After listening to a recent episode of This Week in Media, I was inspired to put in my two cents’ worth on what I think is the most critical aspect of success in multimedia – Education. I believe that this is true on multiple levels — whether you’re an aspiring multimedia professional or just a home user wanting to create better music, movies, photos, etc.

What sorts of education? I can’t discount a college education, but, as a freshman-year dropout, I definitely can attest to alternate methods, such as:

Technorati Tags: business, GTD, howto, lifehack, multimedia, productivity, tutorial, video

Become a Learner
Anyone can sit in a classroom, read a book, watch a tutorial . . . but I believe the first step is to want to learn. Be hungry. Feel the Eye of the TIger– whatever it is that makes you want to take your knowledge to the next level. Every major life / career change that has happened in my life has been inspired by this sort of passion.

Read Read Read
In tech communities, there is a popular phrase– “Read the F-ing Manual” aka RTFM (expletives deleted). Want to tackle Final Cut Pro? Plop down in front of that big honking manual and read. Ironically, most of the info might just float over you since you’re reading, not doing (more on that later)– but you’ll end up learning things you hadn’t even set out to learn. In the casual world, this is a bonus. In the professional world, this can make or break you.

In addition there are so many other sources of great reading on a multitude of subject matters — Industry magazines, “Idiots” Books, Wikis, Forums, Websites . . . we are blessed to be in an age where a trip to the library is a rarity. Self-help gurus all agree that the most successful people in their fields set aside time every day to read and keep up with what’s going on in their industries.

Do Do Do
No, I’m not singing here, but, as mentioned before, JUST DO IT! Sit down in front of that program you want to master. Learn the keyboard shortcuts. Memorize all the menus. Know what everything does. Push yourself to follow along with tutorials and I promise you’ll learn something new. Make your hands learn “by muscle” how to do things efficiently and quickly.

Learn the Basics
You can buy all the gear in the world and have the most expensive software, but if you don’t understand the basic concepts of what you’re working on, you’re just spinning your wheels. Do you like digital audio? Learn about mic placement, compression, decibels (analog and digital), equalization. Learn who Nyquist was. Do you like digital video? Learn about color correction, NTSC and PAL, HD / SD, timecodes, formats formats formats. Familiarity with the basic concepts will take you so much further and will keep you from stumbling over the complex concepts.

—

After all it’s said and done, technology moves so fast that you have to keep learning to keep up. So keep it up!

No related posts.

Filed under: Tutorial