My friend and colleague, Ed Dale, Internet marketer extraordinaire has just released an excellent video on how to capture great looking screencams from your iPhone and iPad. So you know, this does NOT involve using cracked hardware…

Hope you enjoy.

 As I say to my children, “Go with what you DON’T know”

So many people start a business and continue with the same proposition, despite changes in the market and what their customers are telling them.

As the old adage says, there are two things which are certain in life. Death and Taxes. I’d like to add a third and that is Change.

Change is all around us and it’s a good thing. If your business doesn’t adapt and change it won’t grow. If your business doesn’t grow, it’s dead. That’s a proven fact.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, as one of my businesses, The 8.45 Club turns 3 in September and it’s come a long way since the outset and the original concept.

It was always going to be about video and then initially training. The original idea was a course on 100 video lessons to change your business. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less.

I then listened to feedback and decided that it was too bigger production task… I hadn’t tested the market and that smaller courses would be a better way to start. So that’s what I did.

I then listened to feedback and decided that getting traffic to those courses was going to be hard. I sold a few – but testing and gut instinct told me there was a better way.

So I started to partner with subject matter experts who already had audiences. They needed content and production skills and we were gaining those – but they already had an audience, so a partner programme began.

The 8.45 Club - our first website and proposition

I then listened to feedback and decided that the techniques we were getting good at with green screen video production could apply in many different ways and so the focus of the marketing site and proposition wasn’t about selling training courses, but instead providing online video production services.

I then listened to feedback and decided that if we were to stand out from the crowd, to brand ourselves as a ‘bog-standard’ video production agency wouldn’t be the way to go, so we continued with the brand and adapted it, identifying 6 key propositions which our audiences can relate to. We changed the strap from “Learn from the experts… in 10 mins” to

“Bite-sized online video from experts”

…and I hope you get the double meaning there.

Things look and feel quite different now.

The 8.45 Club today - green screen video and training video production

Our core ideas – bite sized chunks of video (because no one has time any more) and high production values (because people need to be engaged) have remained throughout. Our proposition to the market has grown and changed dramatically.

Are you changing your business? Let us know what you think below.

Last night, I interviewed Pete Williams of Going Analogue fame (and many other things too!) We used Skype video and with a bit of magic dust this morning – you can see a screenshot of this concept below.

This interview now forms part of the course at www.goinganalogue.com and will be released to members in a couple of days’ time.

Would you like to be interviewed and have it look this good?!

Not only could they be in the ‘studio’ for the interview – but by using the virtual plasmas and superimposing the video feed in post-production, Skype interviews work a treat, saving time and travel costs.

Why, you ask?

Well, it’s really important to us that our training courses and videos work on iPads and iPhones, which of course don’t like Flash so much…

This new WordPress plugin from Projekktor seems pretty good – but would love your take. When downloading and installing – make sure you go to the configure panel and then install one of the themes, or it just won’t work!

If you’re viewing on an iPhone / iPad – pinch out the video, click play and you can then pinch it back in for it to play inline within the page.

It’s a little clumsy – be nice to just have a big play button there… Nonetheless, a good step forward – watch this space.

[video src_mp4="http://845promos.s3.amazonaws.com/corporate.mp4"]

The 8.45 Club is proud to annouce today a brand new online course focused on the education sector. It’s our first ICT training course available for public sale.

Office 2007 training for teachers is a course which has been written and devised by teacher training experts. It’s been produced and presented by The 8.45 Club team, led by Mark Copeman. Never before has an online course for Microsoft’s Office 2007 ever been written by teachers for teachers, using their language and giving examples pertinent to their working day.

It’s been devised in response to a constant need for schools to reduce costs and an ongoing requirement for teaching staff to work smarter by getting the most out of the software they use on a day to day basis. The course has been produced over the last six months, following research with teachers at a number of schools to find out what they lack.

Mark Copeman, course producer said,

“In our research, teachers are in two camps – they’re either upgrading from Office 2003 and have to come to terms with a completely different ribbon toolbar layout in Office 2007 or they’re still using Office 2003, and have never been properly trained on how to get the most from the sofware. It amazes me how many people still go about things the long way. We’ve set about trying to change people’s bad habits.”

The course is made up of 40+ bite-sized video modules, totalling five hours of learning. Teachers can dip in and out to suit them – learning when they need to and not being limited to when a trainer is in a classroom after school. It is structured so that staff can learn at the pace they want to, or jump straight to a particular topic.

“We’ve already got our first 500 teachers signed up to use the course – and currently, the most popular module is on shortcuts” said Mark. “The really great thing about the course website, is that users can track the time they spend learning and submit a certificate towards their Continuous Professional Development time for that school year.”

The course has already won a warm response from its users.

“What I am used to having is someone talking at me for half an hour. By the time you come to actually come to USE the software, you have forgotten everything and lost any bit of paper you wrote on or were given. This is the right way to learn!”

Anna Deacon, Head of Department at a school in Gloucestershire, UK

This online video course is available through the UK’s Training and Development Agency for Schools CPD database. You can also watch a sample module and apply for volume discounts at the course website – Office 2007 training for teachers.

ENDS.

Their argument is that people will sit up and listen if they are being entertained and smiling. That’s the job of this video, as with any training video – to deliver your message and ensure it sinks in.

Lessons for all here.