The Fabulous Learning Nerds

Scott (0:3.319)
Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode of Your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm your host, Scott Schuette, and with me, as always, you love him, Dan Coonrod's in the house.

Scott (0:16.013)
Mr. Coonrad.

Daniel (0:17.415)
What's up, Scott? How you doing?

Scott (0:19.435)
I'm doing okay, how are you my friend?

Daniel (0:22.259)
I think you know, I think we all know, really. Yeah, yeah.

Scott (0:24.728)
Really?

Scott (0:30.883)
All right, so should we let everybody in on what's going on at your house?

Daniel (0:36.783)
Oh, I mean, I don't want to gross anybody out. Zayda and I have two good doggos and they're both under the weather. it's right before she is right before right before the we hopped on the podcast. They both got sick one right after the other. And so she is valiantly tackling that situation. God bless her.

Scott (0:47.725)
taking care of the pups.

Scott (1:2.325)
Yeah, God bless her for taking care of the poops. That's great. Oh, they are.

Daniel (1:7.266)
Hahahaha!

Scott (1:14.189)
Shut up! Now, you all know that I've got nine of them, right? So, nine little Shih Tzus. Mama groomed the Shih Tzus today and thought it was great. Spent ridiculous amounts of money to buy little bows to stick in their hair. they've got the little, the females got the bows. The men are like, what the hell is this? Can I eat it? Right? And so, yeah, that's not great. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Hey folks, I...

Daniel (1:16.356)
Yes!

Daniel (1:39.677)
Nine. Nine. Two is too much.

Scott (1:44.983)
Two is enough because you get one to play with the other one. Nine is just an indication of how weak a man I am. Honest to God. It's just really an indication that I'm a weak, weak man. And that's totally okay. They're cute.

Daniel (1:52.664)
Oh no, no!

Daniel (1:59.293)
No, no, your heart has enough room for nine doggos.

Scott (2:3.957)
Yeah. I will tell you, there is no difference between owning six dogs and owning nine, really. There really isn't any difference at all. Nothing happens. Anyway, folks, we hope that Zeta comes back. If she joins us later to this episode, that'd be great. We'll give her her due and her love. But I'm super excited because we have one of our favorite people with us back again from Down Under.

Daniel (2:13.533)
Ha

Scott (2:31.105)
We're going into the future, man. We're going into the future. Steve Korty's in the house, everybody.

Scott (2:45.239)
Steve, my friend!

Steve (2:45.444)
Oh my gosh. Hey, it's the Fabulous Learning Nerds! Oh my gosh, I'm so pumped.

Scott (2:51.285)
Yeah, I made that drop just for you. That is your drop. No one's going to get that drop at all. But I guess I have to ask, you got a Batman on your LinkedIn profile. Are you old school? Are you animated? you, are you, what are you?

Daniel (2:52.456)
Yes!

Daniel (3:0.222)
Hahaha!

Steve (3:0.377)
is the Batman drop.

Steve (3:9.070)
Yeah, that's a great question. Hey, hey, hey, it's so it's so nice. Zeta, thank you for your service. You know, not all heroes wear capes, you know, that's the true superhero. And I think, I think that's what it ties in. It ties in really well, because that's why I love Batman, Batman out of all out of all the superheroes. And if you are a comic book guy, to start, and then I really like I really like the the old school. I like the animated and then I like Christian Bale's Batman was was pretty decent. But Michael Keaton, he was he was my first Batman on the movies when I was a kid. But

Scott (3:11.053)
Yeah, yeah.

Daniel (3:16.671)
It's true, it's true.

Scott (3:17.603)
100%.

Steve (3:38.414)
I love Batman because he doesn't have superpowers. Yet if you're a comic book aficionado, the reason he's the leader of the Justice League is because he can beat all of the meta-human people that are in there. He knows how he's got Superman's number. He's got Wonder Woman covered. He's got it all figured out. And I love that about him because anyone, that then means anyone, as long as you've got a trust fund, could be Batman. And so right now,
Zeta is the equivalent of the fabulous learning nerds Batman right now because she's fighting for justice. She's fighting for the good of the pups. Long live the pups.

Daniel (4:7.231)
True. It's true. Yes. Yes.

Scott (4:10.499)
That's right. So if you have a trust fund, you can be a superhero. That's what you're saying. That's... I do.

Steve (4:15.772)
Yes.

Daniel (4:16.636)
I think that's an important lesson. think just anybody with a trust fund who's listening, you could choose to be a superhero.

Steve (4:20.550)
When in doubt. Yeah, that's it.

Scott (4:22.593)
Yeah. So, all right, we're going to nerd out for one more minute and then we're going to get into learning stuff. So my question is, are you a fan of the new James Gunn Superman trailer and the shenanigans with the trailer?

Steve (4:36.376)
Look, you know, what do you do if you're if you're anyone if you're anyone in 2025 and you put something on the internet, you're just strapped yourself in put you put your harness on and get ready to be lit on fire for anything is for breathing, right? I think what James Gunn has tried to do and for the first time in a long time. I mean, I've just seen some real nods to the comic. And it's it's beautiful. However, the people who are usually the ones that are most vocal on the internet probably don't know that Superman was in a comic before it was in a
you know, cartoon or a movie. you you gotta just, you gotta just help. And in the spirit of learning, maybe it's our job as the fabulous learning nerds to teach these people, these poor, innocent, know, defenseless, ignorant humans that there's these things called comic books and they are the original source of truth, not your interpretation of Henry Cavill's, know, chiseled, hairy chest in Man of Steel.

