iD8-TripleSSS is Off and Running in 2013!

(image courtesy of Times Union, Albany, NY)

Our New Year started with a flurry--both literally and figuratively. iD8-TripleSSS Media Development is located in the beautiful upstate New York area, and  literally, our winters are full of flurries and less than balmy yet we are made of hearty stock. Figuratively, an exciting new client invited us to submit proposals for creating content and developing several substantial online courses that are due to start imminently. One has already been awarded to us.

These opportunities both surprised and thrilled us, as our journey into digital educational content and course development is now well established. This burst of unexpected new business was so encouraging that it raised our confidence about meeting and possibly exceeding our 2013 goals.  We invite you to talk to us about it!

A new business model, however, has emerged for us to add to our company. It is service as a product and with it increased ways for us to expand. Service may mean creating custom products for specific clients or it may mean providing “everything content” while also starting to offer our own courseware—blended class/online learning will be required in all markets within in two years. This is an exciting initiative for us that creates opportunity that does not compete with our current client base.

We invite you to share in our goals, which include:

1.  Continuing to provide development and content to all our clients in the digital space as well as the print/blended spaces.

2.  Breaking into new markets while acknowledging existing business has evolved almost wholly into digital opportunities.

3.  Meeting face to face with and listening to our clients’ needs, present and future.

4.  Talking with educators and administrators in the K-12 market-space as well as our postsecondary spaces, and trying to determine how best to meet those needs.

5. Relying on our staff, the very heart of our business, to grow and learn with us, as we create the content that will always serve as the fabric of educational publishing.

As the business climate of educational publishing has shifted, so have the opportunities for us to grow. Growth is never something we take lightly, especially in this still-struggling economy coupled with the excitement of digital transition in educational publishing. As an organization based on a service model, we pride ourselves on being  flexible, customer focused and devoted to quality. 

Thank you for trusting us on this educational journey. We are there and ready to take those next steps with you. 

Reflections of 2012--and What a Year It Was…

What a difference 10 years makes! iD8-TripleSSS celebrated its 10^th anniversary in October of this year. There are two words that encapsulate the year for us--technology and people.  They may seem like polar opposites, but it is the advances, innovations, and expectations in educational technology and the people with whom we worked on our digital journey that have made 2012 memorable.

Technology changed our processes, and services, and advanced our skills and services in ways that we could not have dreamed of even one year ago. We used to set up FTP sites, and transfer files through yousendit and related sites. Now we set up a Dropbox folder for each project, and we check the files on our phones and tablets. We ask our clients whether we should provide mapping documents or author online. Flash has given way to HTML 5 and social media has become as important as a website.

Print marketing materials? Nonexistent. Tablets? They are crucial to our clients and to us.  For years we’ve written some content for online courses. Now we are often asked to write the entire online course, thanks to the wonderfully qualified professionals we employ.

Rather than developing postsecondary content for only print or online courseware, we began developing content for multiple media and platforms. We recently completed a successful foray into app content development for the K-12 space, and we now create builds for proof of concept work and beyond . We learned about keeping our footprint “light” so we do not take up band-width. The amount of new buzzwords we now employ (not just read about) could easily comprise a short dictionary.

We studied best-practices in K-12 and assessed our  strategy in this entire market-space and made some investment decisions accordingly. We watched and acted as content become personal, and adaptive-learning  became the expectation at all levels. While content became more personal, access to resources continued to open-up, and OER (open educational resources) grew world-wide and became less of a threat (maybe) to the copyright world.

Finally, what made 2012 most memorable for us is the people. The loyalty, skills, and growth of our writers, developers, project managers, and creators inspire us each day. We have learned together and helped each other through challenging projects and times.

We suppose anyone with an organization claims to have the best people, but we will always argue that iD8-TripleSSS truly does have the best.  We do not settle for less than the best and are thankful everyday that each of these excellent professionals chooses to work and grow with us.

A client once said we are “transparent,” complementing us deeply and something we take to heart. “It’s personal” was our original mission when we opened our doors 10 years ago. “It’s still personal.”

Thank you! May your New Year be Healthy, Happy, and Prosperous-- from all of us at iD8-TripleSSS Media Development, LLC.