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New Media Blog by Ken Aucremanne

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My Love Letter to Lynda.com

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I know Valentine’s day is still more than a month out, but Lynda, you make me so happy. Our conversations are always delightful, and you always have something new to show me. You are always by my side, and make a heck of a travel companion. I cannot count the number of times you have saved my skin when working on a deadline.

Alright, alright… before my wife gets too upset about “the other woman,” let me level with you. Lynda.com is one of my all-time favorite tutorial websites. In fact, my wife and I are both big fans of Lynda.com. When I first discovered the site back in 2006, there were dozens of helpful courses. In 2015, there are now thousands. While there is definitely a bias for media production on the site, courses cover business, architecture, and IT as well.

A search on Jan 8 reveals:

  • 62 courses related to Wordpress
  • 822 courses related to User Experience
  • 355 Photoshop courses
  • 2,380 courses relating to “video”
  • 9 Writing Courses
  • 3 courses on setting up a recording studio.
  • 45 HTML courses
  • 14 courses on “Facebook” (and you thought you were an expert already?)

When Lynda.com says “courses” they’re referring to a series of tutorials that may run anywhere from 20 minutes to 18 hours. If you want to gain competency in any media subject, you can do it by creating your own curriculum. For instance, I wanted to learn how to produce, film, and edit a documentary film, but didn’t go to film school. Here’s a list of the core courses that I combined to accomplish my learning needs:

  1. Foundations of Video: Cameras and Shooting with Anthony Artis
  2. Video Production Techniques: Location Lighting with Anthony Artis
  3. Video Production Techniques: Location Audio Recording with Anthony Artis
  4. Foundations of Video: Interviews with Anthony Artis
  5. Foundations of Video: The Art of Editing with Norman Hollyn
  6. Documentary Editing in Premiere Pro with Jason Osder

Other courses were borrowed from as well, and several books referenced, but I accomplished my first documentary film with it. Before you ask, the film was a birthday gift for my dying mom. It is not online, but that’s the best part of Lynda.com… you can learn what you want for personal OR professional goals. And it’s WAY cheaper than college tuition. At $45 a month for premium subscription, that’s roughly 1/100 the cost of a private school education. The funny part? Even top-tier schools are incorporating Lynda.com tutorials into their curricula. Our school, American University, has a free subscription for each student. Lynda makes the case for super-expensive universities a hard sell. If I didn’t have the Post-911 GI bill on my side… I’m not sure I could’ve justified the cost of going back to school.

But the big difference between online sites and schools is the transcript and credentialing, right? Lynda.com has implemented a badge system where completed courses can be posted to your LinkedIn account. Is it equivalent to a college transcript? No, but it is a 3rd Party verification to potential employers demonstrating your subjects of interest. That alone is worth the price of admission.

If you’re the type of person that loves continuing your education and learning new things, this website is a must. It has almost replaced Netflix in my home as the go-to-destination for passive media engagement. On my iPad, iPhone, laptop, and Apple TV, you can find evidence of Lynda’s presence. Thank God I don’t have to buy her flowers or chocolates :)

 

 

SnowDay Book Review: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

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After an uncommonly mild December, it is finally snowing! And armed with a valid excuse to stay in my pajamas by a crackling fire, it is time to submit a review of one of my favorite books of this past year.

 Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (affiliate link) by Ann Handley, represents a very solid instruction manual for folks facing an ever-present fear of writing. This is her second book on content creation. The first, Content Rules (affiliate link) by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, covered the whole gamut of content creation (short of game creation). Both books were epic (in a nerdy kinda way), but I’ll limit this review to Everybody Writes.

The whole book has a conversational, “besties having coffee” tone that separates this from your standard academic, dry tome on grammar efficiency and journalistic best practices. While both subjects are indeed touched upon, Ann focuses on the mindset and strategy behind writing from a content marketer’s perspective. This is not surprising… Ann Handley is reputed to be the first person to hold the title Chief Content Officer with Marketingprofs.com

Part I: Writing Rules: How to Write Better (and How to Hate Writing Less) prepares you to get beyond the paralyzing effects that staring at a blank page can muster. This, for me, has been difficult to overcome. It’s always easier to write when given an assignment or asked to write on a particular subject. When it’s my own blog and I’m the writer, editor, and final approval authority, it was tempting to stew forever on an idea without actually putting ink to page (or digits to screen). Several tricks in this section helped me a lot. One, in particular, was a story about the process Chris Penn uses to flesh out entire articles from sentence fragments on his Awaken Your SuperHero blog.

Part II: Writing Rules: Grammar and Usage is not your standard high school grammar lesson. This section addresses the critical flaws indicative of amateurish business writing, including the excessive use of buzz words, passive voice, and Weblish. Chapter 36 is a personal weakness of mine (like right there.) It covers key mistakes that marketers make, including wordiness and redundancy. If I break copyright law and copy this list to a wall plaque by my iMac, then I apologize Ann. It’s that good, and definitely an area I need to address.

This is a 6 Part book, but I don’t want to bore you or spoil the book. Just buy it. Ann Handley is an undisputed expert on the written word… and she brings back the librarian look with style :)

 

If this review helped you make up your mind, please buy it from the link above. Otherwise, please use Amazon Smile and pick a good charity. My personal favorite is International Justice Mission.