Communications, marketing, instructional design, and more.
This well-thought-through video was released by Skullcandy toward the end of October and has naturally received millions of views on YouTube. I had to post it knowing it was filmed in my backyard here in Utah. Watch the final minute of the video for a glimpse into the production of the video. Bravo, Skullcandy.
Loving this look. How do you feel about mid -length skirts...yay or nay? #urbanselfie @urbanselfie pic.twitter.com/IEoPjURwBI
— Janine (@BeingBrazen) December 13, 2013This time last year a little clothing store located in South Africa was running an outstandingly creative customer engagement social media campaign. Urban Degree gave store customers an $8 in-store credit if they would try on clothing from the retailer and take a selfie, share the image online, and include the hashtag #UrbanSelfie
There's a lot of opportunity for other industries to do this. Why can't restaurants provide a $1 discount for guests who take and share a photo of their food? When you provide small incentives for your customers to promote your products and services, they will.
Photo credit: "People in motion" by Götz Keller is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Whyville is an online community for children between the ages of 8-14. This 7-million-member community is a virtual world where kids have the ability to interact with each other with advanced identities and cultural complexities that are found in our physical world. Utah State University's Deborah Fields recently spoke at TEDxUSU on the interesting subject of tween activism that occurred in this virtual setting.
Here's Dr. Field's TEDxUSU speech:
Dr. Deborah Fields is a world-renowned authority in the unique area of tween life in online environments. She co-authored the book Connected Play: Tweens in a Virtual World.
I love seeing this beautiful footage from one of the nation's most beautiful locations, situated in southeastern Utah. Ron Risman does a masterful job of capturing some of the post beautiful scenes those familiar with Moab will recognize along with a handful of shots that are completely unique. What's more, he edits those scenes to from Shantel Nicole Grace's song, Beautiful. Well done, Ron!
The mountains on the edge of Morgan, Utah, caught fire in the fall of 2013. After the fire eventually burned out, ecologists wanted to track the damage and recovery of the charred mountainside. Hikers who visit the area might encounter the sign below which encourages those with smartphones to take a photo and share it to the #MorganFire02 hashtag.
Cool use of twitter pic.twitter.com/5oYB9tPkz6
— Sergei Krupenin (@krupenin) May 18, 2014The #MorganFire02 caught like wild fire (excuse the pun). If you visit its live Twitter feed, you'll see one, two, or more images posted per week from the sign location. This concept is so smart. Think of the saved trips ecologists have spared themselves in launching this package. Think of the added awareness the presence of this feed provides giving onlookers unique insight on the healing processes nature goes through following a fire.
The concept of crowdsourcing documentation via smartphones and through the outlet of hashtags is not limited to forest fire recover observations. There's certainly myriad other options for this concept.
I stumbled across this video of David Lee unboxing Minecraft in the Classroom: Ideas, inspiration, and student projects for teachers. David mentioned that the book helps teach subjects including math, science, languages, and other subjects using Minecraft as a focal point. I've been aware that instructional technologist have used Minecraft in after-school makerspaces with great success for some time. PhD candidate Ty Hollett with Vanderbilt University has invested much of his research focus in this field and has seen a lot of success with his work. The introduction of this book by Pearson Education indicates that there may be expanding opportunities for students to participate in Minecraft learning opportunities within the course of a regular school day in a classroom setting.
Here's a look at the book. Thanks for the video, David.
Photo credit: "Minecraft Castle" by Mike Cooke is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
In honor of Thanksgiving, data scientists at Facebook crunched some numbers to identify the top ten things Americans are most thankful for. They looked at words people used in sentences that contained the words "grateful" and "thankful" to develop their findings. The scientists mentioned that their analysis was "conducted on anonymized, aggregate data by English speakers in the United States." Here's what they came up with:
Data scientists also broke down the top gratitude "thing" that was mentioned most in each state.
Click here to view some additional graphs these scientists produced. It's really a fun read.
