Flat Hatter Collaborative

Rives at TED: It is not a question of if you can, it’s do ya?

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/03/21

The TED conference videos are some of the most amazing pieces of free learning I have ever seen. While working out last week I was going through the que of them on my iPod when I came across this 4 minute piece by spoken word artist Rives — a riff on “If I Ran the Internet”.

Amazing — I watched it over and over again for 40 minutes on the eliptical.

As some of you know, I aspire to geek spoken word, and this, I think is the pinnacle of that admittedly narrow genre. Choice quotes –

• “It is not a question of if you can, it’s do ya?”
• “We can make ‘you’ve got hallelujah’ the national anthem of the cyberspace every lucky time you log on.”

Here it is from YouTube —

Screencasts on Camtasia 4 Flash and Quiz Features

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/11/07

Brooks Andrus has blogged some very nice screencasts on new Flash and Quiz features in Camtasia Studio 4. Brooks works for TechSmith, the company that makes Camtasia.

I am just getting up to speed on the full feature set of this release, but it looks like they’ve got some nice variable output options for ipod and flash video — definitely steps in the right direction — being able to repurpose your screencasts to multiple environments is becoming a standard requirement these days — Camtasia’s pan-and-zoom feature is indefensible indespensible on that front.

Cerner 2006: Blogs & Screencasts in the Quest for Training Attention

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/10/09

I am in Orlando today presenting a session called “Blogs & Screencasts in the Quest for Training Attention” at the 2006 Cerner Health Conference. From the session description:

In the quest for user attention, blogs and screencasts are more that buzzwords. Join us as we examine how these technologies help organizations capture valuable elements of “watercooler conversations” and leverage them toward system and process training. Session will include: An introduction to blogs, screencasts, and RSS; An examination of why content produced and distributed with these methodologies is naturally interesting to users; A short tour of WordPress and Camtasia — two popular blog and screencasting tools.

Here’s the links to the files from the session –

• PDF of Keynote Slides (PDF - 7 MB)
• Installing WordPress via DreamHost320×240 (YouTube Flash Video)
• Installing WordPress via DreamHost1024×768 (Quicktime - 370 MB)
• Installing WordPress via DreamHost320×240 (Quicktime - 73 MB)
• Intro to RSS Readers via Newgator1024×768 (Quicktime - 268 MB)
• Intro to Camtasia1024×768 (Quicktime - 63 MB)

FooBar Sessions as Literature

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/08/29

Berkun has a great writeup of his FooCamp experience from last weekend. Sounds like a great time.

Found myself nodding with this lowlight observation ––

I’m guessing fewer sessions were recorded or taped this year. I don’t know why, but the vibe was much less about blogging, posting and publishing in real-time than last year. Maybe this is not a lowlight - not sure.

Seems to me that this is both a highlight and a lowlight. In one sense, people are more focused on engaging with the stuff around them –– the facilitator, the content, the people, the space.

That’s a big win in my book as the ‘must blog’ buzz is subsiding in favor of more human lids down engagement  (laptops, not eyes).

On the other hand, having just done a full weekend of session video capture at BarCamp Vancouver, it’s a lowlight to me that so many great conversations that could have been captured and passed on just won’t.

In a sense, our ‘now’ orientation keeps us from seeing the connections that are waiting to happen outside of the room/people/time of a particular setting like this.

And yet, when things get captured decently, they have great potential to take on a kind of life of their own — making connections and sparking fires that we can’t see in the moment — kind of like good literature does over the ages.

Even capturing a session that is not hit-it-out-of-the-park-fantastic is fun for me because the presenter is always really grateful and will usually go back and see the things they did well and learn things they could do better next time.

All the stuff, those rhetoric classes were supposed to teach you, but, because you never saw the relevance, never did.

Anyway — the weekend was really useful to help me think through this participate/capture dichotomy — lots of ideas percolating on how to bridge the gap.

Can’t wait for Mind Camp 3.0 to try ‘em out.

Interviewed on blogs and podcasting in the corporate environment

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/06/14

Caught up with Stuart Maxwell of the Seattle Podcasting Network (SPN) a few weeks ago at the Seattle TechCrunch party.

We talked about the challenges of using blogs, podcasting and new media tools in the corporate environment — great chat.

I cover some of the ins and outs of spreading the vision for these types of projects in healthcare (and other non-tech-industry) organizations (like the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford where I currently work).

Stuart recorded our conversation and has posted it to the as ‘SPN Podcast - TechCrunch Party Interviews: Part Two’.

Part 1 is also available from the SPN site.

Search