Coming in 2012: Immersive Learning Design (my first book!)

It's official!

As I type this, my book contract with ASTD is in the post and I'm mentally preparing for the next few months of writing my first book to be published next year: Immersive Learning Design.

I've been blogging since starting Tandem Learning, I've written articles about the many shades of immersive learning (games, simulations, virtual worlds), and I've presented at more conferences than I could easily count. But a book is a different level of reflection for me and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to take on the challenge of documenting what I actually *do.*

The goal of the book is three-fold:

• define immersive learning as a category of design that incorporates elements of games, simulations, virtual worlds and other immersive technologies, 
• describe the design process for immersive learning experiences and differentiate immersive design from traditional instructional design, and
• detail examples of how organizations have been applying immersive learning design to address business issues and corporate learning needs.

I'm sure as I get deeper into the weeds of writing, I'll be posting more about the book, asking questions of others who specialize in immersive learning design, and recruiting organizations who are willing to share their stories of immersive learning design implementations. In the meantime, I'm gonna start limbering up my typing fingers!

We're hiring!

I've heard there's a recession going on, but wow, are we suddenly busy. Its time for us to start thinking about how we can grow Tandem in a way that builds long-term value. Its true, there is a balance between hiring freelancers to support our projects and figuring out the right time to hire. We have been very conservative over the past 8 months in an effort to weather through the unpredictable economy and keep our finances and overhead costs in check. We've developed great partnerships with other small companies and we have an extremely talented pool of people that we contract with on an as-needed basis.

But at some point, we have to start thinking about adding value to our company through strategic hires.

If you read my blog, you probably get that we're not a "normal" company. We like to think that we're a little unusual in that we like to stay out ahead of the crowd. I also think we have exceptionally high quality standards, as our reputation is only is good as our body of work, but specifically our last project. We're fiercely independent, protective of our brand and reward creativity and initiative. We're highly opinionated and not afraid to speak our minds, nor are we afraid of a little calculated risk. We're competitive and loyal and treat each other like family.

And now we're hiring. We'll be posting specific job descriptions on our website, but we're always looking to work with people who can add value to our company so don't let the job descriptions prevent you from dropping me a line if you're interested.

Hard work, optimism, and not counting chickens

The last few weeks have been a blur of work; almost every day I actually get confused what day of the week it is. The good news is, the hard work seems to be starting to pay off. Notice the words "seems to be"? Yeah, Little Miss Optimism is definitely once bitten, twice shy. 

Somewhere along the way last year, I was reminded of a very valuable lesson. Words tend to be pretty cheap. People are much better at stroking your ego then just telling you the reality of complex situations, and they are loathe to talk about the internal politics of their organizations, especially when they don't have control. Organizations as a whole are a bit commitment phobic, and the current economy has only made this worse. 

So we're continuing to work hard, I'll keep having to ask what day it is, and hopefully my tempered optimism will be end up being a little less tempered.

Fun with contracts!

Oh, the fun you have with contracts! Let's start with client contracts--the necessary evil in my current line of work in order to get paid. I'm guessing most b2b companies have the same issue, but for those of you who get to avoid this glorious process of contracting because you're a direct to consumer business, let me provide a few details.

So you land your first project with a company. Woohoo! They are happy to let you start working, but you really should concern yourself with how you are going to get paid. This means you need to start talking to their accounting or procurement department to make sure that all the paperwork is in place so that you can send them an invoice and they will pay it. But wait! The procurement department is never going to pay up until you have a PO# assigned to the project, and you don't have a chance of getting THAT until you have a Master Services Agreement, and possibly a Confidentiality or Non-Disclosure Agreement, signed. You can try to send your company's MSA and NDA (which hopefully you've gotten your sharkweasel to draft for you), but more and more companies want you to sign theirs. Once they send you their contracts, you need to send that to your sharkweasel to review to make sure you're not giving away more than the project entails. Your sharkweasel will likely have some changes to their MSA, which will result in a lovely match of volleyball between the sharkweasel and your client's legal eagles before everyone can live with the MSA. THEN, you can send the Statements of Work (SOW) for the project, which may need to be updated by this time to reflect the new MSA agreement. If everyone signs off on the SOW, then you'll probably get your PO# shortly thereafter (although sometimes you have to hunt this down, too) and then you can finally send your first invoice, which depending on the payment terms of your particular client, they may pay in 30, 45, 60, sometimes even 90 days (from the date that they RECEIVE the invoice, not the date of the invoice). The only good thing about this process is you only have to do it for your first project (or until the MSA agreement expires, at which point you have to do this all again).

And this is just the contracting process for your clients. You'll also have to go through a process for contractor agreements and employment agreements. But I don't want to scare you. Did I mention you should get yourself a good sharkweasel? I'd recommend mine, but as you can see, I'm currently keeping him quite busy...

Protecting your ideas

I did something new this week, especially for me. I asked people who I was talking to about Tandem's future initiatives to sign a confidentiality agreement.

For some people, that probably seems like a no-brainer. But its a big deal for me. I like to trust people and expect the best out of them. It seemed like asking someone to sign a pre-nup when you're just dating them.

But boy, would I be pissed if someone took my ideas. So I gave the confidentiality agreement to a couple people to sign, as a "just in case." I think the sharkweasel will be pleased.