Milamber Blog

(London: 14 April 2011): PIXELearning (PIXEL), a global leader in business simulations and games-based learning in the e-learning marketplace, has been acquired by Milamber Investments in a cash and share deal.

The company provides custom as well as off-the-shelf games and immersive learning services to blue chip customers, business schools and colleges.

Investors in PIXEL include regional VC fund Advantage West Midlands and loan fund Advantage Transition Bridge Fund. Both, along with others, will become shareholders in Milamber Group.

Andy Hasoon, CEO of Milamber Group, joins the PIXEL board. Richard Smith remains CEO of PIXEL and will continue to spearhead the growth of the company.

Richard Smith says, ”We have been working with Milamber since April 2010 when I took over as CEO of PIXEL. During that time we have made significant progress to move from a bespoke serious games and immersive simulations company to having a suite of products that are also off-the shelf such as PIXEL’s finance, business, entrepreneurship, sales and leadership simulations, plus ‘must have’ products such as our ‘diversity’ and ‘data security’ simulations – we plan to make many more over the coming years”.

In addition, says Smith,  “We have put in place development and distribution arrangements with companies  such as Reality Works, Global Novations and Pearson Education. Teaming up with Milamber gives us the ability to take the next step in our growth.”  

Headquartered in the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University’s Technology Park, PIXELearning has pioneered the application of computer games and simulation techniques to create world-class technologies and tools for education, training and marketing communications in the corporate environment.

PIXELearning has an excellent track record in developing innovative solutions to business learning issues. Recent examples include the creation of a new recruit induction programme for KPMG and an online game for HP to help employees understand good practices for data security. Its client list includes 3M, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Shell, Comcast, and CocaCola.

Milamber is already working to bring access to capital, management resources, and scale to PIXEL’s product portfolio. Says Hasoon, “We have the expertise and experience to build a global distribution footprint and access content and development partners who can help grow this business significantly”.

Notes for editors

For further information contact:

Andy Hasoon, Milamber Group Ltd

Email: andy.hasoon@milambergroup.com

Tel: +44 (0) 247 623 6971

“Peter Frederick is a black belt in persuasive writing.” – Andy Hasoon, Entrepreneur and CEO of Milamber!

This is the quote that I wrote for the back of Pete’s book.  Well when a guy as talented as Pete writes a proposal (with no presentation) and just by using the power of the written word helps secure £750k in funding as a grant from the Technology Strategy Board you confirm that he is a master at persuasive writing.   

http://www.milamberblog.com/milamber-digital-gets-technology-strategy-board-funding-for-1-5m-project/

And this one is a win-win for Milamber as well as for Peter. We did the introduction to Pearson’s brand Prentice Hall Business which resulted in getting Peter’s first book published. The reality is that quality and talent always shine brightly.

I  have to say having worked with sales people and bid writers through-out my career this is one of those books that really is a ‘must have’ for anyone serious about winning proposals, but its more than that. Let us say you are a manager or director of a company and have to write something in order to help persuade someone or a group of people to come around to your way of thinking – this book nails on the head all sorts of ways of doing that practically and easily.

Peter sent me the early manuscript of the book and frankly I found that I learnt a huge amount about how to write more persuasively, and succinctly to get across key points to a potential buyer or audience. I found that I started using his tips and lessons in day to day written materials not just proposals but e-mails and letters to colleagues and staff, and I found that the message I wanted to deliver was getting to through to them more effectively.

This is a little gem and we have already decided to help Peter further – we have offered to build a whole series of virtual tools around this topic.  

For more information on Peter’s book please go to:

 http://www.persuasivewriting.co.uk/

I get this question a lot what is the size in numbers for the UK corporate learning market and where is the best research on the market.

The UK Learning market typically focuses on the 6,000 Large Enterprises, each with over 250 employees which represent about 9m employees overall.

However, we find that 1-249 employee organisations i.e. SME’s represent

a) about 1.2m organisations in the UK and

b) have about 9.6m employees overall.

http://stats.bis.gov.uk/ed/sme/Stats_Press_Release_2009.pdf

So what we see is that the SME market is actually bigger than the LE market but the challenge is how does the learning industry target this highly fragmented demographic?

