5 Secrets to Funding Lecture Capture

Hi, my name is Erica St. Angel, and I want to thank you

for joining us for today's webcast, Five Secrets to

Funding Lecture Capture.

A bit of housekeeping before we get started, before I

introduce our presenter.

You'll be able to watch this presentation on demand

immediately afterwards by clicking the same link that

brought you here today.

And we also will be taking your questions throughout the

presentation.

There's a little speech bubble Ask button that you can use at

any time to ask us a question.

And if we don't have time to get to all of your questions

today we do ask that you provide your email address so

we can follow up with you after the event.

There's also a Links tab with some additional resources that

Sean will point out a little bit later.

And now I'd like to introduce Sean Brown.

Sean's our vice president of education at Sonic Foundry.

He's got over eight years of experience working in

education technology on both the technology provider and

the higher education side.

And this is the first time he's taken the mike in over

two dozen best practice webinars that he's moderated.

He's now moved over to the presenter role to share with

us his ideas and past success that he's seen in finding

unique and successful ways to find your lecture capture

initiatives.

Thanks, Sean.

Thank you.

Looking forward to it.

I hope I do half as well as the guests that are usually in

this chair.

And it's very great to be sitting here with Erica

because a lot of what I'm going to talk to you about

we've compiled together in our journey with Mediasite.

Over the last better part of a decade, I've had the pleasure

of being involved in almost all of the Mediasite

installations around the world.

Since the inception of Mediasite and lecture capture

itself, one of the most common questions that I get asked

when I travel is how are others doing what they do with

their projects with Mediasite?

Within that specifically, the most common concern is how are

other people getting their funding?

So today I'm going to share real stories from out there on

the road, sometimes the names have been changed to protect

the innocent.

But the best research that we have internally and external

about how to successfully raise funds for Mediasite.

Mediasite, and technology spending in general on

education, but Mediasite in particular, has been a bright

spot consistently through various economic times.

There have been, over the last eight years since lecture

capture was introduced, many different economic faces, boom

and bust. From post 9/11 to the difficult global recession

that we find ourselves in right now.

However, the growth of Mediasite across the board in

terms of number of units sold and number of units installed

has continuously grown throughout this entire period.

Our research and interviews with our customers that I'll

share with you have identified a couple of key areas that

rise to the top as the reasons for this.

The number one and most obvious is that the benefits

of Mediasite are a visible impact.

When you're talking about streaming media and the

automatic capture of knowledge delivered in video via the

web, there's a certain immediacy that our customers

report, give projects surrounding Mediasite more of

a visible impact than some other projects that you might

raise funds for, for technology deployment.

Mediasite is a proven solution at this point.

We've moved into a phase, and I'll talk briefly about the

history of these phases, but we've moved into a phase where

the role of lecture capture in an institution is a proven

commodity, a proven benefit and the

research supports that.

Investments in Mediasite based projects are actually a

consistent investment on the academic side of technology

investment versus the tremendous amount of funds

that have been spent over the last 50 years in higher

education, for example, on administrative systems.

Administrative systems like ERP, financials, human

resources, student information systems, while incredibly

important, are dominating the funds spent up until Y2K.

Now academic based systems like the CMS and Mediasite are

having their day.

And generally this new type of investment has some attraction

to stakeholders.

Along the same lines, Mediasite tends to be more

aligned with the academic mission particularly of the

higher education institution, but almost any type of

education institution, government agency, or even a

corporation.

The academic mission of the institution is generally

supported by whatever project people are designing to raise

funds for around Mediasite.

Side And finally, with the advent of Mediasite reporting,

the benefits of Mediasite are quantifiable to a very

granular level.

Therefore, the claims you make about what the benefits that

will occur with the investment in Mediasite are easily shown.

So brief history, what I found to be the case from 2002, when

Mediasite was introduced, to about 2005, roughly, is that

it was the pilot phase.

There were different deployments going on.

But generally speaking, if you looked around the world, the

majority of Mediasite projects were pilots in the following

categories.

Distance learning, an application for recent

investment in internet connectivity itself.