Scott (5:32.621)
Well, I gotta say the one thing that did give me a little bit of the uncanny valley, so to speak, was the shot of him going through the iceberg thing. And he comes out and you get a full headshot of him flying, which is fine. But it looks like first gen AI eye tracer. You know how you can have your eyes look at the screen?

Steve (5:40.176)
Oh.

Steve (5:53.296)
Yeah.

Scott (5:58.901)
I've used that and my eyes look that way. It looks that weird look right into the screen thing. So it almost makes me think that they filmed it and went, yeah, eyes aren't looking into the camera. So we're going to go ahead and use AI to fix it. And it just looks goofy. That's my thing, goofy. And I'm like, please fix this. They could fix it. I know. Well, they can't fix a mustache apparently. But maybe they can fix the eyes on Superman.

Steve (6:15.384)
It's rough.

Steve (6:22.960)
Yeah.

Scott (6:27.819)
I don't know. I thought it was great. I do also think that the trolling of the Super Bowl with, oh my gosh, Guy Gardner, is, for those that don't know who Guy Gardner is, he's a Green Lantern with a bowl haircut, and they had an ad that said that this is the only bowl that I need. I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was great. All right.

Steve (6:29.104)
bless.

Steve (6:35.726)
Yes.

Steve (6:46.104)
You

Daniel (6:51.519)
You

Steve (6:53.168)
That is

Scott (6:55.959)
Well, listen, we're not going to nerd out on Superman anymore or Batman. We could, but I hear people clicking off right now. So let's go ahead. We're going to dive into our topic of the week, everybody.

Steve (6:59.088)
Man, what a tragedy.

Daniel (7:0.531)
Be good. Be good.

Scott (7:13.685)
Alright, we're back for another round of new tech with Steve. Steve, talk to us about some new and groovy tech in learning, sir.

Steve (7:23.150)
Well, you know, if you've been, if you've been living under a rock for the last five minutes, every man and their dog are pumping storyline files full of JavaScript.

Daniel (7:28.700)
You

Steve (7:40.059)
And based on the absolute crickets that were just delivered to me by my fabulous learning nerds, no one cares. And that's the point. Like, oh dear.

Scott (7:51.523)
Okay, I have not done that in Storyline. Is that what they're doing? So adding Java to Storyline? Or help me understand what you mean by that. I'm lost.

Steve (8:0.366)
Yeah, that's a that's what's happening. No, so so so articulate in all their glory, they could be they could be making rise just a little, little bit better. But instead, they're charging, they're charging, they're charging for for AI, which is okay. But some they've added more like robustness to their to their ability to put code into the into the system. And the the interesting thing that I'm seeing at the moment is there's a whole subset of the community that have gone all in on how
how far can we push storyline with JavaScript and other code languages? And I see it being super great, but I also see it being super treacherous because what it's gonna do is it's going to make people super indispensable for a period of time. But for the client and as a contractor, as a freelancer, as an agency owner, if I'm giving a storyline file to a client to look after once we're finished a project,
it's already difficult to edit and maintain in storyline pure, you start dropping, you know, codes in there that are going to conflict and have to get updated. And yeah, it's a lifetime of servitude. So you may as well just, you know, chain the client up and drag them along to be, you know, in your debt for the rest of time, you know,

Daniel (9:11.977)
Dude.
Dude, a hundred percent. Like, I mean, there's a point where we stopped building courses in coursework and we're building apps. Like we're just diving so much in. know, I think this was maybe like two weeks ago, I was talking to somebody who was, here's the tech sentence for 2025, who was basically opening up the code of their storyline file because a client had asked for like, hey, can you do this? And they had said, yes.

Steve (9:24.014)
Yeah.

Daniel (9:43.795)
before checking and then when they found out he couldn't do it in Storyline, they were using AI to rewrite the script, to put it in so they could repackage it and set it up. And then of course running into all the errors that were going to happen from that. like, yeah, like you're right, like a hundred percent. Someone's going to come after this, whoever dev this and be like, okay, yeah, sure. Let me just open it. Well, I can't open this in Storyline.

Steve (10:10.074)
Yeah.

Daniel (10:10.173)
Uh, why, why not? What's wrong? Oh wow. There's so much, there's so much extra code here. Oh no.

Scott (10:15.223)
Well, I it's already... Listen, I think it's a great tool. I use it a lot, but then in the same boat where all of it's like, here's a file that I got from somebody. Can you fix it? And what should be super easy to fix becomes not so easy to fix. If you gave me a PowerPoint, right? If you gave me a PowerPoint, Steve, and you said, fix this, nine times out of 10, I'm going to be able to fix it unless I've done...
something funky like take an entire picture and then format the background with the picture and it looks like it's a PowerPoint thing, but it's not really a picture. I get that, but even that I can fix. I can totally just do my own thing and fix it. It's where we don't have things we can fix is an opportunity. So I love that. Here's the moral of the story today. Make sure that you hand over projects and files that...
people can use and change if they need to. think that's a good thing. Unless there's debate on that. I don't think there's much debate on that.

