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…
1. That is is free and I find it valuable. There is a slew of free information out there and it is hard to weed through what is of value and what is not. The instructors that you have I feel targets a specific audience, one that is willing and enjoys sharing education, which is a new model. Not all photographers embrace this idea.
Since you reach a large audience, questions aren’t always answered and I applaud your chat hosts are able to filter through all the questions and ask relevant and good ones. The hashtag idea is a good way field live questions and having Zack ask us what we wanted to learn/questions, was a good idea.
Of course, being a webinar, one-on-one teaching/interaction is not available, unless you are in the live audience (great idea to allow a select few to attend live).
2. Atlanta, GA, USA. I’m catching the various classes during the afternoon and being freelance photographer, I try to catch the live workshops, but if not, I will purchase the download before the end of the class.
3. I think it does work. Of course, your workshop times are targeted to those of us here in the States and that is convenient for me. Now, I know you have audience members worldwide that tune in at 3am, which I applaud, but maybe something you can do is do a replay 12 hrs later, so they can have access to the same free live option. But of course, they will not have the ability to ask live questions.
The experience parallels to me attending a large freshman calculus class in college. Lots of students; one instructor. Not all questions may be answered unless you speak up or up front of the class, etc. The way you get your questions get answered is you hang out after class or go to the teacher’s assistant or your small group class to get more one-on-one attention.
The audience you target would be able to grasp the idea of this live, webinar workshop.
I value what CreativeLive is doing and I support the efforts and hope that the feedback helps and that you can continue to exceed my expectations.
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others?
Good stuff is ofcourse that it is free. Worse well live is hard to manage and all new things you need to learn. That said you guys did a stellar job on the Zack series. More internet power and higher image quality is always great 🙂
Love the fact that you can interact with the broadcast.
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?
Located in Denmark in Europe and this is a downer with the live stream being in the middle of the night. Did watch some of the relive with Zack but day three was a problem being within work hours.
Would love for you guys to do a on demand stream for maybe for a week after the show and then start the sale. Don’t know if it would cut in to the sales that is of course important, but as it is know its hard to follow from this part of the world 🙂
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?
Apart from the time of the day this really works. Great possibility to learn. Loved to see Zack work and hear his thoughts on it while at it.
Also the fact that the in class students where brought up to shoot was brilliant.
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All in all a very great iniative and I just love the fact that it is free – only problem for me is the time of day/night this is streaming 🙂
Tks for a great weekend of learning with a truly inspering photographer
had a bit of problem with feed abt 3pm sat where it stoped and started missing abt 10-15
min where i finaly did a reboot and cleaned up the problem. Other than that everything seemed to go just fine
again thank you for the free instruction very well worth it. THANKS AGAIN
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others?
Well to be honest, usually, as soon as some nerdy looking photographer who is a trillion times better than me starts nattering about technical stuff I tune out and go and watch The Simpsons , so I found the fact that I WANTED to keep watching interesting. Zack was very engaging and honesty in a photographer about lifes challenges, not just the triumphs, was very releasing and empowering.
I enjoyed the live Twitter questions. There is some things that can get lost in translation (even in usa engrish) so it was cool to be able to clarify. I loved that it was free. I probably wouldnt usually buy teaching online unless I was completely passionate about it. I liked the countdowns and setups for some reason. Im not 100% sure why, I think they just made me curious and I sort of felt part of it because of these, even when the guy running the show got frustrated and choleric, I still liked it:)
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?
Im an Aussie currently living in a village in Northern Thailand on the outskirts of a city. People in my street have satellite dishes on shacks made of bamboo. I watched creativeLIVE on my pimpin thai wifi balcony as the lizards ran around me and butterflies flew past (seriously, Im not even joking)
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?
Yep it works.
I told my friend about it. How Id been sick (with some gross tropical cold) and couldnt go out because I was too weak but was kind of happy because it meant I could watch all of Zacks classes. “AND!!!” I said “ITS LIVE AND YOU CAN ASK QUESTIONS WITH TWITTER!!” She thought that was really cool and shes not even a photographer. I thought it was a totally excellent experience. For me it helped me to remember how big and yet small the world is. Im here getting the opportunity to shoot in such an amazing country , yet sometimes its totally overwhelming. So when someone from the other side of the world asks a question that is on the tip of your tongue its a good reminder of the common challenges with photography. Without gushing too much I just wanted to say that I was encouraged by the series and the generosity of Zack and the creativeLIVE crew. You could feel the vibe was excited and motivated and open.
