In this episode, we talk with Troy Tolle, CTO and Co-founder of Sciolytix, and J Johnston, Account Manager at ProctorFree, about how to personalize the learning experience, setting your customers up for success, the future of online education, and much more.
In this episode, we talk with Troy Tolle, CTO and Co-founder of Sciolytix, and J Johnston, Account Manager at ProctorFree, about how to personalize the learning experience, setting your customers up for success, the future of online education, and much more.
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"I look at the product through these lenses: are people satisfied using the product? Are they growing with the product? Are they expanding how they're using the product over time? And are they meeting their initial goals during the onboarding and implementation process?" - J Johnston, ProctorFree
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Time Stamps
* (2:27) Intro
* (6:09) The path to founding an online learning company
* (12:39) Providing an excellent customer experience
* (17:45) The secret to your candidate’s success
* (28:06) Data’s role in the future of online learning
* (34:00) Getting to know the brains behind online education
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Sponsor
Incredible Learning Experiences is brought to you by your friends at ProctorFree, an on-demand, convenient, and cost-effective online proctoring solution for education and corporate environments. Elevate your credibility and reputation while providing convenient learning opportunities for your target audience. Learn more at proctorfree.com
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Links
Mike Murphy: [00:00:00] this is Mike Murphy, the host of incredible learning experiences. I'm joined today with Troy and Jay from cytolytic. Troy, can you go ahead and introduce yourself for the audience so they can recognize your voice?
Troy Tolle: [00:00:28] absolutely. My name is Troy Kelly. I'm the chief technology officer at silent X
Mike Murphy: [00:00:34] And Jay, can you introduce yourself as well?
J Johnston: [00:00:36] yeah, I'm Jay Johnston and I am the vice president of client success at Silex.
Mike Murphy: [00:00:41] Great. Troy, we're going to go right into our opening segment. Can you tell us about and, um, and specifically how it is related to digital chalk, because I'm familiar with digital chalk, but I want to hear about both entities and organizations.
Troy Tolle: [00:00:54] So is a company with really two products because. [00:01:00] In late 2000, 19, early 20, 20, there was two companies, digital talk and celebration that merged to form the company. Cytolytic I came from the digital chalk side. And so that's kind of how that came together, but we're, uh, we're an online learning company, the products that we have, or digital chalk, which is the LMS product and then uptick, which is a sales training and engage in enablement product.
Mike Murphy: [00:01:26] And what is your role?
Troy Tolle: [00:01:27] I'm the chief technology officer.
Mike Murphy: [00:01:29] Okay. And Jay, what is your role at Sila Lytics?
J Johnston: [00:01:33] I am the client success, the vice president of client success. I do all of the onboarding and oversee the client support team. Um, and so I helped with implementations. I worked very closely with Troy and the dev team to report back how the, how the customers are using the product.
Mike Murphy: [00:01:50] Troy, why are you in this industry? Yeah.
Troy Tolle: [00:01:52] That's a great question. So when I, when I was growing up, I loved movies and, uh, One of the things that my high school [00:02:00] guidance counselor told me as a, Hey, if you love movies, you want to create movies, go into computer science, which was probably the wrong advice in terms of What I should go into, but I loved creating content and I loved.
Kind of the creative aspect of that. I got to NC state and I started, uh, in a computer science curriculum and found out that computer science is very artistic and I loved creating in that realm. And so, you know, as my career progressed, different jobs and things, I landed in an opportunity to be able to take this creative aspect of video technology, which I was very interested in multimedia technology and learning.
And put those two things together. And so when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped and said, Hey, this is the thing that I want to create. And that was kind of the Genesis of digital chalk.
Mike Murphy: [00:02:54] What is your, why?
J Johnston: [00:02:55] My, why was I kind of stopped, pulled into this industry? I was working in a different [00:03:00] industry. I had a friend who was working with digital chalk at the time. And I needed a part-time job. And so I said, yeah, absolutely. Let's check it out. And, um, I did, I was taking inbound phone calls, just being a part-time support agent.
And I got to work with Troy and the team. And I loved the people of the company. And I was like, you know what? This is something I'm excited about. And, and I think the thing that has kept me excited about the learning industry is it a centered around growth and that's something that's really important to me.
Personal growth has always been something that's very important in my life. I'm never satisfied with staying the same over a long period of time. I always looking to challenge myself and to grow whether it's physically, mentally, emotionally, And so being a part of an industry that is built around people getting better over time is actually exciting to wake up in the morning and come to work no matter what frustrating things are happening, you're contributing to the growth of the people around you.
And it's kind of why I'd like to stay in this [00:04:00] industry.
