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. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others?
Better: it’s free! I can watch from home. But it necessarily feels much less interactive because there’s a crowd of 100 other people in the chat room.
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?
Kirkland, WA. Unfortunately the live feed is normally in the middle of my work day. If I was signed up to take an in-person workshop, I’d take the day off, but this live workshop I just listen to with at most one ear, so I don’t get as much out of it. For Zack’s workshop, I listened to the nighttime rebroadcast of the first day and then watched most of the weekend live.
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?
I think it can work. When I’m watching on a computer screen, the workshop has to be super-focused or I’ll start doing other things at the same time and eventually drop out. And it’s hard to make a workshop like that. I liked the intensity of Greengo 10-week digital photography course (pre-creativeLIVE), for example.
I live in Dryden Ontario, Canada.
Loved the life thing. Keep up the good work. I haven’t taken many courses as they cost money. So to make anything of this calibre available for free in any way is excellent. Major props.
Keep it coming.
1. It`s totally insane, to be able to attend to a class in an other country, live!! not just a theorical class but with models and alot of different things, its the finest thing it has happened to me!!! I think i`ts great! Zack Arias is really inspiring!! Thanks for sharing so much about your life experience in photography + I laughed alot! 🙂
2. Medellin, Colombia!
3. I had little isues, some times it would stop, but it would be like for seconds, so I would refresh the live page and boom it would last for a really long time in really good condicions. It was awsome how much things Zack showed us this past weekend! and all this for free woww Magical. Thanks for doing this! What an opportunity having such good teachers and being able to get so much with out being there! Internet and Creative Live rocks!! Thankssss!! And please don`t let this new kind of class dissapear!
Its like magical,
Zack’s workshop was amazing and his eagerness to help and give is amazing, I can imagine him thinking who may buy his dvd after CL workshop, if this CL download is so affordable, but I think that he’ll have in return good fortune, and I’m sure that many as me will find a way to attend to one of his workshops one day.
Answering the questions:
What makes the creativeLIVE approach different?
First than anything is worldwide, so it’s able to reach the widest audience
As business matters I wouldn’t fear to give away, do it for free. As an example I new I wasn’t able to watch it all live (zarias), and beforehand I knew it was going to be amazing, so I didn’t thought about it twice and I just bought it in advance.
What matters most to me, that I feel grateful for, is, that like many I daydream about become this commercial photographer that chooses his clients and I’m pushing myself very hard in any spare time I have, I read loads of blogs, loads of magazines, I buy dvd’s (the ones I can afford) etc. And lately I found out that I needed some more serious education, but where I live is rarely a workshop at the level of Zarias, Hobby, McNally, Santa Fe Workshops, etc, so the solely Idea to attend one of this workshops involving Travel, accommodation, workshop fees, expenses, currency exchange rates is overwhelming. Working my ass off and saving every penny, I would hardly be able to attend one workshop a year ¡Maximum! So even though growing photographically depends entirely on me, be able to access this education well help me grow faster, as well as many others, and that will surely raise the bar.
CreativeLive is like no other video course, the live Q&A puts you in there, the quality of the production is fantastic, and any money I could spent on the workshops I think is well spent.
The price of the workshops are really accesible, Only a few people can pack so many hours and price it as that, plus available to download.
2.- I live in Guadalajara México
3.- Does this live worldwide format really work? Obviously yes, is fantastic, repeating it for the people in the other side of the world, is great.
4.- Why I think Zack Arias Workshop was a success?
1.- Zack Arias is a well known inspiring photographer, with something around 5000 followers between his twitter, FaceBook and blog, and if you add, chase followers, strobist followers, and the other people that help spread the word, you know for sure there’s was gonna be people watching.
2.- He put everything in, I don’t think he kept any secret to himself, I was surprised of how much knowledge he has, and even greater is able to communicate.
3.- I entered the contest and sent my video and was prepared to spent the money to get there and attend the workshop, and while my video wasn’t selected I didn’t felt bad at all, cause i knew that watching on the interntet, was gonna be like being there.
4.- I like Zarias Portfolio
5.- His photography journey to get where he is now is inspiring as well
I’m sure there’s many other reasons, I hope this helps, thank you very much for pulling CL , you can count on me, to support CL buying as many workshops I can with my budget.
Daniel
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? I can’t answer this yet, see point 2
2. Where do you live? We want to understand the breadth of our audience with the comments on this post.
I’m from England and I’m only a part time ‘tog so I have to have a “proper” job as well. The difficulty for me is being available at broadcast times with the time zone difference. As yet, I’ve not managed to catch one
3. Does this live worldwide forat really work?
It certainly should but I think you could reach a bigger audience if you could stagger broadcast times, or maybe look at hosting “local” events. A uk creative broadcasting to the UK using GMT or similar (might mean a late night / early start occasionally) but I guess this would depend on where your main market is. You seem to be globally recognised so i assume you have fans/students around the world?
Also, I appreciate that you can pay to download the classes to keep but if people like me might want to catch it “live” how about being able to tap in and view it for up to 24hrs after the event before it goes off line for purchase only. it wouldn’t be interactive but it would give us the opportunity to watch the whole thing, or tha good part of it of it before deciding on a purchase. just an idea. It’s the only drawback to the “worldwide” live format I can think of.
Keep up the good work
Moto