Day 1 - Thirty Day Challenge Launches!

Can you believe it? More than 8,000 people have registered to participate in the 30 Day Challenge put on by Ed Dale, Dan Raine, and Nic Messe. That's pretty amazing. When was the last time 8,000 people signed up for something you were doing?

The much-anticipated launch, heralded by a couple of weeks of pre-season A/V mastery, stuttered a bit as much of the 30DC community were stymied by the .mp4 version of the first training video. All along, the organizers had been providing both streamed video and .mp4 versions as particpants were getting up to speed with iTunes, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 social media they had never before encountered. I realize the server demands for streamed video with 8,000+ hungry challengers all trying to access it at once would cause a performance hit, but dropping off the easy-to-use video (basically, just click and play) on day 1 was a bit of a shock to many. The forums lit up with calls for help and echoes of frustration. Too bad. The guys did see this coming, but dropped the ball a little in execution on the first day. Some explanation needed to be provided, or at least some warning. I say this because it's what I'm always advising my clients -- make life easy for the users, even if you think it is already easy. That's what we techwriters do -- anticipate user problems so solutions can be provided ahead of time.

The huge number of newly-initiated users may have been underestimated. As mentioned, challenge participants include people on dialup and those who have only ever used the default tools installed with Windows. Throwing Skype, Twitter, Firefox extensions, Facebook, and iTunes .mp4s at them all within hours of each other caused information overload and technical overload to boot.

I'm sensitized to user frustrations because of my job, so I see all the people running into walls. And I see walls people haven't hit yet. I also see the gaps.

But when you think about it, a little frustration is a teensie, weensie price to pay for the awesome value being provided -- FOR FREE -- in this training the lads are giving. Nothing comes without a cost. Learning, for sure, doesn't come without effort, sometimes pain, and yes, plenty of frustration. On the Scale of Value, the flea on one side is easily outweighed by the elephant on the other. No contest.

In today's broadcast alone, Ed gave the marketer's 4-part formula for success, and if you learn only that, you will improve your business efforts immensely. Register for the Thirty Day Challenge to get access to all of the valuable training.