Are we doomed?

The essential mechanism by which we have been learning for millennia is being rewired for us. We're being taught to distrust traditional teaching methods (i.e. Socratic) and embrace just-in-time knowledge transfer. Applications running on tablets and smart phones are quickly replacing mentors, teachers, professors, and even supervisors.

The saving grace among all this chaos is that learning is less a singular event and is slowly becoming a social experience. In social learning, each of us becomes both the teacher and the student.

New tools and applications allow us to use video, animation, annotations, and even create fun interactions to illustrate what we need to share.

Solving the Field Training Problem

If you are a technical manager, responsible for the performance of a field force of installers, system techs, and maintenance techs, you know the problem. Every hour your people are out of the field for training is lost productivity. You have to juggle schedules, pay overtime, or lose work because of it. 

But, you need your people to be capable, confident, and knowledgeable. You need them to acquire, hone, and master the skills of the job. They must have training and education and there has to be a way to measure if what they learned is having a positive impact on your team's performance.

Or else this happens:

Traditional methods of removing personnel from the field are not relevant anymore. Your people are learning on their own. 

They are:: 

• sending informal Q&A via texts and phone calls to other techs
• accessing Google and YouTube
• accessing manuals on vendor sites
• accessing their own-created knowledge bases

Read this link. It's about kids and parents but is relevant to our situation

Do you care about certifications anymore? Are you rewarding your people when they acquire a certification? We're hearing that tech managers don't believe these awards anymore. Passing a test doesn't always turn into stellar performance. In the field, there's a lot more to success than a piece of paper. But, certifications are important to both the tech and the employer. Just make sure you have a way to verify that the new-found knowledge can be put to good use.

Certification: What does it mean to you?

So, what is a tech manager to do? 

1. We suggest that you reinvent the learning delivery platform. Scrap the LMS or at least use it less and less. Make all your learning self-paced and easily accessible. Reduce your learning down to 30-second and 60-second chunks and "suggest" playlists of chunks.
2. Encourage your people in the field to send videos (moderated, of course) that will help other techs get the job done right. 
3. Create an easy to access repository of all, and I mean all, data sheets, specs, and user manuals on everything a tech might find in the field, including tools, equipment, and materials.
4. Create a culture of mentoring and challenge. I won't go into detail here. for that, you need to call me. Let's just say that this single element can mean the difference between success and failure.
5. Change the role of your training department. Make their job a daily challenge of supporting the people in the field, the headend, the office and the call centers. Stop creating and reinventing training and start optimizing what you already have.

So, whether you like it or not, traditional eLearning is dead. Your people are learning on-the-job and the younger ones are making the more seasoned (older) techs look outdated. Give them all the tools they need to succeed! We can show you how.

Dilemma for the Cable Operators

For decades the cable companies have said, NO FTTH! It's blasphemy to the die-hard HFC folks. We didn't spend the last thirty years learning how to fine tune the cable system coax plant and customer drop just to see it all swept away by some stinking fiber!

Well we all know about progress; it follows the route to the biggest pot of gold. Once that pot of gold is FTTH and not HFC, guess what?

There are some who think it's necessary to rework DOCSIS so it can run over fiber.

There are some who think that replacing the drop with LTE will be the answer.

There are some who think an all IP DOCSIS 3.1 is the answer.

And, you have all the cable operators wondering which of these is the right choice. Each one means a visit to the investors, the banks and the CFO.

If it were your money, where would you place your bet?

Now, to make matters worse, which FTTH technology do you choose? EPON, GEPON, or GPON? Maybe it's just RFoG or perhaps you go wireless. Which one? FDD-LTE or TDD-LTE?

Or do you say, "The heck with it!" and just concentrate on stealing those ripe and juicy commercial accounts out of the hands of the Telcos and run Metro-Ethernet? OK, now which technology; WDM, EPON, GEPON, or GPON?

See? It's not easy. You need a handicapper (shameful plug - that's us), someone who doesn't work for a manufacturer. You need to see where the standards committees are headed and which manufacturers have investor confidence. You just can't rely on your brother-in-law to tell you which way to go, you have to make an informed decision.

We also need to face some truths here; it's going to be FTTH eventually. It may be a hybrid fiber-wireless solution, too. A new acronym, HFW.

Don't you think you need to learn and teach your techs about this stuff now?

The Internet of Things

No, I did not coin the phrase but I wish I had. Each time I start writing about training in this chaotic broadband world, there is a new device to think about, to inform, educate, install, and maintain.

The customer premise devices are making it difficult to maintain any control over the user experience.

Let me ask you, as a technical operations manager, you get a call that says the customer's washing machine can't talk to the Internet, your Internet. Or that the customer's kid's tablets are running slow connecting to YOUR Internet.

See, no matter what the problem really is, you run the Internet for them. You are the lightning rod.

So what are you going to do, hide your head in the sand? Tell them to call their manufacturer?

