Welcome to 2022! I hope the holiday break was restful. At the end of last year, I sent around a survey to all of the designers I work with asking how they would like to learn about lighting in 2022. The vast majority told me that they would prefer to learn about lighting in person, with visits to their office, factory tours, and showroom/pop-up visits. That said, about 25% of respondents said they enjoyed or even preferred to learn about new products online via zoom or some other training. I was preparing my first quarter plans accordingly, focused on office visits, samples, and planning factory visits.

But I wasn’t giving up on online learning either. The reality is that the pandemic has installed virtual learning into all of our lives and I believe if it’s done well it can be the start of learning about a new product.

Enter - Ten in the Shed

Ten in the Shed is a 10-minute live demonstration I’ll be running every Friday morning at 10 AM Eastern Time. The idea is to make it a fast-paced, fun presentation of something you really want to learn about.

Then, of course, the Omicron wave of COVID-19 hit NYC and everything changed. While this wave appears to be fast-moving and mild, I am still getting the sense that most firms are pulling back from getting back into their offices full time and in-person presentations (to say nothing of travel) are going to be limited until February.

That being the case, I want to make Ten in the Shed even better by introducing higher quality video (which is why this is hosted on YouTube, rather than Zoom), multi-camera capability and pre-recorded video. I’ve spent this holiday break revamping the shed and kicking the tires on some new software and hardware.

So take a look at the Ten in the Shed page and get it on your calendar. I can’t wait to see you every Friday morning at 10AM.