EP-101: Holly Owens - Day in the Life of an Instructional Designer at Amazon

Holly is back on the show! On today's episode, she talks about her journey from being a teacher to instructor to instructional designer at Amazon. We also take a deep dive into what a typical day looks like for her. If you have been thinking about wanting to work at an organization such as Amazon, this episode is for you.

👉 Takeaways:

1. Transitioning from teaching to corporate instructional design can be challenging but also rewarding

2. Corporate instructional design offers more freedom and innovation compared to higher education

3. Project management and upskilling are important aspects of the job

4. Creating simulations can be time-consuming but highly effective in training employees

5. The goal is to make employees feel confident in their skills and improve their time to proficiency Incorporating fun and real-world aspects, such as simulations and gamification, can enhance instructional design.

6. Building strong relationships and fostering collaboration within a team is crucial for effective instructional design.

7. Personalized and adaptive learning should be prioritized in corporate settings to meet the diverse needs of learners.

8. Emerging technologies like AI and VR have the potential to revolutionize training and development.

9. Perseverance, drowning out negativity, and staying true to oneself are key to success in the field of instructional design.

👉 Mentioned Links:

• Holly's LinkedIn

• EdUp EdTech Podcast

👉 Recommendations:

• 🎓Take your instructional design skills to the next level

• 📚So, you want to become an instructional designer?

• 📙 My Book

• 📗The Do It Messy Approach: A Step-by-Step Guide for Instructional Designers and Online Learning Developers (IDOLs)

• 🎤 My interview platform recommendation (Riverside)

• ✍ Backwards Design Course

• 👥 Join our Group

👉 Connect with me:

• 👨‍💼 LinkedIn

• 🐦 Twitter

• 👨‍💻 Blog

🙌 Support the Channel!

• Check out IDOL Courses Academy

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Transcript:

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:02:21

Luke

Holly, welcome back to the podcast. How are you?

00:00:03:04 - 00:00:07:07

Holly

I'm good, Luke. It's good to be back here with you.

00:00:07:12 - 00:00:21:11

Luke

You belong here. I mean, at this point in time, you've you've been on this show a number of times. I've been on your wonderful podcast a bunch of times as well, and I think it is fifth. I know we were trying for a fifth or six times. It's around there.

00:00:21:22 - 00:00:26:00

Holly

Yeah, I'm sure you're right. You probably do map better than I do.

00:00:26:11 - 00:00:30:00

Luke

I don't know. I think I'm remembering it because, like, five is my favorite number. So is.

00:00:30:00 - 00:00:31:13

Luke

This. Oh, it's gotta be five.

00:00:32:13 - 00:00:51:16

Luke

Yeah. Good. Try to think about it like that. But thank you so much though for coming back on to the show another time around. And today I'd love to kind of just like dove in more into your story of things and of course be able to talk more about your career pathway. A day in the life of an instructional designer at Amazon.

00:00:51:16 - 00:01:13:10

Luke

And of course, to hear about all the awesome things that you've been up to over the last couple of months since I've last talked to you, I was going to say it's it's been a while besides just on LinkedIn messages here and there. Right. But for those who may not know who you are and they haven't listened to your fabulous podcast episodes before, can you introduce yourself and tell us more about who you are and what is that you do?

00:01:14:00 - 00:01:36:00

Holly

Absolutely. So. Hi everyone. I'm happy to be back on Luke's podcast. My name is Holly Owens and I am currently an instructional designer at Amazon Pharmacy, so I've been doing that coming up on two years this summer, which has flown by and I've done a lot of different roles throughout my career and I've mostly spent time in higher education.

00:01:36:00 - 00:01:55:19

Holly

I was a teacher. We'll get into all that, hosted a podcast, do some other side hustle type things. But that's mostly what I do. I'm like, Luke, I, Jane, Jack of all trades and you know, that one, this and that. But truly, instructional design is my passion and I also teach as well. So Luke and I are like instructional design twins.

00:01:55:19 - 00:01:59:17

Holly

I think I've said that before. We like kind of do the same stuff, just a different place.

00:01:59:17 - 00:02:02:21

Luke

This is just going to say this sounds very similar.

00:02:02:21 - 00:02:03:09

Luke

To.

00:02:03:18 - 00:02:16:11

Luke

The story, but I know as well what is and I didn't prepare you for this. I'm going to ask anyway, what is your best tip for time management with juggling all of your projects?

