Friday, October 31, 2008

Celebrating

This week has been full of celebrations, in Philadelphia (Go Phils!) and because of Halloween. It dawned on me that we haven't been celebrating enough around here at Tandem lately. So, to rally the troops, and remind myself how much progress we've made, here's some cool things that have happened over the last month...

  • We debuted our Virtual TerritoryTM in London
  • We passed our half million dollar mark in revenue recognized
  • We decided on our second logo
  • We created new marketing materials 
  • We developed a new website
  • We still haven't taken on any additional investors (despite the economy...)
  • We've met with 5-7 new potential clients, both in the US and internationally
  • We've talked to 3-5 people who are interested in selling our services both in the US and overseas markets
  • We've developed a sales and marketing strategy for 2009
  • We prepared for our first conference booth
And this is just in the last month...

There's something to be said for celebrating. Don't forget to appreciate and recognize your victories, big and small.




Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Rolling

A couple weeks to catch our breath, and suddenly, all of the preparation for big things is starting to pay off. The thing about momentum is that you can't force it...you can prepare for it, foster it, you can support it, and sometimes, if you want to, you can stop it. Good work leads to more work. Activity leads to sales. Positive momentum can propel you forward.

The last three Mondays were brutal. This Monday, however, was filled with activity, hope, and possibility. Now that's the way to start a week...

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Script from FastPitch at Virtual Worlds London

The video is still not up on intruders.tv, but in the meantime, you can imagine me saying the following with the accompanying slides. 




Slide 1:


Hi, my name is Koreen Olbrish, founder and CEO of Tandem Learning. I’m excited to introduce to you today our vision of the future of enterprise learning, the Virtual Territory™.

Slide 2:


Applying virtual world technology to create new methods of training has countless benefits and will create a shift in how organizations approach their learning initiatives. With so many benefits, it begs the question – why aren’t companies adopting this more quickly? Why aren’t we seeing more successful case studies?

For too long, a gap has existed between the technological capabilities of virtual worlds and the organizational needs of enterprises. The creation of a virtual world platform is just the first step in the solution. It’s the APPLICATION of that platform that is the key to success.

As a company with a background and expertise in instructional design and adult learning principles, we set out to create a learning methodology based around virtual world technology. The result is a revolutionary advancement in enterprise learning – The Virtual Territory™

Slide 3:


The Virtual Territory™ is a sales training tool that incorporates virtual world technology, content management, data tracking, key gaming features such as competition and randomization of events and simulation in an experiential and immersive learning environment.

The Virtual Territory™ mirrors a sales representative’s actual sales territory and provides opportunities for authentic practice in a digital environment. Sales representatives determine the appropriate selling messages for their various customers, which are closely modeled after identified customer segments. During each sales call, sales representatives select and utilize appropriate selling resources. And because there are more people involved in making a sale than just the target customer, sales representatives navigate the subtleties of a total office call.

Slide 4:


The Virtual Territory™ provides numerous benefits to learners, managers, and the organization as a whole:
Learners are exponentially more engaged, entertained, and accelerate from knowledge acquisition to application much more quickly, therefore improving their job performance.

Managers are provided with structured selling scenarios across their team of sales reps that yield more consistent and structured feedback and coaching.

Organizations have access to unprecedented data about sales representative decision-making, enabling companies to analyze behavioral trends and more accurately identify learning needs across the sales organization. All of this gives organizations the key information they need to make more strategic decisions about how their future training dollars are spent.


Slide 5:


What should you leave today knowing about Virtual Territory™? It will make organizations money AND it will save them money.
The Virtual Territory™ will make companies money by improving learning outcomes, leading to improved performance of the sales force, thereby increasing sales. Because managers will be able to provide better coaching and feedback, sales performance will improve. Finally, the Virtual Territory™ allows organizations to see across the entire sales force and identify where knowledge or skill is lacking. By addressing those areas in future training, the organization is more likely to hit its sales goals.

Now let’s talk about how the Virtual Territory™ will save money. Obviously, the Virtual Territory™ works to reduce travel costs, since sales representatives can engage in virtual role play activities instead of attending live workshops. By increasing learner motivation to participate in learning activities, the Virtual Territory™ helps save money. Investments in “once and done” learning initiatives that held questionable organizational value now shift to immersive, experiential learning with measurable results. Most importantly, once the Virtual Territory™ is built for an organization, it can be used again and again over time to incorporate new training initiatives.

Slide 6:


Having developed the structure and strategy for the Virtual Territory™, we are actively consulting with client organizations on how to implement this tool as the first step in the use of virtual world technology for enterprise.

