How do IT pros learn, and do they have game?

I'm working on a start-up idea to make educational computer games for adult professionals.  I've worked in Information Technology for my whole career, so that seems like a natural topic to begin with.  IT professionals are necessarily computer savvy, and they'll be using these skills at a keyboard, so why not learn them there, too?

While talking to the various smart people in my life, I discovered that I didn't have hard data to defend some of my core assumptions about this business model:

1. Do IT people really play video games, or is that just a stereotype?
2. What would make a professional trust a video game as a teacher?
3. How would games stack up against competing learning methods (e.g., books, classes, and the all-knowing Google)?

I've found some excellent research about what IT pros choose to learn, and the demographics of video gamers, and I'm deeply indebted to those sources.  So I've decided to share the fruits of my research, too.

You can download a spreadsheet of my results, but I'll call out some highlights here:

Who was surveyed?
I sent the survey out to 65 of my trusted LinkedIn colleagues, along with a personalized introduction.  I got 33 responses (which I consider a staggeringly great response rate).  I wasn't critically interested in typical demographic information (age, sex, location), but here's what I do know:  Everyone on this list does business in the US (with a concentration in California), in the Information Technology industry, and speaks fluent English.  14 of those invited were women, but I didn't ask gender in the survey, so I can only assume that about 20% of respondents are also female.  88% of respondents had been in the industry for more than 10 years.

I also posted the same survey on Hacker News.  That audience provided 31 additional responses, and added some more responses from students and junior-level professionals.  I don't have any demographic info on the Hacker News readership, but since it only contains English language articles and heavily covers Silicon Valley start-up culture, I'd guess it has similar makeup to my LinkedIn circle.

Interestingly, the two groups responded very similarly.  Unless otherwise noted, the percentages in the rest of the article are aggregate, although everything's broken out in the Excel file.

How do we learn?
In a word, pragmatically.  The two most preferred ways to learn a new skill were "on-the-job" (70%) and "Google it" (64%).  In a separate question, the most respondents (70%) answered that being able to "use what I learn immediately" was a key influence in what they choose to learn at all. 

Books (50%), in-person classes (36%) and following a course of study like a degree or certificate (30%) all received luke-warm responses in the face of shorter, more immediate approaches.

On-line classes (13%) were the least popular method of learning, and "recruiters are looking for it" (16%) was the least popular motivation.

Do we game?
Yes, we do!  72% of respondents play video and computer games regularly ("a few times a month" or more).   83% of respondents already have some experience with educational games.

What gets people to buy?
The largest purchase influencers were friends' recommendations (61%);  the availability of a free, playable demo (63%); and covering material the student was "already planning on learning" (63%).

And don't count out the fun!  64% of respondents choose what to learn based on fun, and 52% said even educational games have to look fun to close the sale.  The Hacker News group even prefers "fun to learn" (77%) over "can use immediately" (70%)!

What are they willing to pay? 
You could spin the data as "many people (45%) would be willing to spend $50 or more."  But you could also read the data as "no one believes that an educational game will be the dollar-value equivalent of an in-person class."    Based on some other poll data from my current employer (that I'm not at liberty to share, sorry) I think this is related to in-person classes being perceived as a prestige service.  I enjoyed the movie The Matrix a lot more than the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, but movie tickets are "mass market" and operas are "prestige"... so Opera San Jose got a lot more of my money than Keanu Reeves did.

What did I learn?
It looks like part of the path to success is making games that could be viral.  Friends' opinions were an important purchase influencer (the highest among people who received the survey through their LinkedIn social network), and even early adopters will be looking for a free, playable demo.  Having a way that players can brag about what they've learned, and a way for our trial to ride along on that tweet or wall post, looks like a great way to build a sales funnel.

It also looks like I'm better off producing games of modest scope and modest price; things you could buy on your lunch break and use what you learned that afternoon.  Larger courses could be broken into individually sold "episodes," which is increasingly common in video games.