So I guess I just really want to thank you guys for all your great and highly professional work.
V Please completely ignore any comments past this point V
My only gripe with the whole thing was the grey brick wall that I kept imagining myself coming into shot with a paint roller to fix up. Sorry thats the lamest critique, I didnt like the grey wall. I liked the wood grain background for the Ballerina shot. That can stay! haha But that grey brick wall behind Zack for most of the teaching looked a little too Lo-fi for me and I ( in my humble opinion) believe that you should give that one a lick of white:)
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to other formats?
What makes it different is what it is; a live workshop broadcasted global, and its free! The differentiation is the uniqueness and that there is a pure commitment to share to the community. The business and earning-money-ambition is kept on a level of “we just want to cover the expenses” (even though no business model actually works that way in the long run =) ). This is attractive since people want to pay as little as possible for as much as possible.
The first format that comes to mind when comparing is Kelbytraning.com. I wont do a complete SWOT-analysis but; CreativeLIVE is free with limited access, Kelbytraining is middle cheap/expensive but unlimited access for your submission time; Creativelive is more inspirational that start from the basic level and go to average level, Kelbytraining is more tutorial based and got all levels of advancement; when comparing prizes Kelbytraining gives unfortunately more value, 199 usd/year compared to 79 (129) usd/workshop. In short your advantage is: free, interaction through asking questions, to some extent possibility to tailor the workshop (as Zack did Saturday morning). And remember; there is not any advantage in itself that it is Live, just that it enables interaction.
The difference between live and re-watch is significant in one, and one only, way. I’m so more engaged when I watch the live feed instead of the re-watch. The ability to ask question’s live engages me a lot. But, and there is a but, what’s engages me is the believe that I may get my questions answered. And when I don’t get q’s answered I loose engagement. It is quite hard to really feel that one’s questions are coming through to the moderators and get asked.
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?
Gothenburg, Sweden. The live feed’s streaming 7pm – 3 or 4 am. Re-watch 5 am – 1pm next day. And this is one of the biggest reasons why I have the opportunity to watch, thus its hard to put full daytime during a WHOLE weekend into a streamed workshop. If you were broadcasting European daytimes I would have hard to prioritize CreativeLIVE.
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?
It really works… together with your business model. The live worldwide part works, but if I had to pay to watch it, I’ve would not have watched. I’m not willing to pay to watch a live feed. Depending of the prize of course, I would pay for a live stream if the prize was maximum 25 US dollars, but only if I knew that I could watch the entire workshop.
One other aspect is, as I wrote above, the possibility to ask questions, which brings the event to a new level. And for me as a European that cannot join in person, this is a reason why it is worth watching. But I would most certain have watched anyway since it’s free.
My feeling while watching is; relaxed since I’m at home, I feel thankful since it’s free, darn inspired since the teachers (so far) have been really good, I feel as a part of a global community since it’s live from another continent, I try to get everyone that could be interested to watch since it’s a such opportunity.
Twitter is a big part of the experience, that is how I try communicate with the moderators since the chat room is somewhat out of control and it’s hard to get your questions through.
So, have I bought any of the workshops? No. And so far that’s because Vincents and Zack’s workshops was kind of information based. A lot of information just pouring out to me, i.e “this is a baffle, this is a beautydish”. If they were more based on short and clear tutorials I would have bought it. One thing that I really missed in Zack’s workshop, that would have made it more of a tutorial, was to see his pictures more, and more discussions about the pictures that he actually shot, pros and cons with a certain modifyer etc.. As it was right now it was more like “I do this and that, and this what a softbox looks like”
One other reason for me to buy the workshop would have been if I didn’t understood and had to go back. Since it’s a live feed I cant stop and go back. I’m looking forward to David duChemin’s w-shop and I think that maybe I’ll buy that since I guess it’s more philosophical and needs more thinking to grasp.
“You join a live workshop, broadcasted form Seattle in USA!! Isn’t that cool?!? And its free, but you want to keep the workshop afterwards.” Everybody gets what the format is, I think.
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A very unstructured comment since that is how I wrote it. But hope it helps.
Since you Chase, is so passionated and I believe you when you say that you want to share with the community, I’ll be happy to give further feedback if that’s of interest. Twitter: @AlexOdman
Take care.
/ Alex