Celebrating the New Year and five years of learning with Gomo

The end of 2019 brings us to the end of an eventful decade in corporate learning. Before the year is out we also wanted to acknowledge a milestone for Gomo—it’s been five years since we launched to the market. While looking forward to everything 2020 has in store for us and our products, we thought we should also take some time to say a little about Gomo’s journey so far.

2019 was a milestone year for Gomo, its fifth on the market after launching as a standalone product in April 2014. Technically, Gomo existed before 2014: it was an experiment within Epic (the learning company that merged with LINE Communications to form LEO Learning). The experiment looked into app-based learning delivery. It then grew to meet the needs of HTML5 content builds as demand for Adobe Flash-based content diminished.

The last five years have seen Gomo go from strength to strength. Both the business and the authoring tool have grown significantly through mergers and a focus on continual refinement and innovation. Read on to find out more about where Gomo came from, and a little on where it’s going in 2020.

A quick Gomo history lesson

Gomo has been a commercially available eLearning authoring and delivery platform for five years, but the Gomo story actually began back in 2010. The Gomo project started within Epic as the company’s way to build mobile learning apps. Over time it morphed into a responsive, HTML5 authoring tool. HTML5 offered great compatibility with the emerging mobile learning market, so Epic was keen to move away from Flash.

We often refer to this period as ‘Gomo 1.0’. Three years later, we rebuilt Gomo as a client-facing Software as a Service (SaaS) product. Taking an internal eLearning authoring tool to a wider audience requires a significant rethink. The user interface obviously had to change, but substantial changes were also needed ‘under the hood’. We essentially rewrote and redesigned Gomo from scratch.

The resulting Gomo 2.0 was deep in development by the end of 2013 and poised for public release the following year.

2014: Gomo was first officially demoed to the industry in February 2014, at the Learning Technologies conference in London. The platform launched in April 2014. This was the same month that Learning Technologies Group (LTG) acquired LINE. LINE brought with them a similar authoring tool—LINEStream—and this team was merged with Gomo. A few months after launch, Gomo won its first accolade: Best Advance in Content Authoring Technology (Silver) at the Brandon Hall ‘Excellence in Technology’ awards.

2015: Components of LINEStream were repurposed as Gomo Hosting. This formed part of the new Gomo Learning suite, which now provided authoring, delivery and analytics in a single package. Gomo was honored with a second Brand Hall award (Gold this time) for ‘Best Advance in Content Authoring Technology’.

2016-2017: Gomo continued to evolve, adapt, and improve with new features released monthly. The awards also kept coming. The Fosway Group’s 9-Grid™ named Gomo as a ‘Core Leader’, Training Industry featured it in their list of Top 20 Authoring Tools and Craig Weiss named Gomo as the #1 authoring tool in the world.

2018: LTG acquired PeopleFluent, an integrated talent management and learning solutions provider. PeopleFluent brought with them the KZO learning video creation and delivery platform, which initially found a place within the Gomo Learning suite as Gomo Video.

Exciting changes ahead

Gomo has continued its evolution throughout a fantastic 2019, and we’re very excited about significant new developments we’ll be able to share with you soon.

2019 saw us spin-off the KZO/Gomo Video functionality into an innovative new platform: Instilled. As our Learning Experience Platform, Instilled is a fantastic complement to LTG’s learning and talent businesses, demonstrating the strength of the Learning Technologies Group. To deliver Instilled, we worked with our sister companies Rustici Software and Watershed to integrate their technologies, enabling us to build the platform on established, robust and industry-leading solutions.

Instilled has another role to play in Gomo’s story. As we revealed in our recent interview with Gomo Success Manager Simon Waldram, we will soon be releasing the Gomo Academy. This Instilled-based learning portal will make you an expert Gomo author, delivering YouTube-style microlearning. We plan to cover the basics, right through to expert techniques. The Gomo Academy will roll out for all Gomo customers in early 2020.

Beyond this, we’re planning big things for Gomo next year, with a new milestone release for the platform coming soon.

Until then, we hope you have a happy New Year and a fantastic 2020.

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