What do I wish I'd asked?
I'm surprised that so few people were motivated to learn a new skill to improve their appearance to recruiters (Q3).  When I only had the LinkedIn batch of responses, I assumed it was because that group had lots of experience and a proven contact network.  The Hacker News crowd has (on average) less experience; maybe they disdain recruiters because that audience has a strong entrepreneur/startup flavor to it?  This missed expectation rattles me so much, I'd actually like to find a third (even less experienced?) population to survey.

I wish I'd asked for details about people's experience with educational games.  Was it positive?  Was it recent?  Is an experience with Oregon Trail 20 years ago really going to help you decide how to spend your time and money as an adult?

I didn't ask, in question 7, whether people would be interested in a free (ad-supported) or freemium (e.g., Farmville) pricing models. I excluded these options intentionally; I don't think these games will ever attract enough players for those models to be profitable.  Still, given that the multiple-choice answers people picked for Q7 skewed so low, a morbid part of me wonders how much lower it would have gone, if given cheaper options.

Mail Merge and the Dystopian Future

My wife was asked to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of our couple-friends, A and E.  She gets to throw the California edition of their bridal shower -- the cool coed one with all their west coast friends, instead of the "traditional" one with the mothers in the midwest.  Of course, throwing a party means sending invitations, and this shindig is just fancy enough to earn real paper invites.

Being proud owners of a computer, we figured mail merge in MS Office would be the best way to address the envelopes.  Labor saving devices, for the win!

It was then that I discovered: doing a mail merge is a sneak peek into the dystopian future.

For one thing, I think the home printer is the modern embodiment of the ancient nightmare of the Golem: a clay mannequin that hyper-literally follows directions even beyond it's creator's intent. It doesn't surprise me that a printer is short on self-knowledge; for $80 I don't exactly expect Caprica Six. Still, it seems like a 21st century gadget shouldn't eat my fancy stationery, apply self destructive force, or squirt ink all over its paper-handling surfaces.

The entire phenomenon of paper jams stems from the printer lacking the sensory organs to inform wiser decisions that its motors could already follow: back up, slow down, apply a little more friction.  I don't have a lot of perception of my inner workings, either, but I've got plenty of nerves in my fingertips, out where I do my work.

It gets scary when you apply this cautionary tale to dangerous robots.  Will self-driving cars be able to feel the tire shudder of an alignment problem?  The smell of burning oil?  The sight of smoke billowing from under the hood?  (On an unrelated note, does anyone want to buy my 1989 Mercedes 560SL?  Cheap!)  Doesn't my shredder find it a little suspicious when I fight back as it digests my tie?  I can hear the motor struggling to keep strangling me!

The second glimpse into the abyss came from the software half of the equation.  This isn't going to be a big party, we were only addressing 30ish envelopes.  Still, in that small pool of data, we had one person without an address, one significant other without a last name (who entertainingly printed as "Mr. Steve"), and two cases of hidden whitespace after first names.  A is actually a very conscientious and detail oriented person, so the three wasted envelopes aren't a reflection on her, they're typical of every database in my experience.  Data entry isn't fun or glamorous, and choosing tools like Excel that don't impose a structure on our data means that this happens all the time.

How will crummy data contribute to the end of the world?  Well, there's the ID making scene in Idiocracy.  The episode of King of the Hill where the bureaucrats mark Hank's license "Female."  The software bug that killed three people with radiation overdoses.  When imperfect people give imperfect data to overly confident machines, the machines can make bad decisions quickly, backed by hulking robot strength.

There you have it: This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a printer.

The Worst Parts of Meatspace

Meatspace, noun. a term, originating from cyberpunk  fiction and culture, referring to the real (that is, not virtual) world, the world of flesh and blood.  ... The opposite of cyberspace.

In July, I caught a breathless article on CNN about a telepresence robot.  Imagine, if you will, being able to attend meetings and peer over your drones' shoulders, all without subjecting your bed-sore-covered carcass to sunlight.  It's $15,000 worth of technology that makes a Segway look like a wise and life-affirming investment. 