Mike Murphy: [00:04:01] gonna go into the roadmap. Troy, can you talk about the inspiration to create digital chalk? I mean, w w no, not everyone just found something and create something. So how do you go from. NC state wanting to make movies, viewing the artistic element of computer science to starting, or co-founding a company.
Troy Tolle: [00:04:19] so it, it really started with the previous company.
that I was working with. I was. Put in charge of a product that we were creating for a online university based out of Georgia. And that university, their mission was to share the gospel all over the world through online learning. And we built that product released it, you know, gave it, gave it back to them.
We did that as a project. Well, um, the company that I was with was acquired, uh, and you know, everybody kinda grew with that company and there was a point there was kind of this inflection point where I knew that I had this opportunity to go [00:05:00] do something different and, uh, knew that I was young and. I could, I could go do this or continue to grow in the, in the current company.
And I actually went to a mentor of mine and he said, listen, this is the time for you to go. You have the capabilities. And so he was an encouragement to me to jump. And so I jumped. And so for the next year on my couch, in the living room, I was coding. What is now known as digital chalk kind of scrappy as I could.
And so that's, that's kind of where it started because I got to combine this teaching aspect, this multimedia aspect. And we were one of the very first platforms out there for training that did video based delivery in a, in a big way. You have to remember, this is 2006 really early, and, you know, YouTube was brand new really at this time.
Right. So. We're jumping into this when people still had cam quarters occurring carrying around on their shoulders, or, you [00:06:00] know, handheld things that they're recording on DVD and transferring that information online is difficult. Um, but that was the industry that I wanted to be in to be able to, to share information worldwide and to let people make money while they do that.
So that's, that's why I jumped in.
Mike Murphy: [00:06:17] Jay, can you talk to me about the reach who interacts with digital chalk and Silex where are they? Um, where are they coming from?
J Johnston: [00:06:27] One of the unique thing about our product, specifically the digital chalk product is that's a very wide net. We have different lines of business. We have an e-commerce line of business where we have experts who are selling their expertise. To the end user who are just coming in and purchasing that course individually directly on our site, we have continuing education where people are required to sign up for continuing education courses and they're purchasing.
We also have corporate clients who there's compliance, training and annual training and industry specific training. So there's a lot [00:07:00] of different types of people who use the digital chalk product. So it'd be hard for me to pick out one of those groups of people. But I think if I had to, if I had to narrow it down as much as possible.
On the e-commerce side, it's somebody looking to gain a new skill set and maybe increase their productivity on the corporate side. It's it's usually someone who is just getting started at a new company is most often new hire type training on the corporate side and trying to learn what their day to day is going to be like, or maybe go through some sort of training that's required by their employer.
Mike Murphy: [00:07:34] Okay. And Jay, this is for you, but Troy, feel free to jump in at any time. So when we think about content, are they bringing their own content or are you helping with that? Like how does it end up on the platform?
J Johnston: [00:07:45] Most of the time they have their own. We also have a library of content that we have partners with. That they can choose from so they can buy a specific number of seats into that content. And we have a few content partners, but the vast majority of the time in our implementation [00:08:00] and onboarding process, I'm teaching them how to upload and create the content that they need to share to their users.
Mike Murphy: [00:08:07] So when you've got business owners, CE training, corporate entities, um, interacting with this content, what are they looking for as well? Engagement, are they assessing the knowledge at the end of an experiences or a test that exists at the end of a course?
J Johnston: [00:08:21] most of the time. Yeah. Most of the time there's there's chapters. I would say the, if I had to like get really general, you got content quiz, content quiz, final exam is, is like the most general use of the product. And, and there's very different. Layouts of that, but for the most part, that's what it looks like.
And then a certificate being earned at the end. And so I would say most of the time the focus is on the content. In digital chalk. That's not always the case, but most of the time, you know, we have a lot of people who don't have a test and maybe don't have a certificate. People are just buying the content or accessing the content because it's interesting to them or because they need to learn it.
But then [00:09:00] specifically in the continuing education world, which makes up a huge portion of our platform, these are the things you have to learn. And we have to know that you learn them. And this is the way that we know. And that's by you interacting with this exam and earning a certificate.
Mike Murphy: [00:09:13] okay. So if we look at I'm learning, there's an assessment and that's done. We think about post tests, analytics and reporting. You've mentioned certificate. What information is available either back to the candidate, back to the stakeholder, like w w what is provided afterwards?
J Johnston: [00:09:31] In general, they've got a, they look at the grade, um, but we also have the ability for the them to pull down even specific individual exams so they can see the answers from each, each person. Um, one thing about digital shock and I don't want to get too inside baseball with the LMS world here, but we are also ex API compliant.