The 2 best reports that give you the data you need on the UK market and that are up to date:

1)      UK E-learning Market £499+VAT

http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/Resources/Market_Reports_/The_UK_elearning_market_2010

2)      UK Training Industry Report £460+VAT via Keynote.

http://www.keynote.co.uk/market-intelligence/view/product/10404/training?utm_source=kn.reports.browse

(London, 10 March, 2011): The Milamber Digital Consortium has secured a substantial grant from the Technology Strategy Board to build a next-generation Digital Learning Marketplace (DLM) on which to develop and test-drive a number of state-of-the-art innovations in the use of metadata.

The grant was awarded following a successful application to the Technology Strategy Board’s “Metadata – Increasing the Value of Digital Content” funding competition.

The Consortium consists of Pearson Education, Milamber , Redtray, 2SMS, Lifecycle Software, Ashridge Business School and Warwick University.

The aim of Milamber Digital is to create a platform to help increase the value of business learning content to creators, publishers and consumers by making such material more accessible and useable. A key goal is to render digitized learning content into standards-compliant formats for mobile delivery in an app store type model.

“What’s stopping publishers from unlocking the full potential of their learning assets?” asks Andy Hasoon, CEO of Milamber and leader of the Consortium. “A babel of formats, protocols and platforms that do not talk to each other”, he says. And, he adds, “the difficulties of protecting intellectual property….and getting paid”.

The member companies of the Consortium are charged with developing a set of tools to deal with these and other roadblock issues, including:

• A set of extensible translation modules to allow content using various proprietary metadata formats to conform to common internet formats based around recognized standards.
• Support for digital watermarking and fingerprinting of multimedia assets to allow tracking of intellectual property rights  even when content is broken down and repackaged.
• Provision of reliable semantic search by exploiting detailed metadata, meaning that a DLM user can quickly find relevant material and create tailor-made training content with ease.
• Developing a licensing and rights registry for IP. This will allow owners to submit metadata for ownership and licensing rights in the DLM as well as the tracking, billing and payment of appropriate royalties to content owners.

The total cost of the project is £1,476,000 and the £737, 000 Technology Strategy Board grant is payable over an eighteen month period for delivery against Consortium defined milestones.

The Milamber Digital project begins on 1^st May 2011.

End

Note to editors

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led government body which works to create economic growth by ensuring that the UK is a global leader in innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. For more information please visit www.innovateuk.org.  

1) Capsule para:

The goal of the DLM is to enable educational publishers to increase the value of their content by developing and deploying key innovations in metadata use. These include searching for content in disparate formats, managing rights and paying royalties.

For further information contact:

Andy Hasoon, Milamber Group Ltd

Email: andy.hasoon@milambergroup.com

Tel: +44 (0) 247 623 6971

Here is the article that TSB released to announce the overall funding for the competition.

http://www.innovateuk.org/content/press-release/new-research-and-development-will-address-challeng.ashx

Here is part of the Press Release – you can find the full release at:

http://www.skillsoft.com/about/press_room/press_releases/February_15_11_50Lessons.asp

NASHUA, N.H., February 15, 2011 – SkillSoft, a leading SaaS provider of e-learning and performance support solutions for global enterprises, government, education and small to medium-sized businesses, today announced the acquisition of the assets of 50 Lessons Limited, a provider of leadership video content that helps organizations around the world develop their employees by leveraging the power of story-based lessons. SkillSoft intends to market this video content under the 50 Lessons brand name as a distinct SkillSoft content collection that can be licensed standalone or fully integrated with SkillSoft’s Leadership Development Channel. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The 50 Lessons Library, comprising over 1,000 video business lessons from over 200 world-class business leaders, is an important tool for companies looking to develop and deliver highly engaging and effective leadership programs. Many of the speakers featured in the 50 Lessons Library are well-known, C-level executives from around the globe including Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, Prof. Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, Anders Dahlvig from IKEA, and Neville Isdell from the Coca-Cola Company.

“50 Lessons naturally complements SkillSoft’s Leadership Development Channel by adding the element of story-telling, which is considered by many to be a very effective and engaging technique for broadening business perspective,” said John Ambrose, SkillSoft’s senior vice president of strategy, corporate development and emerging business. “More and more organizations are recognizing the obvious benefits of video as a tool to engage and inspire their global workforces.”

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On a personal note I just wanted to say, ‘Well Done!’ to Matt Burr for his commitment over the past 18 months in leading the company as CEO and working extremely hard to get this deal executed.

