In today’s workforce challenges are never ending. As technology advances, teams work from various locations, and methods and strategies improve there is never a lack for knowledge, skills, leadership, and values. One of the best ways to enhance these skills is through training and development programs. These programs provide individuals with the opportunity to expand their knowledge, brush up on skills, and explore new horizons.
We meet up with Chip Reaves of Bigger Brains as he shares the importance of training and the new programs he and his team are developing.
Video Transcriptions
Harry Brelsford
Hey nation nation back with Chip Reaves a Bigger Brains. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. All right. Hey, I wanted to tell you, your Bigger Brains is now part of what I like to call the conversation. I was just in a phone call earlier earlier today. And the lady rattled off two or three training organizations, and you were one of them. And that's where you want to be. Right? That's the you want to be part of the conversation, you don't want to be absent from the conversation.
Chip Reaves
A lot of it's a good part of the conversation and not, you know, let me pay what these guys did to me. No, it's good. And it kind of makes sense. I mean, it's, you know, back in the hardware days, and not been in the channel 30 something years at this point. But we used to always have that joke about the short between the keyboard and the chair, right, that it was a user error, and you know, whatever. So it's inevitable that at some point, the channel gets around to trying to fix that short between the keyboard and the chair, right, and trying to help the user be more productive, be more efficient, be a better computer user. And that's what bigger brains is all about.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about the year ahead. What's, what's news? What, what's going on in your courseware? Development? What's going on in the industry?
Chip Reaves
Well, I mean, the industry is, you know, crazy, like everything else. For us. We're part of the learning and development industry. And of course, all of that is kind of really focused on online training, which puts us in a good position, we're trying to deliver what our customers are asking for, really, a lot of what we just delivered in q4 is big updates to our Microsoft 365 library, that Microsoft, to their credit, has put a lot of new features and a lot of new functionality and things like teams, SharePoint with like Viva connections, and Viva learning. And so we're constantly having to update our courses to keep track of those. Now that we've got those pretty well, up to date, we've got another update coming through for office 2010. And then we're working on new stuff for new professionals in the workplace
Harry Brelsford
in Wait a minute. It's 2022.
Chip Reaves
But in the same way that a lot of us still use Office 2019. There is also an office 2021. That was released in I think it was October, so it's okay, got it. Okay. I'm very reversion. We're still we're still working on that.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. Yeah. A lot of new features and functionality now. Are you doing courseware development outside the Microsoft product stack?
Chip Reaves
Yeah, we are. That's, that's a big focus for us in q2. And q3 is, I mean, we do a little bit with like, Google and Adobe and Intuit. But we're also doing a lot of business skills development. So we're doing a new line of new professional training for young people just entering the business workforce, especially we see a lot of people that are maybe leaving retail and restaurant jobs, we're moving into a corporate job, and they may not have training on you know, what's appropriate, put in an email, when do you use an email? When do you use Microsoft Teams? And is it safe to use exclamation points and emojis, which is actually a big topic of debate amongst my staff? Right now, you know, these kinds of questions. So we're working on a series of courses to help new people enter more of a business professional corporate workspace for the first time.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. And all things being equal. I know, these are crazy times. But if, if and when industry events return at a fairly robust pace, is that part of your business model? Would we see bigger brains at ConnectWise or adatto? Con? Or do you do events?
Chip Reaves
We do? As you know, Nancy Williams is our channel manager and Nancy loves to do events, we tend to do a lot more smaller events. I know that we're lined up to do a couple of ASCII events this year. The it build or build it, event, it compass, that there's a couple of those events that were lined up for. We've looked at ConnectWise we've looked at it nation, we've looked at data con. Those are, you know, certainly the biggest events also makes it er sensitive events. So whether or not we do those, I don't know, but you'll definitely see us at probably at least five if not 15 of the smaller events this
Harry Brelsford
year. Alrighty. Well, hey, we'll check in next quarter, and hopefully those events will be occurring.
Chip Reaves
I hope it actually happens.
Harry Brelsford
Alright, thanks, Chip. Thanks very