Post-Traumatic Tech Disorder

Just a reminder… Seth and I will be at Chicago Comic Con (formerly Wizard World Chicago) next week at table 3712 in Artist Alley.  You can see the full AA list here.  Interesting that Artist Alley is referred to as AA… it’s like they know us.  We’ll have some copies of our Image comic books there, (hopefully) some t-shirts to sell, and as always, Seth will be doing art commissions there at the show.  We always enjoy chatting with readers and fans, so even if you’re not thinking about buying anything, feel welcome to come by and say hello.

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Zuda Comics – the current competition is almost closed and my friend Jorge’s comic is in second place.  I said I’d toss a link over there… his is the violent historical piece there, and knowing the way he writes, if you enjoy stories with twists, you’ll want to see the rest of that story.  But check them out… the one that wins gets to continue as a weekly webcomic there (so the votes are meaningful).

I’ve been revamping training materials for the day job lately.  Mostly because we’re expanding the training we offer… and also because I’ll be the first one to present the new training next week.

There’s a lot that goes into training.  The priority is to get the information into the brains of your class.  You can do this through various methods like repetition, mnemonic techniques, humor, and good ol’ fashioned brainwashing.

After you have the core material down, you still need to be able to present it in a fashion that’s engaging.  This is mostly to keep the class awake.  Though I did contend to my teachers in my youth that I did retain the material while asleep in their class, there was no scientific evidence to support it (hmm… sounds like a research grant proposal to me).

Finally, there are the exercises. Many people learn better through doing.  You can talk about a subject and demo it over-and-over, but sometimes it just doesn’t click with students until they actually apply that knowledge with some hands-on exercises.  Building those out probably takes the longest out of all the work (going step-by-step through something that’s almost second nature to you in order to document the process).

And even with all that time and effort dedicated to make a solid set of training materials, you still wonder at the end of training… how much of this information is really getting through?