From The New York Times Bits blog:
Before a valuable employee quits a job, how does a company make sure a bit of his or her magic stays behind?
Some companies try to capture it on video, by recording lectures given by some of their best employees. The knowledge can then be shared more easily with new workers for years to come. And even if these star employees are not leaving, recording them can help share their expertise an engineer's guidance on how a custom piece of software works, say, or a salesperson's insight into how best to work with certain customers with a much broader audience inside a company. Making these video presentations useful is the tricky part. A company in Seattle, Panopto, has developed a service to help clients capture video presentations. It won't transform presenters into thespians, but it does make their lectures more digestible.
I wonder if employees would get a similar benefit from recording their employers...
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 26 2014, @12:55PM
>I wonder if employees would get a similar benefit from recording their employers...
Employees' benefit from working at a company is experience and compensation.
If you have to take a copy of the training videos with you when you leave, you probably aren't capturing much of that experience benefit while you are there.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday June 26 2014, @01:08PM
>I wonder if employees would get a similar benefit from recording their employers...
Sure, there often is. How? By recording embarrassing activity, and then demanding post-employment perks in exchange for not releasing said recordings to the public / police / regulatory agency / news organizations.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by strattitarius on Thursday June 26 2014, @02:09PM
This isn't about secretly monitoring employees. This is about a guy with 20+ years experience at a company trying to immortalize his knowledge. Hell, I would be honored for a company to want me to "tell them everything I know" because it shows that they actually appreciate the amount of knowledge you have gained.
And I have left a company and "recorded my employer" in a manner of speaking. I took some of my code just so I could reference how I did things (not code for commercial software). I have "taken" some of the training material from classes and seminars I attended on the company dime. It's a two way street. I give documentation specific to their needs, and I keep the more generic documentation.
So negative...
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by elf on Thursday June 26 2014, @02:47PM
When I read it I thought of Dilbert, so I saw it in a funny way. I think the comment was meant to be sarcastic in that the benefits would be minimal
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @01:20PM
Yet another advert wrapped up as a news story - probably an example of Churnalism. There are lots of products on the market that allow this, yet one is specifically singled out, not a good sign for an unbiased article.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday June 26 2014, @01:59PM
I have always been huge on documentation. I always leave a job in better shape than when I started. Recently I have started doing screencasts as a quick way to do informal documentation. The only problem I have had with some of the free software was the size of the recording (but that's probably due to screen resolution). Other than that, it's a free way to create a quick video. I have reinstalled since using it, so I can't remember what software I used. But it was simply found through google. I bet a screencast would be more useful than a video of the person quite a bit of the time. Plus that removes a whole bunch of the reason for nervousness when creating a video. Maybe you don't need a thespian or a company to help you be one.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lgsoynews on Thursday June 26 2014, @02:05PM
Knowledge, company memory is vital. At least, that seems obvious to me, and probably to anyone who has ever worked on a project maintenance, but not to the companies where I've worked.
I've worked for many years in the french telecom companies. That is, big to huge companies, and very technical ones (obviously). In each of those I've been astonished to see how the memory is NOT kept (knowledge sharing, documentation, know-how, tutoring, mentoring : none of those!). There is not even an effort in that direction.
In France, there is more and more a trend to outsource (not necessarily offshore), which means that I've worked in teams where more than 75% of us where contractors, like myself.
Contractors come and go much faster than the salaried workers. In such an environment, it seems obvious that keeping memory of the projects is vital. But no, it doesn't seem to matter. Whole teams have been brutally dismissed (I've seen it 3 times), leaving no clue to the next team about the whys, hows, or anything... I've been for instance once given to maintain 2 years worth of work from another contractor, without a SINGLE comment, or ANY documentation. None at all! And they expect you to hit the ground running. (This was one of the worst companies I've ever worked with, they had NO concept of documenting, nor of testing, pure cowboyz-style, what a buggy mess!)
Now, keeping the knowledge is great, but I'm not convinced by the video part.
For sure, the advantage of videos is that you can easily do an half-hearted job by improvising some kind of interview and get it over with. I bet this will be done that way in most cases because preparing a good video is very time consuming. I was myself once video-taped when giving a lecture about web-sites design, but despite a professional setup it was not designed for a video (I had been told only the day before I would be video-taped), therefore, it was not that good. You don't improvise teaching & communication. To communicate effectively, you must think about the message, organize the presentation, etc. Well, it's a project in itself. It takes time and skill. Time: companies are always reluctant to give you some, skills: not everybody is gifted for communicating, even if they are good at their jobs. That's a difficult problem.
Then, videos have a fundamental problem: they are difficult to use for reference, and it's difficult to jump to a part that interest you more as there are no chapters like in the book, well, you know it CAN be done -see youtube- but it's not very practical. They also have no "keyword search" functionality. I wouldn't like to have a problem at 3 am about the DSLAM 123-B and have to fast forward in the 3 hours video -number A23.AR- from my predecessor in order to find the hint I -vaguely- remember he gave about that problem, probably in another video anyway!
Moreover, I've spent a lot of time watching educational videos from youtube and others (CS mostly, but other topics as well). My experience is that they mostly suck! And those are usually from university courses, that is, the teacher usually knows how to present his/her stuff. When done by amateurs, the quality of the presentation often is worse, and I'm not even talking about the video quality itself.
In summary, I think videos could be somewhat useful, if they were well done (but they probably won't). Still, they will not solve the problem completely, the best way to perpetuate the organization memory being a direct transfert between people + up-to-date documentation (a dream that I no longer hope to see achieved). But, I suppose they are better than nothing. And given what I've seen until now, you can't do worse anyway.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @02:39PM
From panopticon? What a horrible name for a company like this. To derive its name from a prison architecture that allowed constant, unending surveillance. I don't want constant unending surveillance from any product, even while at work. I don't think this is the image the company is trying to create, but it's the image I have of their products and intent solely by their name (and their website doesn't give any other justification explaining the name that I can find, not that it would really matter if it did).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:14PM
I came here to post the same thing. Crazy people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:10PM
I watched some video lectures from a previous expert, and he was actually a pretty good public speaker. The problem was that the audience would ask questions - at first useful however the discussion turned into the guru just troubleshooting a current customer problem, not the purpose at hand.