Guerilla Multimedia">Guerilla Multimedia
As I’m packing up the last of our personal belongings while my family and I wait to get into our new house, it struck me that to move from stasis, you just need to be able to do something.
At work, our team once had no skills or capability to produce media. For less than $100, we were able to produce video and audio. We’ve taken that train as far as it goes, and leaders grew discontent with the quality of the audio and video we could produce. Still, we kept doing it. Why? Because they didn’t care enough to want to pay for something better.
I’ve spent the better part of two days re-evaluating the tools we have and what capabilities they provide for our team, in terms of media production. When we began building E-Learning content ourselves, there was no budget and no appreciation for media, so everything had to be guerilla-style.
What is guerilla-style multimedia? It’s multimedia production on the cheap. I selected a small, $40 FlexMic (from MacMice) that was a USB condenser microphone, which provides better audio quality than the unpowered microphones that plug into your Audio-In port on your computer. We put a pop-screen together out of a coat hanger and panty hose (I read that one online a few years back). For video, I picked up a Flip Camera (which ended up getting adopted throughout the organization where people wanted to do video).
When we had no media capability and no business case to make, this gave us a set of tools which enabled only so much. I’m now proud to say that our leadership is demanding better quality audio and better quality video, and that after two years we’re now easily making the business case it will take to significantly advance our ability to produce such multimedia in-house.
Sometimes to please people, you have to make them aware of the pain their own lack of investment causes. You must withstand the countless retakes someone will make you do before a leader realizes that it’s the quality of the tools you’re using that prevents desired results. You must be ready with a plan to improve (and you must deliver on that plan).
Many organizations tend to value the diving catch; they should be valuing the people who prevent the need for diving catches but it’s largely not in our nature. Designers, by definition of wanting to design the “right” experiences, tend to fight this head-on. As a disruptive practice, I advise leveraging this cultural moray. Do the best job you can with the tools you have and continue to work on the plan to level up. That way when the idea to improve becomes a leader’s idea, you have a solid plan to help that leader execute flawlessly. You can make the diving catch.
Relating to your dilemma, our work team also at one time had no skills. Fortunately, our organization believes in having the right tools to do the job. Because of that we have all the latest and greatest tools – Adobe CS3, Captivate, Lectora, Articulate, and a few others including Adobe PremierPro and Encore. We even have a fancy digital video camera.
“You can buy me a better hammer, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to hammer a nail any better.”
Our frustration is coupled with a team that has a lack of instructional design skills. Teaching one to use a new tool is just a matter of time and the learning curve to use it. However, if there are no visual design, instructional flow, or usability skills…fancy tools mean squat!
We have organizational support in the direction of on-line training and elearning, and we have leadership alignment on what it will take to produce it. What we don’t have (yet) is a solid strategy that understands good instructional design takes time and should be handled like any other project. Instead we often take a policy document, convert it, add some buttons and a multiple choice quiz, build a report, and announce a user is “trained” if they successfully answer all 10 questions.
Rapid “Fire” Elearning may not be effective, but we publish a heckavu lot of it! In the past few years (3) we have pushed the envelope forward and have created more demand (which is a good thing). To your point, “…you have to make them aware of the pain their own lack of investment causes.” they are beginning to see the lack of investment in time to develop a proper course and the lack of skilled designers is showing.
It’s all good though…keeps me on my toes and off the streets!
Great post!
Thx, brother! I’m actually not frustrated, except for how generally slow true adoption takes in grassroots/guerilla approaches. It’s taken two years and when all is said and done, the organization will own the shift.
There’s, oddly enough to me, a parable to be drawn from the Old Testament (there’s my shout out for Rosh Hashannah), where Moses could deliver the people to the promised land, but couldn’t go in, himself. As an internal learning consultant, I’m getting the people to own the solution but their adoption and internalization of the better practices must be the reward.
I use the term ‘frustrated’ loosely as we are making progress. The moments of frustration are felt after the time is invested into a new strategy or even a single project that some owners are still not ‘getting’ it.
You phrased it perfectly – “Getting people to own the solution but their adoption and internalization of the better practices must be the reward.” Can I use that?
I Creative Commons the blog, brother. Every once in a while when you shout that out, just get people to check out the blog