Steve (11:15.268)
I don't think so. No, I think, I think people are inherently good, right? And that's, that's, that's, that's the beauty of our industry is that we're all here trying to do the right thing. It's just a challenge. And Dan, you said it right. Is it we're, we're blurring into the world of apps, but we're not building learning on, you know, pure app based tools and solutions we're using, we're using a square peg, and we're trying to jam it into a round hole. And as a result, we're just creating these super bloated
not fit for purpose solutions, but they look great. it's love my LinkedIn feed. There's a few, there's probably half a dozen who are absolutely killing it. And they're pushing our industry further forward. But yeah, at the risk, I always just go like, what's in the interest of the client and the learner. And it's making sure that they're gonna be okay when this person retires or gets picked up by Google or another cool tech company and starts coding for them in real software.

Daniel (12:6.559)
You know, it's one of those things where, and I know this is going to be controversial, so I'm going to put on my hot take pants. Like, I know, right? You know, I can only imagine. But I think too often, especially in our industry, I love how future forward learning and development wants to be.

Scott (12:13.184)
Ah!

Steve (12:14.941)
Give me it. Where's the sound effect? There's got to be a sound effect.

Scott (12:20.931)
Okay, go ahead.

Daniel (12:35.719)
in my experience, my time here, we tend to like get like pie in the sky, big dreams, and then like, then not quite make it. And because I think we end up with like a lot of, a lot of fads. Um, we're talking about like app development, like learning course development, turning into app development because people want to see like, Oh, Hey, can you do this? Hey, can you, Hey, can you connect it to this database? So it pulls.
you know, updated stuff and like that's all cool stuff. And as a developer who, who I can, I can tinker with like some, you know, after works bill, but I'm not going to like say it by any means, my programmer, like it's cool and it's fun and you can, you can show it off and be like, check out this, but like, is it really impactful? go to like, here, here it comes. Here comes my hot pants take VR learning.
I love VR. I'm a giant VR nerd. I have loved VR since I was a little kid and the helmet was the size of my torso and it needed wires and cables to support the weight of it or else it'd knock you over. You know, I love VR now. I've got like a great like first gen Oculus test dev kit. I've got like, you know, the new MetaQuest 3. It's super, super cool. But every time somebody's like, hey, do you think you could build some learning in this?

Scott (13:32.493)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (14:1.479)
I go like, why, are we trying to do? What are we trying to do? know, inevitably I'd say 99 times out of a hundred, it's, they just want to say, I built something in VR. And I've seen some stuff that like, does work and it's cool and it's awesome. I saw one example by a company, I think that built something for a client where they, they were doing coaching practice and you have to coach this person.

Steve (14:3.278)
That's it.

Daniel (14:29.435)
and you coach it to them and then the scenario switches and now you're sitting in the chair and you're having to listen to yourself give the coaching because it's recorded the coaching. And I was like, that's super cool. And that is like, there is the one, there is the one time out of a hundred where I'm like, that's impactful. That's awesome. But as soon as I got.

Scott (14:45.815)
Well, I mean...
Finish your thought.

Daniel (14:49.843)
I gonna say, but as soon as I tell a group of people, hey, I want you guys to put on these really nerdy looking helmets and we're gonna take a course together. Like, no, like they're already, already I'm getting, losing points. I'm losing attention.

Scott (15:4.525)
Well, it's really great for learning in an environment where it would be unsafe to have them learn. Because the thing that I love about VR, and yes, I have created something in VR. did it for our former, yes, yeah, for sure, right? And it was cool. It was like, hey, look what I did. It was cool. And the learning that went into that was great. But it never, ever, ever got used because it wasn't necessarily practical.

Daniel (15:17.737)
Ditto, ditto.

Scott (15:29.047)
But I think about Delta Airlines, where they've got their virtual training for the people that bring the jets in. I think everybody's using this program now, which is basically a simulation. So instead of going out on the tarmac with a live jet with an engine on, I can go ahead and do my safety check around the plane in a VR space. And that makes sense. And for an organization like Delta or any of the other major airlines, that makes sense. the cost of, you know, we've got a limited
audience and the cost for entry isn't going to be that huge. And it will deliver the results we want in a safe environment. But there's so many other ways that we can go ahead and train customer service and coaching and overcoming objections now in a way that doesn't require me to go ahead and drop tens of thousands of dollars on VR headsets that why would I do that?

Steve (16:7.866)
That's it.

Steve (16:19.823)
You know that man. that's that beautiful, you said the word that summarizes what learning development and learning design is, which is we are masters of the way. What's the most optimal way to solve a problem or realize a goal, right? And so what you said there, Scotty, so good. Down in Australia, VR for firefighters is huge because the cost to burn a building down is stupid. you can burn.

Daniel (16:42.325)
Hahaha!

Steve (16:43.076)
You can burn 100 you could burn 100 virtual buildings down with your headset on and then you do one as a team and you solidify your learning. But as you said, is there another way that can get you 80 % of the way there, but for four fifths of the cost. And that's another part of our job is to go what does the client actually need? Do they need a shiny object like you were saying Dan, which is know, VR is cute and it's cool, but it's expensive. Or could we get away with a
you know, a more static or a video based scenario, choose your own adventure branching scenario in rise or in chameleon, and then get 80 % of the way there. Like really, that's seriously great insight from both of both of the learning nerd cats, legends. So good.

