Author Topic: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?  (Read 24529 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline ChrisGammellTopic starter

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 158
    • Chris Gammell's Analog Life
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #50 on: August 14, 2013, 05:44:46 pm »
A ha, I have a solution for that too. Since networking is meant to be a big part of the course as well, I will be splitting the session into groups of 8 - 10. So the discussions will be localized for that kind of thing and then the group can vote on what should be presented to the other groups. I figured if you say to a bunch of electronics people (aka. nerds-like-me) that you should be discussing things with the group, then usual social dynamics take over and the "A's" like you mention do all the talking/posting. Breaking it down into smaller groups allows for more discussion and encourages real connection. Was also thinking about shaking it up 1 or 2 times throughout the course. It's hard to meet new people, even online, y'know? And social dynamics mean that the smaller group will hopefully encourage more participation.
 

Offline JohnnyGringo

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 154
  • Country: vg
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #51 on: November 06, 2013, 08:01:38 pm »
Chris,
  Not much activity in this space for a few months. What's the status of the CE course?

I'm interested in taking your course, but have very little EE background/experience.
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein
 

Offline ChrisGammellTopic starter

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 158
    • Chris Gammell's Analog Life
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #52 on: November 06, 2013, 08:46:43 pm »
Hey Johnny,

Actually, quite a bit of activity. I'm up to 120 videos and I'm prepping for launch. Did you sign up for the email newsletter? (sign up on ContextualElectronics.com) I've been sending out videos as part of an introductory "Getting To Blinky" course. I'll post it more publicly on the forum later, but there are 8 videos showing you how to design a small board in KiCad and actually order and build it. Here are the ones posted so far (trying to get 6 and 7 out tonight):



~Chris
 

Offline ResistorRob

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 115
  • Country: us
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #53 on: November 08, 2013, 03:06:28 pm »
Much like I do when I go to Chipotle for a burrito...I'm going to go with chicken on this one ;-)

AlfBaz, good suggestions, but for right now I'm going mainly for listeners of The Amp Hour and followers on Twitter/YouTube. As I try to pull in others that might not be familiar with the other things (or god forbid, don't know what EEVblog is!), I'll consider your ideas, they're great.

I will play devils advocate on this one, since I have a web design and marketing background. As you know your conversion rate is the number of people who join or buy intead of taking no action and leaving. If you have 1 person out of 100 join your conversion rate would be 1% (obviously). If you can get just 2 extra people out of every 100 to join it would bring your conversion to 3%. I know it doesn't seem like a very big deal, but essentially what you did was triple your sales!

Obviously you will get an initial bump of traffic and sales from followers of the blog and podcast. They will have less resistance to a crappy website (I'm not suggesting yours is), but people coming to you from ads or search results will be a whole different ball game. With ads costing $1-3 per click (guesstimate for the keywords you might use) I think you can see the value of every visitor even if they arrive at no cost you.

"Content is king" is a catchy little phrase, but I have seen people become millionaires selling complete junk online, because they had a killer website selling it. I'm not saying don't make the best content possible, but what I am saying is don't overlook the quality of your website, because it's more important than you realize.
For my 10th Birthday I got a Fisher Price oscilloscope!
 

Offline ChrisGammellTopic starter

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 158
    • Chris Gammell's Analog Life
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #54 on: November 08, 2013, 03:09:05 pm »
I completely agree. Selling is a whole new ball game for me and I've already had one guy help me out with messaging. I'm sure there is a LOT more I can do, but for now I don't have time to worry about it.
 

Offline Kohanbash

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 175
  • Country: us
    • Robots for Roboticists
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #55 on: November 28, 2013, 04:29:21 pm »
Hi
I just watched the videos you have on YouTube.

They are good and step through the process nicely. I would be interested in taking the course once it is ready.

Two things that you might consider improving:
1. The volume level is quite low. Even with my laptops volume turned all the way up it was hard to hear the videos with any background noise  in the room (for comparison with eevblog/Netflix videos I do not need to turn my volume all the way up to hear in a busy room).
2. There are several times in the videos where you correct yourself or go back to fix/change something. You might want to fix those segments of the video so that the tasks are done cleaner (Some of the errors you encounter are good and you should leave as people are likely to encounter those errors also).

« Last Edit: November 28, 2013, 04:33:23 pm by sdk32285 »
Robots for Roboticists Blog - http://robotsforroboticists.com/
 

Offline Towger

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1645
  • Country: ie
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #56 on: December 30, 2013, 12:50:12 pm »
The site http://www.contextualelectronics.com appears to be down. I just got around to reading the sign up email sent on the 23th...
 

Offline Kohanbash

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 175
  • Country: us
    • Robots for Roboticists
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #57 on: December 31, 2013, 03:08:56 pm »
The site http://www.contextualelectronics.com appears to be down. I just got around to reading the sign up email sent on the 23th...