This documentary, produced by GVI, was outstanding. It made me appreciate the work of one of our era's finest cartoonists. What I enjoyed most about it is how well GVI captured the extreme thought and detail Richard Thompson put into his art. As interviewees point out, Thompson's work is deceptively elite. I have a lot of appreciation for Richard Thompson's broad artistic abilities after watching this piece.
Last week, I wrote about the upcoming vote regarding regulation of ridesharing companies. Since the date of last week's post, members from Salt Lake City's council voted in favor of cracking down on said companies; Uber and Lyft don't seem to be amused.
“If the Council’s intention was to welcome ridesharing into Salt Lake City, these regulations clearly miss the mark. The Council is attempting to fit a square peg in a round hole by passing outdated regulations.”
A few changes have been made as a result of the vote: Ridesharing drivers will be required to pay for $1.5 million insurance policies, and drivers, once properly registered, will have access to Salt Lake City airport. Here's Utah's Fox 13's story on the vote:
Photo credit: "LYFT" by Alfredo Mendez is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Photo's sharpness reduced.
There's a very highly paid professional who recently quit his $7.4 million-per-year day job. What's more, he quit his job to take up farming. Meet former NFL Center Jason Brown. Here's Jason's inspiring story of why he chose to make this major career change:
You'll notice in the video that Jason said he has used YouTube as a resource of learning his news skills. Videos like this helped him build his basic knowledge in the area of farming:
“When I think about a life of greatness, I think about a life of service.”
In addition to his elective online learning, Jason looks like he's done a lot of learn-by-doing by making investment in equipment, land, and delivering his first harvest of 100,000 pounds of sweet potatoes. Jason also said he received advice from other farmers in his surrounding community.
Based on my observations from the video, it looks like Jason is well on his way to becoming highly skilled in his new career.
Music is so crucial to setting the tone and mood of a video. I have spent hours looking for the right track for various video projects I've worked on because of this importance. In the last year, I've channeled nearly all my soundtrack purchases to the website Music Bed. The site's search categories, sort options, and quality of selection all work together in helping filmmakers find some outstanding soundtracks. One of my favorite artists on Music Bed is Tony Anderson whose music you can listen to, here. His music has depth, professional-level production quality, and is memorable. If you listen to just a few songs, I think you'll realize why he's one of my favorites and why he's a top artist on Music Bed.
I stumbled across this video which highlights a unique friendship Tony has developed with an unlikely friend. It's a cool look at the artist behind some great music, and it's also an outstanding and visually rich video production. Enjoy.
Taxi drivers must jump through extensive regulatory hoops in an effort to ensure that passengers are traveling in safe, reliable vehicles. The sometimes exclusionary expenses associated with getting a taxi license. Taxi drivers and taxi companies don't fully foot this bill. It's passed on, indirectly, to consumers in the form of higher rates, poorer customer service as the result of less competition in the marketplace, and potentially dirtier taxis, also a result of less marketplace competition.
Ridesharing companies have emerged in recent years to solve some of the issues in this transportation market. Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Rideshare have developed apps that allow individuals to reserve transportation from their drivers by simply submitting a request through a smartphone application and getting picked up minutes later. Consumers benefit from less expensive fairs, better customer service, and potentially cleaner cars using these systems.
Still, some regulators raise concerns about the safety of this dynamic solution to the taxi problem. Efforts are being made to regulate these new companies and make them adhere to the same or similar regulations traditional taxi companies must adhere to. Safety concerns have been raised given some early issues some riders experienced although all said companies require thorough background checks before drivers are hired.
Others applaud the companies' efforts which may help people consume fewer resources and provide more options for those needing transportation.
Duke University's Michael Munger recently spoke about the benefits of these rideshare organizations in his presentation on the sharing economy when he visited Strata in September.
My guess is that rideshare programs are here to stay. They will grow and evolve in major metro areas where they'll naturally thrive best with limited regulations.
Photo credit: "Taxi" by Moyan Brenn is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Image was cropped, desaturated, and softened.