Your wage slaves get to interact with your wheeled robot stand-in through a tiny little screen, to enforce the message that being spoken to by this contraption is holding the muddy end of the stick.  As the power player, you're at home, dressed somewhere between Hugh Hefner and Howard Hughes, driving from a monitor bigger than their cube wall.

So, this manages to project both poor taste and intense disdain for those around you, like an indoor Hummer.  But I also thinks it solves a vast, interesting problem in a way that deftly preserves all the worst parts of physical reality in a shiny new digital shell.  The robot can't operate doors or stairs or even elevators.  When it joins a meeting at a normal conference room table, it has to swivel left and right to "see" who's talking.  The driver has to choose between steering it room-to-room throughout the day or making all the meetings come to him (which will kick off a territory-marking contest if ever two powerful honchos in the same company own robots).  A battery life of "up to 8 hours" also means your plastic servant is likely to need a pit stop in the middle of the day.

All of these problems were solved by video conferencing 20 years ago.  You update a room with a monster TV, a wall-mounted camera that can see everyone in the room, and plug the whole rig into the wall for power and network.  Time for the next meeting?  Hang up and call another room!

All hatin' aside, Anybots isn't the first company to just not get that they could be using digital technologies to solve meatspace problems instead of faithfully preserving them.  This appears to be the whole premise of Second Life.  Imagine how fun it would be if you had to walk from Amazon to Flickr!  Imagine clumsily steering your avatar into a meticulous recreation of a drab conference room, to watch a presentation blocked by the head of the guy in front of you, at a faithfully recreated slightly-to-one-side angle!  Oh, and can we import assholes, too?  You bet!  (Second Life defenders will note that now your Avatars can fly and teleport.  Keep going guys, you're a few patches away from being Star Trek Online.)

David Weinberger gets it.  Virtual stores are better than physical stores.  I can sort, I can filter, I can leap from cameras to chocolates without a 20 minute hoverchair ride around the Buy n Large.  Check out David's story about the big pile of clothes, start near the 15:00 mark if you're impatient. 


What about online classes?  On the one hand, I get to take them from the comfiest chair in my house (an overstuffed, closeout sale, C3PO-colored monstrosity), on a screen just the size/distance/font-size that I like, after putting on the baby's pyjamas (and my own).  On the other hand, I ask fewer questions, I don't grow my personal or professional network, and I don't get my knuckles rapped with a ruler when I doze off.  Maybe online classes take a good thing too far, maybe they need a little meatspace infusion.

Meatspace and cyberspace are different, no matter what you learned from Tron and Hackers.  Meatspace is really good for some things (hello, reproduction!) but don't think that everything in cyberspace should aspire to be like its older brother.  And if your product can be thwarted by a doorknob, you may not be solving the right problem.

Bounce Rate Sucks? Blame Journalism Class.

I love long blog posts.  Stevey's Blog Rants, Joel on Software, Paul Graham, I just eat them up.  I hope you do, too, but more likely you're one of the 88% of visitors who is going to read part of this then browse away never to return; in the web analytics biz, that's called my Bounce Rate.

Some curmudgeons will tell you that you're browsing away because you have a child-like attention span, growing ever more attenuated by Google and Hacker News and that newfangled Rock and Roll.  I'd like to give you a bit more credit than that.

I believe that you are a highly discerning informavore: knowledge is your prey, and you are merciless in its pursuit.  You don't browse away because you have a tiny magpie brain—you are locked on to the "information scent," and you will follow its lead until the Nature Channel-tastic end.

This is where the journalism lesson comes in.  Remember the Inverted Pyramid?  The concept is that you lead with the important part of your article because your reader may abandon you at any time—it's proof positive that people have had short attention spans for at least as long as there's been writing.  The basic Inverted Pyramid story goes something like this:

Thing you need to know.

