The results are in and Visual Purple has been recognized as one of the top performers in the global simulation and training industry for the second consecutive year.

Military Training Technology is proud to announce the 2009 MT2 Top Training and Simulation Companies. The list’s companies are from around the world that have made a significant impact on the military training industry across the spectrum of technologies— serious gaming, live training, constructive simulation, modeling, virtual simulation and others. An impartial panel selected the winners from a very competitive group. Companies were selected based on various criteria, which in part, included total military sales, innovation, and program effectiveness. The 2009 submissions were especially competitive.

To learn more about the awards or view the awards list, click here.

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My Grandmother used to be a fruitcake-making junkie each year when the holiday season rolled around- many friends and family would graciously accept then turn right around and regift “Grandma’s famous homemade fruitcake.” So this got me thinking- social media tools are a lot like a fruitcake. Although thought, care and a little love may initially be baked in, the end result is nuts and the weird fruit candy-like things. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are the social media kitchens, but often at the end of the day, it’s still the same fruitcake!

Some almost relevant tidbits you might enjoy… Online communities and social networks are becoming more and more mainstream, a part of our everyday lives (both personal and professional). So here is a scary stat: With the ever growing size of Facebook’s 300-million active users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populous in the world.

So in reality it’s fitting how the term ‘fruitcake’ can also reference a crazy person. Every time I see the commercial for Verizon selling phones where the parents and kids are on the back porch and Dad is tweeting: “Sitting on the back porch,” I chuckle to myself about how true this is with some social media updates today. Although I have carefully handpicked the people I follow on Twitter I still see random tweets like “sitting on the plane waiting to take off” or “going out to Mexican food with the girls.” Although these tweets do depict an activity- are they really relevant? I tend to want to follow people that have the same interests as I do- although I have not met most of them face-to-face I can tell a little bit about them just in the way that they tweet. So on a whim I decided to try posting a ‘pointless’ tweet and see what the reaction was. Although there was no reaction after I pressed the ‘tweet’ button, I felt like I had jipped my followers (sorry, loyal followers!)… Here I was, yet another person in cyberspace that had posted a tweet with no real value and was in fact, pointless…who knows I’ll probably see it re-tweeted soon…wish I liked fruitcake…

“- Link to”
YouTube Visual Purple Verizon commerical- Twitter Updates and Facebook

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Ed Heinbockel has confirmed to be on an industry panel at the upcoming Engage! Expo entitled “Vendor View: Collaborating to Cross the Chasm.” Join Ed on Thursday, September 24th from 4 to 5 pm.

What’s the session all about?
Thinkbalm has identified a number of barriers that need to be overcome to enable increased adoption of immersive technologies in the workplace. You can view and download the PDF of the ThinkBalm’s analyst report: Crossing the Chasm, One Implementation at a Time here.

Tony O’Driscoll will moderate a panel discussion with CEOs from the vendor community to understand what are planning to do from a technology roadmap perspective to address these issues so that we can collectively drive increased adoption and get across the chasm.

Tony O’Driscoll, Professor of the Practice, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business (moderator)
Chris Badger, VP of Marketing, Forterra Systems
Ron J. Burns, CEO, ProtonMedia
Ed Heinbockel, President & CEO, Visual Purple, LLC.
Howard Mall, VP of Engineering, ECS, Inc.

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In celebration of our 100th blog post on Virtual Speak- I saw it fitting to recap the Top 5 most popular blog articles.

1. Return on Investment= Proven Success?

2. Push vs. Pull Learning

3. When Your Voice-actor is a Robot (Confronting the NPC Speak Challenge for Virtual Worlds, Part 2)

4. Chat Bots 101- Artificial Intelligence Optional

5. The Bottom Line- What’s Your Company’s Training Budget?

Here’s to the next 100- thank you to our loyal readers!