50 Lessons on the electronic billboard’s of Times Square!

50 Lessons in Times Square, NYC

One of my favourite TV Shows was the West Wing and in it are two characters acted by Rob Lowe and Richard Schiff – playing the parts of the President’s Speech Writers – for me they were the hero’s of the show. I remember watching the President played by Martin Sheen deliver the State of the Union speech and how the different audiences emotions and reactions are being measured real-time as he delivers this vital oratory masterpiece written by Richard and Rob’s characters.

Recently, when David Cameron delivered his speech without notes but from memory, the nation was almost shocked that someone had the skill to deliver a speech without notes or aide de memoires.

So from time to time as I am fascinated by what makes the art of communication truly effective I look around the internet to see the latest views on what makes great speeches successful and recently found this article:

JFK’s inaugural speech: Six secrets of his success
By Max Atkinson published 18th Jan 2011.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12215248

So having read it I look up who this Max Atkinson the Author of the article is as I am intrigued? And get a link to Max’s blog – I click on his blog…..
http://maxatkinson.blogspot.com/

and aside from being mesmerized by the musings and content on speeches within the blog, one of the things that hits me is that Max is literally down the road 10 miles from me in Wells, Somerset. Small World.

I now enter a world of insight into what makes great speeches, how to harness the power of words and to deliver exemplary oratory. Not only that by going to the blog I get to link to a host of other experts like Andrew Dlugan, Charles Crawford, Kethy Reiffenstien etc. Within a few minutes I have accessed a whole host of ideas, lists, tips, analysis, thesis, and examples on what makes great speeches.

The question that lingers as I digest this material is this………how to synthesize these musings into some useful, into something coherent, that is comprehensive and useable and can be applied on a day to day basis? That is something we are working on…….in the meantime I finish my tour of great oratory by listening to one of the most amazing speeches of the last century:

Cisco Sigma Training Animation:

As you know due to my background I am a big advocate of ‘Engagement in Learning’ techniques whether that be via Story Telling, using Video, Cartoons or Animation.

We all remember (for those that are old enough) Video Arts and their ‘Meetings Bloody Meetings” video starring John Cleese et al. This comedic approach to getting across learning messages on how not to conduct meetings was brilliant and at the time revolutionary.

What most people don’t know is that the ‘Scritps’ for those highly comedic Video Arts videos were mainly written by Sir Antony Jay who also wrote the iconic satirical British comedies ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Jay

Although the script for this Cisco song is not in the same league as Sir Antony Jay’s work – it is an interesting way of getting across a message about e-Sigma training approches. This animation was released about 4 years ago. The question is will this animation be as timeless as Yes Prime Minsiter!

In my job I get to meet some fascinating people and this week was no exception. I met with Dr Liz Miller author of Mood Mapping an extraordinary lady who has her finger literally right on the pulse of the mood of you and your team.

Dr Liz Miller

Liz is a GP, psychologist and occupational health physician and works with companies and individuals to help people better manage their mental and physical health.

She first trained as a neurosurgeon until becoming ill with bipolar disorder. It was through that experience of managing her own mental states that she developed mood mapping and her strategies for improving moods.

She co-founded the Doctors’ Support Network with Dr Soames Michelson in 1995, took part in Stephen Fry’s 2006 TV documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive and was voted Mind Mental Health Champion in 2008.

In 2009 MacMillan published MOODMAPPING™. She currently see’s clients, run’s workshops and is writing her second book Mood and People.

So prior to meeting Liz I realized that whenever I walk into an office the first thing I ascertain is the mood of the people – whether the place has a buzz or as in numerous cases whether it feels ‘dead’.

So what Liz has to talk about resonates with me personally i.e. ‘Mood Mapping’ provides a simple graphical way to quickly capture the mood within a team, department or enterprise.

This data can then be used by the leadership team within any company or organisation to make evidence-based decisions on how to improve mood, morale and productivity.

Whether an organisation is expanding or downsizing, a workforce with a positive mental attitude and an ability to combat stress can be a critical success factor for business improvement. What I found out is that effectively Mood mapping can help improve the mood of employees in a cost-effective and easy-to-implement way.

