Monday, March 29, 2004

DVD Courses and Lifestyle Learning

A friend of mine has recently started a company that produces and markets courses for collectors of military artifacts. They've obviously done a top-notch job of the production and the marketing (PDF) looks really solid.

When he first floated this idea, I was pretty skeptical. My advice to him was to try to move beyond educational content to find business models that didn't depend on creating and selling "proprietary" information.

I still stand by that advice, one of things I love about this initiative is that it's focused on what you might call lifestyle learning. Collecting militaria (I'm trying to keep an open mind) is just one of many hobbies that are very information-rich, opening the door for learning opportunities beyond what could be gleaned from general books or other available content. If you imagine all the other hobbies the baby boomers will be taking up and pursuing as they retire in the next two decades, you start to wonder how many of them might be willing to pay for high-quality instruction related to their areas of interest.

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