00:02:16:22 - 00:02:43:21

Holly

I use Pomodoro, so I'm technique I. I haven't found anything else that works quite like that. Pomodoro and listening to music work for me, you know, you have your, your YouTubes, which I've used before in those working sessions. I feel like I have undiagnosed ADHD as an adult. Like you should have been diagnosed a long time ago because my mind is just like, I want to do this and I want to do that, but I have to finish something first.

00:02:43:21 - 00:03:04:01

Holly

I have to tell myself to finish something so that pomodoro I'm like, Oh, wow, 25 minutes went by and I got all of that done. Like, I got that whole task done. I focus on one thing that is the one thing that works for me and I highly, highly recommend it. And it's you can go on the tomato timer or, you know, do 25 minutes, whatever, go to listen to Luke's working sessions.

00:03:04:01 - 00:03:06:20

Holly

And it really does work, especially if you have trouble concentrating.

00:03:06:20 - 00:03:36:16

Luke

And yeah, if you want to see some super old videos of me with like that gigantic beard, then you can pop up those videos I have been listening to in the background. And I said, Shay, that there is a YouTube channel that's called like Sean's study that I've just been like listening to everything. I have no idea who this person is, but they post a YouTube video daily and like there's travel all around the world, so it makes you feel like you're working in these different types of places, whether it's in Japan or China or England or anywhere else.

00:03:36:17 - 00:03:38:20

Luke

It was just like, this is kind of like, That's interesting.

00:03:38:20 - 00:03:39:14

Holly

That's cool.

00:03:39:14 - 00:04:00:02

Luke

Kind of vibe. But the thing that I found now that I've been doing, it's really been helping me to stay on track with all of these things, which is so simple and dumb, but it is so effective, is that I keep buying whiteboards and making to do lists with them. So there's a new whiteboard over there. There's one down below over here, and they work so well for me.

00:04:00:08 - 00:04:04:00

Luke

I don't know why it's so simple, but that that's not my thing.

00:04:04:04 - 00:04:20:10

Holly

You're like, I'm not going to do this. It's like, I can do this. I'm an adult, you know, I can figure this out. But really, you need something. We all need something. We have so much going on, especially in some of these longer projects. So you feel like something that's going to take forever. Like I get super overwhelmed by the forever projects.

00:04:20:17 - 00:04:22:07

Holly

Like I feel like I'm never going to finish.

00:04:22:15 - 00:04:45:15

Luke

Yeah, especially like the fun ones that also get, like, delayed because something happens and all of a sudden you're like, Oh, that's four more weeks or even six more weeks. And you're like, How am I going to wrangle that? Yeah, it's it's always a good time. But let's talk more about your story, Holly, because I know that you are a transition teacher, you're a success story who now works at Amazon, which is super cool, and also professor and all these other different things.

00:04:45:22 - 00:04:58:11

Luke

But I actually don't know as much about like your teacher journey. Like I know you want classes you've taught or what grade. Like I have no idea about that background story. Enlighten us. What exactly was your teaching journey?

00:04:59:06 - 00:05:24:23

Holly

So when I went to college, I was going to be a biology major and I was going to teach science that was my initial, but I was going to do and the guy I was dating at the time, we I was in chemistry. And you have to take organic chemistry, which is super difficult. I went to UBC, which is outside of Baltimore, and he's like, You might want to consider changing your major.

00:05:24:23 - 00:05:47:19

Holly

So because we were having a conversation about campus, I just it just wasn't clicking for me. The chemistry, the science. I did really well in all the biology courses. So I shifted my major from biology to American studies to like social studies. And I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher since eighth grade. Like I shadow one of my mom's friends and in her middle school classroom when I was in eighth grade, they had like a job shadowing day.

00:05:48:09 - 00:06:07:00

Holly

And then I was like, you know, this is something I really want to do. People label me as a slow learner or a quote unquote slow learner. They wanted to put me in special classes, and it it wasn't really any of that at all. It was kind of like maybe a learning disability or nerd diversions like things that we talk about nowadays that weren't really prevalent then.

00:06:08:18 - 00:06:30:06

Holly

So I decided I was going to be a teacher and I was going help other students like me. So I went into social studies or American studies, got my degree, got my certification in Maryland, and then I landed a job outside of my. Nobody's going to know where this is outside of D.C. It's it's called southern Maryland at a high school.