Scott (17:25.987)
hats. Love it. So if I'm listening to us nerd out about this, what are some cool new apps or software or things that have caught your attention that are really helping you solve your client's needs that we might want to chat and or nerd out

Steve (17:47.374)
Yeah, that's um, I mean, when you you reached out, when you reached out, Scotty, it's always it's always so great to get, you know, just our general chit chat on LinkedIn. And then you're like, Oh, hey, what are you doing? It's like, I'm not doing anything, of course. But then you said, Oh, think about some tech. And so I spent I spent the entire I spent the entire couple of days just in the back of my brain thinking, what, what new and keyword is new, right? What new tech have I used since we last spoke? And
It's not with regret that I say this, it's with absolute excitement that I say that there is not a lot of really brand new squeaky stuff that has appeared onto our shores over the last probably six months that has really moved the needle enough for us to go. What I've loved though, is I've loved the updates that some of these, you know, our poster child tech have made in the direction of making it easier to do stuff. I'll give you an example.
because I know you want one. So last time I was here, we spoke about 11 Labs, right? And this is the concept of the concept of using AI, using a voice model to replicate and create voiceover. Brilliant. 11 Labs have updated to the point where I was able to upload, so I do some static interviews or videos for myself. I was able to upload like 90 minutes of just me talking to camera on training videos and stuff that I'd done previously. I now have a Steve Pro.

Scott (18:48.781)
Mm-hmm.

Steve (19:12.944)
11 labs voice, which I have like punked all of my mates with. And it's it's literally unless unless you know me intimately. It's indistinguishable between between my voice and, and the AI so so that development alone is is super unbelievable. And then we'll stop and nerd out about that for a sec. But what I want to talk about is I want to talk about how now the it's not so much about individual tech.
what I'm finding is the ability to stitch pieces of tech together seamlessly are starting to hit really hard. And so I'm happy to go into that. yeah, first of all, maybe this is actually my pro voice. It's not my, no, this is real. This is real, look, look.

Daniel (19:54.455)
Steve was never here. I love that 11 and a lot of people and I love what you bring up. The new and exciting stuff maybe isn't popping off again. Sometimes it takes a minute for cool stuff to get down to learning and development. I will say that there's been like, I think there's just in...

Scott (19:56.789)
It was his AI avatar.

Steve (20:11.072)
And to Australia,

Daniel (20:20.071)
I think I'll use last six months. Last six months, I think there's been a real change in like, think how leaders are thinking about like tech in learning and development and just like what's possible. just, you brought up 11 labs just, just two weeks, three weeks ago, I had a client look at me and be like, Hey, I know we have a lot of voiceover work. And I'm like, yeah, it's okay. It's fine. We've got so-and-so and they're going to do it. And they're like, well, just so you know, we talked internally and it's fine if you guys want to use like 11 labs. And I'm like,

Steve (20:48.931)
Awesome.

Daniel (20:50.655)
Oh, okay. Are you certain? is there a voice in 11Labs you want us to use? Like, no, that's fine. But just, we think the technology is there and it's good for our needs and we're fine if you want to use that. And I was like, oh, oh, super cool. So I got to tell this developer, hey, instead of like sitting down and like spending, you know, dozens of hours recording, you can, you can go back to building. You can go back to doing these other things, you know, and I'm sure they were happy, but it's, it's, I think.

Steve (20:53.121)
Sure.

Daniel (21:19.623)
A lot of these perceptions over like what's, over what we can do and the tools that we have access to are changing. Yeah.

Scott (21:28.501)
And it's interesting too, like, so I have a colleague of mine and we're working on some video stuff and the, almost every one of the video solutions that are out there has, um, you know, text to speech capabilities, right? So they're all going to have AI capabilities. Some are pretty good. Some are not ready for prime time. Right. Uh, and then, and then you have 11 labs in my humble opinion, which I think is like the gold standard, unless there's something better. And I would love to use that. Right. I'm sitting here watching.

Steve (21:28.697)
Yeah.

Steve (21:41.860)
Yep, yep.

Steve (21:48.388)
That's right. That's okay.

Scott (21:57.963)
one of her videos and you know, it was talking about, you know, heating ventilation, air conditioning, right? And what came out was so like 2006, it was just really bad, like HVAC, you know, I'm like, oh my goodness. And so I had to like, hey, we're gonna figure this out, we're gonna figure this out. Okay, that's really great. If you want, you could borrow my 11 labs.

Steve (22:5.944)
Yeah, plus.

Scott (22:27.307)
account, I guarantee you it's going to sound normal. Right. And so you're right. Like, go ahead and build your video in the solution that you want. If there if there's text to speech isn't up to par, go use something else. Right. And there's so many different ways to I'm finding there's so many different ways to go ahead and skin the cat now that it's super exciting. And I'm going to default to what I like until I find something that I like better.

Steve (22:41.829)
Definitely.