With Liz’s methodology she provides you with numerical data, therefore, mood mapping can be an important addition to a companies key performance indicators, balanced scorecard and/or executive dash board. What’s more it is important to keep on top of the ‘mood’ of your organization so Liz’s team can provide you with a view of the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual mood of your whole organisation at the same time as ensuring individual employee privacy.

They tailor the mood mapping tools to best meet the unique culture of each organisation and can undertake the analysis of the data and provide reports as an outsourced service and / or train your staff to carry out this task themselves so Liz and her team provide second line support for them only.

Think about it – if you and your team are in a positive mood and feeling good you can do anything. In fact its the strap line of this blog. But as leaders how many times have we ignored morale, at the cost of productivity.

On the front of Liz’s web site is this simple diagram – and for me it hit the mark and showed what she is all about!

www.moodmapping.co.uk

I started thinking about how if you could harness the mood of an organisation in a positive way then all sorts of things would happen, including increases in productivity, and profitability being the by product. Seriously, what organisation can not afford that sort of positive change in this climate!

For those of you that have not got it yet – the 2010 E-learning report from the e-learning centre is a ‘must have’ report for anyone in the e-learning industry here in the UK.

http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/

For those that don’t know the e-learning centre is published by Learning Light. They engage with e-learning and game development businesses in the United Kingdom offering services in research, such as investigating market growth, trends, and analysis, develops and designs strategy and planning, deployment of practice, and measurement of improvement; membership services, including knowledge base publications, papers, news, surveys, and guides, networking events, support and expert advice, workshops and training, and monthly news letters; as well as professional services, including organisational assessments, strategy and planning, infrastructure design, tendering and procurement, deployment and implementation, and learning and development. The company is based in Sheffield, the United Kingdom.

Helen Routledge is Head of Instructional Design at PIXELearning and has kindly written a synopsis of Robert Becker’s paper on Interactive Games for Business Training published on the 22nd Jan 2011.

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With 25 years experience in the design of games, simulations and other forms of e-learning for business, Bob Becker, provides readers with an introduction to the area of game based learning for business training.  He focuses mainly on rhetoric rather than taking an academic approach to his analysis; this may work to his advantage as the main objective of the paper it seems, is to convince the reader of the virtues of games for training. 

Becker begins with an anecdote uncovering an organizations resistance to welcome fun into their training regime. This is an all too often familiar reaction designers of serious games face. Even when commissioned some clients, just don’t want to push the boundaries too far. But that’s another blog!

Through further anecdotal evidence Becker summarises why using games and game based approaches to training are or should be a no brainier.

After reviewing games, play, and the current state of play Becker introduces his four pillars of game design for corporate e-learning; this basic taxonomy is his own invention rather than the product of scholarly research, but he argues, it aids the understanding of how business training games work:

Becker proposes the four pillars as;

1. Puzzle. Problem-solving play that spawns and develops competencies

2. Scenario. Stories in which players join and learn from others’ experience

3. Simulation. Exploration in which players learn from their own experience

4. Immersion. Play enriched with affective and cognitive aesthetics.

Becker explains how the four pillars noted above are linked to Business simulations and how they link to learning theory.

After laying the foundations for his view on the world of business training games, he further goes into detail regarding how these games come into being and reinforces the need for good Instructional Design, reinforcing in the readers mind that he is making a clear distinction between entertainment and training games; a valuable clarification for new comers to the field.

When it comes to evaluating games, and anyone familiar to the industry will be aware that there is not a great deal of empirical research out there to find, Becker argues that our current systems of measuring ROI and effectiveness of training are backwards looking and perhaps are missing the valuable aspects of games; mainly being the appeal of the genre and increased participation in learning. He also suggests that rather than looking at training games as a distinct genus, to other forms of training, that instead we should leverage the reams of research from good interactive e-learning, which uses similar approaches. 

Becker continues to examine a wide range of topics such as the plethora of available platforms, the players perspective, the level of fidelity in the game, and with each area provides advice and guidance.

Overall this paper provides some good solid justifications for using games in business training, which could easily be applied to other training areas. If you’re looking for academic references and journals, this is not the paper for you. If you’re looking for good place to start with clean, crisp summaries, you can hear all of Becker’s anecdotes and read the whole paper here. 

http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper123/Interactive_Games_for_Business_Training.pdf

http://beckermultimedia.typepad.com/