00:06:30:20 - 00:06:36:07

Holly

It's about 40 miles south of of D.C. And I taught high school government.

00:06:37:13 - 00:06:38:17

Luke

It never does that.

00:06:39:11 - 00:06:39:20

Speaker 3

Yeah.

00:06:40:01 - 00:06:59:09

Holly

So I, I am I know government. I taught that for four years and eventually, you know, so was incoming freshman because the state of Maryland has a state test that they have to pass to graduate. And then eventually I got some of the, you know, the classes where people had failed the test. So I taught some of those.

00:06:59:15 - 00:07:15:11

Holly

They're like, you're so good with these these types, you know, quote unquote. Again, these types of students who are struggling and eventually I help like seniors, you know, get their selves on track. That had passed yet. But yeah, I taught government for four years. It was called listen, local, state and national government.

00:07:16:04 - 00:07:17:22

Luke

I would have never guessed that ever.

00:07:19:00 - 00:07:21:04

Speaker 3

Like politics, I don't.

00:07:21:08 - 00:07:22:19

Luke

I've never talked about this. I'm like.

00:07:24:02 - 00:07:25:20

Speaker 3

I am not. Okay, that's.

00:07:25:20 - 00:07:46:13

Holly

Not a conversation at the dinner table. That's not something like I really get into. I would tell we saw the students, I would say so this was right around the time is like 2007. So it was post like the Gore-Bush thing, you know, definitely not what we're experiencing now. I would tell this is how the government was set up by the founders to be run.

00:07:46:13 - 00:08:06:22

Holly

What we're talking about, this is how it's supposed to work. And then they could get the kind of the contrast and they're listening to the news and a president signing an executive order and they're like, wait a minute, what about checks and balances? Like, doesn't that have to go through Congress? So we would kind of get those. So it's really fun to kind of relate those, those different things that were happening.

00:08:07:23 - 00:08:13:03

Holly

But yeah, I know, it's so weird. I was the first year I was literally learning right along with the students.

00:08:14:05 - 00:08:35:04

Luke

I, I believe it. I mean, yeah, I totally believe it. Well, fun fact I wanted to be a paleontologist and then I wanted to be a police officer. Those were the, the two very different fields of. And now somehow I'm an academic and I'm like, I don't know, it's it's a weird world that that we live in for these.

00:08:35:14 - 00:08:36:11

Luke

Different types of.

00:08:36:20 - 00:08:57:01

Luke

Journeys. So you started off with this and now all of a sudden here you are, you're teaching everything from the government, which I still can't get over. But then from there you were taking your teaching skills and abilities and obviously you have moved over and shifted over into instructional design. And I believe please correct me if I'm wrong here.

00:08:57:09 - 00:09:10:10

Luke

This was before like the the transition in teacher movement. You've been doing this way before all these things happened. So what was it like back then, trying to transition as a teacher into it?

00:09:10:10 - 00:09:30:07

Holly

It was it's difficult because people don't really understand like the transferable skills that teachers have. And I think that thinking about like what I wanted to do next, I was going to be a teacher forever. And then like I kind of felt teaching to be super regulated. And that's not that doesn't let me tap into my creativity. So that's why I transitioned out.

00:09:30:11 - 00:09:55:15

Holly

Yes, I was doing it before all the cool kids who are doing it now. And I actually landed a role government contracting as an e-learning developer with with TRICARE, which is the military health care system. So I did that for about seven months post teaching it was it was difficult to find something that people don't know what instructional designers are learning developers instructional technologies.

00:09:55:21 - 00:10:15:14

Holly

I got my master's in instructional technology and I got about two years. I was almost done by the time I was transitioning out of teaching, so I landed that role and the supervisor had at that time took me. He used to take us for a one on one walks. This was in Northern Virginia because I live in southern Maryland.

00:10:16:01 - 00:10:33:12

Holly

And one of the things he said to me and I'll never forget it, he's like, talent recognizes talent. I'm like, I'm like 20 something years old. I'm like, what the what does that mean? He's like, Holly, think about it. Talent recognizes it. He said, there's this job at Northern Virginia Community College. You need to go apply for it.

00:10:34:03 - 00:10:57:23

Holly

I went in, applied for it. I interviewed 15 minutes later, the my manager called me and said, we want to hire you. So that's how like I did a brief stint contracting and then I went right into higher education and at that time it wasn't really instructional designers as instructional support specialist. So supporting all the edtech when I was in teaching, I was EdTech person.

