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…
First of all, thanks for putting up the interview. Didn’t have a chance to watch it either, so it’s great to get to see it 🙂 Highly appreciated.
On to the weekend and the class itself. It was absolutely fantastic, amazing, inspirational, just off the hook (did I mention amazing?!). It was amazing enough to keep me up 3 nights in a row from 9pm till 5am in the morning. So yeah it was rather amazing 😀
1. I can’t really compare it to other formats, since I don’t really know other formats of such classes, not in this form anyway. I really like the format as it is. I wouldn’t really change anything about it. It’s great that there’s a live audience in the studio and that the whole world gets to tune in. I’m sure I’m not alone on saying, that this is a fantastic opportunity for a lot of us to learn from some of the best in the industry and that we really appreciate that. And it’s also great that it’s a whole weekend and that it goes on for 7-9 hours each day. That way the instructor can cover a lot of ground and can really get into detail about a whole lot of stuff.
2. I’m from Romania, Europe and I’ve been watching the live feed every night from 9pm until 5am in the morning. That was ok on Friday and Saturday since I could sleep in until 1-2pm the next day. It was only a problem Sunday since Monday morning I had to get up at 7:30, so I only got some 2-3 hours of sleep. My other viewing time would’ve been for the re-run, but for that I would’ve had to get up at 5am. So I preferred going to bed at 5am than getting up at 5am.
3. As I said at 1. this format works really well. I actually told a lot of people about this offline and got a few tuning in. Some of the people whom I told about this thought that I was crazy LOL, but I don’t really care. Thing is that this is an amazing chance to learn a lot about the stuff that you’re interested in and that’s what counts. I also liked all the “action” around the whole class: the tweets, the chatroom, the entry videos for the contest to get in on this class. And now the results of the shoots: the photos on Zack’s blog, with all the comments and all the great discussions.
To sum it all up. The Creative Live concept is great and the execution of the past two major events (Vincent’s class and Zack’s class) were great and I think even the people on the internet got a LOT out of it even if not the full on 100% experience that you get when you’re actually there.
Some other random thoughts:
It’s great to see that there’s all these dedicated folks out there who try and make this the best experience for all of us. I’m mainly talking about Craig and his crew and how dedicated they are and how big of an effort they put into it so that everything works and everybody has a great time.
It’s also fantastic to see that there’s companies who support this kinda education and stand behind this dedicated crew.
And then there are the instructors. Zack is definitely the hero of the weekend. He was just so on top of his game and so into it. You can tell when somebody is really passionate about what they are doing. And not only was he passionate about it, his style of telling things and teaching stuff was just really eloquent.
I could go on and on and on about how awesome these 3 days were, but I just want to thank everybody who’s been involved in putting this together. It was a treat to be “part” of this.
Szabi
@question #1: what makes creativelive different/better is a few things. for one you guys are live, i can learn actually watching in real time and the odds of someone have the same question i have is super high, so all the time my questions get answered even if not asked directly by me! then i can do this in my own home, i’m 28-married with 2 little ones, the times are not always during nap times! But i may have a chance to watch a re-air of it. if i cant the i buy it for $79. i don’t always have $79 but it’s more probable that i will then paying over 40,000 to go back to college? i even looked at new york institute of photography, cheapest for that entire curriculum is about $950, and i don’t have that now either,we pay mortgage guys! then i looked at betterphoto.com and they seemed awesome, however they make a class of everything under the sun! which means that you have to take about 7-$200 courses to get what i got from jon greengo for $79( yes i just had to buy, and zacks studio weekend too!!) in 10 weeks!like are you serious!? thats how you guys are amazing.
@#2: i live in ocala fl originally from Queens NY, and have my computer station in our bedroom, lately since i’ve bought 2 classes we put them on cd to watch on our tv. i fell in love with photography several years ago, 28yrs old and have a college degree in animal science! don’t have anymore college debt but couldn’t afford more of it to go back for photography? my husband told me if i really wanted it enough and i kept asking The Lord for it He would provide a way for me to learn for free, about a week later my cousin who is going to school for photography in tampa told me about creative live and here we are, i’m 28yrs old, wife and mother with a passion who just can’t afford to go back to school, or leave my kids? i don’t think going back to school beets this by far??!
@3: i am 3hrs behind you guys so like this weekend for zacks class i got to bed really late but hey i got caught up today! i love the format, especially learning by watching and hearing, nothing beats that. only that i wish i could be there!
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse?
I’ve found that the best way for me to learn from these workshops is to sit through it, then be able to go back and watch it in my own time, rewind and review. There is so much information to absorb in just a few days it is just not possible (at least for my little brain). But being able to go back and review – particularly to rewined and see certain parts over again (and sometimes again) really helps.
2. Where do you live?
I’m in Idaho – Mountain Time zone
3. Does this live worldwide format really work?
No complaints, really. Very accessable, easy to watch, wasn’t techincally challenging. My only real issue (other than blocking out that much time in my life) was knowing the start/end times so I knew when to get back. That said, I liked the loose format and even if the start/end times had been solid I don’t think it would have made that much difference.
I saw enough of it live when I could break away from my life to pick up some great points and to prompt me to pay for the download.
Great class – thanks to everyone involved.
1. It works because it interactive, we can ask questions and get involved.
2.I live in the UK, it’s a bit awkward to watch some seminars as they run from 5pm until 2am, but other than that its awesome.
3.It’s great it feels like I’m in the room with most teachers.
I love this idea, its seriously been better than some of my university classes!
1. First and foremost i like the “interactive” approach, the ability to ask questions live througout the class is great and makes the learning experience better.
2. Sweden, the class started around 7 pm here so i didn’t get to watch the whole live feed but managed to watch the parts i missed on the rebroadcast. The 9-hour time-difference gets pretty noticeable but it’s all worth it.
3. Heck yeah it works! i think it’s great, it really feels as if you were there in the same room, i think Zack did an awsome job reaching out to the interwebz. I’d describe it as any other seminar only over the internet instead of at a school (or whereever it may be).
I’d also like to thank everyone who made it possible for us to watch this for FREE, it’s an awsome experience. I know I learned ALOT this weekend and im really looking forward to future seminars. Thank YOU!