere from the Open University, UK, the main question is "How can we use eLearning to add value?" He is currently involved in an open innovation action project that strives to provide early notice of skills that will be in demand soon. For Markku Markulla, Director of the Lifelong Learning Institue Dipoli, Finland, problems in the past have had to do with missing coordination and networking skills. New eLearning concepts based on the social web need to be developed. To improve performance, not only do individuals and groups have to be empowered, but networks as well.

Diogo Vasconcelos, eGov Cisco sees two main challenges. First, the Lisbon Strategy is not connected to society. Furthermore, we now live in a different world, where 50% of the population is connected through the internet. So for Diogo Vasconcelos, the future lies in connected learning, in order to achieve social innovation. For the future, he proposes to create a market for eLearning, establishing cheaper open platforms. To achieve this, schools and universities have to have their own budgets. Other challenges include the aging population and climate change, and for Diogo Vasconcelos, there are big opportunities for eLearning. He asked, "How can connectivity and eLearning help people to stay longer in their established communities?", and "How can eLearning help to stimulate patterns of climate change?"

"Each Member State has to build a culture of merit in its administration", proposes Rogerio Carapuca, Chairman and CEO of Novabase. He says that progression in careers should depend on evaluations about what every individual has learned. There should be competitiveness between staff to build a more knowledgeable workforce. Another proposal of his is that every major product should come with just a one-page manual and an eLearning tool to guide you through the product specifications. He believes that this would help to make people more ICT competent.

Various plenaries and workshops followed. Mark Rosenberg, American consultant and expert in the fields of organizational learning, eLearning, and knowledge management gave a summary of his book "Beyond eLearning". In a vivid presentation, he explained his concept of "Performance-Based Learning". Etienne Wenger, expert in the field of learning communities, presented his findings on informal learning and communities of practice.

In the open session on re-skilling for the knowledge society, Ilkka Tuomi, Chief Scientist, Meaning Processing Ltd., tried to answer whether the concept of skills make sense in the world of future and whether we need a more human-centric model for learning, where competences are socially and socio-technically distributed.

ELearning Lisbon 2007 was the biggest eLearning Conference ever held in Portugal. Approximately eighty percent of the 1,500 participants were Portuguese. For Patricia Leao from the FDTI - Foundation for ICT promotion, the conference was a big success. "The conference truly raised awareness amongst all stakeholders."

Charts of the presentations will soon be available on the conference homepage or in the conference blog .