00:10:57:23 - 00:11:06:02

Holly

Like I did a great with the state of Maryland. I had clickers and Smartboards in my classroom, clickers that don't even exist anymore. So I don't know if you remember those.

00:11:06:12 - 00:11:08:08

Luke

I do. I do. Yes.

00:11:08:08 - 00:11:25:22

Holly

So I was training people on how to do that at my school and at the Board of Education. And then like everything just I was like, I love this stuff. I want to do more training and I want to do more like where I'm supporting others in their own classroom, kind of be on the back end of that and sort of dealing with all this knots that was with some of the students and some of the regulations.

00:11:25:22 - 00:11:31:01

Holly

So so it was it was definitely challenging to transition. There's not a lot.

00:11:31:20 - 00:11:51:01

Luke

Know and that's something that I don't think people are aware of is how few instructional design jobs that there were just years ago. And by years ago you can take literally any time frame before the pandemic. But yeah, I mean, I've been doing this for about a decade and same thing trying to be able to apply around was just like it wasn't a thing.

00:11:51:01 - 00:11:52:06

Luke

So you either found that.

00:11:52:08 - 00:11:53:18

Holly

Like a dime a dozen, you know?

00:11:53:18 - 00:12:06:20

Luke

Yeah, it just they didn't exist. And the ones that did exist, you were also you weren't too sure about what exactly you were getting into because it kind of was like unclear around some things. What did you say to make someone want to be able to offer you a job in 15 minutes? That's what I want to know.

00:12:07:06 - 00:12:08:13

Luke

What a magical thing to do.

00:12:10:00 - 00:12:19:19

Holly

I don't remember exactly what I said, but I know that one of the things I did talk about and let's put this into perspective. This is 2011. 2000.

00:12:19:19 - 00:12:20:00

Speaker 3

Sure.

00:12:20:06 - 00:12:38:01

Holly

Yes. Okay. So people are like this is really pre-pandemic life before we even know knew COVID was coming. I talked about the trainings that I did at the Board of Education and what I learned from the instructional technologists that I had worked with at the Board of Education. And what she she taught me on how to train people.

00:12:38:10 - 00:13:09:05

Holly

So I definitely talked about that. And I think one of the things I did is I went through about 5 minutes of that training and they were just that's one of my presentation skills and my, you know, when we we love the talk and you look and help, other people came to life. And I think that's what landed me the role is how I dealt with other people and how I was able to train, take very difficult concepts when it came to edtech and simplified down to it's like very, you know, basic concepts.

00:13:09:18 - 00:13:25:16

Luke

That make sense. That definitely makes a lot more sense if you have that type of a demonstration, I'm sure. I mean, that's that's how I landed my first instructional design job. Speaking of whiteboards, was that in like one of the interviews that I went up to the whiteboard and they asked me a certain type of a concept and I was just like, Oh, let me did you to you.

00:13:25:16 - 00:13:36:00

Luke

And I started like mapping or doing all that crazy stuff. And they're looking at me like, All right, all right, maybe this is the guy. And I was just like, Please let me be the guy.

00:13:36:19 - 00:13:37:03

Luke

Yeah.

00:13:37:12 - 00:13:55:00

Luke

That all worked out in the end. Did you face any? So let's fast forwarding here. You're inside of this new type of role. What are what challenges do you face from trying to be able to like learn how to do this job, which sounds like, you know, on the fly with what you've learned about previously, now you're actually doing this.

00:13:55:00 - 00:13:55:23

Luke

What what challenges do you face?

00:13:56:04 - 00:14:16:23

Holly

Yeah. As a teacher, you come out with and I say this about all the teachers even mostly nowadays is the trauma and not being with your students, there's like a certain set of like it's like something died. I don't know. I don't know because I used to coach field hockey too. Like having to deal with those emotions of not being in from the classroom and not being like in that routine.

00:14:16:23 - 00:14:35:14

Holly

So dealing in the trauma that you experience in the classroom as well, like all the regulations and you know, they're coming in to watch your class, you have to have learning objectives. So those kinds of things like teacher schedules are very strict. You know, you don't feel like you get a lot of time. Everybody's like, you get time off in the summers, like, hardly.

