Salim Bloggy Blog

Post Bootcamp : How to continue learning after a training. 

Last week alongside 30 classmates, I had the opportunity to participate in a New Media Bootcamp for organizers of Color, titled BlackRoots. Our class included a dynamic group of people with a shared dedication for community organizing and an interest in learning the skills of online organizing.

Kept to a tight timeline, the class content was intense and incorporated an arsenal of trainings and lectures from data mining, web design, excel lists and email structure. There were many times when we wanted more time to go even deeper into what we had just learned.

To help each of us maintain the educational momentum set last week, I’ve compiled suggestions for retaining and using the information we learned.

Keep it organized: Create a folder for your presentations and notes and keep them together.

Review and revise. Look over your notes and the coinciding lecture slides. Compare what you wrote to the content on the slides. Write out any questions you may have.

Think it : Practice thinking within the subject. Devise ways you can go deeper into a concept or tool. If you are learning html, explore HTML language, commands and operations.

Teach it. Look for opportunities to teach someone else what you’ve learned. Be it a team member or a colleague. Test yourself by seeing if you can explain it to someone else, completely unfamiliar with the material.  If you have difficulty teaching it, it is possible you may have not learned that subject well enough. Go back or ask for help.

Google it : Google is your friend. Do a keyword or subject search if there is something you don’t understand and you will most likely find a tutorial or answer on the web.

Related Media : Once you get into the subject, look for books magazines or podcasts that relate to what your learning. This will only improve your understanding and introduce you to new techniques.

Fall Back : Give yourself time to absorb and incorporate new ideas. Apply the trainings into the work your doing  Start by incorporating small aspects of what you learned and scale from there.

Learn with others.  Identify topics you want to improve on and let your other classmates know. Create a discussion on our Facebook group  or using Twitter. In addition check out our Storify-which contains all the tweets from BlackRoots11 and our DocStoc where we encourage everyone to share their class notes.

Ask the Coaches.  Use the trainers we met last week as coaches who can provide answers, advice and help guide you through.

Hope this helps.

NOI New Media Blackroots 2011 Grad

11/10/2011  New York, NY

Subject: Startup Marketing School Session 5

Last nights class covered P.M.A. Product + Market + Assumption. What follows are some of my notes from class mixed in with my experience and perspective.

The Start: Develop Brand

The rule of thumb for almost all branding cases, parallel in my opinion some of the principals found in screen writing and media production. It begins with, “the story”. Developing a brand narrative has proven to be extremely valuable. In todays market many would argue narrative as quintessential to building lasting brand impressions that connect on the long term.

The art of developing and telling a brands story is not a simple feat. There is a systematic process, but its something that develops over time and changes as the product offering and brand matures.

Within the startup phase of brand narrative P.M.A should be approached as an interconnected process.

Within that process Product + Market + Assumptions are the key components and are eventually reiterated through time to find a perfect fit.

Applying the lean startup methodology, the suggestion is that you should quickly test your hypothesis identify the areas where there is some failure, make reiterations to either your product and or market and then lastly check your assumptions to identify whether they were true or not. Major key to the success of this methodology is to constantly test and cycle on a 60 to 90 day basis. With in that given time frame you are then able to create your measurements for success and identify the areas that produce the best results.

Product represents the item or service that you sell or offer in exchange for a market good.

Market represents the industry and audience in which you plan to serve, reach or communicate with.

Assumptions represent  the thoughts which you believe to be true or not. Your underlying assumptions.

Reiteration is one of the most important elements to keep in mind. And must cyclically be done on a 60 to 90 day cycle in order to refresh the process.