PhotoMath has developed an outstanding application to help students find solutions to math problems. Although some individuals and groups have expressed concerns that students will use this app to cheat on tests (some inevitably will), there is a lot of potential utility in the use of this application as a form of scaffolding in math instruction and learning. Benefiting from this utility, of course, would take some discipline on the part of the student. A student would attempt to solve a math problem from beginning to end. She could then use PhotoMath to check her work and correct errors after making an honest, unassisted effort to solve each problem. In the event that the student becomes stumped on a problem after such an effort, she could then employee PhotoMath to find the correct solution, view the sequential steps required to solve the problem, and identify the specific area where she encountered difficult.
As you can see below, some users naturally enjoyed using PhotoMath more than others. One common complaint I found associated with the application was the lack of detailed explanations associated with the set of problem-solving steps PhotoMath provides for each problem. Others found that it provided adequate support in aiding learning.
You can download PhotoMath for free for your apple device, here. The folks at PhotoMath are also currently working on developing an app with the same functionality for your Android device due to launch in the spring of 2015. To enter your name on their mailing list to be notified when the Android PhotoMath app is launched, click here.
I've been asked for the technical details behind how I made my IRONMAN training video seen below:
I'll break my production process down in this post.
I set a goal to capture footage of every day during my 6-month training period as I prepared for the IRONMAN Coeur d'Alene. I would try to get a few shots from each training session and pick the best one for the day used the following equipment to capture this footage:
I began my editing on Final Cut Pro X, but found that I liked Adobe Premiere much better for editing this video together. Here's a look at my timeline. You can see that the timeline has tons of clips and is pretty complex as I tried to keep the video moving forward quickly in synchronization with the pace of the song.
Video tracks 2 and 3 served as placement spots for my 180+ .PSD files which reflected my updating training stats. I started with a .PSD file titled January1.PSD which had stats started at zero and then added my daily training numbers to the .PSD file and saved it uniquely to the date during which I trained. On days that I did multiple sports, I created multiple .PSD files. E.g., March15a.PSD, March15b.PSD. Here's a look at a .PSD file in Photoshop:
It may be challenging to see, but the .PSD file has several elements all of which I can make visible or invisible in the "layers" panel. I had layers for the swim, bike, and run icons which would allow my to flip the layer on whose stats I was reporting. On a run report, all icons would be set to grey with the exception of the run icon which would be turned visible and would appear green. I would then change the date to match the icons color for a more dynamic dashboard.
This dashboard took much more editing time to work with then the video files I worked with in Adobe Premier.
I primarily used a Garmin Forerunner 10 to track my run distances, times, and calories' burned estimates. I also used Strava and Map My Run to help me with data. I used basic estimates on calories' burned and distances cycling for my indoor training. I used online estimates for calories' burned for swimming to estimate those numbers as accurately as possible. I would do my best to transfer this recorded data into a new .PSD file in Photoshop as soon as I could following a workout.
The following is a very typical sequence of steps I would take to get my training in and documented on a daily basis:
My schedule during this 6-month period of time was very busy. I ended up doing a lot of my workouts in the dark as seen in the video. If I were to do this again, I would make more efforts to film in daylight as those shots tend to be more interesting.
All in all, I am pretty happy with how this video turned out. It was a lot more work than I anticipated. I estimate that this project took 20-30 minutes of every day I had for 6 months to keep the video gathering, processing, and editing moving along. Knowing that others would potentially be seeing the effort I put into training for an endurance triathlon keep me motivated to get out the door every day and drove me to keep careful stats on my workouts.
Do you have plans to document a big event you're training for? Please share your final product with me. I'd love to see it.
Photo credit: "Phonebooks galore" by Tim Welch is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
With Facebook becoming more of a pay-to-play social network, and with the ability to pay for placements and reach on YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms, having a healthy social media budget at one's hands is a welcome and helpful tool in executing successful communication and social media campaigns. For many organizations, such a budget is a novel concept and other organizations still have no fiscal allocation for social media activities.