00:14:35:22 - 00:15:05:23

Holly

Or those breaks hardly. It's like you're grading stuff every time that you're off. So having a transition out of that and then into like more the backstage role where I'm not the one who's at the center of it, I'm more of the supporting actress or actor in the situation. And then having to learn technologies that I've never, ever used in the classroom before, obviously I felt very experience with the ones I had been training on and then having to learn other types of systems.

00:15:05:23 - 00:15:30:09

Holly

Like I didn't realize the, the, the types of technologies that existed. Like then it was like the drop thirds with the Smartboards and, and touching the screens. And it wasn't just smart notebook, it was like the Smart Pad clickers as well. And they had three different types of clickers. They had like math clickers and you know, having to learn all those different things was really like I was I was overwhelmed at first.

00:15:30:09 - 00:15:42:00

Holly

I was truly overwhelmed. And then having to balance that with also developing relationships with faculty and not realizing that not every faculty member is open to this type of support.

00:15:43:15 - 00:15:45:14

Luke

You don't say, Oh, so shocking.

00:15:46:19 - 00:15:49:19

Holly

I'm young and naive. I'm in my twenties, mid twenties.

00:15:50:04 - 00:16:13:14

Holly

And I'm like, If somebody was mean to me, you know, let me but not like open. I was like, What is wrong with you? I don't understand what you want to do this for students because I'm coming out of K through 12, I'm like, everything's about the students in higher ed wasn't like that yet there wasn't it wasn't necessarily it was more sage on the stage kind of situation and people were kind of turned off to the fact that, look, why do we need technology in the classroom?

00:16:13:14 - 00:16:18:18

Holly

Why can't they just, you know, just listen to us and take notes? And I'm like, oh, my God, this is going to be so difficult.

00:16:19:15 - 00:16:43:00

Luke

I mean, that's the thing that still kills me. How is that like that's still is alive and well in some places. I know that really is like like we've gotten so much better. We've come so far as a society. But still, I'll get an email every now and again asking if I can come do a talk or something for talking for faculty about like what makes a learning experience interesting and like making people want to be able to listen.

00:16:43:00 - 00:16:51:06

Luke

And I'm like, Well, tell me, what are you folks doing right now? And they're like, Well, they just basically go in front of a classroom and is talk outcome for 3 hours was like.

00:16:51:18 - 00:17:10:13

Holly

Oh, I know even that even online, you know, online synchronous people do that. It's really like it it kills me on the inside when I hear that like, So what are your students doing? What are they experiencing? I'm like, you know, you said you're going to Disney World. I think of that. That's an experience. What are they experiencing?

00:17:10:14 - 00:17:17:14

Holly

They're like, they can't answer right now. They're not seeing anything. They're listening to me talk for 3 hours and they're bored.

00:17:18:07 - 00:17:23:21

Luke

Yeah, exactly. And they're like, I don't understand why no one's filling out the course evaluations. Well, I could tell you.

00:17:23:21 - 00:17:24:11

Luke

Why they.

00:17:24:11 - 00:17:28:23

Luke

Don't want to say bad things about you, so they just choose to be silent. So I'm.

00:17:29:00 - 00:17:29:21

Luke

Right not to.

00:17:29:21 - 00:17:57:00

Holly

Bash higher ed, but like education in general, and I say this on many of the presentations I do, education lags behind and in what's happening in the modern era, they they significantly lag behind accepting what's what's going on and what people should be doing. At this point, I don't understand. It's just a very traditionalist form of, you know, like this is how it was done back when Harvard or, you know, people were lecturing back in those days.

00:17:57:00 - 00:18:01:13

Holly

And this is how it's going to be. Not always. We're not going to mess with tradition now.

00:18:01:13 - 00:18:27:18

Luke

And what's what's so interesting, too, is that when you do get because this also happened to me recently, where you do have someone who is such a fabulous speaker and you can actually listen to them talk for hours because you're like, you are the most interesting person I have ever heard. And the way that you teach and the way you connect with the audience, like there's a way to do it that actually does make people want to essentially binge watch Ted talk videos, but they're like.

00:18:27:18 - 00:18:28:01

Luke

This is.

00:18:28:01 - 00:18:54:01

Luke

Amazing. So it can be done. But that's so hard to be able to have that come across from an audience. And it's just, you know, as you said to education is definitely lagging behind a number of other different things. I mean, in some areas they're thriving. And it's always so funny listening and talking with some people where they think that all the places that are doing the amazing innovations and to be fair, there are some places like, of course, MIT and Harvard that are crushing and doing some awesome things.