Supporting material.

Cute anecdote.

Drivel. 

So here's my big idea, the one I would have put at the top if I hadn't slept through that J-class:  The Inverted Pyramid is actively driving away your users.  The further you read into an IP article, the weaker the information scent gets.  This probably mattered less in the heyday of newspapers, because the fastest way to get more information about a topic, assuming that you cared at all, was still to read the article in its entirety.  What else could you do, drive to the library?  Put on your weight lifting belt and crack the Encyclopedia Britannica?  Even if you were certain that better sources existed, the best value-for-effort was still to finish that article, diminishing returns and all.

On the web, everyone knows where to pick up the trail to better information the moment they lose the scent.  And maybe that's ok!  Let's face it, lots of blog posts contain just one good idea, which could have been stated succinctly.  Then its just the author typing because he likes that clicking sound.  Heck, plenty of blog posts contain zero ideas, just a link bait title followed by backpedaling, trolling, or fanboyism.  Your information senses are serving you well...

...until they aren't.  The dark side of this is that we're all building up habits that support the one-idea article.  When a really intricate idea needs to be transmitted, the author is likely to lead with the (not yet supported) core, and the reader is likely to expect that if that core doesn't make sense on first contact, it's all down hill from there.

I did wake up for the part of the class about "you need to tell 'em what you told 'em" so here's my formulaic conclusion:  The Inverted Pyramid is actively driving away your users (and maybe that's ok!).  If you've really got one clear idea, lead with it and people will leave when they get full, or when they think they're more likely to find the next big idea somewhere else.  If you've got something complicated to get across, you're better served with a format that feels as little like the Inverted Pyramid as possible so you can build the scaffolding before you drop your ton of knowledge.  Either way, your audience will thank you.

How to Get Your IT Guy Excited about the iPad

I'm excited about the iPad.

For me, it starts with the iWork suite being rewritten for the iPad as multitouch-flavored productivity candy.  For an extra $30, the iPad supports the entire "knowledge worker" software stack: email, calendar, word processing, slides, and spreadsheets.  That gives an IT guy an excuse to be excited about the iPad at launch that I didn't have for the iPhone.  (Remember, useful corporate email support came about a year after the iPhone originally hit the streets.)

But before I get into how the iPad can change the game for IT, let me tell you about the game we're playing now.  These are the requirements my IT shop imposes on a computer (especially a laptop) to make it a "supported corporate asset":

1) Access to local files and programs is limited to trusted operators.
2) The theft of the physical device does not lead to loss of intellectual property.
3) Malicious code is prevented from executing or spreading.
4) Portable devices can access the corporate network remotely.
5) IT-mandated patches to the OS, browser, and applications are applied promptly.
6) IT-curated applications are licensed and paid for centrally.
7) Work is backed up.
8) Status on all of the above is reported to IT automatically.

For this post, I'll divide that list into things the iPad already does right, and things I'm only hopeful about.

Done Right
1) Local access control
Given that the iPad is running an improved version of the increasingly inaccurately named "iPhone OS," we're able to enforce the PIN protected login once the user connects to ActiveSync to get their email.  Unfortunately, there's no real mechanism to have more than one local user with differentiated access.

Counterpoint:  It's $500, get your own.

2) Theft Protection
The iPad has full disk encryption (so did iPhone, starting with the 3GS) and remote wipe (via ActiveSync).  The jury still seems to be out at this writing whether the iPad has the same vulnerabilities as the iPhone in it's disk encryption.

3) Malicious Code Protection
I know it’s popular (and fun!) to bash the App Store approvals process, but IT is getting a lot out of it. Apple is making it their business to guarantee that “iFart HD” is not going to do something awful to my device or file system.  There is much in the Store that is tacky or worthless, but no one has found trojans or malware.

I’m a little taken aback by the outcry for background applications. People seem to take this rosy view of how well behaved their Twitter and IM apps are going to be, but have they forgotten what the task bar looks like in a year-old Windows system?  The upside to the sandboxed, no-background-process state of Apps is that there is no iPad blue-screen-of-death.

