Let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve been working on for my client…

She has a online store presence that was built from scratch and is anything but easy to use from the admin side, not to mention that it was custom built and the guy that built it is gone. Not a good situation.

At the same time she’s looking to use the opportunity to launch a new online storefront with a blog to go with it and to alter her business model to expand her business. The trick is, I’ve got to help her to remove a lot of manual garbage that she does right now and automate as much as possible between her suppliers, her resellers and her direct customers. I’m going to do all this leveraging off-the-shelf open-source software, tweaked to her particular situation.

It dawned on me however that part of this meant having to train her on how to use the blogging software (which is Wordpress) and how to use and configure the storefront which will be run from Zencart….

Here’s the trick - I’m busy and she’s busy - how the heck are we are going to find time for me to train her?

Well, my answer was that I would create screencasts to train her on how to use them with the intent that I will repackage and resell these screencasts as part of an online course.

Sounds easy! Well, it’s not. I’ve monkeyed with several screen capture tools, video compression software and various ways of delivering the video online…what a pain. I think I’ve got the technical pieces together now and I know the content that I want to do (more or less). I still have some kinks to work out in terms of finding the optimal video size to use vs. the size of the movie file that the student will need to view.

But, that’s not the biggest obstacle that I’ve had. You know what it is? Me.

I’ve been too much of a perfectionist with it…wanting the production quality to look and sound fanstastic. So much so that I just wasn’t getting anywhere. The other problem that I’ve got is finding time to record that the kids aren’t screwing around in the background.

So here’s what I’ve decided….

I’m going to forge ahead with the tools that I’ve got.

I’m going to do a decent job of producing the videos and not worry too much if it doesn’t look and sound like it was done in professional studio (so what if you can hear my kid playing with his toys faintly every now and then?).

I’m going to call it “ready” when it’s got at least couple of full lessons done. (it wont be “done” but it will be enough to let some students in).

Result? Something will get DONE.

Welcome back again!