And Troy can talk about this if that's something that's interesting, um, is that we, we put all
Mike Murphy: [00:09:54] you throw it out. If you throw out an acronym, I want to know what it is now. Like I got to write it down. I'm going to Google it. If you
J Johnston: [00:09:59] it's just a [00:10:00] standard across the learning industry. And we, we have all of our, um, activity go into X API statements that can be put into, uh, something called a learning record store in which allows you to get more data out of the LMS and more analytics about the user experience. And so something that's really important to us is giving people more data than they could ever know what to do with.
Mike Murphy: [00:10:22] so Troy, you have a CS background. You, I think you've maybe taught at NC state for a little while. Okay. Um, so can you talk to me a little bit about what you've seen change over time? What type of standards you've seen? Like, what is LTI? Why, why do these standards matter? And like, why are they even created?
Troy Tolle: [00:10:42] When we dive into that just a little bit. That's, you know, the LMS itself is designed to delivered. Really standard training. That's that's the traditional look of LMS. So, you know, CBTS computer-based training is kind of the old, old, old term, right. LTI. But you also have [00:11:00] these, these standards that were created gated by the ADL, right?
SCORM SCORM is something that you hear across industry because it gives us a way to package content and place it on any LMS. And LMS needs to be compliant to some sort of standard and storm kind of has been that standard for a very long time. There's other standards that we support as well. Like, uh, AICC.
The newest of that is something some people know as tin can. Um, but it's the experience API or ex API is, as Jay was talking about, this is kind of forging into the future. So why, you know, why is it important because. Anybody can go off and create content in these formats and know, and be assured that they can deploy them on any multitude developments.
There's over, there's over 600 LMS is in the industry. Right? So, you know, if you were to create content, unless like video is a really easy [00:12:00] form of content that most LMS is, will. Be able to deliver now, but, you know, pre video SCORM or the standards needed to be in place so that the LMS is, could deliver to deliver anything that was being created?
And so that's kind of the Genesis of it. Why is X API so important? Well, you know, it takes us into kind of a newer model of delivery. It is a rest based. Delivery model a better security, a little bit more robust in its tracking capabilities. It's gotten more generic so we can track more things. We tracked an actor, does something, you know, certified by somebody.
So that's the general statement and that's important because now what digital chalk is able to do. Is tell you everything that's happening. And when Jay said, you know, our goal is to give you more information than you'll ever know what to do with right. We live in the world of big data. We've got the machinery, we have the artificial intelligence to [00:13:00] process mass amounts of data, and to look at the analytics on those things.
And next API is able to deliver all that data. So from digital chart, we can tell you when somebody logged in, when they logged out, when they hit. Play on a video when they paused it. When did they rewind it? They fast forward. How many seconds did they fast forward? Did they answer a test question in a certain way, in a certain time period?
So all of this stuff goes into this learning record store is, as Jay said, and that data can then be used to create a better learning. Right. So it gives us a way to measure the outcomes from the learning experiences that people are creating. So you package it as the experience API, and now you can get the data on the back end of that, to make the learning even better and connect other systems to it.
Mike Murphy: [00:13:52] So aside from a candidate receiving, uh, a better experience over time, what a candidate care about this? Or should they care if, say [00:14:00] they're in high school or college right now?
Troy Tolle: [00:14:02] right. So very interesting. How you, how you phrase that. So the, the student themselves, the learner themselves should care about their learning. They don't really care about the technology. The technology should really fade away. You know, people don't want to know kind of the code behind it. They want to know I'm a better individual.
I understand more because I went through that training, right. Who does care about that is the course creator, the person responsible for managing this person, training this person, making sure that the safety protocols are, are met, right? So we have a better work environment or we have a better performing person that's who should care about, you know, This because number one, I can create better training.
If I know, you know, what were the problems in this training or do I see something that's tripping everybody up in this training or, you know, I see better outcomes in job [00:15:00] performance. If this person goes through this type of training that's who should care now, the student cares or the learner cares from a different perspective.
Can I get through the training in an engaging way? Something gives me better learning, right. Something that's not just. You know, checkbox compliance, type learning, but something that's engaging at the end of the day, I walk away knowing that, Hey, I captured something that I didn't know before, and it made me better at my job.
Mike Murphy: [00:15:28] we're going to transition into learner success. Jay, is there anything. Thing you've discovered or implemented in the last 24 months that has measurably improve learner outcomes or your client outcomes.
J Johnston: [00:15:39] Yeah. So I predominantly work with the people who are building the training my day to day. I don't interact with the end users as much as I did when I was doing like inbound client support. Now I mostly am working with helping our clients use the platform more effectively. And so in a general sense, over [00:16:00] the past 24 months, I've been on this journey of how can I help people be successful more often, there's a lot of people who sign up for a product and it doesn't either doesn't work for them or they never get started.