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1) We are passionate about applying advanced simulation technology in radically innovative and effective ways.
2) Although we have produced dozens of training simulations, only a handful of our ‘first-person thinkers’ are available for public consumption.
3) Contrary to popular belief, we really don’t wear pocket protectors!
4) What Visual Purple stands for… although our mission statement is “Visual Purple’s mission is to provide our clients with world-class, state-of-the-art instructional tools that increase trainee understanding of processes and procedures, reduce training time, and improve overall mission readiness and performance. We take great pride in the creation of each project: we build strong, sincere business relationships, striving to understand your training needs. Our commitment to your vision ensures effective solutions and provides you with a lifetime training partner well versed in your organization’s goals.” Our name actually implies ‘always driven by perspective.’ For instance, our friends in Special Operations Forces immediately equate the name with survival because visual purple—rhodopsin—is a highly light sensitive pigment found in the retina of the eye that enables vision and thus survival in low-light conditions.
5) Our team has been a leader in the interactive computer software industry since 1991 (our founder and CEO is really old and built games at Sierra On-Line in the 80’s), when our products were originally developed as interactive adventure, cinematic and strategy PC games.

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Adult Learning Techniques (ADL) can be applied in a variety of forms from instructor led classes to immersive training simulations.

Mark Prensky, author of Digital Game-Based Learning (2000), confirms the need for simulation training using adult learning techniques in The Technology Source, “Simulations and the Learning Revolution”:

“I do not believe it is possible to overestimate two things – first, how different and richer simulations are than other learning content, and second, how much they will eventually dominate the way classes are researched, designed, and implemented. Anyone who wants to understand and contribute to education in the near future must develop a working knowledge of the philosophy of simulation.”

Adult Learning Interactive Simulation Techniques stimulate positive behavioral change in trainees while they train, meaning that improved performance is immediate. Through repetitive training, users acquire a more developed sense for making good decisions, as well as an increased ability to deal effectively with the consequences resulting from their decisions. The 3D Visual Imagery allows for updates and modification to the program, maximizing efficiency and cost effectiveness.

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No, I am not talking about training with syrup or pie eating contests, rather training that increases learner retention rates and compels the learner to actually remember what they have learned. Research has found that participants in online training groups demonstrated significantly greater knowledge during post-training and follow-up compared to instructor-led training and text.

Many studies have been conducted regarding simulation training versus standard classroom training. The Edgar Dale studies have shown that “simulation training is a specialized type of e-learning that engages the learner into taking an active part in the training rather than simply reading or listening.” Edgar Dale’s studies of the early 1990s have created the “Cone of Learning” depicted below. This Cone of Learning shows that we remember and apply only 10% of what we read, but remember a remarkable 90% of what we do.

The desired end result of decision simulation training is a positive change in trainee behavior. Visual Purple’s training techniques make learning an active process that results in a different way of looking at your own decisions and experience. These differences are experienced by the trainees as they work through the various threads within the decision simulation. These new perspectives lead trainees to a deeper understanding of the processes involved in accomplishing their goals – a new awareness of “how to” – that is experienced through participation in the framework of the decision simulation.

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Visual Purple, LLC. is proud to have been recognized with a Bronze Telly Award in the online training category. The Power of Story: Driven is a short tale about what a level 5 decision-based training simulation can offer. The prestigious international Telly Award honors the best in video, advertising and film production. Its recipients have demonstrated creative excellence and superior work in the industry.

“- Link to”
YouTube Visual Purple Power of Story: Driven

About Telly Awards
Founded in 1978, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, interactive agencies, and corporate video departments in the world. The Telly Awards receives over 13,000 entries annually from all 50 states and countries around the world.

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Although the topic of this blog post can apply to a wide variety of training types – I’d like to focus on measuring ‘baked – in’ training support within decision-based and virtual world training applications. So here’s the BIG question: Are you measuring training support within your current solutions? And the obvious follow up question: If yes, then why?

