SUMMARY
Without any formal or written instruction, I learned Amazon's CMS and became a Subject Matter Expert (SME). With that knowledge, I authored a custom organizational training program for Quidsi, Inc.
ISSUE
In 2014, Quidsi Inc. decided to migrate to the Amazon development stack. This allowed Quidsi to leverage internal Amazon tools. The most helpful of these tools would be the internally built CMS known as Symphony. Quidsi would receive the newest version of Symphony (version 2).
A new, modular CMS was great, but there was no formal training or instruction available to any department in Quidsi that would be managing content for the sites. It was completely new territory for everyone to include developers.
SOLUTION
By way of having to design components for Symphony, I jumped directly into the fray and learned by trial and error. A project for Landing Pages forced me to learn what was possible (and what wasn't) in order to design the right tools for various Strategy & Merchandising teams.
Through this period of learning, I emerged as a SME and go-to point of contact for Symphony at Quidsi. Seeing the need for others in the org to access my knowledge, I volunteered to author and present training courses. These courses covered concepts of Symphony as well as functional use.
PLATFORMS
Live Instruction
Video
Amazon Wiki
ROLES
Subject Matter Expert
Course Author
Presenter/Instructor
TOOLS
QuickTime
iMovie
Powerpoint
Amazon Wiki
KNet Online Course
TRAINING SCREENS
I created several presentation decks to provide live instruction to various teams across the Quidsi organization.
TRAINING COURSE VIDEO
This is the 1st of 6 video training courses. I authored the course and recorded videos in order to provide on-demand online training via the KNet online training platform.
CONCLUSION
As a Subject Matter Expert (SME), I was proud to provide the knowledge I gained to the rest of my company. I literally got thrown into Symphony and was forced to learn it in order to design for it. Through that learning, I gained a perspective into how we could maximize Symphony's powerful tools. It was this abstract thought that inspired me to create the training course.
I provided the first course, Symphony Fundamentals, as a basic introduction to Symphony in the Summer of 2016. In total, I reached over 260+ corporate employees. The second course, Symphony Applications, was set to be an intermediate course for seasoned Symphony users. The final course, Symphony Advanced, would have been like a masters class in how to use the system.
PROJECT