If you ask my employees what one characteristic describes the essence of Eric Bort, they might tell you “He’s a complete genius and rules with an iron fist of Quality, Integrity, and Honesty”. Seriously, that’s what they’ll tell you. 

I’ve gone by gut instinct a lot in the past when quoting projects (alongside line itemed excel sheets); custom training is notoriously difficult to plan out, as everything is potentially up to artistic interpretation and there’s no way to guess how many rounds of revision or approval a project might take. When looking around into competitor’s pricing guidelines I get the feeling they feel the same way. 

So what am I getting at? I honestly feel that this year we are developing and delivering some of the highest quality work we’ve ever completed as a company, and yet our project prices always seem to stay in check. In talking with my employees during the quoting process there’s a bit of a struggle to find that spot where we make enough to survive and prosper, but not charge any more than we have to. Our skills and the love of what we do compels us to make quality projects, designs and solutions for each of our clients – but that doesn’t mean we need to jack up the price. I feel a lot of developers have it wrong – they seem to be charging an immense amount and delivering sub-quality work. I want to be known as the company that delivers a $40,000 course for $12,000 – while putting in detail and creativity that no one else can offer. As my one client put it: “You’re not cheap… you’re high value!” 

I seem to watch a lot of CNBC Bizography at night, and noticed at the end of the George Foreman special his dream in life was to be thought of as a nice guy. Here’s someone who makes millions, is everywhere in the public eye, and in the end his priorities are family and kindness. Doesn’t that tell you something?  I get an immense amount of joy working with the people I meet, and working on a wide variety of projects. It really is my honor to work with the clients we have here, and I hope it shows through that more than anything I strive to run an honest and open business where creativity and innovation are what counts. Staying on budget and meeting deadlines count too, they just don’t make for very inspirational blog posts. 

In the end it really is all about passion, drive to learn something new and knowing tomorrow is a new challenge. We are amazing; because you give is amazing opportunities to shine. Yes I’m on my 6th cup of coffee, but you should still have a tear rolling down your cheek right about now.

I have this mental block sometimes… when I think of ‘corporate training’ I use one part of my brain, when I think of educational games for kids, I use another. It could be that I was partially lobotomized at birth (I’m kidding.. who would write such a horrible thing!) or it could be the odd but persistent weight of client expectations of how one type of project should look depending on the target audience.

Is it a given that kids can only be entertained with excitement, clever puzzles and captivating characters? Or maybe it’s that adult training happens to land more around the area of “here’s how to refinance your home using our 15 step mortgage calculator”. The following projects are made for kids, but more often these days we’re looking to get creative characters, engaging environments and unified (short & to the point) goals that are memorable and have long lasting educational value into adult training.

This first piece is the NCFL (National Center for Family Literacy) “Literacy House”. I had the pleasure of working with a great idea of theirs, and helped turn it into a living breathing experience with a variety of illustrations, photos and multiple voice overs. I got to bring in my 2 year old daughter Elena into the project (that’s her voice you can hear throughout) while I played the role of daddy (how fitting!).

Users can explore a house and simply roll over and click different areas of interest to learn about various ways you can incorporate literacy into every day of your child’s life. Rarely do I find a project I can bring into my own personal life, but this one honestly works with kids – there are a ton of ideas and suggestions throughout, so take a look!

Our other two project launches (both with NCFL and Smithsonian) are the “How would you feel” Greensboro Sit Ins simulation, which teaches the user about various perspectives of a variety of people throughout a sit in. And finally the Find  a Flag is more along the lines of where’s waldo for U.S. flags – explore the environment to discover fun facts about the U.S. flag, and if you find them all you get a surprise at the end!

 The projects are filed under Educational Games and Basic Simulations in our eLearning portfolio, check them out today!

Edheads.org wins TechColumbus Innovation Award, Executive Director goes full time

On February 4^th, our partner company Edheads.org continued its streak of success by winning the TechColumbus award for Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery.  The award was a surprise to Gail Wheatley, Executive Director.  “TechColumbus is known as one of the top 10 innovation incubators in the country, so, while we were hopeful, we certainly didn’t think we had this one locked.  There was a lot of outstanding competition, including the number one science center in the country, COSI, and the number one library system in the country, the Columbus Metropolitan Library,” said Wheatley. 

