Viddler

We’ve mentioned Rails for Zombies from our blog before but now we’re privileged to be able to bring you an interview with Gregg Pollack from EnvyLabs (and the guy in the instructional videos) to tell us about how Viddler has helped Rails For Zombies‘ success as well as about EnvyLabs’ new venture; Code School.

Gregg, we at Viddler think Rails for Zombies is a fantastic resource for developers moving to Rails. How successful has Rails for Zombies been from your point of view?

Over 5,600 people have completed the entire Rails for Zombies course, over 25,000 people have signed up, and over a quarter of a million people visited the website.  We have been blown away by the response to the website, and it feels great to know that we’re giving lots of developers their first taste of Rails.

What inspired EnvyLabs to couple the video content with the programming tutorials?

1. We had first hand experience doing conference tutorials where people had to show up with applications installed. No matter how simple the configuration was to get a library / application installed, people are going to have problems. Inevitably you’ll end up doing a lot of troubleshooting, trying to get crap installed on someone’s computer. We wanted to have the same sort of interactive tutorials, but do away with the configuration issues by allowing users to code in the browser.

2. We realized that learning by reading a book or watching a screencast isn’t as powerful as learning by doing. You actually learn something if you’re forced to solve problems.

Rails for Zombies is very well produced. What made EnvyLabs put so much of an investment out there, and then offer it all for free?

Thanks! It helps that we have a killer video delivery service like Viddler built into it. *warm fuzzies*

About 10 months ago we put out the Rails 3 Screencasts (also powered by Viddler) and I quickly realized that the videos (although they were basic) were targeted towards existing Rails developers. I took a look around and realized there needed to be more (up-to-date) introductory Rails content, so it made sense that the next project needed to be a beginner website.

Regarding the free part: Some people like writing open source software, I like giving back by creating educational content. When you put out content for free it has the opportunity to benefit so many more people. If we were charging for zombies we’d have maybe 10% of the user base we do today.

Rails for Zombies uses some key Viddler features, such as controlling the video player with JavaScript. How have these features helped with the success of Rails for Zombies?

Viddler is the perfect platform to host our videos, allowing for HD streaming and downloading of content. Having the ability to control the player with javascript makes it dirt simple for users to skip around to watch a certain topic again if they didn’t understand it the first time. That’s one of the awesome things about video education. If you don’t get something the teacher says the first time, you can easily skip back to the beginning of the topic and watch it again.

We at Viddler would like to thank you for putting this resource together. Being a Rails shop ourselves we’ve all referenced the labs to up our Rails game. Thanks Gregg.

That’s great to hear, and I’m happy to say that we’re on the cusp of releasing a new course which follows the same Rails for Zombies format. The course is called “Rails Best Practices”, and it’s targeted towards the Intermediate Rails developer who wants to polish his/her skills. So, if you dig Rails for Zombies and you’ve created at least one Rails app on your own, you’ll really dig Rails Best Practices. Rails best practices sports a brand new interface, point system, hint system, and an all new set of screencasts and in browser challenges.

It’ll be running on a new system called Code School, which will act as a store front (like the app store) for purchasing educational content. We also plan on also releasing a jQuery and HTML5/CSS3 course over the next month or two.

The courses are not going to be free, but they’ll definitely be a lot of fun.

When they’re up, you’ll find them over at CodeSchool.com. If they’re not up yet, you’ll find a form to be notified when they gets released.

Thanks to Gregg and the entire EnvyLabs team for making Viddler their preferred video service for both Rails for Zombies and Code School. We at Viddler wish them the best in their new venture!