ASTD 2010 Conference and Exposition – Find Your Value

Several us at Ignite just got back from the ASTD (American Society for Training & Development ) 2010 International Conference & Exposition in Chicago.  The theme this year was Value, and how each decision you make is measured by its value to you and to your organization.

For me, this year’s conference was most notable by how the session topics have changed over the last few years.   There’s been a noticeable trend toward showcasing informal learning tools as a legitimate means of training. These include new social media applications that so many of us are using in our personal lives, things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace, as well as videos, podcasts and virtual worlds.  I admit I’ve been slow to adopt these tools both professionally and personally.  It’s safer and easier to stick to the classroom-based PowerPoint presentation and endless bullet points we’re all use to. But times are changing, and fast!  And we have to change with them if we want to maintain our value to the organization.

I came back from the conference excited about ways to incorporate these new ideas into our current employee and customer training.  I plan to share my experiences, both the good and the bad, in the coming months.  For now, I’ll leave you with the following YouTube video, which nicely presents this new wave of social media.

Ignite Tradeshows: Streaming Media East & ASTD International Conference

The  tradeshow season is now upon us!

Ignite is first headed to Streaming Media East held in New York at the New York Hilton, May 11 & 12th. Ignite has exhibited at the show for the past four years.  Ignite customers from Bank of America and Huntington Bank will be speaking on a the panel, ‘Cost Savings from Enterprise Streaming‘ on Tuesday, May 11th at 11:45am.

On May 17th Ignite will be exhibiting at ASTD International Conference in Chicago at McCormick Place.  The American Society for Training & Development organization holds its premier event for workplace learning and performance professionals. The conference features over 230 educational sessions from industry-leading experts, and a world-class EXPO filled with the latest products and services available from top suppliers.

Each year we have seen an increase in demand for elearning delivery solutions. The ability to create rich content provides an engaging learning experience and many companies are looking for solutions to deliver these large elearning files directly to the end user desktop, laptop or mobile device without impacting  the corporate network or end user experience.  The Ignite Solution helps to solve these delivery challenges enabling end users to view rich media content directly online or offline and easily integrates to learning management systems.

We are looking forward to these two industry events and hope to see you there!

New Whitepaper – Ignite and Aberdeen Group: Business Class Video

Ignite co-sponsored a whitepaper with the Aberdeen Group titled, Business Class Video: Defining the Standard of Business Value,  by Hyoun Park, Research Analyst, Telecom and Unified Communications. The whitepaper released today, summarizes the top strategies and actions to gain business value from video solutions in the enterprise. You can download your free copy here.

Based on the input of over 150 organizations, the study is intended to look both at the current state of video in the business environment and line-of-business video usage to discover how video has created business value. Aberdeen used the following key performance criteria to distinguish Best-in-Class companies:

• 100% were able to measure ROI for video solutions
• 186% annual ROI for video solution (payback time of 6.3 months)
• 81% of employees have access to enterprise video solutions

Not there yet? The report suggests required actions to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must consider the following video benefits from a business value perspective:

• Align video solutions to line-of-business needs throughout the enterprise, rather than treat video as a pure technology solution.
• Track and manage the green and sustainability benefits of video from a travel, document creation, and employee development perspective.
• Think of video content and communications as corporate assets that can be parlayed to help additional employees, customers, partners, and suppliers.

The report has extensive information, useful statistics and compelling graphs to support the justification for an enterprise-wide business video platform.

Benefits of Business Video Using Peer-to-Peer Technology

Interactive Media Strategies in conjunction with TMC.NET recently interviewed Fabian Gordon, Chief Technology Officer at Ignite Technologies. The video is now posted on Business Video TMC.NET website. Fabian discusses the benefits of managed, secure peer-to-peer technology for distribution of video or other rich media throughout the enterprise.

Fabian states, on average 95% of bandwidth and computer hardware assets are under utilized.  Businesses can leverage these resources and additional bandwidth to distribute large video files efficiently to all users within the company.

Fabian also discusses the benefits of a business video distribution using a SaaS model and the importance of being able to track employee video usage and view rates.

Do you have a question related to distributing video within your enterprise? Post a comment or  contact Fabian at fabian.gordon@ignitetech.com.

E-Learning Experts, are you Articulate?

Click to view streaming presentation using Articulate

Making the leap to e-learning can be a daunting task.  Selecting the right authoring tool can be even more daunting.  After looking at several products, we landed on Articulate.  It’s an easy-to-use tool that requires very little technical savvy (something I sadly lack).  If you know PowerPoint, you can use Articulate.  Basically, you create your PowerPoint, use a template to build your navigation and customize the look, and then you publish.  Presto chango, you’ve got a really slick looking presentation that others will think must have taken you “forever” to create.  