00:18:54:01 - 00:19:10:03

Luke

But also, I've seen so much innovation from local community colleges who don't have as many hoops to be able to go through because they have a smaller type of a system. So therefore they can do more and they can actually act upon things. When I'm talking to some friends, assign community colleges and I'm like, You're doing the what?

00:19:10:09 - 00:19:32:05

Luke

It's like, what's this create? What simulation did you make? And they're like, Yeah, this is what we're doing. And I'm like, Oh my God. Like, that is amazing. So yeah, it's, it's so wild to hear about what instructional design is like, depending upon what organization you go to, not just what sector, but like the matter where you go to bed is always these odd nuances with things and all can be kind of different about some things.

00:19:32:11 - 00:19:54:04

Luke

But one thing that I was always interested about and still talking about this of other people is really just like so interesting to be able to think about is like this concept of higher education versus corporate America. Yeah, there are other sectors, obviously government, nonprofit, health care, freelance. Like there's a number of other different things, but it's always what it comes down to people I like higher ed corporate America.

00:19:54:07 - 00:20:17:11

Luke

What is better you have experience with both. You have higher ed, obviously. Now you're on Amazon. We're going to talk a lot more about that, about the day in the life of what you do over at Amazon, because I am super curious, but from a if you could paint in broad brush strokes, is it what you thought it would be like as far as for what you heard, like corporate America instructional design is like?

00:20:17:11 - 00:20:21:08

Luke

Or was it different from going into your expectations?

00:20:22:01 - 00:20:56:18

Holly

I think it's different. I think it's very different. And it's like we were talking about before this. It really depends on where you go. It's it's so I want to say it's freeing in a way, getting out of academia for a bit and figuring out because I still teach. So I'm, I've never truly left education, but getting out of academia and being in a spot like Amazon that's so innovative and you're allowed to make mistakes like in teaching, if you made a mistake or if your test scores weren't this or whatever, you know, scores weren't at a certain level.

00:20:57:05 - 00:21:23:03

Holly

It's the teacher's fault. It's the teacher's fault. It's not the learner's fault. It's not like, you know, like when the responsibility is on them to learn. And I'm not saying that, you know, all students anyways, we won't get into that conversation. That's my slippery slope at this point. But for corporate, you can try so many different things. And I was so scared to like push out on my comfort zone when I first started Amazon, my and my manager was like, I want you to use your creativity.

00:21:23:03 - 00:22:00:07

Holly

You podcasts, you, you're, you do all this on LinkedIn. You have great you have great articles. You do. And I she's like, I want you to push yourself outside, bring that into Amazon. And I'm like, Really? Because then because the teaching is like, this is you're going to follow this, this and this. So I felt like at a certain point it's been really freeing to be out of that academic that I don't want to say it's stifling sometimes to the regulations, even in higher education, that people have to follow or the like you're saying the whoops and the red tape that you have to jump through to get stuff done in higher education, not at

00:22:00:07 - 00:22:09:17

Holly

Amazon. You can try it fail, try something else. It's not any blemish on you. It's just like you actually. It's good if you try to build it.

00:22:10:06 - 00:22:26:22

Luke

Mm, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's what you're looking for in organizations that you want some that actually takes that chances and figures that out and everything. I mean, that was one of the things that I loved when I first came to MIT was hearing about that remark on I do pilot programs, I'm going to do this, and they're like, Great, try it.

00:22:27:02 - 00:22:28:02

Luke

Like, Oh.

00:22:28:11 - 00:22:34:23

Speaker 3

That's nice. Yeah, sure. I was like, Let's go. Yeah, oh, yeah, exactly.

00:22:35:03 - 00:23:00:22

Luke

So let's talk more about speaking of Amazon, I love to just dove in further and hear more about, which is kind of funny or just like, what do you actually do? And the reason for why I phrase it like that is that instructional design jobs are just so different. But I know it's not just from the sector perspective, the organization perspective, but I can tell you that instructional designers at MIT for the different schools, we do entirely different things.

00:23:01:04 - 00:23:01:14

Luke

And.

00:23:01:17 - 00:23:17:08

Luke

It's wild because you're like, But you're at the same institution. So it's got to be the same as I know we're different structures, different processes, different whatever. So walk me through like what does a day in the life of someone who is an instructional designer inside of Amazon pharmacy?

