Class on Demand Report Card

News, views, and information from COD | November 2008

It's in the mail We’re excited to tell all of our customers that have pre-ordered Class on Demand’s Complete Training for Adobe Creative Suite 4 and Designers Guide to Illustrator they’re in the mail. You should be receiving your copy very shortly. Thank you to those who placed on line pre-orders and those who placed advanced orders at DVExpo last week (see next news story). We appreciate your patience and look forward to your feedback on the training. Giving thanks for DV Expo We’d like to thank everyone who stopped by our booth at DV Expo in Los Angeles last week. It was great to meet so many new and existing customers. We’re happy to report that very little inventory made the cross-country drive back to Chicago. For those of you who made it to the show and are now kicking yourself for not picking up that extra title when they had the chance at 50% off, we've created a promo code on our site, DV50, to extend that great deal through the end of November. As it’s Thanksgiving and we’re driving a 1992 Jetta Wagon not a Range Rover sport we’ll extend this offer to any purchase on the site for the remainder of the month. Happy Thanksgiving from of all of us at Class on Demand to you and your family. Class on Demand in Español We’re excited to announce that Class on Demand has signed a partnership agreement with Alerbrije Music and Video productions who produce the highly popular social scene program “Illinois Latino” which airs on local Hispanic channels in the Midwest and is widely distributed online. Alerbrije will produce Class on Demand’s award-winning training in Spanish. The founders and principals, J. Luis Flores and Carlos Perez, will be the on camera talent for the training which will be conducted using each program’s Spanish user interface. The first titles will be based on our highest volume titles like Pinnacle Studio others will follow. For our Spanish speaking customers, please let us know which titles you’d like to see produced in the future. DVPA and Class on Demand team up We’re pleased to announce a partnership with our friends at the Digital Video Professionals Association. Class on Demand teamed up with DVPA at DVExpo last week and three lucky audience members at the session hosted by DVPA’s president & director of operations, Benjamin Weeks, won a free copy of Class on Demand’s "Complete Training for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium", well at least their copy is in the mail (see story above). The lucky winners were; Philip Patton, Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, Richard Shaw – Catalyst Computer Services, Los Angeles, CA. and Benny Loguerta, Long Beach CA. We’ve also extended a special discount for DVPA members available through their site at www.dvpa.com

Paul Holtz Fires Back

What goes up must come down
Call me mad, many do, but for last week’s DV Expo in Los Angeles I decided to rent a SUV and drive from Chicago. I know driving an SUV will have you ‘greenies’ shaking your head but I’m doing my part to keep the economy going. Oh that’s right, oil companies seem to be recession-proof. Indeed, Exxon Mobil recently reported yet another record financial result earning a staggering $14.3B for the quarter ending September, up 26% from the same period a year ago.

I find driving relaxing. We live in a beautiful country and you don’t get to enjoy it or meet interesting people in their home towns by taking a plane. Driving gives me time to think about life, business, family and friends, and everyday things. My SUV, a Ford Explorer, required me to stop every few hundred miles and line the pockets of the oil executives some more and this got me to thinking.

What goes up must come down, right? This doesn’t seem to apply to all those surcharges that get tacked on by any company who relies on gas to deliver their service. It seems everyone has jumped on the gas surcharge bandwagon; airlines, taxis, UPS, Carnival Cruise Lines, even the local Chinese restaurant delivery guy! Am I missing out here? Should Class on Demand start passing on the gas surcharge for our deliveries to our customers? No way! To me this is just part of doing business and is factored into your margins. Surely, when customers are being gouged at the pump the last thing they want from the people they do business with is to get bent over and spanked for their margin reduction.

Let’s humor the gas surcharge for a moment, what’s amazing to me is how these get added on so quickly but are almost never reduced or eliminated. For instance UPS charges 10.25% of the shipping cost as a gas surcharge on ground shipments and a whopping 34.5% on air and international shipments. This surcharge was introduced way back in 2000 and has steadily climbed over the years with the increase in gas prices. However, oil just dipped below $50/barrel, the lowest it’s been for almost 10 years from a peak of over $147/barrel in July this year. Why is it taking all these companies charging gas surcharges so long to react to this reduction and reduce or eliminate their unfair charges? A UPS spokeswoman in an interview with NPR recently blamed the latency on internal IT systems (I’m paraphrasing a gobbledygook answer). Are they really trying to tell us in the era of connected computing and instantaneous trades that they can’t adjust this surcharge on a daily basis? I think the accountants are rubbing their hands together over the increased profits gained at a consumer’s expense by continuing to charge gas surcharges when they themselves are benefiting from falling gas prices. I tell you, it’s pondering this type of consumer inequity that makes the journey pass so quickly.

By the way, where did I find the cheapest gas on my trip? Just outside Oklahoma City, $1.77/gallon - beat that!

More Training by Tim Kolb Basic Training for Adobe® CS4 Production PremiumExperience the all-new Adobe® CS4 Production Premium through task-focused lessons that explore the seven major applications and the technologies that improve your Adobe® workflow Basic Training for Adobe® CS3 Production PremiumExplore the Adobe® CS3 Production Premium applications through a series of "real-world" examples that touch on the major software modules Basic Training for Adobe® CS2 Production StudioThese lessons will give you the solid foundation needed to quickly get started with the Creative Suite 2 Production Studio