Whew! What a week it was last week… Last Wednesday, I brought pal and photog instructor guru Zack Arias into my studio for another episiode of chasejarvisLIVE. We chatted photography for 2 hours and took questions from the live Twitter audience via #cjlive. Was a blast. While about 20,000 of you caught the interview LIVE–it seemed like I got at least that many tweets/emails/fbook requests to post it again here on the blog, so… As you wish. Here ’tis.
From there, we shipped Zack and his crew into our creativeLIVE studio where he put on one heckuva studio lighting course all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully you saw the interwebs booming, especially with the @creativeLIVE and #askzack tags. I’m pretty sure Zack swiped some ratings from the World Cup. Or at least we had fun trying. I wanted to give a huge shoutout to Zack and his team for an amazing effort. You guys and gals nailed it. Also a shoutout also to all the manufacturers that kicked in gear for Zack to give away, as well as uber thanks to B&H Photo Video for their support of the creativeLIVE studio and G-Technology for keeping our gobs and gobs of data safe. They support us, please support them. I hope lots of you tuned in. And if you didn’t but wished you had, the course is available for download here.
While I’ve got you, I wanted to ask for your feedback. Not somebody else’s…YOURS. In the comments below, we’re looking to find out a few things with the goal of making creativeLIVE the best it can be. Tell us whatever you want, but please help us by answering some or all of the following particulars about our LIVE, free, worldwide creative education platform:
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others?
2. Where do you live? We want to understand the breadth of our audience with the comments on this post. Where are you from, and when are you watching the LIVE feed?
3. Does this live worldwide format really work? This is the important part. What does the experience feel like to you? Can you help describe this format to someone who’s never seen it?
Thanks for taking the time! If you’re new here, I invite you to subscribe/follow via links above and to the right. Lots more stuff heading your way soon on all our channels…
I attended the Art Wolfe sessions live and thought it a great chance to understand his approach. I also watched most of the John Greengo class am really impressed by the structure and graphic explanations (and yes I bought the 10 week class).
1. Comparison – I like the structured lecture environment of creative live. I set aside a period of time to participate and play catch up by purchasing the course. I have watched photography classes from Kelby Training and attended in person their live events. Creative live is the nearest learning tool I have found to being there in person. Other on line classes feel less like the presenter is addressing me personally.
2. I’ve watched the live feed in MA and OR USA. Both worked OK, although I defaulted to the Webinar version in OR due to bandwidth and computer limitations. I prefer live HD feed. Obviously their were some teething problems, dropouts, missing voice or picture or both at times.
3. The live feed is engaging, with the presentation switching between graphics/photographs and the presenter. The ability to pose questions (and receive answers) is critical to audience engagement and works well. The dual simultaneous chat room is confusing and distracting – perhaps only questions should get through screening via a delayed filter. Purchase options are great for catching up on missed episodes, dropouts and other interruptions. The ‘replay’ is less engaging, however, due to editing, the final product is of high quality and a useful addition to being there Live.
Please persist in this endeavor by creating a sustainable business model (and bring back Greengo for the advanced version of his great class).
Hi Chase,
Heres’s my CreativeLIVE feedback.
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others?
I don’t have anything to compare it to…yet (may take the forthcoming lighting PS seminar).
2. Where do you live? We want to understand the breadth of our audience with the comments on this post. Where are you from, and when are you watching the LIVE feed?
Yorkshire UK. Watched FDP live (those that I could) and then bought the downloads. Watched Zack as a split session; the first few hours of each day I watched live, had myself a good nights sleep, and then watched the remainder of the class in the morning on the rerun.
3. Does this live worldwide format really work? This is the important part. What does the experience feel like to you? Can you help describe this format to someone who’s never seen it?
Yes it works for the most part. Technically, fine. As an activity I would do – yes I’d take a 3 day class, and yes its certainly a concept thats easy to get and to describe.
Zacks session was a marathon for me even so. Sitting at a computer for that long was tougher than being in an actual classroom environment for a number of reasons. Predefined breaks would have helped with a lot of that.