As a result, we're willing to forgo the antivirus and app-whitelisting requirements we impose on our laptops and desktops. Which is just as well, since no one makes one, and it's not obvious that it's even possible to.

4) Access to the corporate network
Between ActiveSync and the VPN client, the iPhone OS already has the tools we need to connect up to the mother ship. 


Hopeful
5) Patching
If Apple really wants the iPad to be the only computer for certain types of user, they're going to need to lose the notion that some things can only be done via iTunes.  First up: upgrades to the OS currently require a "bigger brother" computer to download and force feed it over USB.  If an iPad is a computer, and not just an accessory, it has to take this part of its destiny into its own hands.

On the bright side, once we figure out OS patching, browser patching gets solved as a side effect.  And on top of the base browser, on a full-operating-system laptop we've also got to worry about the patch level of Java, and Adobe Reader, and Flash -- it's a relief for me to not have that class of crap as a possibility with Mobile Safari.

6) IT-curated Apps
I'm lucky to work for a company with a pretty laid back attitude, so we're not interested in blocking any Apps that Apple has been willing to permit.  We're also delighted that the App Store puts the cost of Doodle Jump and Bookworm onto the user, which contrasts nicely with Blackberry users' ringtones showing up on the corporate bill.

But when Photoshop or AutoCAD or some other pricey-yet-critical application launches, we certainly don't expect the user to expense it, and we do expect to be able to reclaim and reassign that license when the user leaves the company.  Ideally I'd like dual financial responsibility: the company will pay for and retain ownership of these n Apps; for everything else you're on your own.

7) Backups
For email and contacts, I'm already confident that ActiveSync is covering my data -- I don't need email backups from the iPad's point of view because I've got the "original" on the server, and the server goes to tape.  Some Apps also shoulder backups themselves: my Yelp bookmarks and Kindle books are synced to the appropriate "big computer in the sky." 

It is staggering to me how bad the file management is in all the iWork apps. There are more ways for me to organize my pictures than my documents, versioning is missing, the trash can (a Mac feature since... well since it was a Xerox feature) is missing. The only comfort I have is that it's so bad users will instinctively use email to store and share, so I'm back in the protective arms of our Exchange filers.

8) Monitoring device status
Our IT shop needs to know when an iPad starts to get into trouble.  There will be exploits against the base OS; how can we make sure our users upgrade promptly?  I'm putting a lot of faith in Apple's approval process for Apps; how can I detect jailbroken iPads?  Documents and presentations and paintings are all going to be born on the iPad; how can I make sure our users have good backup habits (at least to iTunes)?

This kind of central thinking seems to be totally absent in the current iPhone OS.


So, why are you so excited again?
I'm excited because we know the device launched with about half of my requirements met, in the operating system, for the base price.  I've got a further expectation that most of what's missing is under consideration in Cupertino (comparisons between my wish list and iPhone OS 4 are left as an exercise to the reader).

For comparison, to hit these same requirements, my Mac laptop contains six third-party "management" applications, all running as background apps, each dragging down my productivity a teeny bit.  That's before I load up any software I use to do my actual work.

The vision of a clean slate -- with all of IT's requirements baked in, and the whole processor devoted to what the user wants to achieve -- should excite even the most jaded IT guy.

An iPad, a decal, and the future of learning

I preordered an iPad about an hour after the form opened.  Apparently, so did about 120,000 of my closest friends. 

In an effort to convince myself that I'm not just a member of this herd, I started pondering personalization.  When I had a similar crisis with my iPhone, I designed a custom decal for the back with a WWII nose art motif.  (I hate cases, but a decal adds zero bulk and absorbs some wear and tear.)  For the iPad I'm leaning toward something that makes more of a statement about why I'm excited about the device. 