Hey, we just built out this big great network, we need

applications to go on it.

That attracted investment in Mediasite in the early days.

All over the world, but particularly in Canada, our

early success was seen around the double cohort, the

elimination of 13th grade and overcrowding and looking for

solutions there.

Staff development, trying to increase the quality and

efficacy while decreasing the cost of

providing staff training.

The keys to funding sources for these types of investments

previously were both internal to the institution, but were

quite often other foundations, such as the National Science

Foundation, Internet2, even eRate which Mediasite was not

directly e-ratable but in surrounding projects, was the

key part of e-ratable type initiatives.

From 2006 to 2009 we saw a massive boom in the deployment

of Mediasite into what I like to call the deployment phase.

People were no longer merely piloting can rich media help a

particular area, like we mentioned before, but actually

looking to reap the benefits of the deployment of rich

media and larger areas.

And these key areas that rise to the top are important for

the rest of our discussion.

Global outreach.

If there's an international component to a mission that

you're seeking, rich media and Mediasite itself has been seen

as a key component of it.

Economic development and recovery, like what

we're in right now.

Definitely the ability to do knowledge share job training

in a more efficient way came to the forefront over the last

three or four years.

Equal access to education for

historically underserved groups.

Labor shortages, so in both boom and bust, whether you

have a work force that you're trying to retrain in recovery

or a shortage of a particular type of personnel, these have

been draws that for which Mediasite has been a solution.

Disaster preparation and recovery.

We've seen Mediasite funding sources externally over avian

flu, swine flu, SARS, you name it.

Different types of disaster preparation.

The need to get the word out.

This is attracting a lot of funds for Mediasite.

And finally community outreach.

Ever increasing needs and desires to have open meetings

transmitted has been a draw for investment in Mediasite in

all types of institutions, not just higher education, city

municipal government and on.

The global stimulus moment that we find ourselves in now

is identical to the previous slide but on steroids, as I'd

like to say.

Right now the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

and, all over the world, various stimulus activities

have been focused on exactly the same initiatives that I

talked about before, more often than others.

So you've basically seen the traditional funding areas,

where there's a nexus between Mediasite benefit and an

increased amount of funds available from the government,

finding themselves together creating a fertile environment

for your application for external grants.

The breakdown of funding for Mediasite projects, based on

our internal research, and this is based on the number of

units, falls roughly into these categories.

The vast majority of funds for Mediasite still come from

inside an institutional organization itself.

But the second largest category and the largest of

all of the remaining external categories are federal

government sources.

This is in the United States, Canada, Mexico, all over

Europe, this still remains to be true, that the federal

government sources are the largest single component of

externally sought after finds.

State and provincial county governments also fold in

there, making the whole public sector from the government

that large external segment.

But we're also seeing growth in external funds coming from

private and public corporate partnerships, which I'll talk

about momentarily, and the newest but most exciting area,

which are self funded models, meaning, where the Mediasite

pays for itself directly through subscription or online

on-demand sales of Mediasite.

And we'll talk about some examples in each of these

categories.

The most common but largest real life federal funding

example that I could talk to you about is a United States

four year research institution with a significant Hispanic

population.

This university had the foresight, as many others have

since, to take advantage of a United States federal

government program to improve Hispanic serving institutions

and increase their academic outcomes with a focus on

retention, recruitment and other key areas.

This is called Title V money, and many of you out there are

noddling because you've tried it, you've used

it, you've done it.

But literally hundreds of Mediasite units are operating

in classrooms that were built and paid for all or in part

with Title V money.

Also similar to title V money is Title III money and other

government programs to serve historically underserved

communities.

Title III Part A and Part B encompass historically black

universities and native American and indigenous

populations in the United States.

but we have seen across the globe programs similar to this

be an attractive source to align the Mediasite

capabilities with seeking grants.

An example of state and provincial type funding comes

from Canada.

And this is also typical and replicated

over and over again.

A two year Canadian college with a significant nursing

education program recognize the shortage of nurses in that

province provided an opportunity for them to take

advantage of provincial funds that were available to

increase any idea that could more efficiently recruit,

train and produce qualified health care workers to address

this critical shortage.