Steve (22:53.840)
Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's awesome. And I think, I think for us as for us as L &D, it's always, it's always tricky, because we have to be jacks of all the trades, right? And I saw, I had a chat with someone who's going for a job, and the the level of key selection criteria and the skills that they're asking, it's like you're asking for four people to do one person's job, it's super difficult for us. But as you were saying, Dan, like the leadership leadership is starting to get a little bit more of a grip on
learning tech, they're starting to understand what's possible. And so as a result, what a great opportunity for people who are either working in the function of L &D in companies or for freelancers or contractors to come in and go, look, I know that you know about this learning tech, let me help steer the ship so that you're going to have a really good video solution, you're to have a really good voiceover and narration solution so that I can set you up for success.
and allow you to self serve when you're ready, as opposed to, know, Mavis from accounts and Jimmy from procurement and HR goes and gets five different licenses. And you've got 16 different levels of voice AI that are being used all at different qualities. L &D is sort of like the stabilizer now, which is allowing us to come and sit at the table, be heard, because we know all of the different aspects, because we have to know video, we have to know audio, we have to know a bit of code, we have to know a bit of AI. So it's a really cool place for us now.
to start being heard at the table. And I'm excited for it because that just means that we're gonna be around. Like we're gonna be sort of AI proof in this next few years.

Scott (24:29.507)
I might challenge you on AI proof because I feel like, hold on, I feel like all of us need to understand the basics of how do we utilize AI to create more, better, faster. We have to, we have to double down on our ability to be knowledgeable in prompt engineering, to be knowledgeable in what the solutions are. Because if we aren't, then I think we become very dispensable to those people who are.

Steve (24:32.481)
Go on.

Steve (24:58.896)
If we're not, yeah, no, I agree with you. I agree with you, Scotty. If we're not at the forefront, or at least like you don't have to be creating software, but if you need to be an early adopter to be able to be far enough ahead of the curve that Mavis in accounts who still doesn't know what chat GPT is, she's going to go first. She'll be the one that gets to tap on the shoulder and say, hey, robots taking your life Mavis, all the best. Here's your gold watch. But yeah, definitely you can't have your head in the sand now. Otherwise, yeah, you wake up two months later and it's like, whoa, okay.

Daniel (25:25.692)
No.

Daniel (25:29.651)
You know, I think we've talked about this before, but like, think the folks who are embracing AI and, and I think we've talked about like AI, if you have a skill and you're using AI, it's like superpowers. It's like, you know, we talked about being Batman. We joked about it at beginning of the show, but like, yeah, it is like, and if you, and the thing I think that makes so many people afraid is if you don't have the skill.

Steve (25:51.504)
That's your trust fund,

Daniel (25:59.793)
it gives you a place to jump into to like still contribute, still do things. And I think there are so many people who are afraid that because somebody who doesn't have the skill can like now enter into the fray and contribute that it means that like businesses are going to like cut them out of the process entirely. and listen, yeah, like I was going to say, actually, I'm sure that early on, like, I don't want to fear market, but I'm sure there will be off businesses who see the opportunity to

Steve (26:17.552)
Mm-hmm, it's the opposite.

Daniel (26:29.199)
to make those cuts. But I think that's short-sighted thinking. Instead of increasing productivity to the moon, you're going to just kind of keep the status quo. And just like people who embrace the power of AI to grow and develop, businesses who embrace the power of AI to increase their productivity are going to see the same returns.

Steve (26:30.564)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Steve (26:52.036)
Yeah, nice. So, so, so valid. I had a chat like just before I had a chat with, um, with a, with a colleague who's in, uh, she's in, she's in Long Island. She was as cool. It was another, it was another, she was in the past. I was in the future. We're talking exactly that right. Is my, my fundamental belief is that learning design is not difficult. Anyone can Google it and anyone can do it. And now with chat GPT, anyone can create training. Now, when I go and see a client who's had a crap,

Daniel (27:5.545)
Heh.

Steve (27:18.596)
And that's what we you know, that's a that's an Australian isn't they've had a go they've had it they've had a try at creating training. My first reaction, which is different to a lot of the industry is great effort. Well done. Like how's it how's it performing? Whereas a lot of a lot of these people who are coming from a scarcity mindset, they're going to go, Oh, you imbecile. You haven't used Bloom's taxonomy and this is not weak. Like how dare you? How dare you, sir.

Daniel (27:31.284)
Yeah.

Daniel (27:42.355)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Steve (27:46.448)
you know, even try to be an elite, you know, apex predator like me. And that's wrong because what's gonna happen is they're gonna go, but dude, I can just go chat GPT, I can go to 11 labs, I can make a voiceover, I just did training like it's done. And so for me, it's like, here's the opportunity, the learning opportunity to have a seat at the table and bulletproof my position is, hey, how's that performing? What are the metrics? Is it engaged? Like are you getting engagement? Are you getting drop off? Oh yeah, no one's reading past the first module, huh?
Interesting. Do you want to explore that? Like, do want to explore why all the texts that you've put in there, that's all AI generated, maybe we could look at revamping that. Like, what are the learning objectives? What are they? Oh, let's teach you again. So we become the teachers of the people because the more people that believe that we've got something to offer, the longer that we're going to be around and be valuable to these projects. And tech, tech in the spirit of this conversation, tech is the thing that's going to allow us to do that en masse, on scale, and quite quickly.

Daniel (28:34.047)
100%.

Steve (28:43.631)
You

Scott (28:46.093)
So I want to pick your brain, I want to get your thoughts, because there are so many different ways of skinning this cat too. AI avatar. So first of all, is there an AI Steve? Did you create an AI Steve? And if you did, what did you use to create AI Steve?