And they never reached the goals that they had. Set out for during like the sales process, for example. So I try really, really hard each time that I meet with something to wipe the slate clean and, and be completely flexible to, to how they need to use the product, how they need to learn. So sometimes that means I meet with them one time with a large group of people and we make in-depth decisions in a large group.
And sometimes that means I have short meetings with one-on-one training for these people, because that's the type of training that they need. And I work really, really hard. To adjust my delivery of the, of the training and the content that I'm trying to show them how to use the platform. Individually.
Each time I meet with a client, like, like I've never done it before, because I'm trying to keep them from sputtering out in. Six weeks and saying, man, maybe this platform [00:17:00] isn't for me, or maybe I don't understand. Or maybe, maybe, maybe my content is not as good as I thought it was. Um, I do everything that I can to keep those types of things from happening in the, in the way that I've been able to maximize that, or at least get a little bit better over the last 24 months is by just taking all of my preconceived notions and getting rid of them and approaching each person like a, like an individual, like, uh, like I've never done it before.
And I, and I, I don't have hard data on how much that's helped. Um, but I, my gut tells me, I do see more people learning the product, getting comfortable with how they're going to deliver their content and essentially getting the content to their users more effectively.
Mike Murphy: [00:17:39] So when someone's interacting with you, they're a new client. We know that we've got to get them on the platform. How early can you tell whether they're going to potentially sputter and how do you tell.
J Johnston: [00:17:49] It depends on if they're willing to accomplish the action items that we set out for them. There's only so much that I can do to help them be successful. Although I try to get them. I try [00:18:00] to do everything that I possibly can for every client, no matter who they are, but every time, one of the end to call, I go through what I think based on what they're telling me, chronologically, here are some action items to help us get started.
If we can accomplish these three things over the next three weeks, I really feel like you're going to up your chances of success on the platform. When those action items are given to them, I verbally do it. I follow up in an email and I, we talk about those action items and if two weeks goes by and they haven't logged in and they haven't.
You know, done step one or step two, you can kind of tell that either there's something else, pulling them in a direction where they don't have the time in order to make this successful, or maybe they're just not as committed to what they were hoping to do as maybe they thought when they were signing up.
Um, but our team, I have a team of people that work with me as well. We try really, really hard to make it easy, to understand and simple. Here's some simple tasks for you to do. And we really believe if you do these three things, it's going to up your chances of success on the platform. And most of the time people do them.
And on the corporate side, it's like they have to do them or else [00:19:00] they're going to get fired because it's like their bosses told them to do it. So Corp it's a little easier on the corporate side, but when somebody comes in and they're like, you know, I'm an expert in this area. And I believe that people will want to buy my content because of my expertise.
They really have to believe in themselves because there's no one telling them what they have to do, that they don't have to log in and work in digital chalk and make their content every day. It's just how committed are they to do the goal. And so I try to really, I try really hard to, to partner with them.
I tried to take a team, a team mindset that there I'm a part of their team and get rid of any excuses that we possibly can.
Troy Tolle: [00:19:34] You can.
tell when somebody is very passionate about what they're getting ready to teach. And some of our, you know, most successful people on the platform are those that they dive in really, really quick and they get started quickly. And we've had some that have come in had this brilliant idea. They've.
Create all the content, put it out there That didn't work and you know what they did, they pivoted. So there's some people that are on the [00:20:00] platform that maybe started in a different place teaching online, but they knew they could do it and they pivoted, and then they're making a million dollars a year or more by teaching this new thing.
So there's a passion around creating content and that entrepreneurial journey on that side as well.
Mike Murphy: [00:20:18] That must be really. Special to see someone do that.
Troy Tolle: [00:20:21] It was amazing. You know, we started in 2006, right then 2008 hit and everything was kind of crazy economy wise. And what was so encouraging during that time is we had a platform that people ran to, to create businesses to survive. And so we were the entrepreneurial support for those businesses and we saw.
Hundreds and hundreds of businesses start and flourish on the platform during that time. And, you know, we're putting, you know, we're putting food on the table, in these households and, you know, having kids and a family myself, you know, that.
it's so [00:21:00] important to see when you are contributing to others, being successful.
That that is a very, very cool experience. And when they're excited, you get excited. It's very contagious, very contagious.
Mike Murphy: [00:21:12] So for, for, I'd like both of you to answer this and how do you and your roles, uh, measure success Troy, as a CTO? What are you most concerned about is that that's very satisfying, right? The pivot story, but how do you measure success?