00:23:17:18 - 00:23:18:18

Holly

Yeah, that's correct.

00:23:18:18 - 00:23:19:18

Luke

Okay. Amazon pharmacy.

00:23:19:22 - 00:23:25:11

Holly

Separate health care component. Yeah. Going there. Yeah. So there's some of the things you have to deal with as an instructional designer in health care.

00:23:25:15 - 00:23:27:16

Luke

Right. Walk us through what's it like?

00:23:28:04 - 00:23:49:03

Holly

So one of the things I had to do my first day is I had to at Amazon is learn about HIPA. I protected health information. I had to go go through an e-learning module on HIPA compliance. All that stuff like first day, right and right out of the gate. You had to get that done within the first day because that's what you have to do in the health care industry.

00:23:49:03 - 00:24:09:01

Holly

So I'm like taking these e-learning modules. I'm like, What? What? I'm like, Am I in higher ed again? I hear compliance accreditation. You know, we're accredited by your Amazon pharmacy. And for those people know, yes, Amazon has a pharmacy and it's fantastic. I use it. I'm not just saying that because I work there. It's really amazing what Amazon has done in the health care space.

00:24:10:04 - 00:24:28:23

Holly

But that was my first day and I'm like, Ooh, I'm like, I'm not even getting training on the systems or anything. This is this is what's important on the first day. So daily at this point, as an as an instructional designer and switching from corporate, from education to corporate, I had to upskill. You know, we used we used 360 products articulate.

00:24:28:23 - 00:25:05:02

Holly

So having to become more comfortable with those sorts of products instead of the education facing ones was definitely a challenge for me at this point in two years. And I'm more comfortable. But a day in the life of designer, you are really project managing every single day. You are looking at your projects, you're trying to what we say referred to as Amazon move the needle and I'm sure other people say that to on your projects making sure that some things moving because you want to keep pushing forward it's always day one at Amazon you can look up leadership principles and about you know it that sort of situation where it's always day one we're always

00:25:05:02 - 00:25:25:17

Holly

trying to be innovative. So moving the needle on my projects, upskilling myself on a daily basis, working with my colleague because we all are at different spots. Like I will say this for transitioning teachers who are listening three out of the five instructional designers on our team are former educators.

00:25:26:04 - 00:25:27:00

Luke

Yeah, it's awesome.

00:25:27:07 - 00:25:47:18

Holly

So that is something to be said. They were looking, I said, you know, when I did my interview, I was like, you know, I'm I'm a teacher at heart. Education is my my jam. And they're like, we're looking for somebody with that to bring that into the corporate space. So don't don't be upset if you're like, you know, you're playing these corporate roles and you think it's because it's your education is probably not.

00:25:48:09 - 00:26:19:04

Holly

They really want to bring in that that education stuff anyways. So really like just just dealing with my projects. I find that time management has been a huge thing because of the freedom to work from home and manage those projects. We do two weeks sprints, we use Scrum, Agile, so figuring out my calendar, you know, and really trying to just get stuff done on time and dealing with the SMEs and we have some really good ones.

00:26:19:04 - 00:26:36:10

Holly

We have some really we're really fortunate, we have some really great stories and the documentation as a team we kind of we were separated into two different departments at first because there's like a if you think about a pharmacy, there's like a front end and then there's the back end, the people who are like fulfilling the medications and stuff.

00:26:36:10 - 00:26:55:06

Holly

But our team came together about sort about it's almost been two years, so we had to figure out how to, you know, all the processes that we were going to use from start to finish with like figuring out like we're going to do intake calls, we're going to them, we're going to do task analysis, you know, like kind of following the ADDY model.

00:26:55:06 - 00:27:14:11

Holly

But how that all works and what we're filling out and what we're documenting. So daily, it's just those administrative tasks moving the needle, project management, making sure things are getting done that need to get done. But on the other side of that, the innovation piece, like what are we going how are we going to level ourselves up? But what are we doing?

00:27:14:11 - 00:27:33:23

Holly

The love of pharmacy and the customers that we serve, our customers for instructional design are the people who are being hired. So the customer care agents, the pharmacies, the certified technicians and learning about pharmacy. Oh my gosh. There are so many acronyms there are so many acronyms.