Steve (28:50.884)
Let's go.

Steve (29:1.624)
Yeah, I to, I looked for the I look for the best at the best in class, right. And so, Synthesia, Synthesia was like a meme coin. It was like, the L &D industry did not give two shits about Synthesia when it was just us. But then all of a sudden, the B2C coaching and I've just created a course in Thinkific or Kajabi, they found out about it. And then all of a sudden, it went to the moon. However, between Synthesia and Heygen,
they're the two leaders in this avatar space that I've found. I've been really underwhelmed as to the output. Like if I compare it to how much fun, and it's more just like my reaction, my visceral reaction that I have when 11 Labs plays my voice and it sounds like me. I haven't had that reaction with the AI avatar yet. I just don't think that they're there. And I'm super happy to hear your guys' perspective, but those are the two, Synthesia and Hey Jen are my go-tos.
I mean, there's a couple of apps like there's a captions app, which is similar to like a CapCut on the phones that has a crack. But you know, like you look at it and you go, this is, I just, I'll just rather shoot a loom video myself. Cause at least then I know that it's real.

Scott (30:14.413)
Oh, I love Loom. When you introduced me to Loom, I'm like, this is the best. Oh, weaponize that. So I guess I'll push back. you use the, I believe that if you use the paid version of Hey Gen, you can get a better result. Did you?

Steve (30:17.328)
That looms with weapons.

Steve (30:30.492)
I've paid I even paid in your dollars and so for those of you that are listening in the u.s. As I come to Australia, it's 40 % off here all the time, right? Our dollar is so weak. It's so weak and just feeble It needs a it needs some love. Please come to Australia, you know with the animals. I'll protect you. It's okay. No, I paid I think I paid like 1500 US dollars for a yearly hagen yearly hagen account and

Daniel (30:35.465)
Hahaha

Daniel (30:42.459)
Oh, haha!

Daniel (30:50.228)
Ha ha ha!

Scott (30:54.047)
No way!

Steve (30:59.056)
Cause I just go all in, right? That's the privilege of being an agency owner is we need to be across the tech. So it's an investment, it's an expense. Yeah. I mean, I haven't really probably given it the love because the first crack that I did wasn't really even close to something that I was happy with. But what do you guys found? Have you created a digital Scotty or Dave or a new guest to bring on your podcast?

Daniel (31:21.151)
So I had the opportunity to use HeyGen some. so like, I feel like that kind of like that tech, like HeyGen is good. think I like HeyGen more than like Synthesia, but to your point, I don't think they're quite there. It still feels weird. Even when it's good, I go, yeah! Ah!

Steve (31:44.728)
Yeah, it's that it's that it's that little dirty taste that little metallic taste back of your throat where it's like, this is this is this

Daniel (31:48.062)
Yeah.
Yeah, like this is cool and I'm enjoying seeing it, but I don't think I would share this with a client and I don't think I would share this with my friends other than to have a laugh. To be like, look at this, this is freaking weird. And I want the tech to get better. I think some of the video gen stuff is getting really good. I've been using Kling AI.

Steve (32:6.545)
Yes.

Steve (32:17.168)
Oh yeah, nice.

Scott (32:17.347)
Mmm.

Daniel (32:18.827)
And like the stuff it gends is like, is again, it's still on the wrong side of the line, but man, like there's some times where it is right there, where it's just like, it's like, could clip that, that, that three second part out. And I would be, I would be happy and proud to share that with a client. I'd be like, yep. Does that, does that, you know, does that, does that fit you? Does that look good? Um, man.

Steve (32:37.434)
Yeah, Niko.

Steve (32:43.496)
And just hope they don't ask you to make the rest of it.

Scott (32:45.965)
So...

Daniel (32:46.269)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

Steve (32:51.774)
Scotty.

Scott (32:51.789)
Dan, I shared this with you. I had the opportunity to go ahead and produce a tech demo, so was part of a, look what Scott can do thing, right? And so I haven't played with, Jen, I have looked at Synthesia. My early, so Synthesia a few years ago, whoo, like a lot of people tried to solve problems with Synthesia and created more, right? That's just my humble opinion. Now they're a lot better. That's the cool thing about tech, and probably the emphasis of this discussion is it's getting better, right? And so if,
If what you knew two years ago, if that's what you think it is today, you're wrong. It's way better. Right. So I will say this. So I use, I use Veed. I like Veed, I offer. I like it. Yeah. It allows me to create one minute videos without a lot of work. And I help a lot of people with it they have an AI generator. I'm like, I'm to go ahead and create a video. And I don't have a lot of time to do it. So I use their AI generator. It wasn't an AI Scott. It was just an AI generated thing. I shared it with Dan and Dan was like,

Steve (33:31.120)
Oh yeah, nice. Yeah, yeah, it's cool.

Scott (33:51.587)
Yeah, and so his suggestion to me, which was great, it actually worked to my advantage, was, well, make sure you tell everybody that you just did this in tech to prove a point, right? So I'm doing this presentation for a potential client and we have this video, role play video, because role plays are hard, and it was just me. I I guess I could have called you, Steve, we could have done a role play and it would have been a thousand times better. But I didn't. What I did was I used a feed to create it.

Daniel (33:52.829)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Steve (33:54.352)
Yeah

Steve (34:18.223)
Ha ha!