Troy Tolle: [00:21:27] boy, success?
is measured in a lot of different ways. So there's product success, right? And that is, you know, how many people are. Getting the product in the hands too, and hands up. And how are they using it to affect the people at their business? Are we moving the needle? There are people, you know, renewing and coming back to the platform and relying on us and growing our contracts.
Right? So, and Jay. Jay's team is responsible and he's a rockstar at making sure people understand the product and they, they [00:22:00] grow, they grow with that product. So that's one way from the product perspective internally. Um, you know, for my team, we measure success based upon the things that we're creating are people onboarding and using, right?
When we release a new feature, How fast do people onboard onto that feature? Get used to that feature, start to utilize that feature in a big way. And, and how does it, how does it grow? How does it change the way that they do business or how does it change the way that they do training, deliver that training?
That's how we measure success there. And then, you know what I measure success on my team. Are we having fun? You know, do people show up and ask good questions and want to be involved and, you know, have fun with each other on our slack channels, on our internal chats, um, within our meetings, are we engaged enough to create great software together and have fun?
Mike Murphy: [00:22:56] Jay. How about you? Success for you in your role.
J Johnston: [00:22:59] Yeah. [00:23:00] So I've talked a lot about the success from the, the lens of implementation and onboarding so far in this call. You know, I also run our entire support team and I think that's a different metric. You know, we get right around 800 support tickets every month. Um, and the vast majority of those are administrator, we do do end user support, but we mostly work with administrators.
And so I try to get a sense of, you know, if people are coming to our support center, are they asking proactive, helpful questions helped me achieve my goals or are they asking frustration based questions? Hey, this isn't working right. Hey, this isn't doing what we thought it would do. Hey, how come we can't do this?
And my team. And I meet once a week and try to talk about that, you know, what are the, what are the red flags that we're seeing. What are the people that are asking the helpful questions, because they are going to achieve more, they're going to grow. So we try to look at the lens through, from our support center, our people, our people growing, our people feeling [00:24:00] satisfied with their experience.
Are we contributing to their satisfaction with the experience or are we just babysitting frustrated customers? And then from the onboarding implementation, I think that one's really easy. Our people from the day they sign with us, are they getting to the point to where they're delivering their content to their users?
That's the ultimate goal. They sign, they got to build the content. They got to create the logic that makes the product work for them. But essentially their success is, are the people that are looking for this content, whether it's e-commerce based purchases or whether it's corporate based compliance training are, is the content getting in the hands of those users with a very small amount of headaches.
And so I, I tried, I, you know, I tried to look at, through those two lenses. Are people satisfied using the product? Are they growing with the product? Are they expanding how they're using the product over time? And are they meeting their initial goals during the onboarding and implementation process?
Troy Tolle: [00:24:52] I think one of the things Jay, that you said there, that we've, we've repeated over and over again. And one of the things I love about being a SAS product [00:25:00] right, is we're only successful when our customer successful. Right? So even in the early days of how we even priced the product, we priced it in such a way that, you know, what.
Our success is built upon our customer success. And that, that makes us partners in this journey. And, you know, Jay does a, an amazing job of, of making sure that our, our customers know that they are valued. They are loved, and we are with them on their journey, uh, of training the people that they target. So that That's been really, really important.
Mike Murphy: [00:25:35] That's a great outlook. Can we talk about the future?
Troy Tolle: [00:25:38] Absolutely.
Mike Murphy: [00:25:39] All right. Dry. What's going to be the biggest trend in online learning over the next few years.
Troy Tolle: [00:25:44] One of the things you could look back at is data. So we talked about it a little bit with X API, the data. Is going to continue to grow. You know, we currently integrate as you know, we integrate with, with Proctor free. So we're integrating with more and more systems. And [00:26:00] so all of that data is being poured into a backend LRS.
As that grows, we're going to be able to do more analytics on that data, through artificial intelligence. So we're going to start. Being able to look at trends with certain people in positions in locations and understand how are they learning, what makes them more effective in their learning, in their jobs, in the things that they're trying to accomplish, and then to be able to suggest that training.
So what's coming and learning. It's this personalization aspect through artificial intelligence, right? So we can't look at every single combination. Every single time. Right? So we have to take a step back, look at this data that we have, which is terabytes and terabytes and terabytes of data on all of these individuals.
We have to be able to take that through the lens of AI go, okay, because you took this or because you're performing this task, we suggest this learning and it's not just based [00:27:00] upon, Hey, you took this course. So therefore you're going to take this course. It's not, you know, here's your curriculum. It is more about who you are as an individual.
How do you learn what's most effective for you? And the way that you are performing right now and suggesting good training to move you along. And so people can self-select. I see people who are going to start to integrate these integrations through, you know, 360 review systems or sales force or sales systems that looks at, you know, the opportunity pipeline and make real time decisions.