Oh yeah...can we say CHURN?

So, 2013 is not only The Year of the Internet of Things, it also has to be The Year of Learning how to Install, Configure, and Maintain the Internet of Things.

My, how the definition of CPE has grown; that single three- letter acronym, Customer Premise Equipment. No longer the realm of TVs, DVD players, tablets, smartphones, and computers, CPE now means: Thermostats, IP security cameras, Carbon monoxide alarms, fire alarms, burglar alarms, lighting controls, the refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, furnace, air conditioner, air cleaners, vacuums, blood pressure monitors, urine testers, toilets, ventilators, dog collars, litter boxes and sexual aids.

No, I am not advocating that we teach our technicians how to install configure and maintain the customer's sex toys.. wait, there may be an app for that... I am suggesting that every broadband provider consider the need for a document repository that grows and contains the instructions for any type of device a customer may try and connect to our networks.

One way or another, and that other way is usually through Google, the technician is going to leave the customer with a smile on their face. And, if you don't make it easy for the technician to do their job, they will take up a lot of time learning the same information over and over again.

That's money off the bottom line. That's a customer waiting for a tech because they are trying to figure out why the dryer isn't sending a text reporting that the clothes are dry or why the litter box isn't connecting to the Internet.

As I said, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO MAKES THE CPE, if something goes wrong  it's the fault of YOUR INTERNET.

Here's what we recommend. 

• A set of YouTube Channel videos, in a few languages, that show the customer and the technician how install, configure, and maintain all sorts of CPE.
• A mobile-accessible knowledge base with manuals and diagrams and troubleshooting workflows.
• A lab, somewhere, that can be shared among all broadband providers, that tests and documents and rates the CPE's ability to work on all or systems.

Live long and prosper.

It's not Evolution, it's Revolution!

Can you imagine Verizon and Comcast merging? Can you imagine Comcast purchasing Disney, with its ESPN, Disney and ABC programming? Can you imagine a time when you will no longer use the words "cable drop" or "inside wire" any more?

The time is soon upon us, perhaps in as little as five years, when the bandwidth required to stream live TV at 4K and 8K resolutions will easily occupy a 5-20MHz wide carrier in the 700-800MHz range in free space.

Now imagine that the HFC infrastructure we so carefully maintain is now used to place thousands of LTE neighborhood cells, talking to small base stations in the home and office. Using the new 802.11ac, Super WiFi technology, the home LAN now supports 1.5Gbps. No more inside wire.

All this is great news to the cable industry where the majority of all service calls are related to installation and problems with inside wire, connectors, splitters, and amplifiers at subscriber's homes and businesses.

But is this good news for consumers? That's a lot of technology and programming in the hands of just a few enormous corporations. Where is the competition? There doesn't seem like any are around except for a few municipal fiber nets touting ubiquitous WiFi.

And what does this mean for rural America? In every one of the over 18,000 communities in the USA, there ought to be a fiber, multi-gigabit per second interface to the Internet. How access gets to the citizens ought to be up to the local powers, as in franchise or self-build.

Trackable QR Codes Help Generate ROI on QR Code Campaigns

If you haven't buzzed around to http://www.qreatebuzz.com/  then I suggest you do. Interested in running an in-store or in-restaurant QR campaign? Find out how many times your code was scanned and when. Tie it to Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter as well as your web page. Social networking never looked so good.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Scan for a 10% discount coupon

2. Scan for a free dessert

3. Scan for a free gift

4. Scan for a chance to win a free dinner

5. Scan for a chance to win a $200.00 shopping spree.

And many many more.

Call today and let us show you how to tie it all together. We make sense out of all the confusion.
Call 309-310-7245

The Message is the Message - Dos and Don'ts of Digital Signage

We see a bright shiny sign and instantly look at it. It changes right before our eyes...very cool! We might even touch it and interact with it. Even cooler!

But, for those of us in the electronic communications biz, the technologies we have available to deploy these solutions for our customers are as diverse in cost and complexity as the messages our clients want to get across.

If your clients are asking you for digital signage, be sure you know what they, and you, are talking about.

Do sit down and evaluate their existing signage and traditional communications strategy.
Don't start selling them on all the new gadgets.

Do spend some time educating your clients about the options for replacing or adding to their strategies and what it should deliver in terms of things like employee retention, satisfaction, loyalty, morale, customer service, and the bottom line in reductions in returns, increases in value-added sales, and in more sales during new campaigns.
Don't make wild promises. Adding digital signage is just part of an overall change in culture. Be sure that you lay out what's required of everyone in order for it to be a success.

Do see the "FUN" in visual communications. Signage can open new doors for engagement, competitions, contests, karaoke, and social networking.
Don't just set it and leave it. Messages need to be dynamic and change often.

Do be prepared to produce all the graphics and videos.
Don't assume your client will have the skills to produce their own.