Dispointed and saddened by the direction ACI is taking ITProtv

---

I love the content, don't take me wrong, but as I saw more and more of the edutainers getting laid off and changes, I got super sad ...

ITProTv was more than just a learning platform for me it was a community I loved, I made so many new friends on the live channel but now gone... and making friends is hard for me.

Getting paid a visit by Don, Wes, and Peter at my work was the happiest day of my life, and they no longer do that to give the rest of the community a chance to experience that.

If i can get at least one thing out of this message before ACI forces it to be taken down please go back to being more transparent with the subscribers. I have to really difg to find any news on what is happening at ITProTV now. I miss a lot of the webinars because without the live channel or postings i never now when they air ... And maybe consider if not a live video channel maybe a live chat even if it is a discord or slack channel ...
Ill hang in there but emotionally i don't know how much more i can take still will be a fan and hoping you'll listen to some of my feedback.

Brian,

Thank you for sharing your candid feedback. I have known you for several years now, and I wanted to take time out to personally reply to your concerns because they are valid and I wouldn't dream of removing your post. I know from the outside it looks like there has been a lot of change at ITProTV since becoming part of ACI Learning. However, there really hasn't been much change at all. I co-founded ITProTV with Tim Broom. In the early days, I was responsible for our content and he was responsible for the business stuff (sales, marketing, etc) and we did that with a team of about 60 people. Fast forward to today, and I am the Chief Product Officer for ACI Learning with a team of over 300 people. While I have a number of other duties, I am still the person responsible for all of the content created under the ITProTV brand. Most of the decisions you referenced were made by me which is also why I wanted to respond to this personally. I am going to do my best to address each one and share what information I can in an effort to be as transparent as possible.

• Edutainers are getting laid off.
  Over the last 10 years, we have filmed content with over 50 subject matter experts (SME). Many of them were contracted for short-term engagements, but around 20 were full-time salaried employees. In all that time, we have only terminated 1 SME. While I cannot go into specifics on this, I can say that most people come and go for their own reasons and most of them would be welcomed back. Anthony Sequeira is a great example of someone who left ITProTV for a great opportunity with another company and then recently rejoined our team. The average tenure of an IT employee is 2 years. We have Edutainers like Ronnie Wong, Wes Bryan, and Daniel Lowrie that have been with us over 8 years. I think that is something we can be proud of. Still, there are times where we may need to change out on-camera talent. I think that is an unavoidable part of any business. I know that ACI Learning is very fortunate compared to companies like Microsoft (LinkedIn Learning), Facebook, PluralSight, Twitter, and Amazon that have collectively laid off tens of thousands of employees.

• The live channel is no longer available.
  This was a hard decision for me to make. For a long time, broadcasting live was a part of the ITProTV culture. You might not know this, but our original company name was "EdutainmentLIVE". We envisioned a product where we would have multiple studios broadcasting live every single day. However, over the years we saw a consistent trend away from live viewership. The bulk of our users were more interested in the recorded content in the library as opposed to the live stream. As a result, each live channel had fewer and fewer viewers in them. A few years back we decided to consolidate down to just one live channel to increase participation. However, even the single live channel reached the point where we would see less than 10 people active at any given time. The cost and effort of maintaining a live streaming channel was detracting from our ability to create more content that people actually wanted so we made the decision to close the live channel. That being said, it may not be gone forever. We are looking into alternatives like YouTube Live that would require much less effort for us to maintain. I can't promise anything, but we will see where that goes.
  In a way, a lot of this applies to our Q&A forum as well. We know our viewers have questions, but there just isn't a lot of activity in the forums. That would indicate that we haven't done a great job of allowing people to interact with us the way they want to. You mentioned Discord and Slack. Internally, we have looked into using them as a replacement for our Q&A forums, but have not made any decisions as of yet. I use Discord personally for a number of projects that I participate in and I think it could be a great community solution for all of ACI Learning. We just have to make sure we pick something that people actually want to use to ensure that we get participation. Maybe that is Discord, a subreddit, Twitter, or something all new. We are open to suggestions on this one and would love to hear what you think... as long as it isn't TikTok. I can't swallow any more Tide pods.

• We no longer do in-person visits.
  Finally, we hit one that isn't my fault. We canceled all live events at the start of the pandemic in March of 2020. Ever since then, we have been in a holding pattern while we wait on large public venues (like conferences) to get back up to full attendance. It has been a long process, but it is almost over. We have a full trade show schedule for this year and you will see Edutainers making appearances at conferences again. I am planning on attending Black Hat / DEF CON this year and we will have people at RSA, Wild West Hackin' Fest, and others. Once we get back in the groove with conferences we will turn our attention back to member events like the one where we visited you in Wisconsin. We still have the cheese hat on display in our office and I really enjoyed putting in some volunteer hours at your company. I look forward to doing more events like those in the future. We have recently added some phenomenally talented people in our Marketing department that are excited to make that happen.

• When are live events scheduled?
  This is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed. In addition to our course content, we have podcasts, webinars, and other specials that follow an on-air schedule. These used to be communicated pretty clearly through our on-air page and in our apps. This lost visibility when we sunset the live channel and we have not done a good job replacing it. I can assure you that our team is aware, we are just trying to find out the best solution. We have looked into email alerts in addition to our newsletters, SMS messages, and popup bubbles on the website. However, I don't think we have found the right solution yet. I would love to hear any thoughts you have on this one.

So this message turned out a lot longer than I intended, but hopefully I was able to address your concerns. As always, I value your feedback and welcome any suggestions you have on how we can better serve our learners. I'm sorry I let you down, but please know that I am still trying to make the product I wish I had when I got started in IT.

Thanks for your reply Don, still love you. I just want to make this the best community out there for IT Pros. I get worried when I see the ITPro.tv name slips away further and turns more into ACI I do have to admit I have trouble with change (guess that is not great since IT is ALWAYS changing)

I do like the Dashboard for upcoming events just needs to be updated more frequently think i missed the last few live webinars now because I am never sure when they are on. It was nice when they were on a regular schedule , and the monthly emails were great ... also i do miss the quarterly Q and A with the founders... course looks like Tim is retired but maybe one of the webinars can be a Qand A with you and and ACI bigwig add some transparency on what their vision is for this community

But i want to end on a good note the changes i am seeing in the practicelabs AMAZING... (maybe a server2022 sandbox but 2019 is still what i use most so no rush) and the video production value has been improved so much since the first ones ...

just promise me youll never leave me Don if you go i go to haha ...oh and whens the next gameshow

Oh another idea i had to make comments and interaction better ...

Done on a lot of other learning hubs have a comment section on the video page so learners can post while they are watching and the ideas are fresh instead of clicking to another page

Thank you for the compliments and don't worry about me. I'm not going anywhere any time soon

I love the idea of a chat area for each individual episode. I proposed that option two years ago, but we couldn't do it with our current forum platform. Right now, the forums are hosted by a 3rd party provider (NodeBB) so we are somewhat limited as to how much we can integrate the forums into our platform. We would likely have to develop our own which, in all honesty, has not been a priority for us.

You're right about the founders Q&A. Tim was definitely the driving force behind us doing those. I will have to chat with Brett, our CEO, and see if he is interested in doing something like that. If nothing else, I could easily jump on air with my leaders and present something. I'll see what I can get done.

I'd love an IRC channel, honestly; I'm not an expert on internet chat options, but is there a way to do everything in one? An IRC channel that marries to a web forum that is also discord/slack chat? I'm just guessing that with the very diverse communities you're training, each will have it's preference for interacting. Random thought.

Anyone going to Red Hat Summit this year?