Not just on, Hey, you have to go take this compliance training, but Hey, you know, in order to close this deal and, uh, there's things that you need to work on from your management. We're going to put these things together, make some decisions and suggest learning to you, or just a short video or a conference or other things like that.
So you're going to see learning move from. Just this, uh, you know, one [00:28:00] course at a time online to looking at you holistically from a conference perspective, from a mentorship perspective, from the course perspective, all of these things are going to be put together to create the right experience for your employees.
Mike Murphy: [00:28:14] Kind of answer a little bit about, um, I was going to ask how is online learning, going to be different for the candidate in 2030? So I would love that if I was going to go to a conference, I always feel like there's too much to attend here. I'd love it. If something was curated for me, like, Hey Mike, here's your pre lunch session?
Here's your post lunch session. So is that an example potentially?
Troy Tolle: [00:28:33] Absolutely. Right. So if we can capture that, think about just the technologies that we have today, right? Capturing the video, trans transcribing that video, understanding that. The text of what's going on and the nature of what's being taught and matching that up with jobs and then being able to pull out the highlights.
Right? Give me the daily digest of what were the highlights. Right. So I just watched the, the apple event. Right? I know I didn't need to watch the whole thing. I [00:29:00] really just need to know what, what are the big things that I need to know right now? So if I can get that daily digest and then start to dive into those areas that I'm very, very interested in.
Yeah, you're going to see, you know, marketing is ahead of the game here, right? They're using all this analytics about us to, to send us the information just in time, right? Whether it's on our feeds, you're going to see that move verbiage quickly into the training space and in the learning space where people are going to get that information that they need to perform their tasks instantaneously right.
When they need it. So just in time learning.
Mike Murphy: [00:29:34] Interesting, Jay, what do you want to get your hands on? This could be technology for anything.
J Johnston: [00:29:38] Kind of to piggyback a little bit on what Troy said. I'm excited for this machine learning AI driven recommendation platform that could exist where you take a, an entrance exam on your LMS. They look at every answer to every single question and they curate a catalog of courses specifically, for your knowledge set.
I think something like that would be really powerful. We've actually [00:30:00] even had people ask it, this was possible already in onboarding calls. Like, Hey, can I just do this? Like, why can't, why doesn't this exist already? And I think it's a great, it's a great point. It's a great idea. And that's something that has really popped up over the last 15 months with the pandemic is hybrid learning.
So the majority of digital chocolate is all, is designed around asynchronous training, right? You log in, you watch a video, you take a test and you can do that at any time of day, but more often, these people that are having to accelerate their timelines from taking live training onto the online world, they want to do a hybrid of live training intermixed with their asynchronous training.
And I'm really excited about what that looks like after. Engineers from all across the industry can kind of see that there's an appetite for that, because right now, you know, there's some, there's some okay options. But I think that hybrid training between live and asynchronous is going to be something that's really, really big.
Maybe in five years, maybe not, maybe not 10 or 20, but I think over time, people are gonna want, they're gonna, they're going to want to keep the [00:31:00] face-to-face, they're gonna want to do live training, whether that's. Live on video, like we are right now or whether that's in person. And I think as hybrid training expands, I think the e-learning industry is going to have to adjust a tad bit or maybe build some new technology around what hybrid training looks like.
Mike Murphy: [00:31:17] Fantastic. We're going to go into some quick hits. Troy favorite teacher, who was it?
Troy Tolle: [00:31:22] Fair teacher. I had a lot of, I had a lot of great teachers. Uh, I think of two individuals, uh, my high school math teacher, calculus. His name was Mr. Howard. And then, uh, the first teacher that I had computer science, Carol Miller was an amazing individual. She worked at bell labs and then started teaching at NC state.
Um, and she was kind of. She shepherded me through my entire time at NC state. And then we actually ended up teaching together, uh, later. So, uh, she was an amazing individual.
Mike Murphy: [00:31:57] so you got to teach alongside your favorite teacher.
[00:32:00] Troy Tolle: [00:32:00] I did, I did. We actually got the right. We got the right, the curriculum together, which was, uh, was, was awesome.
Mike Murphy: [00:32:06] That's pretty cool. All right, Jay, what about you?
J Johnston: [00:32:08] fourth grade, Mrs. OYO. She was this little old lady and she was probably around 70. At the time. I grew up in a very poor area in Southern New Mexico. And I'm, I'm only can guess how much our teachers got paid. It probably wasn't a lot, but she made every single one of us feel like we were smart. And it was the first time in my life.