Scott (34:21.323)
And so it was all done. People watched it and they were like, what, what is this? What, what? And then my response was, okay, you know, after discussing it and pretending like nobody noticed that it was like really weird. Um, I just said, Hey, and Oh, by the way, if you thought those people were weird, I just want to let you know that they're not real people. We just totally made them up and they all started laughing. They thought it was great. So. Prove the point from a behavior perspective, um, showcased new tech and also got a laugh out of it.

Steve (34:40.464)
You

Steve (34:45.071)
Nice.

Scott (34:51.144)
Um, so yeah, no

Steve (34:52.196)
and didn't spend a portion of the process right. I think like, again, when in our world, which, you know, a combination of contracting jobs and then business, it's like, you want to be able to spin up a minimum effective dose and be able to see whether or not it's worth going into the full dev. It's like podcasts. So this is a machine and you guys have got it drilled in so well that it's just like bread and butter. However, in

Daniel (34:54.622)
Yeah.

Daniel (35:8.179)
Yes.

Steve (35:20.292)
companies, they're like, oh, we really want to create a podcast, what would that be like? And so when they ask that, that's permission for me to go, hey, just give me give me like your company report. Okay, cool. And I upload it into Google Notebook LM. And I go, this is what a podcast would look like in your organization. They're like, oh my gosh, it's like I just discovered electricity. And I'm like, no, no, no. This took me this literally took me three clicks. And I'm there. This is now your decision to give that to some of the stakeholders and listen to it.
And if this is what you want, then we could look at creating an actual show for the company with real people. But there's the there's the use case,

Daniel (35:58.057)
That's a beautiful example. It's a beautiful example. think of like, of what the tech, what the power of the tech is because years ago, our leadership was like, for a company that worked out was like, Hey, we think we want a podcast. And so as we were talking about it and everyone was thinking about it, everybody could agree that they wanted a podcast, but nobody could agree on what it should sound like, what it should do. Like nothing else. And so the project was like stalling.

Scott (36:22.051)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (36:26.559)
And like people were getting frustrated because they're like, Hey, didn't we ask for a podcast like two months ago? And you know, you'd have to be like, yes, but we still don't agree on anything. Nobody knows what they want it to be called. Nobody knows what the focus is. And so in order to like save this project, I had to like go to my team and be like, Hey, just make a podcast, make a five minute sample. And they're like, uh, okay. Like, are you sure I'm positive? Just go make it. Well, what should it be called? Whatever you want. What's it sound like? However you want it to sound like. Like.

Steve (36:31.724)
Yeah, right.

Daniel (36:56.083)
Just go make it. And I had one person, thank God, who had experience in the podcast and radio realm and was like, okay, cool. I know what to do. And the rest of my team was like, okay, this might take a little bit because I'll have to learn some things. That's fine. That's fine. And as soon as we had that sample, they were like, this is exactly what we wanted. Okay, great. Good. So I can go build now. And they're yeah, go build. Okay, great. But to your point, you literally just took three clicks in five minutes.

Steve (37:16.226)
Yeah.

Daniel (37:25.245)
And went, here you go. Is this what you wanted? This is exactly what we wanted. Because the power of having something beats the power of an idea so often.

Scott (37:36.779)
I am so glad you brought that up. It's something I've been preaching a lot these days too. Sometimes like if I want to, hey, how do you convince a stakeholder that's unsure about something that you think is really cool and innovative? Well, I got to build something and then show them because otherwise they're not going to get it. I mean, how many conversations did you have Daniel about the podcast with people who just didn't get it? But once you had it, they, oh, I get it.

Daniel (38:2.184)
Oh yeah.

Scott (38:2.763)
Now I see this, like I totally get it. And I love what Steve's talking about. three clicks, you can get something that people can get, right? Um, but it's so important from a relationship stakeholder perspective of sometimes if you build it, they might come. And I say might because sometimes you could take, okay, Daniel, I know what happened with your podcast. Do you want to tell people what happened to the podcast?

Daniel (38:25.689)
Oh, listen, that podcast was outstanding. it was it. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Well, we had professionals building that one. You know, we're just a bunch of yokels. But like. like, no, it's it. It was one of those things where we went from we went from nobody could agree. And like it was it was like going to be like just for a small group of people.

Scott (38:28.489)
It was, I listened to it, it was great. It's way better than anything we ever produced, that's for sure. Yeah.

Steve (38:34.232)
Yeah.

Scott (38:36.141)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, I get it.

Steve (38:39.284)
Are you?

Daniel (38:54.277)
And everyone was like, it'll be a niche thing. maybe we'll build two or three episodes. And it'll be great to, you know, our executive staff, our C-level suite got a hold of it and listened to it and went, oh, this is great. Where's the next one? And so we went from zero engagement, like fighting an uphill battle to, I would say, the opposite problem. Hey, where's the next one? Well, we haven't started making it. need to, well, it's approved. Anything you want to is approved. Just go, just go, go, go. Make it, make it, make it. By the way.

Steve (39:10.542)
Yeah.

Steve (39:19.674)
Yeah, what a... Amazing.