It is always a challenge to measure the transfer of training to the learner, but is critical in allocating resources based on proven past performance. Of course you could go to Amazon and buy a book about the how-to’s of measuring training support, or you could save yourself the hassle and just make sure that when choosing a training solution a specific level of training support is available and proven.

Although there are some general principles that go into training measurement, weighing the pros and cons of a training platform and tracking ROI are key to any training solution success. Corporate training provides organizations with a distinct business and strategic advantage, making them smarter than their competition. According to a recent Training Industry Quarterly ezine article. An estimated 40% to 80% of training content failing to take root with learners; training leaders are seeing a massive amount of waste and unrealized potential. So how are you going to guarantee that the next training/learning solution that you bring into your organization provides for high learner retention rates and a strong Return on Investment?

From a past article written by Dorn Williams of Manage Smarter

“Training is a critical component in any organization’s strategy, but organizations don’t always evaluate the business impact of a training program. Given the large expenditures for training in many organizations, it is important to develop business intelligence tools that will help companies improve the measurement of training effectiveness. These tools need to provide a methodology to measure, evaluate, and continuously improve training, as well as the organizational and technical infrastructure (systems) to implement the methodology. Cross-functional and reporting and learning analytics provide important connections between the measures of learning effectiveness offered by a learning management system (LMS) and the larger enterprise metrics that indicate whether learning is transferred and positively affects business results.

Business Performance Impact

Many organizations are unable to evaluate their programs beyond the first two Kirkpatrick levels because they lack the tools to collect the data to make higher level evaluations. In part, LMSs, the most common repository for training data and mechanism to deliver training, make lower level evaluations easy but don’t provide any tool for higher level evaluation. Most LMSs automatically will track and report information required for Level One and Level Two analyses.”

Our services are not cookie-cutter or out-of-the-box, rather we collaborate with our clients and experts to create cutting-edge training solutions. Since we track EVERYTHING in our sims (especially important in virtual world sims), the training measurement taken from Visual Purple produced simulations have returned superb results. No surprise that the factor consistently getting the most press is Return on Investment (we’ll talk about ROI in future blog posts as it is an often misunderstood and elusive metric). Clear cut benefits to the bottom line and the organizations goals are keys to implementing any type of training solution.

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Visual Purple Wins Silver & Bronze at the 8th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards Competition

The Horizon Interactive Awards, a leading international interactive media awards competition, announced the 2009 award winners to highlight this year’s “best of the best” in interactive media production.

Visual Purple was recognized for their excellence with a Silver award for the Training Category ICS: 3-Part Training Series.

Visual Purple was also recognized for their excellence with a Bronze award for the Training Category for the Winning in Wireless: Virtual World Simulation.

The eighth annual, international competition saw just over 2000 entries from 32 countries around world including: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Croatia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Martinique, Mexico, Oman, New Zealand, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Taiwan, Turkey, and nearly all 50 of the United States of America. An international panel of judges, consisting of industry professionals with diverse backgrounds, as well as an end user panel evaluated 19 different categories ranging from online advertising to video games. The 2009 winning entries showcase the industry’s best interactive media solutions including web sites, CDs and DVDs, online ads, video and more.

“The 2009 competition was an all new level for the competition,” said Mike Sauce – Founder of the Horizon Interactive Awards. ”The overall quality of entries was far and away the best we have ever had and judging was very competitive. Year after year, we are amazed at the level of creativity and overall technical excellence of the entries that are recognized by the competition. They truly are the best of the best!“

About the Horizon Interactive Awards
In its 8th year, the Horizon Interactive Awards was created to recognize excellence in interactive media production worldwide. Since 2001, the competition has received many thousands of entries from countries around the world and nearly all 50 US States. Each year, those entries are narrowed down to the best of the best to be recognized and promoted on and international stage for their excellence. The judging process involves a Horizon Interactive Awards advisory panel, end user panel and a worldwide panel of judges consisting of industry professionals. Winning entries are dubbed the “best of the best” in the interactive media industry.

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