It is up again. Chris sent a message out before saying he is doing a bunch of server work.
Robots for Roboticists Blog - http://robotsforroboticists.com/
 

Offline resistor

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 74
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #58 on: January 08, 2014, 05:35:25 pm »
Hey Chris,

We had a brief exchange in a support ticket, but I thought I'd follow up here.  I'm kind of on the fence between auditing and participating, mostly due to the time commitment.  I'd like to encourage you to have some kind of hook to upsell people like me to the higher tier.  I'd previously suggested having read-only access to the forums for auditors, though I don't know how feasible that is offhand.  An alternative idea might be to give some kind of preview of the additional content you get at the participator tier.  Maybe make the full content available to everyone on one or two modules, with a "This is a preview of what being a participator would be like!" banner at the top!  I know for me that if I could see that the additional content was compelling, I'd be much more likely to go with the participator tier.  But, as it stands, going with the higher tier relatively sight-unseen is hard to justify.
 

Offline ChrisGammellTopic starter

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 158
    • Chris Gammell's Analog Life
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #59 on: January 08, 2014, 06:55:54 pm »
Yup, saw your tickets, those were helpful.

The tough part is the logistics of getting view only. I'm really at the mercy of the software I'm using. As much as I would like people to be in the participate tier, the added money it brings in does not really justify my time on the upsell. I figure most people will be able to make the decision from the pricing matrix. Additionally, the community aspect really hasn't started yet, so there isn't much to show right now.
 

Offline apelly

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 1061
  • Country: nz
  • Probe
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #60 on: January 08, 2014, 07:06:10 pm »
Your Kicad videos in the course are significantly more helpful than the "Getting to blinky" series would have had me believe.

I'd like to see a video of you converting a project from Eagle to Kicad though because every man and his dog seems to be using Eagle.
 

Offline resistor

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 74
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #61 on: January 09, 2014, 08:41:16 am »
Yup, saw your tickets, those were helpful.

The tough part is the logistics of getting view only. I'm really at the mercy of the software I'm using. As much as I would like people to be in the participate tier, the added money it brings in does not really justify my time on the upsell. I figure most people will be able to make the decision from the pricing matrix. Additionally, the community aspect really hasn't started yet, so there isn't much to show right now.

Just saw your new site preview video.  I don't know if it was directly inspired by my suggestions, but I just wanted to say that it gets a :-+ from me.

I still think some of the other things I've suggested could be beneficial, but I totally understand that you have to make judgment calls about where to invest your time.
 

Offline ChrisGammellTopic starter

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 158
    • Chris Gammell's Analog Life
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #62 on: January 09, 2014, 04:04:05 pm »
Yep, definitely had you in mind. Thanks for the feedback!
 

Offline aroby

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 214
  • Country: us
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #63 on: March 11, 2014, 04:17:03 am »
Chris - I just found this thread and read your blog about what you're trying to do.  I hope you are successful, but I share some of the sentiments of others on this thread.  I didn't know much about electronics until about 4 months ago when I found Dave's youtube site, then Mike's, then Martin's.  All have contributed to my knowledge and I've learned a ton more from other sites.  None have been structured, which has been the missing link for me.  I feel that there are certain basic electronic building block circuits that none of these people cover and that if I understood them I'd be a lot better off.

That said, I'm not sure at this stage I'd invest in 8 weeks of training.  Largely because I don't have the time and predictable schedule to keep up.  However, one thing crossed my mind that I thought I'd share.  I'm a keen amateur photographer, and I readily pay $200 a year to subscribe to Kelby Training (now Kelby One).  That seems to be a model that works - and the content there is amazing.  Whilst it may be out of your immediate reach to be able to pull something like that off, you may want to take a look at it.  I would think that there is a market for getting luminaries in their field to produce compelling training videos and charge for them.  I certainly wouldn't have minded paying for Mike's series on hacking iPod displays, for example.  And having these as a subscription where you can access any topic whenever you want, provided you pay the subscription, is a pretty easy sell.  I don't know what the business model mechanics are behind the scenes, and obviously Kelby Media has a far bigger audience, but it may be worth a thought.

Anthony
 

Offline nixfu

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 346
  • Country: us
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #64 on: January 22, 2015, 02:39:11 am »
Chris, about how long(how many weeks/months) is the 2015 session going to be?
 

Offline ChrisGammellTopic starter

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 158
    • Chris Gammell's Analog Life
Re: Any thoughts about the idea of Contextual Electronics?
« Reply #65 on: January 22, 2015, 02:47:17 am »
Actually, it doesn't really end. It's more like an ongoing thing where we continuously develop new modules and projects. There will be breaks, of course, but it's really meant to be an oongoing thing.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf