Making Myron Tribus' excellent DFC course more accessible

[Wayne Levin <levin@predictum.com>]

Myron Tribus, Alan Mossman and myself are looking to re-release Myron's 
excellent training video on Deployment Flowcharts but with a big 
difference. Instead of offering the program on video tape, we're looking 
to transfer it to Digital media so that it can be placed on a corporate 
intranet and played on any desktop.

There are a number problems that we are trying to overcome in our effort.
1) Viewing video-tape in the corporate setting is difficult. You have to 
locate the tape (usually held centrally), sign it out, and get a room 
with a TV to view it.
2) The set-up effort is relatively high for video so it's only 
well-suited if want to watch all of it or at least a major chunk.
3) It's not very good for refreshing one's know-how on a particular 
subject somewhere in the middle of the program due to the high set-up 
effort and the foibles involved located the material of interest on the 
tape.

By digitizing it, we hope to overcome these disadvantages and add a 
couple of advantages:
1) We can provide direct email links to knowledgeable resources to answer 
any questions the viewer may have. These links can be context sensitive, 
directing the viewer to different resources depending on which material 
they are watching.
2) We can link the material to documents and applications that reside on 
a corporate network. For example, an organization that wishes to make use 
of Deployment Flowcharts can link Myron's learning material to templates 
and charting applications tightly weaving learning with doing. It can 
even be coupled with other material that show the user how to use the 
flowchart software employed in the organization! No guesswork here!
3) It can be readily revised and enhanced. Video tapes are not readily 
updated or upgraded. But digitizing it makes this possible.

The segment was produced rather quickly to provide a proof-of-concept. 
We've taken the raw video and audio and coupled it with an expanded view 
of the slides and charts presented.

You'll need Quicktime to view this content - which many of you have - as 
I know from earlier projects. If you don't, you can get it for free at 
http://www.apple.com/quicktime or just click on the link provided on the 
left of each page.

Have a look and let us know what you think! 

To get to Myron's example ...
Go to http://www.mostt.com
Click on Examples
Scroll down to Deployment Flowchart

Click on the contact button to send us your thoughts. Is this project 
worth doing??

Thanks very much,


Wayne J. Levin, M.A.Sc., P.Eng
Predictum Management Sciences
PO Box 77506
592 Sheppard Ave. West
Toronto, Ontario CANADA
M3H 6A7
Phone: 416.398.8900

[Moderator's Note:  I hope that as a community we can find even more ways to
make such works more acessable.