I'm a science fiction nut (thanks Dad!) so I started by considering if there was something from SciFi that I could pay homage to.  Jonathan Ive says that the iPad is "magical," but Arthur C Clarke taught me that's just another word for "sufficiently advanced technology."

The first thing that came to mind was the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a bottomless computerized travelogue that guides Arthur Dent through zany adventures in space.  That's how I'd like to think I'll be using my iPad (instead of reading Fark on the throne).  On the other hand, as much as I like the "Don't Panic" sentiment, I think the eyeless green mascot is creepy, and every part of the 2005 movie (except Zooey Deschanel) makes me hesitate to identify with this franchise for a few more years.

What other inspiring references are there?  In my head, the "desk" computers in Ender's Game look just like iPads, but I don't know how other Battle Schoolers imagine them.  I dig Cryptonomicon, but I'm not a security wonk, so that's likely to become a conversation piece for conversations I'm not interested in.  My favorite Star Trek is the skinny-Shatner era, but I don't think that boxy blinkenlights look is iPad-compatible.  Do people even read in Star Wars?

Finally, the object that jumped out at me was the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from Diamond Age.  The Primer is a nanotech-powered book that teaches the main character, Nell, in subjects from reading to self-defense to nanotechnology.  It combines written stories with narration and video and interactive games to teach a gestalt lesson. 

This got me thinking about what's missing in the world to make the Primer a reality.  What's holding us back from a device that can teach reading as easily as particle physics? 

I think multimodal teaching is critical.  The Kindle seems like a rockstar for textbooks and simple diagrams, but I personally thrive on lectures and lab work, both of which require a frame rate that digital ink seems a long way from fulfilling.  The very best way to solve this problem may be a constellation of devices: Steve Jobs wants to convince us that the iPad belongs next to a $200 cell phone and a $1200 laptop, maybe there's room for a really great reader there, too.  But I think one cross-functional "good enough" device is going to outsell a stack of best-of-breed tools.

I originally thought some of the Primer's features like speech recognition and human narrators were a bit of fantasy overkill, but now I'm not so sure.  Certainly at the very young end, having almost no artificial interface is a beautiful affordance.  I'm still unconvinced of its utility in adult education; I work in a cubicle and live with two other people, I've got very little time where I can talk to a computer without driving someone else nuts.

I'm worried about the state of educational software, I don't think it aims high enough.  I grew up with Carmen Sandiego, and my wife fondly remembers Oregon Trail, but I think they each represent only a part of "teaching."  Carmen Sandiego feels like the same class as every IT course I've ever logged into: trivia memorization.  And Oregon Trail seems to do the same job as the Giant's game in Ender's Game: making an academic lesson visceral.  I can't come up with any software that has taught me the entirety of a new task, at least nothing deeper than Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.

I think there's more that software can be doing that is both needful (trivia in the age of Google seems extra pointless) and that brings cheap CPUs to bear on the problem of teacher:student ratios.  When I'm watching the SICP lectures, the examples could follow along in a REPL I can play with.  When I'm learning guitar, the guitar could be jacked into the computer, so the software can comment when my sloppy fingering causes fret buzz.  Why isn't there an App to teaches me how to braid or fold origami using touch?

So I'm delighted that I've got some time to figure my iPad out for myself before my 6 month old daughter, Valentine, is ready to learn more than how to get her feet in her mouth.

Oh, by the way, for the decal, I'm working on something that looks like the leather-and-gilt cover of a book, with "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, by John Percival Hackworth" embossed.  I'm hoping the fact that I'm not a young lady is going to give me a chance to introduce a great book to new people, and to pitch these ideas about improved educational tools.

Keynote from IT Expo

My keynote from IT Expo/Digium Asterisk World is now available on the TMC website.

http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=1976

The topic is how Yahoo! decided to use Open Source Telephony (specifically Asterisk) as our standard phone system.  There's some history, guidelines for choosing supporting technologies, and trivia about the space shuttle.  Don't miss it!