[Inaudible].
We got a lot of questions from students on all sides about the acquisition.
And the cool thing is that they were pretty consistent across the board.
No matter if they were students at Linux Academy originally, or students at,
ACG originally. Believe it or not, uh, the number one was, I have a membership,
to one of the platforms, so can I start having access to the other one?
That was the number one question that came through and very understandably so.
Our response to that,
it's really trying to show the work and the effort that goes into those seamless
experiences and again, a great learning experience.
And so it takes time to build that together. It takes time to get these courses,
uh, efficiently put together so they can access and it takes time to build
everything on the backend.
It takes time to ensure that their data will pull over.
And so being able to paint that picture, that it's coming, yes,
we have done this acquisition,
but it takes time to ensure that you're going to be taken care of.
And so we've had really good feedback from that. Um,
and just being able to be transparent and talk to them like humans, um,
about what's happening.
Between things like authentication between things like activity tracking between
things like, um, yeah, like video video migration and, and, you know,
trying to consolidate these subsystems that each,
each company and engineering team had.
I think it presents a lot of complexities that from the outside in,
you just don't see. We,
we didn't come into this and say were just going to hustle for six months.
We did, we did a lot of smart decisions. We did a lot of soft launches.
We did a lot of things to make sure that the impact of everything being go,
was going to be mitigated all along the way.
And lots of little incremental pieces.
Very special when we bring the two together.
We make the best decisions with the best data that we have at the time in terms
of what we delivered to students. But if the ratings tell us,
otherwise we have to be prepared to pivot.
The whole point of this acquisition is to be able to give our customers the best
of both products, the best of both worlds in one offering and one subscription.
It's very clear that both products were used for different reasons and for
different parts of a customer's journey.
So it's very important that customers knew that we're very mindful of that and
respectful of that. And, uh,
the point is to bring both products together in a really positive and value add
way.
Hello, Cloud Gurus. Today, we're going to be making one of these,
which is an Amazon echo out of one of these, which is a raspberry PI. Hello,
Cloud Gurus, and welcome to AWS This Week.
The combined organization will now have more educators than Linux
Academy and A Cloud Guru separately.
Howdy Cloud Gurus and welcome to the premiere episode of Azure Service
Spotlight.
Welcome to my AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder Specialty Certification course.
We want every educator to be genuine, to be themselves,
but we're also giving them some advice and some tips and hints to really bring
out that energy, that humor,
the kind of the engaging storytelling that we know our students love.
We want to help all of our Training Architects inject their personality into it.
Um,
now that doesn't mean that I want everybody to tell silly dad jokes like I like
to do at times, but it does mean that if you have a certain. Like,
if you love to go hiking, why not incorporate a hiking theme into your,
your course material?
Why not have that as part of your personality so that people come to the
platform, both for the content,
but also because they want to see that next course by that presenter or that,
that Training Architect.
Timezones, goodness gracious in the content team.
We have eight time zones represented throughout the world and there's really no
good single overlapping timeframe where we can all collaborate
and meet. It's really hard to get everybody included at the same time,
somebody is going to be up at 6 o'clock or somebody is going to be up at 10:00
PM. It's just one of those things.
So the timezone challenges can be pretty significant,
especially if we as we have to band together quite quickly to start creating and
delivering great content for our community. So how we achieve our goals.
I think we do this in three different ways.
And the first of all is setting up really strong, solid asynchronous, tooling,
and systems. So that at any one point in time,
any team member just knows where something is at.
Second of all is I think injecting a lot of flexibility in the way that we work.
So that might mean, for example, if you are in Australia,
that you might start your, work day, a little bit earlier and wrap up earlier.
And lastly,
it's just about having a lot of patience and grace and understanding for each
other and knowing that yes, things may slip from time to time,
but that it's okay.
And that we're all in this together and that we can find a way forward.
I have a co-lead essentially, that is in America. He's actually in New York,
which is kind of a bit tricky because of the massive time difference between
Australia and New York. I think it's like 11 hours. We did stand downs.
So when the Australian teams finished up for the day,
where we all left all within our current work, and then the U S teams,
when they wake up in the morning,
they would be able to read those stand downs and know what to work on next.
This is not your typical 9-5 job. And, you know,
that's largely driven by the fact that we are not only a global business.
We are also in the middle of an integration and so that obviously is,
it's hard work. And, um, you know,
there has to be a flexibility to sometimes work funky hours.
And when the day's done,
turn the computer off and go home and spend time with your family and take care
of yourself. And when you're doing that, as you're doing that,
the other timezone is just waking up and getting the day going.
And they've got a million Slack messages going, and they're sending emails.
It's hard. It's really hard to do to keep that balance and not go, "Oh,
what are you talking about?" "Oh, what are you talking about?".
We had planned a lot more for March and April to bring more people face to
face over those months.
And that was completely derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Inaudible].
When I think about what it meant for our customers specifically in this
scenario. It wasn't just about bringing, you know,
two content catalogs together, and two platforms together,
but it was also about doing it in an environment where this was even more
important that they had access to online education.
That they could accelerate their move to the cloud.
And so I think it created an additional sense of urgency around the
mission that we were trying to accomplish for our customers,
whether those were our large enterprise businesses or our individual
subscribers, who, you know, were finding themselves in many,
many places, uh, you know, looking for a new career.
We basically had to overnight ask our, half the company,
not all of our, not all of our employees,
because about 75% of Linux Academy's team was already remote. Um,
but we had to have the whole,
other half of the company learn overnight how to work from home sometimes with
their spouse or their partner in the house or their flatmates,
sometimes even their kids. And that has been massively disruptive.
There's no getting around that.
But what I think the whole leadership team has been really proud of is
how our employees have actually managed that transition.
I think for the most part,
people have been able to make that transition from being in office,
to working from home.
Now it's not like half the team is remote while the other half is in an office
and someone's missing out on some sort of experience,
or someone's not used to it. It's like,
we're all kind of just forced to figure it out together.
So I don't think it's a bad thing.
So what's happened is it's kind of had to force everyone to learn a new
communication style, um, and be flexible, much faster. Um,
it's forced people to get to know one another in different ways and be creative.
Um, and I think it's just kind of forced everyone to be more empathetic,
faster as well, right? Because now we all are dealing with this. Uh,
we understand the struggles of having to figure out timelines and data
integrations and team structures and everything remote.
Being able to stay home and stay focused, um, has really, I think,
helped more than it's hurt.
You are very lucky because you're about to get our combined
catalog of Linux Academy and A Cloud Guru courses together.
This is what we do. This is what we live and breathe,
and we're here to be your guide.
It's not us, they. They are legacy LA, legacy ACG.
Like we are just all one team.