There are many things one can do to increase an organization's social media budget, but I'm going to focus on just one way in this brief blog post:
Look at your organization's marketing/public relations/communications budget as a whole. A sample budget might look like this:
Company ABC has goals. Its marketing budget is put in place to help it reach its specific goals. A savvy marketer should monitor the performance of each tool the department uses to distribute content it hopes will help Company ABC reach its goal in an efficient and effective way. Let's say Company ABC is an high-end ice cream chain with five locations. Let's also say that since Company ABC began operations in 1994, its target audience has remained primarily in the demographic age range of 15-35 years old. A lot has changed since 1994. 15-to-35-year-olds communicate and behave much differently than that same demographic did 20 years ago. Perhaps the marketing group for this chain performs a bit of informal research and finds out that their target audience makes most desert decisions by talking with friends and by using their smart phones to perform searches for local dessert options. Given this generalization of the situation, do any items listed above seem to appear like they could be ineffective at reaching this target audience?
One of the easiest ways to add budget dollars to one's digital marketing budget is to look out for the best interests of your organization and carefully consider its goals and weigh the performance of its spends against the goals to determine which activities seem to be the most efficient, effective ways for the organization to reach its goals.
Let's say the results of your research show that Company ABC is only effectively reaching 10-15 customers for its annual phonebook placements. The cost to reach each customer would be $1,000 / 15 customers = $666.66 per customer. Can Company ABC reach potential ice cream shop customers more inexpensively with other means? Under this same scenario, you might find that the cost to reach 1,000 on social media is $5. One could effectively transfer $5,000 from the phonebook budget allocation to the social media budget increasing it from $1,000 to $6,000. Notice that the overall marketing budget, under this scenario, did not expand. On one had to approach the CEO and ask for more funds. Budget dollars were simply reallocated from one marketing category to another in an attempt to be more efficient and effective with allotted funds.
In short, an easy way to potentially grow your social media marketing budget is to evaluate where current marketing dollars are being spent and how effective those dollars are in helping the organization reach its goals. Based on your findings, make reallocation adjustments to better meet your organization's goals.
Photo credit: "Neon Westminster London City - Blended Big Ben" by Simon & His Camera is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
The New York Times predicted that 2012 would be the year of the MOOCs. From 2012 until present, these MOOCs (massive open online courses) have popped up all over covering nearly any subject one might want to learn about. MOOCs, by definition, are open. I.e., anyone can join them without going through an admissions process. They are also free. Other online platforms have developed which charge students course fees in exchange to access to courses. Here's a review of five of the most popular platforms where these courses can be found:
https://www.coursera.org/
Coursera is home to 800+ courses with a student population of 10,000,000+ Coursera has teamed up with many traditional and internationally respected universities to provide online courses on many subjects, most of which one could expect to encounter on a college campus. Coursera's U.S. universities include many Ivy League universities including Columbia, Brown, Princeton, and Yale. Major research universities including University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Minnesota are home to instructors who are also contributing members. The best part about Coursera's courses is that they are free!
http://www.craftsy.com/
Craftsy's focus is centered around crafting as is evident in its name. Learners pay a small fee. Learners who pay the fee for the class have access to its materials for life. Subject areas that are covered on Craftsy include quilting, photography, gardening, home remodeling, and many other areas. Craftsy's video interface is very engaging. Students can make comments during instructional videos which are attached to the specific place in the video when the comment was made. Others are able to see these comments and instructors' responses which makes for a dynamic learning environment.
https://www.udemy.com/
Udemy claims to have four million students and 20,000+ courses. It has taken the approach of providing a rewarding profit sharing structure with its instructors. This structure acts as an incentive for instructors to curate high-quality content and to market their courses to potential students. Students naturally also benefit from courses that Udemy's instructors have put a lot of time and effort into. Many of Udemy's courses are free, and fee-required courses are typically between $5 and $100 per course.