One of the unique benefits of Virtual Territory™ is that it is really a training methodology – not a specific platform. We address the specific needs of each organization and choose the platform, which bests suits their needs on which to build the Virtual Territory™. To that end, we are always interested in speaking with potential platform partners

Virtual Territory™ is a tool that takes a complex real world training process and delivers it to any employee anywhere, anytime for less cost and with benefits that can’t be achieved in the real world without significant monetary or time investment.
We look forward to speaking to you more about this and our other innovative applications of virtual world technology for enterprise learning. Thank you for five minutes of your time.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

New look!

In case you didn't notice, I updated the blog (kinda) with our new logo. Gone is our friendly green...and the speech bubbles. I'll probably tinker with it a bit more, but the rebranding of Tandem Learning has begun!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Session blog: Using Virtual Worlds for Supporting Business and Enterprise

The following are my notes from a session at Virtual Worlds London...apologies for the sketchiness, I was taking notes live.

Dr. Sara de Freitas, Director of Research
SGI (Serious Games Institute)
Coventry University Technology Park

Trends
  • by 2011 80% of all active internet users will have an avatar (Gartner)
  • currently 80 vws, next year another 100, (100+ aimed at kids)
  • studies demonstrating the efficacy of serious games for training
  • wide uptake of social software (eg, facebook, wikipedia)
  • lines between vws, games and social software are blurring
How can you use virtual worlds in business?
  • support b2b collaboration and communication
  • meet with customers remotely located
  • provide training for sales staff
  • provide mentoring and support staff

Demos:
*Business Nexus Island (SL)
*New hire orientation on OLIVE

Spending on Gaming:
by 2011, $12.5 billion US, $48.9 billion Global

Demo of serious game: 
Triage

***Data shows significant difference in learning between traditional learning and game play

"New" research on efficacy
Edgar Dale, Cone of Learning (Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching (3rd Edition) Holt
Chi et al 1989

Strengths of virtual worlds for learning:
  • accelerated learning
  • engagement
  • motivation
  • role-plays
  • rehearsal
  • longevity of learning
  • experiential/exploratory learning

Will Virtual Worlds change how we do business?
Example:
*Virtual Philadelphia


KO commentary:
I thought this was the best session I attended. One reason, it wasn't a panel. Another, it focused on learning and research, and let's face it...that's my thing. I think the opportunity for data and case studies emerging in the next 6 months that demonstrate superior learning outcomes in these types of training programs is all but guaranteed. Once these outcomes have been proven, the future of enterprise learning will change forever.


5 minutes of fame


Yesterday I did a 5 minute FastPitch presentation at Virtual Worlds London conference. It was during cocktail (ok, beer) hour, but still there were probably about 100 people in the room. The five minutes were fine, although I do wish that there were more people in the room who might have been interested in buying something as opposed to scouting out the competition.


The video will eventually be up on intruders.tv but I'll post an update when its available (if I'm not so utterly humiliated that I can't bear for anyone to see). 

I will say, it was harder to plan for those 5 minutes than any longer presentation I've done. I went back and forth on sticking to a script or winging it...I ended up reading, but every bone in my body wanted to wing it. I regret just showing slides and not an actual demo. I am glad a had a few sips of beer before I took the stage (and then finished that said beer after). I was happy that I didn't go over my five minutes and have to be escorted off stage. I'm upset that the rest of my Tandem cohorts weren't there to celebrate, but at least my London wingman was. 

Now looking forward to what kind of trouble I can cause at DevLearn in San Jose...

Friday, October 17, 2008

Take a deep breath

About 12 years ago, I went through a period of time when I had panic attacks, or anxiety attacks, almost every day. I have mitral valve prolapse, and occasionally my heart stops beating, just for a second. But when it resumes, its like a big rush of blood tries to make up for the lost beat and I flush and feel light headed. That would trigger a pretty extreme sense of panic in me, and there were a few times I went to the emergency room thinking that I was dying. 


I'm being a bit cavalier about it now, but at the time, I didn't think my life would ever be normal. I couldn't really drive, because that was a trigger of the attacks...it seemed that once I was panicking about one thing, other things set it off too. I remember a conversation with my mom, when I told her I didn't want to have to live the rest of my life like that, scared at any moment that panicky feeling would take over. I considered going on medication, but my body doesn't respond well to drugs and I was upset thinking that I might have to depend on something for the rest of my life to be normal (not to mention all the side effects). 

So, I just decided I was going to control it myself. I started practicing yoga and meditating. I developed strategies of what to do when I felt myself starting to tighten up with panic. And slowly, over a few months, I finally took control. Today, all I really need to to when I start to feel anxious is take a deep breath and things seems to resolve themselves. 

What does this have to do with Tandem Learning?

Well, I'm feeling anxious. We're about to do some crazy stuff. We're really throwing ourselves out there. It's exciting and frightening and yes, if there was any such appropriate time for me to panic, it might be now. 

So, I'm taking a deep breath. Doing some meditation, maybe a little yoga. Its important not to let the stress, the anxiety, the panic take over because it paralyzes you. 

It's important to remember to breathe.