 Edheads has previously won major national awards such as the Flash Forward Award for Best Educational Content, and the Communication Arts Interactive Design Competition.  Edheads also successfully competed against international competition to win the American Association of Museum’s Gold MUSE Award, in conjunction with COSI, for best science education project.

 Edheads develops online educational games and simulations to help K-12 students understand difficult concepts and explore careers.   Over 12 million people annually (and over 100 million total since 2000) use the free service to learn the role of surgeons, engineers, weather forecasters, or crash scene investigators.  In order to produce the activities, Edheads partners with many organizations, such as Cardinal Orthopedic and Mount Carmel East Hospital, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Ohio State University Medical Center and OSU College of Engineering. Partnering organizations help research and test the activities to insure their accuracy.

 In addition to winning the TechColumbus Award, Wheatley will soon be leaving her long-time position as Director of Electronic Education at COSI and will be assuming a full time position with Edheads. “This is the best of all possible worlds for me, says Wheatley.  “I get paid to learn about other people’s careers in ways most people only dream about.  I go into operating rooms and witness brain surgery up close, or I can explore an engineering lab at OSU and find how they create nanoparticles.  Then I get to share all that knowledge with students across the country, hopefully interesting them in science, math, engineering and technology along the way.  And I can’t express how grateful I am that the idea has really taken off and that now I get to do this full time!”

To experience Edheads’ free online games, visit http://www.edheads.org/ to be a surgeon, weather forecaster, crash scene investigator, engineer, and more.

There tends to be a mentality that doing your best is good enough (at least that’s what my mom told me when I got a C average in algebra), but what if your background was in finance, and someone asked you to develop a training course on accrual VS. Cash based accounting? Does it make sense that someone nearly-qualified to be a SME (Subject Matter Expert), is handling instructional design? And further still, does it make sense to give that same person access to a rapid-development platform to build out the actual course?

Many people are great at what they do, but if I’ve learned one thing as a small business owner, it’s when to call it quits. I don’t repair my own car, I hire a mechanic… I don’t clean the office bathroom (oh wait.. yes I do.. bad example)… I don’t do my own taxes, I pay my CPA. Knowing your limitations as a large corporation can be tough. Bureaucracy plays a roll, as does boredom. Sometimes jobs are spread too thin over multiple employees, which is when it’s deemed a good idea to take on the roll as eLearning developer for the day. And of course if your manager/superior orders you to do something, you pretty much have to do it whether you’re qualified or not. The biggest reason I’ve seen that large corporations try and handle eLearning development in house is to save money.

If a contractor cost $2,000 to write a script in three days, which resulted in 85% knowledge retention, focused goals and a memorable experience, how would that equate to an employee costing $178 in hours to develop the same script? Does that employee have the right expertise to laser-target the right action items? Are they more likely to bend under the pressure of upper management to “put that 40 page flow diagram back into the course… now!” Is having 40% knowledge retention worth the time it took to train those employees?

I personally love being on the outside. Although there’s the chance we piss someone off, our honesty is generally accepted and appreciated. We’re more likely to stand up for the integrity of the course content and quality development as our job/employment isn’t at risk (don’t get me wrong, losing a client would suck, but if your goal is to help them succeed, this generally doesn’t happen.)

When a large corporation hires a specialist to handle their training development, they get the immediate benefit of an outsider looking in. I know it’s a lot easier for me to pick out someone else’s flaws than it is to recognize my own, and this directly applies to in-house development VS. hiring a specialized contactor. We can quickly assess the need, propose a plan of action and immediately begin research and development. When you need us, we’re there, when you don’t need us, we go away. No need to become a training business with a five person staff on payroll when your company focus is on parts distribution. Do what you do best, and when you recognize your limitations, hiring out can become a great opportunity for both cost savings and business growth.