This institution was able to build around Mediasite

technology and simulation technology, simulation dummies

like SimMan and so forth, a compelling story and narrative

about how revolutionizing their facility could address

this critical health care need.

It was not easy, but it definitely was fruitful.

And we've seen that replicated over and over again in the

United States, Canada and all over the world that provincial

funds, local funds, regional funds are often available from

the government for these types of initiatives.

One new trend that is absolutely massive but has

also been replicated, and this is an example in our profile,

is that a two year US community college in a city in

the west was able to, over a 24 month period, design a

campaign that went directly after municipal and county

bond money to revolutionize their facilities, with

Mediasite as a centerpiece of the capabilities that they

would be able to offer.

The hook was the ability to take the existing education

infrastructure and be able to educate, take nexuses or

centers of excellence, a professor over here on this

campus, on this side of town, is going to be able to reach

and benefit all of the people in the community by virtue of

real time lecture capture

delivered viably with Mediasite.

And other technological enhancements that happened in

the overall facility.

But Mediasite is reported to be compelling part of why this

bond initiative was successful to the tune

of $100-plus million.

Not everyone is able to do this, but more and more

institutions we're seeing think big and go after major

capital equipment money in the traditional funding ways.

There are also examples of external sources of funds from

corporate partnerships with institutions.

In one example, a four year US institution established a

private corporate partnership to create a state of the art

classroom studios specifically to serve the professional

development content of these constituent corporations.

So they went directly to major manufacturers that they had

students from, said we have a new way that we can deliver

online content to your employees without having the

need to leave their desks and come to our campus.

It'll be a major upgrade, but if you support this overall

project with this overall budget, this is what we'll be

able to deliver to you.

And they were successful.

And this has also been replicated all over the United

States and all over the world.

Private funding sponsorship, and this also goes a little

bit to self funding models--

I find this incredibly creative--

a lot of four year institutions, but in this

profile a particular four year institution, used a

combination of athletic booster funds, private alumni

funds, and local advertising funds from local businesses,

in conjunction with the branding capability of the

Mediasite player.

So using those banners, which many people have had the

ideas, but few people have followed through or, in their

inception, decided that there was a connection between

branding and funding.

There is.

People have been able to seek private funds in this

particular profile in advance, showing them that if you fund

this type of system, your name will be here in this type of

broadcast. This has gone for convocations, gone for

athletic events, and even gone for lecture capture.

All in this nexus of external private funding

and business plans.

So those are some real life examples and some real life

profiles of how customers around the world have been

able to seek funds, taking advantage of the nexus between

Mediasite and attractive investment opportunities for

stakeholders who are interested in extending the

reach of your institution.

But what are the tools that these people use to find these

grants or, for internal justification even, to sharpen

their message so they get heard above the noise in these

tough economic times?

These are the principles that we've found, or the general

tools that we've found our customers have

been successful doing.

First is, review the abundant literature available on the

subject of fundraising and fund seeking

for any type of project.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, University

Business, Inside Higher Education, these publications

and others are covering the beat of available funds and

creative use of funds phenomenally well.

It has become a major focus in the newsrooms of all of these

types of publications.

So if you simply tune in, you're going to learn more

about the background that's going to be

critical to your success.

Review the published funding sources.

The published funding sources have never been more easily

searchable and findable to be able to match within your

institution the particular idea that you have with some

sort of investment opportunity that's out there.

So it seems obvious but incredibly important take

advantage of web based resources to do this and we

provide a list.

One thing that, I know Erica is proud, I'm extremely proud

to have found out in our research is that people point

to the Sonic Foundry webinars, the case studies that we've

assembled, and most importantly to me, our

incredible account management staff out there in the field,

regional managers that you know well, systems engineers

and inside salespeople here at Sonic Foundry, as critical in

their success as they prepare their grant requests and

internal proposals.

Why is this?

Because we talk to everyone and we are often able to share

best practices that might help you or research pieces or

anything, any type of resource that you may need to shape

your proposal.

