Over the weekend, I had spend some time speaking to a few of our brand partners so far, as well as doing some research & reading on social media content. And here's the thing, when onlinelabseries was founded, I had a vision, and you might already be familiar with that if you have been following and reading my previous articles. But one thing that we are in essence still learning and figuring out along the way, is how we want to produce & publish our content. So, the two biggest questions we have are the "What", as well as the "How". And I intend to answer both of those questions in today's article.
What is the Content About?
I think that in general, when most people visit a website like onlinelabseries, the very first thing most people might notice is how unpolished it might seem at first. onlinelabseries definitely doesn't look like one of those highly financed, well-designed website that you find on the internet. Yes, I have a goal to make this website the best that it can possibly be. But that will have to happen over a period of time. At this very moment, making the website look great isn't our top priority. Instead, focusing on the content itself is a much higher priority. So, what is the content about?
Our Content Focus & Goal
For onlinelabseries, our focus is really simple. We are a product-based/brand-based learning platform that focuses on fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. That said, it doesn't mean we will partner up with any particular brand that offers us money for it. Our main goal (as onlinelabseries) can be broken down into two main parts:
The first part, is to always deliver learning content about products that we believe will continue to remain relevant in the near future. Nobody wants to invest their time equipping themselves with knowledge and skills that they cannot use later.
The second part, is to always make sure that our viewers are getting the right information, on top of that information, they will be able to understand how to make the best of those products that we will be educating them about.
Taking Time to Understand Each Product
When I first started onlinelabseries, I made the mistake of being really eager to get started. As a previous content provider (producing content online both written and in video), I have been very used to the idea that consistently putting out content every week is important. Taking SEO into consideration, the search engine has a way of ranking sites with more regular content than those that only update their contents occasionally. But is being consistent really the only way to draw attention to the content that we are producing online? Truth is, quality often doesn't play into our timeframes. Sometimes, the best quality video content, or even blog content can take days, even weeks to be generated. So, how then do we achieve great quality?
We start by learning and understanding more about the products from each brand partner. I think as a content provider or someone who's managing a learning content platform that promises high-quality, I owe it to myself, I owe it to my brand partners as well as those coming to learn something; to really produce the best possible learning content that I hope to deliver on this platform. I'm not trying to aim for perfection here, but instead, I am focused on excellence in every sense of the word.
Let's get real here. With all the different brand partners coming together, as a one-man-show right now, there is clearly no way for me to be able to learn everything and be able to produce the content on a single day. Unless ofcourse I have photographic memory, which I don't. So, the most practical way I can go about this is to stretch out the lab series and put them further apart instead of doing it on a weekly basis, I might have to do them on a bi-weekly basis. I will cover this part in my next answer for the question, "How?"
What I Don't Want to Do
Now that I have talked about what I intend to do, I want to also address what I don't want to do. I don't want to rush through things. I don't want to go through each lab series as if it is something that I need to go through the motion of. Though onlinelabseries was birthed out of a simple moment of inspiration that I had months ago, what really drives me is not that inspiration. What drives me is my passion and purpose. But if I only go through the motion, then it would also meant that I have lost the passion and I am just doing it because it is something that I have promised to the partners as well as to the general public (potential viewers/readers of the learning content). No. That is not what I am going to do. I do not want to take the support from our brand partners for granted. I appreciate their support and I am sure they appreciate mine (onlinelabseries'). So, I will NOT be producing shallow, surface-level product information content that you can basically find on YouTube or read about in the product datasheet or a textbook somewhere. Instead, I will focus on providing you (along with everyone that ever visits our website) with content that really means something, something that you can take and almost immediately apply it to your work, or to your studies, or to you life in general, you can create something, invent something, start something with it.
Instead, I will focus on providing you (along with everyone that ever visits our website) with content that really means something, something that you can take and almost immediately apply it to your work, or to your studies, or to you life in general, you can create something, invent something, start something with it.
How Will We Deliver It [the Content]?
I think that this is where the execution is being considered. It's important to have a plan, just like it is important to have great content. But how we will deliver that content is just as important.
So, taking something from the previous section, I have mentioned that instead of doing weekly live video streaming sessions, I am thinking of making it a bi-weekly session. Now, I am spreading out the sessions so that I have sufficient time in between to really research & learning more about each product before actually doing a live session to talk about it. People come and watch a video or tune in to a live session only because they hope to learn something or take something from it by the end of the session. If I am unable to provide that by the end of the session, I would've likely wasted their time. This is also one of the main reasons why I really want to move away from the mainstream social media platforms like YouTube in the first place. There's just so much information being shared, but how much of it is really useful, how much of it can we really take with us and apply it? Yes, there are also a handful of really great content creators on YouTube, and I can name a few of them, but a lot of them are really just "information". Why should I create a learning platform that does exactly the same thing as what everyone else is doing, right?
Why should I create a learning platform that does exactly the same thing as what everyone else is doing, right?
When I founded onlinelabseries, my goal is to be different from the rest. I wanted [onlinelabseries] to stand out from the crowd (from the mainstream content providers). It is truly a bold vision and mission. It meant that I would have to set a standard that is much higher than what others are already producing. Now, I'm not saying that I am trying to produce a movie-level video content, but rather, I want it to be done in such a way that the learning experience itself is comparable to someone actually paying thousands of dollars to fly thousands of miles to attend a physical workshop or seminar.
Now, I'm not saying that I am trying to produce a movie-level video content, but rather, I want it to be done in such a way that the learning experience itself is comparable to someone actually paying thousands of dollars to fly thousands of miles to attend a physical workshop or seminar.
So, I've talked about the bi-weekly plan. The next thing that I want to talk about is the actual quality of the video and audio doing the video streaming itself (or even in a pre-recorded video). Truth and fact is, I am using a very simple and humble setup.
I don't have a dedicated microphone, so when I am streaming live, I am literally using the microphone from my webcam (on the left side of the picture). The challenge that I also face sometimes during a live streaming, is that I need to switch off the screensharing when I want to talk about the hardware itself. Many times, I would forget to do that and people would get lost wondering what I am talking about. The thing is this, I was used to have a proper setup before. Like a proper DSLR, proper video camera, the right video streaming software and tools. I had those things at one point of my career (I don't own it clearly), but it was a fully-equipped studio. So, this setup that I have (the one you are seeing the the photo now), is seriously a downgrade even for me.
But I get it, we all start somewhere, and for me, this is really what I am able to work with right now and so, I am trying to make the best of it. But sometimes, it's really just not [good] enough.
What I Can Really Benefit From Having
Are there things that I can really benefit from having right now? Yeap, most definitely. I really could use a proper video camera like the Panasonic HC-X1 (US$3,000) without accessories included. A Lumix GH5 (also by Panasonic, US$2,400) without accessories. Plus I could really use a good workstation that will allow me to do a list of activities like the ones I have listed here:
Video Streaming
Video Production
Product Design (Autodesk Innovation Suite)
Research & Development
IoT + Tinkering
Software Development
Design & Graphics
Animations
Artificial Intelligence (GPU Computing)
Those 9 activities are the things that I will be using the custom full tower workstation for. And that is also why I have created the crowdfunding campaign for it. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/raising-funds-for-custom-workstation-by-ocuk-computers--2/x/19076155#/
My hope is that people will actually understand why I am doing this, and my goal and vision. And maybe, just maybe, with some hope and faith, they will actually help to back the campaign.