When someone mentions the word ‘corporate’ to you, what comes to mind? Vibrant colors, creativity, innovation, daring ingenuity, humor? Chances are, if you’re like me, you’ll think of the color blue, numerous managers, bureaucracy and long revision processes. These aren’t wholly bad things, they just seem to come with the territory. For the most part the training produced by such organizations mimic the same attitude of safe, boring and looooooong paragraphs (sort of like this one) explaining 19 points of interest over each 10 minute slide. I remember a teller at my bank asking me what I do for a living, so I told her we create custom training… She sighed, put her head down and mumbled something under her breath that probably wasn’t pleasant, referring to her own experience. This certainly isn’t the response I’d want. Training should always have the potential to educate, engage and entertain!

Notice how I don’t use names or point fingers here, that’s because I’m not trying to get into trouble… I’d just like to stress that when everyone gets their way, and all voices are heard (in other words, no single individual is in charge) messages blur and focus is lost. The end user, generally the employees or clients of such a company are the victims… told to drudge through countless screens of information no one could ever realistically retain in time for the post test.

The point? Corporate doesn’t have to equal a mind numbing experience, but that sure is a simple statement for what is in reality a very complex environment. Fifteen people all trying to simply get a job done on a tight deadline does not leave room for creativity – the job just has to get done. But chances are you’ll end up with an already dated approach to ‘training’ where little to no education takes place, in other words, a waste of money. But who’s going to care? It’s not their personal money, it’s the corporation’s. Not only that but you’ve been ordered to get that money spent by a specific date or it disappears!

You may be thinking ‘don’t be silly, just take the money and do the job’. But this is my point of view: I’m passionate about bringing a true memorable educational experience to any topic, with any team, on budget and on time. There isn’t a single topic out there that can’t be approached in a creative way given a few days and medium sized budget needed for that training to be a success. Humor costs just as much to write as boring corporate-speak. Memorable photos in off-beat situations cost just as much to purchase as that collage of multi-ethnic business people standing in a line that I see on 50% of all eLearning development company home pages. My biggest suggestion of all would be this: Would you rather have a 100 minute long course where 10% of the training is grudgingly remembered, or a set of ten, 10 minute courses, on topic with memorable interactions and goals where 60% of all information is retained in digestible chunks. It’s like comparing a five hour long staring contest to a slap in the face out of nowhere. One is brief, memorable, and with a little work actually helps your corporation grow and thrive, as opposed to wasting time and money.

If I’ve learned anything over the years, constructive honesty isn’t always appreciated, but it’s definitely the best policy. This is true with my family, my co-workers, my contractors and my clients. We’re all in it together, and if you’re successful, we’re successful.

Finally, the sweet smell of victory! With long five hour days and relaxing nights, determined to meet our lack of goals and making it up as we went along, We’re proud to announce:

TOTAL MONSTER DESTRUCTION!

Take on an entire city of passive aggressive inhabitants as no one fights off your giant laser attack! Upload a photo of a friend or hated enemy, make up your own monster name and choose one of three exciting monsters: Roboto… The Slime or El Chupacabra!

Fast paced action mixed with a stunning custom soundtrack from our friends at www.scorechamber.com makes one intense monster destruction game! Send links to your grandma, send links to your kids, just send some links!!

Start your game at: http://clearlytrained.com/games/tmd/ today!

After a bit of a summer slow down, things are beginning to pick up around here with some of the most exciting projects we’ve seen to date!

On our plate is a little bit of everything from an interactive autopsy (yes.. you’ll get to poke a cadaver), nano-fiber engineering, fire safety and workplace collaboration skills to name a few. If there’s one thing I love about this sort of business, it’s that every new job is so entirely different from the last one – there’s rarely time to get tired of a topic.

As far as time lines are concerned, I have no idea, but everything is in the works. Hopefully by late this year/early next some of these projects will be available online to share.

Ahh, many know of my career’s origins, my true love around the ages of 10-13 – it was a little game company called LucasArts, and they made some of the best action adventures ever to land on a computer screen.

Monkey Island, the first and the best!