And again, have it cut through the noise.

Another important element that I was surprised to discover,

but definitely have seen repeated over and over, is

that the most successful fundraisers often take

advantage of surveys and focus groups before they prepare

their presentation.

While they're developing their project, they are able to

create surveys that turn out and deliver critical

information that will, in the end, be used to justify why

their project will be successful.

This hard, objective data differentiates the most

successful proposals from the average proposal where

everything is anecdotal or aspirational.

And I cannot emphasize enough how even the smallest survey

done at an academic institution can really help

clarify for an investor the benefits

that you are proposing.

Another thing that we've definitely seen be the case is

that live presentations of your ideas are critical.

This is something that some people have fallen away from,

but we definitely encourage you to continue.

Which is that to have a public meeting about your proposal,

to talk about it, even if there's three, five, seven

people in the room, allows you to continue to practice before

you get to that final stage, articulating your vision and

articulating it succinctly.

If you can add Mediasite to that equation, in other words

using Mediasite to solicit funds for Mediasite, we've

seen people be incredibly successful.

Because then your message is verbal, illustrated, but also

portable, allowing more and more people to engage in your

idea and create that momentum.

And finally, the advent of grant writers.

Grant writers have never been more in demand than

they are right now.

Most of you probably have some on your staff or are ones

yourselves.

But even for external projects, we find people

contracting with grant writers more successful than

those who do not.

On internal projects, if you can't, following the

principles that grant writers follow tends to make people

more successful than those who do not.

This is a list of resources that Erica and I have compiled

over the years of different sources for online research

relative to seeking external grants that

we discussed before.

Matching up your ideas with the grants that are available

and out there.

These include, at the top, when I was talking about the

Title V and Title III and other federal government

programs and also the American Recovery Act, ed.gov, an

incredible source that people use every day.

Also grants.gov has simplified and aligned a lot of these

things that makes it really quick to match your ideas with

potential funds that may be out there.

There are publications that cover this beat that I

discussed before.

And I forgot to mention Campus Technology as well.

Wonderful.

So in the external or supplementary information link

for this presentation you will find this document with the

hyperlinks built out so you can go investigate some of the

sources yourself.

Hope you find one or two that you didn't know about before

this webcast.

So to the five secrets, if I haven't covered them already.

What this really means to me is, based on our research, the

top five most important things that people say have helped

them win over other people when they're seeking grants to

support lecture capture.

Number one, leverage the success of others.

You don't compete for these grants, generally speaking.

Some people have treated-- and it may be true, please don't

let me mess up your intellectual property at your

university--

there may be different types of research grants that you

apply for where secrecy is incredibly important.

But for the Mediasite applications and proposals for

external funds, collaboration has been more important than

competition.

It's a new, emerging world applying rich media technology

to the academic problems that there are out

there in the universe.

Therefore, the more you can show and create comfort by

using examples of projects that are similar to yours, we

have found, make people more successful.

Again the Sonic Foundry resources are reported to be

the best place to start.

The second point is to quantify your benefits and

test your thesis.

Almost everyone that we surveyed who's a successful

external grant achiever, relative to Mediasite, said

that this was absolutely critical in their endeavor in

comparison to other proposals that they have beat.

But they were able to show specific

numbers, specific goals.

We're going to increase retention by this much, grades

are going to increase by this much, faculty are going to be

able to leverage their time by this much, there's going to be

this much ROI.

These types of quantifiable goals and the surveys,

research or focus group done in the prework, seem to be

critical in illustrating your point about how Mediasite is

going to be beneficial.

A third point that our customers have reported back

to us that's a common mistake that's made is that, generally

speaking, the average grant application for external money

is either driven by a technologist or an academic

program owner and both are often successful.

But the greatest achievements in seeking external funds for

an institution come when the program owner and the

technologist work together from the beginning.

Establishing those partnerships between the dean

of the business school and their vision, and the CIO of

the business school, or the CIO of the institution, to go

out and seek funds, for example,

is absolutely critical.

And it makes your particular application for program

dollars sing compared to others that are either purely

technological in their benefit or purely aspirational and

academic in their benefit and presentation.