Daniel (39:21.225)
Here's the people you need to interview. Like, okay, but those people aren't involved in the thing. That's fine. But we need to interview them now because the business wants them to be on the podcast. Like, well, they're the business deciders. So I guess they want to be on the podcast, which is good. Fine. We'll figure it out. But yeah, I mean, but the power to like quickly produce a sample and then dude, you bring up a great point. You were able to turn around and be like, this is how I did it. If you want to do it, there you go. But if you want the next step up,

Steve (39:47.023)
Yeah.

Daniel (39:50.599)
If you want the polish, if you want that professional touch, well, that's something we can help you do, which again, I love it, love it, love it, love it.

Scott (39:58.263)
Yeah.

Steve (40:1.696)
There's a couple of things, a couple of things there that are super relevant, right? And obviously as asked, if we're building for us, it'll never be enough. And I talk about this so many times with clients and obviously people in the industry too is there's two enough buckets. There's your enough bucket, which is just insatiable. It's never full, right? So you'll keep reproducing, you'll make it perfect. It's a quest in absolute futility because it doesn't exist. It's a mirage on the horizon. Whereas what you'll find is that maybe
notebook LLM version of a real shitty chat GPT transcript that you've taken you five minutes to spin up. That's the thing that rocks this person's world so hard that you're done. we have a client and I got told not to do this, but I did it anyway, where I'm like, hey, we're gonna do 11 labs voiceover. We're gonna do Vyond videos for you anyway. But you know what? It's Christmas. I wanna give you one more thing. Here's a 25 minute podcast of this chapter of your course.
Merry Christmas. And they're like, holy shit, this is amazing. And I had to just check my ego at the door, because they liked the notebook LM better than my team's custom beyond that we spent more time on. It's like, hey, cool, whatever. I'm here for you. That's your bucket. It's enough for you. I'm stoked. Like, let's let's let me show you now how to do this. And then when you need us to do more custom work for you later, you're to call us over over anyone else because we showed you we showed you the way we asked you into that into that new world. Yeah.

Daniel (41:22.985)
Yes, they are.

Scott (41:26.915)
Yeah. And no work is ever wasted ever, ever. Cause you could always repurpose it. I got a call this morning. Hey, I, how much do you know about feedback? Well, as a matter of fact, they just put together a feedback course. they didn't take it, but you can take it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just, know, there, there it is. So, man, we could nerd out for another hour. Um, but I know, but, but, uh, but we're coming up on, on time. So I wanted to go ahead.

Steve (41:29.701)
Never.

Daniel (41:31.035)
No, 100%.

Steve (41:33.028)
Correct.

Steve (41:37.904)
Woo!

Steve (41:45.840)
it

Steve (41:49.784)
so easily. It's just so easy.

Scott (41:56.479)
Steve, if you could, anything exciting or anything cool that you wanted to share with our audience before we kind of wrap things up today?

Steve (42:4.324)
Yeah, I think without going into it, which is a perfect time to not do it, it's obviously, if you are here thinking that there's all these new shiny objects, yeah, there are, but it's like sometimes the old store wards of the industry is still there doing the great things. What I see as the bridge now is like using third party tools that connect apps together. So for example, and without explanation, it's if I wanted to use ChatGPT,
to read or respond to an input from a learner. So a learner inputs an answer to a question. It then gets pushed via Zapier or Make or Pabli into OpenAI, ChatGPT. ChatGPT reads their answer. It then pushes it to 11 Labs, spins up Steve Pro Voice, and then sends the learner back a response that's audio. That's where I see like this beautiful marriage of stitching.
you know, three or four really popular and robust pieces of tech together. And for us as learning professionals, we've just got to be at the front of it, we've just got to be embracing it and not being afraid to tell people how it's done and showing under the the under the cloak how the tricks are done. Because what it'll actually do is the opposite of what you're afraid of it doing, which is it'll make them respect you and appreciate you and more, it'll give you a seat at the table. And you'll you'll never look back and regret.
teaching someone how to fish. It's truly a privilege. It's exactly what we exist for as learning designers.

Daniel (43:31.966)
Love that.

Scott (43:35.199)
All right. Hey, Steve, do me a favor. Could you go ahead and let our audience know how they can connect with you?

Steve (43:41.784)
Yeah, if I when I when I limp my way back onto LinkedIn after after a short hiatus of being busy. If you know, you know, I'll you can find me on LinkedIn, Steve Learn stuff. I've got a Batman mask on for a reason. It's to protect the scars from my face from just fighting the battles of all the good. But I run an agency called learn awesome, learn awesome.com.au. We do all sorts of cool stuff learning, but LinkedIn is the vehicle for me. So I'll see you all over over on the on the LinkedIn verse.

Scott (44:8.995)
Okay, great. Well, folks, go check out Steve. He's awesome. And quite frankly, I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate what you've brought to what we're trying to do and what I know you're bringing to our audience and just really, really great stuff. And I appreciate so much just this conversation around how to get better at what we're doing and deliver more. I think that's what we all want. So I think that's great. Daniel San.

Daniel (44:37.274)
Yes, Scott.

Scott (44:38.455)
Do me a favor, could you go ahead and let our audience know how they could connect with us?

Daniel (44:42.981)
Absolutely. All right party people, you guys know. Email us at nerds at thelearningnerds.com. Tell us kind of like what's going on in your world and how you're using new tech to hopefully make your life easier and make learning better. If you're on Facebook, you can find us at learning nerds. If you're on Instagram, fab learning nerds. And lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates, www.thelearningnerds.com.