Turbulent markets make it necessary for companies to adapt to new demands in a rapid way. An intelligent organisational and personnel development plays a central role in coping with this strategic management task. To keep companies competitive in this challenging environment it is necessary to build up, to maintain and to develop the competences of employees and organisational units. The challenge is to bring into relation the management of competences with the performance of the company and to adapt in-company learning and competence development processes appropriately.

These current developments and topics are the subject of the international Professional Training Facts conference which takes place on 20th and 21th of October 2010 and is organised by Fraunhofer IAO for the sixth time in succession. The conference offers practitioners and developers a forum for the exchange of information and experiences from organisational and personnel development. On the agenda are new trends and challenges as well as solutions and practice examples from a company perspective. Speakers from companies and research institutions present methods, concepts and strategies how to design the "Learning - Competence - Performance" triad for today and the future.

The Professional Training Facts conference is most appropriate for in-company experts dealing with further training and competence management. Other target groups are:

• organisational decision-makers,
• experts from the educational sector as well as from the private and public sector, and
• application-oriented researchers.

• gaining an overview about the most important topics, challenges, trends, and solutions,
• meeting experts from research and industry and becoming familiar with their points of view,
• enlarging their own personal network in the international community,
• experiencing good practice examples and solutions to get ideas for their own activities,
• sharing experience with speakers and other participants,
• receiving useful first-hand answers for implementation activities in organisations,
• finding partners for implementation projects from applied research and industry,
• understanding how to estimate the effectiveness of solutions outlined in the area of competence management with regard to time, cost and quality aspects.