Illustrating your vision, which I talked about before,

has been cited by so many people

as incredibly important.

The most important element that was drawn out in the

research for the five key secrets are mock-ups.

That over and over again, if you can illustrate by creating

a simulation of what you intend to propose.

If you're going to do distance education class, build as many

simulations or tests as you can.

And you will find yourself more successful, according to

our customers, than others who simply conjecture or leave it

in writing how this benefit is going to look.

And finally, establish post grant milestones in advance

with all of the parties on board.

This is something that people are reporting more and more

critical in 2010, specifically with the economic stimulus

related dollars, more than ever before.

You want to control the post grant process, is what we

hear, by establishing the milestones in advance of what

is going to connote success for your program.

The more you do this in advance, the more likely you

are to be successful.

But also, the post grant headaches, which so many of my

clients that I researched with told me about, you've got to

manage that grant.

You know, good news, we won it.

Bad news, we won it.

The more you've done in advance to get all the

stakeholders on board about the milestones that we plan to

achieve in the first six months, in the first year, and

so on and so forth, not only help you get it, but they help

you manage it and enjoy it.

So those are the five top secrets of achieving

fundraising for Mediasite that we've found to be the case.

That's the end of my prepared remarks, so maybe

there's some questions.

Fabulous job, Sean, as always.

Congratulations.

So yeah, we have a ton of questions coming in, but as a

reminder, please click on that speech bubble.

And again, please provide your email address.

We'll have about five minutes for questions right now, but

we'll absolutely follow up with you one on one.

And if you're watching this on demand, we'll still follow up

with you then, too.

So the first question is about some of the

examples you provided.

And we understand you've got to skim across the surface in

terms of revealing who some of these are.

But the person asked, several of the examples sum up

precisely what we're trying to do at my college, is it

possible to get more detail about their approaches offline

or talk with some of these individuals?

Absolutely.

People are so forthcoming and I want to

thank all of the people--

I should have done that in the beginning.

I want to thank all of the people who helped us prepare

the best examples that we have. There are people who are

willing to talk and share.

It's one thing to hook people up individually, it's another

thing to broadcast their laundry in a webcast like this

to hundreds of people.

So whoever asked that question, we will follow up

with you, if there's any particular examples you're

interested in, we'll reach out to folks, or folks like the

profile that I gave, and try to hook you up directly if

they are willing to speak.

Great.

And Lynn has a question, very simple.

How much should I ask for?

Ha ha ha, you see, that wasn't in anything.

How much to ask for is the most difficult thing to do.

But basically it comes under the category of

constructing a budget.

And that was kind of one of the first things that we

thought of, but I'll just tell you what most people think.

Basically, constructing a budget that is fair, rational

and is what you need tends to be what we've found our

clients do who are successful.

They don't say well, if you want $1 million, ask for $5

million, or you want $10,000 ask for $50,000.

People aren't playing those games in 2010 as much as maybe

they did in my past. You basically sit down and you

construct a budget that you can defend with the best

research that you have. And that's what you present.

So if you have a vision of x number of classrooms need to

be online, then you price out everything.

You price out the Mediasite piece, you price out the

cameras and the microphones and any facilities renovations

that need to be done.

You build your budget that way, if there's FTEs involved,

you're not shy about it and you put it out there.

In our experience, people who are grant managers appreciate

a realistic budget for success more than something that's

artificially low and certainly not things that are padded or

artificially high.

These days especially.

That's a great question.

And Dale asked about the interactivity aspect.

He says, I have no doubt about the value of lecture capture

for enhancing education, however, is there a loss of

interactivity and how is that affecting potential funding

for interactive distance-based classes?

That's a great question and that gets into the detail of

the benefits, which I won't go on and on about, because

that's what we do every week.

But the reason that's such an excellent question is that a

lot of the early applications for pilots were to prove, is

lecture capture going to be good for students, bad for

students, are their grades going to go up or down?

And it's kind of settled law at this point, I like to say,

in that you can find numerous examples to say that it does

not depress performance.