I remember thinking to myself, like, I I'm smart. Like I can do it. I can get an a and I was a problem child growing up. Uh, I had a lot of behavioral issues where I was just always causing problems and that was the first time of my life. I felt like a good kid.
Mike Murphy: [00:32:45] That's awesome. And what is the first
Troy Tolle: [00:32:46] Jerry. I would never have guessed that
Mike Murphy: [00:32:49] Yeah.
Troy Tolle: [00:32:50] ever.
Mike Murphy: [00:32:51] So Jay, what is the first thing you remember learning about?
J Johnston: [00:32:54] The first thing I remember learning about my mom taught me how to read before kindergarten. She was a stay at home [00:33:00] mom, uh, all throughout our childhood and she didn't want us to fall behind. I think she was terrified of us falling behind and, um, So she taught me how to read time on an analog clock and how to read simple sentences as a four-year-old.
And I remember being so frustrated in second grade when we were learning how to tell time on an analog clock. And I was like, how your guys' mom didn't teach you this? And I felt so superior at that moment.
Mike Murphy: [00:33:26] Troy. What about you?
Troy Tolle: [00:33:28] first thing. Let's see, you know, I kind of have to go back to my first memory and, and, you know, unfortunately, unfortunately some of the things that stick out are those things that are almost tragic. Right? So when I was three, I got lost, um, on the blue Ridge Parkway, my house backed up to the blue Ridge Parkway and I actually took off.
Looking for flowers for my mom into the woods and was lost for multiple hours, um, in the dark, uh, it went into the nighttime. What I learned was, um, the power of community, I think [00:34:00] at that point, because the entire. The tired city that I grew up, I wasn't even city, just a little town, but the entire town came together.
Um, and there was people from all sorts of, you know, occupations, not just firefighters and police officers, but, you know, All of our neighbors, the people who lived two towns away, came and searched for me and just the power of community and what people can do. And they kind of band together. Um, and that stuck with me.
It's, you know, that's an impactful time three and you?
kind of get lost and then you'd come back. But you see the, uh, the power of community coming together to accomplish something.
Mike Murphy: [00:34:41] I bet you got a huge hug when you, uh, were found.
Troy Tolle: [00:34:46] Yes. Yes, I did. I was immediately thrown into the back of an ambulance to check for snake bites and then my mom and dad did let me go for awhile.
Mike Murphy: [00:34:55] Wow. And then you still chose to live in a place like Asheville, where there's lots of woods and flowers
[00:35:00]Troy Tolle: [00:35:00] Yeah, I love it. I love it. Still hike.
Mike Murphy: [00:35:03] and Troy, what is something, uh, recently, uh, new that you've learned?
Troy Tolle: [00:35:07] Wow. Um, so recently I would say that my sons played baseball. I didn't grow up playing, you know, baseball, you know, I played very beginnings of little league, but my sons are very involved. And the cool thing is, is we have a kid on our team whose dad is the head coach for a college, for a university of Asheville.
And. Yeah, I go to practice now every day and stand on the field next to him and just soak up the game of baseball. And there are so much to it. That is so interesting to me. And it's really taught me a lot about just the game itself, the strategy, um, it's, it's something new and fun to learn and learning from an expert who, you know, Played ball growing up and played ball in college and then went into the major leagues.
And [00:36:00] now he's, he's coaching a team in college. I mean that what better teacher? Right? So that's been fun. That's been a new experience,
Mike Murphy: [00:36:07] So outside of work, how much time have you spent at baseball fields? There were just like thousands of hours.
Troy Tolle: [00:36:15] you know, it's going to be, I am very sure it's at least hundreds and hundreds of hours right now. It's almost every weekend for. You know, it's six, seven hours every day.
Mike Murphy: [00:36:28] So for, so for a new parent that who hasn't had a kid play baseball yet, what do you need to bring to the field? Like, is it a cooler, a chair? Like what are the go to is when you're going to a baseball field?
Troy Tolle: [00:36:38] Make sure you have a cooler, make sure that you have some sort of shade. So, uh, you know, we went out and bought a tent because man, it is blistering out there. Uh, make sure you have your sunflower seeds, something to munch on.
Mike Murphy: [00:36:52] I love
Troy Tolle: [00:36:53] And, uh, plenty of water and sunscreen.
Mike Murphy: [00:36:55] what about you? Have you learned anything recently?
J Johnston: [00:36:58] I'm embarrassed to share [00:37:00] this. Um,
Mike Murphy: [00:37:01] Definitely share it.
J Johnston: [00:37:03] A couple of, couple of guys in our engineering team are really into crypto and I have kind of stayed away from it all of this time. And I asked them to teach me about how to set up your wallets and how to do staking, your coins and all those kinds of stuff. And I still don't fully understand that, like I'm not invested enough in it to where if it crashed tomorrow, I'd be sad about how much money I've lost or anything.