Reading through Ron Gilbert’s blog: the Grumpy Gamer (this guy was one of the original creators of ‘Monkey Island’), he had announced the release of early 1990′s era point and click classics such as Loom, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and many others to Valve’s online Steam system. While originally used to sell virtual copies of Half Life and Half Life 2, Steam has become a great library of online games & game media (over 1,500 so far), allowing companies who can’t afford to pay publishers to sell their wares.

Loom - a short game but heavy on plot and character development

When I first played some of these games, I was floored.. the level of detail in the story, the non-linear gaming, the cause and effect action in the plot and the great characters all came together to form a memorable and life changing experience. I can only think of a few games in the last 8 years that have stuck with me as being fond memories, but nothing tops the nostalgia and thrill of those old classics 19 or so years after first playing them.. now that’s staying power.

Monkey Island 2, where else can you row a coffin through a swamp?

Those games got me interested in interaction, game development, character animation, story and plot, which in turn pointed me to a life in eLearning and educational games. I’m simply happy that a new generation of kids and adults now has instant access to these games, and might possibly get inspired the same way I did back in the day.

Has anyone ever told you a skill was worthless, or you’d never need to do that, so why bother?  Well, for the last few weeks we’ve been doing a rather daunting project on the side, all for the sake of pushing our limits and learning new things. When I stand back and look at the results so far, I’m wondering how it relates to this company, our portfolio or anything having to do with training… the short answer is.. it doesn’t.  But, there’s always a bright site to digression – sometimes you stumble upon things you never knew were possible simply because you became curious.

A very rough draft

The project idea initially was to create a sushi-eating interaction, where you could take on the role of a person shoveling various types of sushi into their mouth. Over three weeks it went from that into a giant monster attack destruction game, where users control laser eyeballs of a giant robot, slime, or chupacabra as it destroyed the giant 3d city.

We built the 3D city next

Everything we’re working on is animated with programming, or scripted particle effects, combined with the user ability to upload a photo of whoever, and place it into the giant menacing monster to add some humor and a personal touch – all of which can be saved and sent to a friend.

Here you can upload a photo, rotate and resize, change your monster's name, and choose what monster you'd like

The further we get into this project the more complex ideas pop up, and the more we seem to learn. So besides the fact there’s nothing you can learn from blowing up cars with a laser beam, we’re now more proficient in database management, file saving and uploading, email integration, action script programming and file compression. On the creative end we also managed to design the entire city with Swift 3D – modeling and lighting our way to a miniature city look and feel that couldn’t be created in Flash alone.

Put them all together and you get some exciting results!

Sometimes it’s just nice to try something off topic and a little different. We’ll launch a working version in a week or so, until then.. I’ve got some rubble to draw.

Earlier this week we wrapped up and launched Edheads Design a Cell Phone activity at www.edheads.org. With the help of Motorola, as well as the Ohio State University College of Engineering we approached the idea of getting girls interested in Engineering careers.

It ends up, boys like to blow things up, build things, work with machines, while girls tend to stay away, but for what reason? The activity uses the idea that we can use design and engineering to help people (in this case senior citizens), not just give them something cool to look at.  In the end with the right product we can better their lives.

Edheads Engineering - Design a Cell Phone

Creating the activity was a short but rewarding process – we created a design application where users can build a near infinite number of different phone styles using our 100% script based phone builder. We had to put the breaks on certain aspects to fit the activity, but overall it’s a very intuitive and rewarding feature which has already been used 97,000 times in the first week since launch (based on our lesson tracking data).

Through the process we worked along side Ohio State, as well as Motorola engineers to create a situation where the user needs to not only research and design, but listen to consumer feedback in order to get the best sales results. If you ignore the research you won’t know what sort of phone to build, and chances of being successful go down quite a bit.

Interview the senior citizens

This is the first non linear activity we’ve built for Edheads, and it’s already proving its educational value based on user testing, critiques and overall response. For some additional information on the launch, check out The Ohio State Engineering news site for a little blurb on the project. Motorola also has a bit of info on their overall educational initiative used to help fund the project at their news site.

Engineering Sales Results

We have many more engineering project topics to explore, it’s just a matter of time and funding – next up starting late July we begin ‘Nanotech’ – something to do with fabrics, but that’s all I can say.