I’m reading The World Is Flat right now and had a flattening experience yesterday and thought I’d share it.
In the book he lists 10 “flatteners” that have caused globalization over the past 10-15 years. They include web browsers (anyone can view content), work flow software (managing processes), uploading (people sharing info online), oursourcing, offshoring (moving your plant overseas), informing (search engines), and other things.
One of the things that wasn’t listed (because it wasn’t nearly as big in 2005 as it is now) is the ease of putting video online.
I’m not talking about youtube or google video (which are obviously huge marketplaces). I’m talking about the ability to communicate via video and how easy it is getting and how it’s making globalization easier.
For example, as many of my readers know I have quite a few people who work for me full time in the Philippines. One of the big reasons I have been so successful with it is because of the ability to record a video of a process I do online using screen capture software like Camtasia Studio. I’m busy. If I had to type out processes I use to give instructions to people overseas, I simply wouldn’t do it and employees wouldn’t have my processes. Work wouldn’t get done.
Because of video, I can easily record my process and upload it and they have immediate instructions, in my voice, personalized to them and their situation.
For the past year or so I’ve been using Jing to create videos. The reason I use it instead of camtasia is because it makes it even easier to create and upload a video, reducing the overhead time of creating a video to virtually zero.
The ability to give instructions so quickly and easily makes it that much easier to move anything and everything overseas.
The flattening experience I had yesterday was when I got a Jing video from a customer of mine where she detailed feedback about using our website (how we could make it better, problems she’s having). She took a jing video of her using our site and detailed the problems she sees and why they’re problems. Feedback doesn’t get any more clear than that.
The flattening happens because now it’s super easy for me to forward that feedback onto my developers and have them make the changes, and nothing gets lost in the translation.
Feedback directly from the mouth and screen of a user going straight onto the screen of a developer overseas.
As more and more people realize the power and ease of creating videos and putting them online, the knowledge worker here in the U.S. had better become more knowledgeable or they’ll be replaced by people overseas (which obviously is already happening).
For those of you with jobs working for a company, if you’ve read the 4-hour work week, my guess is you can see how to use this to help outsource yourself!
When you and a few co-workers pitch in together to hire someone overseas, and you create videos to have them do your work for you, so you can go play golf, and you do it without your boss knowing, let me know. I love this stuff.