But it's, it's wild that I even after all of this. Trying to learn about it from podcasts and my friends, I still felt like I had no 0.1% of what even it is. I can't quite get my head around it, but it's very, very interesting. And I'm excited about the future, the future of this weird de-centralized financial technology, but I just, I just have no idea.
It's it's so interesting and confusing.
Mike Murphy: [00:37:52] Well, I'm even more of a novice and definitely on the outside, uh, fascinated by it. And it just seems like there's a lot of information out there about it. Jay's [00:38:00] anything, uh, bizarre or silly happened to you in your current role that you. Do you want to share?
J Johnston: [00:38:05] I think the most bizarre part of my story is how I ended up. In this role, I, I had no aspirations to do what I do. Like as far as where I am in the company, I was just to do answering the phone, having a great time, you know, like helping people use digital chalk. And I get, I get this call from one of our sales reps one day.
And he was like, Hey man, um, we've got this big client, like big client, like would be our biggest client and we need somebody to convince them that they should sign with us. So I'm going to have you come on this call.
Mike Murphy: [00:38:32] no pressure.
J Johnston: [00:38:33] And I was like, okay, like somebody says, you're really good at our product. So I feel comfortable.
And so I had to go and like, I, you know, I wasn't, I don't, I didn't know what to do. I was like, sure. I'll show them how to use the product. And I just did like some generic demo and answer some questions, but I, I built this rapport with this guy on this call and then I became like their point person for this, this, this huge client.
And it was an accident. And I, to this day, I still wonder like, There's like 15 people that [00:39:00] they could have asked to do that meeting instead of me. But for some reason, the guy Sean was just called me up and he's like, Hey, I need, like, I need you in 15 minutes. And I feel a certain level of gratefulness for picking up the slack call when he called me that day or the Skype call, I guess at the time.
But sometimes I'm just looking back, like, what did I get myself into? Um, but as far as bizarre stories, there's always, you know, in a way in the world of customer service, there's always small little oddities that happen, but nothing more bizarre than how I just stumbled into stumbled into my career.
Mike Murphy: [00:39:31] I love it.
Troy Tolle: [00:39:33] bizarre. Um, so. I did a talk at DevLearn in 2010, November, 2010. And it was on cloud computing. And kind of, you know, where was actually kind of goes back to one of the questions you asked me, where was learning, going to be in 10 years. Right. So, you know, I talked about cloud computing at that, at that conference and came home.
And about a week later, a call comes in [00:40:00] and, you know, to our office assistant and she calls me, she says, Hey, There's somebody on the phone from the ministry of information in Egypt for you. And I was like, what? And, uh, so I took the phone call and somebody from the ministry had been to the conference and was asking me to come to Cairo and speak to the minister of information about cloud computing.
And, uh, so two weeks later I was on a plane and doing a talk for. The government in Egypt, which was very bizarre, uh, and it.
was a great time and made some, some good connections and friends up, uh, in the middle east. And that was, that was bizarre.
Mike Murphy: [00:40:40] that's fascinating. Did you get to do any sightseeing when you were there?
Troy Tolle: [00:40:43] I did, I Did I got to,
Mike Murphy: [00:40:45] Did you take one of those pictures where like you put your finger, like at the top of the pyramid?
Troy Tolle: [00:40:50] I took some pictures on camels, so, uh, does that count.
Mike Murphy: [00:40:54] Yeah, absolutely. I love that.
Troy Tolle: [00:40:55] Yeah, it was right beside the pyramids. Actually they put me in a hotel, right. [00:41:00] Right beside the pyramids. And when we flew in, it was an insane storm. And so you couldn't see anything. And I got to the hotel and I still couldn't see anything. And I went to dinner that night and I'm sitting at the table by a bunch of these windows in the sand storm just stopped.
And I looked up and there were the great pyramids right in front of me. And it was something I'll never forget sitting there and just looking out and seeing that. That was amazing.
Mike Murphy: [00:41:32] I love it. Where can people find more information on silo, Lytics, or digital truck?
TroyTolle: [00:41:37] Siloed x.com.
Mike Murphy: [00:41:38] Can you spell that?
Troy Tolle: [00:41:39] Yeah. Yes. C I O L Y T I x.com.
Mike Murphy: [00:41:45] This has been Mike Murphy with a credible learning experiences podcast, and I've been joined today by Troy and Jay. Thank you gentlemen.
TroyTroyjou Tolle: [00:41:51] Thank you.
J Johnston: [00:41:52] a pleasure. [00:42:00]