I’m not a big fan of all of the music played….some of it was a real downer. I know having mentioned it in chat and got an absolute flaming for it that this comment may not go down well but for my money its about keeping it real and UPBEAT. Again a schedule would have helped with this then I could have come back to the session later.
The chat (questions, lounge and Spanish) – a great idea and without a doubt adds value.
For the most part it works (for me) because CreativeLIVE allowed me to attend a class delivered by photographers I admire when its highly unlikely I’d have spent the money to do so otherwise.
Cheers!
Jenny
1. It is free!! For me this makes it totally, totally different. Still can’t believe that such quality teaching is for free. Thank you, thank you. I think this opens it up to a different audience as well. Zack is a great teacher and have the gift of explaining things simple and more importantly in a way one can remember.
2. I live in Grimsby, United Kingdom. I watched half live and the other half with the rerun. It just got to late 12/1am at night for me to really process the info. So thank you for broadcasting it at a different time.
3. I am also english speaking so really could follow. Didn’t feel like I was on another continent. The format (and Zack addressing “Internet”) made me really feel part of the class, even part of the jokes etc. It is a virtual class, just like a real classroom you can even ask questions and interact with other students in the chatroom, the luxury is that you don’t have to leave your house, watch in your pj and eat whenever you like!
Thank you, thank you, thank you words can not express my appreciation to everybody involved.
1. What I like about creativeLives approach is how it allows you to watch/learn/be amazed by the subject matter in its entirety and then allows you to purchase the course knowing full well what we are buying. So far, the subject matter as well as the people teaching the subjects ( I watched Zack and Vincent so far ) are well worth the price tag. The price of the courses are an amazing deal that I do not believe exist anywhere else. I watched the courses all the way through, but I still bought them just to rewatch and pick up things I missed. Its an amazing resource.
2. Im in Littleton, CO.
3. I am hardly “worldly” so its hard to gauge the world wide format, but the times and weekend start time are perfect for me. I own my business and work from home, which means I work all hours of the day/night and weekends so I had Zack’s course playing on my second monitor as I worked….big mistake. I found myself watching way more than worked. I have been perusing my photographic vision for a couple years now and know my lighting pretty well, but I never ever consider myself a “master” at my craft and always am open to learn, relearn, be humbled, with my work. I learned with Zacks class and also reinforced what I learned on my own. It was a great course
If I had to describe the classes that I have seen to other people it would go like this: if you have ANY interest in the subjects that are presented by CreativeLIVE, you must watch these broadcasts. You will enter the mind and personality of a true professional for a few days and will think of nothing else until the broadcast is over. You will gain an unheard of amount of knowledge, be totally inspired, and learn to love the instructor, respect them, and want to have a beer with them. After that you will purchase the course. Why? Because you will learn soo much all over again.
CreativeLIVE is an amazing concept and I can’t wait to see more and wish it all the success it deserves.
Thanks, Chase for bringing it to my attention.
1. I love the format. Multiple camera angles combined with the on computer view is a huge asset. Obviously there are some rough edges during the live viewing as the broadcast team gets in synch with the instructor and vice versa, but with quality instructors it is more of a moment to smile as they move right past it. The format of the broadcast is great, but really it comes down to the quality of the content and presentation. I guess to me that speaks well of the format because it is not getting in the way of that content, rather enhancing it.
I’ve only caught bits of previous presentations, but for Zack I caught as much as I could even while I was traveling for a shoot. Zack was a huge support to our PhotoCamp Utah 2010, and I knew he would deliver on this class. I wanted to return support for him, so buying the download was a given for me.
2. Utah, so Mountain Time Zone. When watching live I was in Phoenix, AZ, so currently in Pacific Time Zone.
3. Does this live worldwide format really work?
I think the worldwide and particularly the live format works on many levels. First, the obvious “giving back” feeling is a bonus, both for its sincerity and that it encourages people to freely spread the word. Second is that spreading of the word happening liberally during the actual broadcast. Those of us active on Twitter continually are reminded when quality content is happening with the live questions and comments buzzing out there. Third, with all the buzz during the live sessions I would hope that sales increase for the downloads for those that come around realizing that they have missed something good!
Thanks for putting so much into this concept and I hope to see it flourish!