https://www.edx.org/
edX focuses on providing high-quality education provided by instructors from some of the world's top universities including Harvard, MIT, and U.C. Berkeley. Courses are structured similar to university courses by university professors. Students can earn certificates for many of the courses they complete. edX courses are free.
https://www.khanacademy.org/
The Khan Academy provides thousands of free instructional videos on specific skills and techniques that learners are developing. The Khan Academy hosts its videos on YouTube. Its YouTube channel is home to 1.9 million subscribers and more than 475 million YouTube video views. If you're trying to solidify your knowledge on any k-12 school or college subject, chances are, someone has produced an instructional video on it that can be found on the Khan Academy's website.
If you're looking to polish a skill you've been developing or to learn a new skill or subject, taking an online course on the skill or subject may be an excellent method to reach your goals.
Photo credit: "academic pursuit in the shadow of the catalpa" by pcgn7 is liscensed under CC BY 2.0.
I love this video recently released by Sweetgrass Productions. Snow, music and LED lights are all combined to create art. Hat tip to Kevin Lawanto and Jeremy Jensen for telling me about it.
Do digital natives and immigrants exist? Researcher Marc Prensky coined these terms as a method of highlighting some generalizations around the generations of tech users including those who grew up before the advent of many of today's technology we use (digital immigrants). Generalizations are also assigned to digital natives who grew up with recent technology who he segments as those born in 1980 or later.
Much like national immigrants who grew up speaking a foreign language before immigrating to a new nation, digital immigrants are said to use technology with an accent and experience some difficulties expressing themselves to the level of proficiency of younger generations who were born with technology surrounding them.
These descriptors are loosely helpful from the perspective of a instructional designer in that it's important to consider the general technical aptitude of one's audience when deciding best methods of sharing instruction. As with all generalizations, there are exceptions to stereotypes, and in the case of the generalizations surrounding digital natives and digital immigrants, the exceptions are plentiful.
Technology is vast. It's expansiveness makes it impossible for any one person to "know technology". There are simply too many technology-related subjects in existence that mastering them all, let alone having a general understanding of all-things-technology, is impossible. There isn't really a pure expert in "technology" young or old. An expert networking specialist likely knows little about web development. A video production editing specialist can master linear editing software but may have little conceptual understanding of iOS application development. One's ability to master any area of technology has little to do with her generation and more to do with her unique interests in specific areas of interest. Those who are interested in app development will likely engage in activities and studies that will expand their knowledge in that area. Because interests are individual and don't always correlate with age, our audience of technology literate users, generally speaking, is diverse.
Differences in the technological skills and abilities of technology users in their 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's, I don't believe, has a huge amount of variation if interests are aligned. I believe a lot of the generalizations Prensky assigns to digital immigrants become more evident in many users in their 60's, 70's, and beyond, although there are still myriad exceptions.
I love this PBS Idea Channel spot on the subject:
So, do digital natives and immigrants exist? My answer is yes, in general terms, they do, but in specific terms, they don't. From the perspective of a designer, it's important to consider the unique set of technology skills and aptitudes your users will have when designing material.
If I'm ever in the mood to view some entertaining, unique, funny, or strange videos, I tend to drop by Reddit.com/r/videos and quite instantly find what I'm looking for. One of my favorite features of subreddits is the ability to sort content by "top fill-in-the-blank" within a certain time period. This search technique helps pull up some interesting content. To illustrate, I've included top videos in each time category below:
I found this costume on Reddit. It's pretty funny, but there's always a bit of truth in humor.
What can social media professionals do to avoid criticism in a field that is relatively new? Produce results. Too often, social media people get caught up in stats that are sometimes but not always connected with value. That's why it's so important to make sure your social media activity is goal-driven, that you are clearly driving traffic, causing impressions, and generating engagement that is leading to organizational goals that have market value.
Photo credit: Pedro J. Ferreira. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Sharpness reduced.