It at least is parallel with being in class and it can

increase it, especially in a blended learning environment.

However, there's different reports that run counter to

that, occasionally.

But basically, the success of Mediasite is predicated

largely on the fact that that was proven in the early 2000s

that this is an enhancement, generally speaking, to

education and pedagogy no matter how you cut it.

And there's plenty of available research that we can

provide you that will support that, as well as anecdotal and

communal information that you can get from talking to

individuals who have deployed Mediasite in some large way.

And I think the key, too, and you've covered this, but to

say that you don't necessarily just have to Mediasite on

demand, or just Mediasite live.

That many people use it for retention.

But again, that goes into the whole what you're talking

about, creating this vision, this

illustration ahead of time.

How do you want to use it?

Is it going to replicate the in-room experience or

complement the in-room experience?

Definitely.

So it's a lot of wide open area there.

Another question about the funding and then what?

You talked about the benefits, but how do you understand what

the benefits of lecture capture are in order to get

the funding without-- it's sort of a chicken or the egg

kind of question.

No, but it's a good question.

And it is what all of us faced in the very beginning.

And that's why I say, reach out to your

Sonic Foundry personnel.

We're here to help and here to be an ombudsman and Sherpa, as

you would say, to guide you into this.

In the early days it was hard to vision.

It was like you had an instinct that rich media and

real time capture could benefit in some way an

institution, but you couldn't necessarily draw

a map to that place.

Now we can help you draw a map to that place.

If you are a business school, if you are a medical school,

if you are a community organization, if you are a

corporation that wants to increase profits, there is

some lineup of examples that we can show you, the good, the

bad, the ugly, to follow and avoid, to optimize and show

you what the outcome will be.

So really work with those who are more

experienced to lead the way.

And a similar question about that, changing the culture,

that we have vision for lecture capture in IT and

maybe, say, the college of engineering, but how do we

stress the value of lecture capture in other parts of the

school or in the changing higher education environment?

My answer to that is, what do you do if you're ready but the

rest of the campus is not?

Well, I went through the eras-- and I'll keep this

short because we're running low on time-- but in the

beginning, people agreed to disagree.

Those who were ready moved ahead.

There was a Balkanization of the efforts after an initial

attempt to be universal and horizontal.

So the engineering school would go ahead with the

blessing of the others.

Let's see how you do and all that.

The beauty of Mediasite technology is that it's so

customizable that, you know, somebody joins later, and they

can still have their own look and feel and all that.

So that's one answer is, don't cooperate necessarily.

Don't necessarily think universally.

But when you're seeking funds for the whole institution,

everybody does have to agree.

So in that case, that goes back to the envisioning.

That goes back to the public meetings and

everything else like that.

The more you can mock-up, this is what a lecture in

engineering looks like, you're in humanities, which-- that's

my background-- you know, you have no interest,

necessarily, right now.

I'm just making up that as a general tendency, but they may

have no interest. Illustrate for them how it can benefit

and give them room to see their lecture and say, this

doesn't help us or say, this is the coolest thing we've

ever seen and we've never thought about it.

That's the key.

So experiments, mock-ups, evaluations, tests, taping

specific events, but being able to hand somebody an email

with links that shows them what could be is the most

wonderful part about doing this in 2010, versus doing

this in 2002, when we weren't sure about dial-up, and would

it be there.

And if we built it, would they come, and all that.

But we still had an instinct.

2010, no, we can show people what the future looks like

when they're not quite on board.

And definitely keep us in mind for resources in terms of

examples of those types of links, use Google or search as

your friend to search for Mediasite content that's

related to a specific school.

It's very compelling when you see yourself in

the Mediasite player.

Feel like an old man.

We didn't even have Google when--

That's right.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

And a couple, again, closing housekeeping notes.

A couple people have noted that the presentation links,

the PDFs aren't clickable.

And so we will correct that for you and you'll have an

updated PDF attached when you get this in

your archive email.

And again, if you have any other

questions, keep them coming.

Just click on that Ask button and please

include your email address.

Thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks to our presented, Sean Brown, and

have a great afternoon.