Articulate Presenter is the basic authoring tool, but we also use their Engage product to add some nifty animations. Their website has a very active community forum where you can find lots of information.  And Tom Kuhlmann has a great blog that is chock full of helpful tips and tricks for online courseware developers even if you don’t use Articulate. Ignite’s Solution Overview was created using Articulate, and was one of the first presentations featured on their Community Showcase.  You can view the Community Showcase area and Ignite presentation HERE, and read why it was chosen.  Also, take a minute to view the other featured presentations. You never know where you’ll get that next great idea.

Innovation, Strategy and Technologies at MURTEC 2010

We will be exhibiting at MURTEC 2010, Multi-Unit Restaurant Technology Conference, March 10-12 at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. This will be Ignite’s second year as a Gold Sponsor at the event.

Entering its 15th year, Hospitality Technology’s MURTEC will bring together over 200 restaurant technology, finance and operations professionals for three days of peer-to-peer exchange of ideas and best practices. In addition to exhibiting, Ignite will host a Networking Luncheon Table Topic, Delivery: Leverage Existing Networks to Deliver Data, Software & Rich Media Across the Enterprise.

Ignite currently has several high profile restaurant/hospitality customers. One customer reigns as the world’s largest quick service restaurant, where Ignite is deployed in over 13,000 US stores and enables the electronic delivery of business procedures, training materials, store promotion information and safety guidelines while centrally managing the inventory and maintenance of restaurant operations PCs.

It’s a new world for training developers!

Social learning and collaboration is everywhere.  In fact, you’re doing it right now. Blogs, Wikis, Facebook, Twitter, virtual worlds and the many other social sites that are out there are changing the way we learn.  It’s also changing the type of learning content we create, as more companies embrace these new technologies.

At this year’s ASTD TechKnowledge Conference, held in Las Vegas, social learning and collaboration was the prominent theme throughout the sessions.  New learners are entering the workplace every day, and the traditional forms of learning content like PowerPoints and instructor-led courses are not good enough. These new employees have been raised on social media and collaborative games. So, the challenge is how do we address the learning needs of these socially networked employees?

New Site New Information – TMC.NET Business Video

Jim Janicki, president & chief executive officer at Ignite was recently interviewed by Steve Vonder Haar, Interactive Media Strategies.

The video is posted on the  Business Video which is a joint partnership between Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), the world’s leading business to business and integrated marketing media company, and Interactive Media Strategies, a leading research analyst firm covering the business video and enterprise communications marketplaces.

The principals of Interactive Media Strategies include Steve Vonder Haar, Founder and Research Director of the research firm, and Paul Ritter, Vice President of Research & Marketing.

Digital Business – What is your company doing?

We are very excited to launch our new blog - Digital Business!

 The purpose of this blog is to form a community, bringing together various industries and disciplines from within a company such as, corporate communications, training, sales,  marketing, HR and even IT to share technologies, ideas and best practices for video and rich media communications.

What is Digital Business?  It’s communicating with each other and across the corporation electronically using video, multi-media or other technologies. Companies are using business technologies such as, digital signage, kiosks, learning management systems, social media portals, and live streamed events are various ways companies deliver a message. The message could be general employee information, new employee application, e-learning modules, and sharing ideas about a project or an executive’s quarterly update to his global workforce. Corporations who communicate is not new, but the technology and the demand for video and a more interactive form of communication across the organization – is new.

Digital consumer lifestyles are now bleeding over into the way we work. Our experiences with high quality video, fast communication, and pictures versus words, instant feedback and openly sharing our experiences with the world will also be demanded at the workplace.  Companies are starting to understand these new demands and are looking to various industry analysts and innovative solution providers to better understand the possibilities of enabling a digital business to support video, rich media, streaming, social media networks throughout their organization.

We hope this blog provides a forum to educate and better enable the use of digital media and new devices within your workplace. This blog will cover subjects such as product highlights, customer spotlights, and views from inside the corporation that represent corporate/marketing communications (that will be me), David Swenson will be covering e-learning and training topics and Vasu Avadhanula  will highlight customer use cases and fun facts about our solution. We will have guest ‘Ignite bloggers’ and other experts from the industry. These industry experts will contribute additional viewpoints and help you to evangelize the use of video and other digital media within your functional department.

We welcome all of you to our new blog and welcome you to Ignite!