00:27:34:10 - 00:27:40:06

Luke

How do you find it funny about how it's just like, as you said earlier, that like chemistry was haunting you.

00:27:40:06 - 00:27:42:12

Speaker 3

And I know our years later, I.

00:27:42:12 - 00:27:44:10

Holly

Know I'm working for a pharmaceutical.

00:27:44:17 - 00:27:45:22

Holly

Company and I'm like.

00:27:46:21 - 00:27:58:11

Holly

You know, fortunately, I don't have to know, like, what the the the shapes of them are or any or balance any of the equations. I know how to do safety and stuff, and that's about as far as I go.

00:27:59:04 - 00:27:59:10

Speaker 3

Yeah.

00:27:59:18 - 00:28:25:07

Luke

That's funny. But what I found really interesting too, as you were talking about that, is also who your target audience is. Because I don't think a lot of folks recognize that, especially for that type of a corporate instructional design role, is that for a lot of people, they're like, Oh, you're doing something for the customer? And you're like, No, we're doing something like internal for the employees, and therefore in our group they're going to do for interacting with people and and so on and so forth.

00:28:25:07 - 00:28:37:12

Luke

And it's really important to be able to help them out at the right level and positioning because it's going to have that trickle down effects and literally touch like every aspect of a customer experience eventually as you go through your trainings.

00:28:37:15 - 00:28:54:07

Holly

So like higher ed where you're helping the faculty, not directly the students necessarily. Right? Same situation, right? We're not the faculty are. This meets in the trainers and the students are the people who are being hired. The, you know, dealing with the customers, the agents and stuff like that.

00:28:54:07 - 00:29:06:11

Luke

So yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Can you walk us through like a specific project that you've either sure are working on or have worked on that you're you're proud of? I love to hear an example.

00:29:07:01 - 00:29:23:15

Holly

I am so as much as I can share, I'm super proud of the fact that Amazon likes to, and I'm sure this exists in higher education as well. We like to use a lot of our own and build our own internal systems. So there's a lot of systems that we use in pharmacy that have built internally by our great developers.

00:29:24:14 - 00:29:51:11

Holly

And we've shifted some things recently, and one of the things that I've learned how to do is simulations instead of articulate. So the trainer will record a click path in a certain system and then they'll send it to us, and then I will put it together as this like interactive experience. They're literally the agent is going through the system as they would if they were taking a call or if they were dealing with a certain issue.

00:29:51:23 - 00:30:16:06

Holly

So it's like you're in, you know, put the goggles on. There's no goggles involved yet, quite yet. But, you know, put the God was on your tablet. You're literally in the experience of it. And so the time to proficiency for people to feel like they have a good handle on their role has decreased significantly for us. And the business loves that because it saves money and time and all those wonderful things.

00:30:17:04 - 00:30:39:12

Holly

So I've been really proud to do these simulations and one of my coworkers taught me how to do it was the first one I did. The first one I did was probably back in January, and I think the first one took me a good, I don't know, a whole week, probably 40 hours plus. And at this point, I'm doing them in 12 hours or less, depending upon the length.

00:30:39:23 - 00:30:59:09

Holly

So I really I really learned how to how to do it and do it well. And the other thing is, is that the feedback that we get on these, like we've added in little characters because someone on our team is really good at that. And the agents that are coming on board, they just and the pharmacists and the certified actually just feel confident.

00:30:59:09 - 00:31:23:16

Holly

And that to me as an educator, so important that these people are feeling confident in their skills. And obviously it's important for pharmacy, for safety reasons. So that is what I'm most proud of, is developing those simulations. Working with this means making sure the process is, you know, crystal clear. You sit there and you look at the system and every every single little click like you're not just going through and skipping stuff.

00:31:23:16 - 00:31:52:01

Holly

Like it's every single little click and thinking about what would benefit the learner. It's been super rewarding and made me love the job, made me love, love, love the job. Not just designing and like those e-learning experiences where you're like starting from scratch. Like those are challenging enough. But these simulations, these are these are top notch. And these are things like if if a system changes, we can just say, hey, we're just going to break it down task by task, very minimal.

00:31:52:11 - 00:32:14:23

Holly

And you're going to you're that's how you're going to learn. It is going to be something that's digestible and it's going to be easier for you to do once you're, you know, your finish. And it's funny, though, I have to say, this is this is probably the bad thing about simulations. So roughly a 10 to 15 minute simulation that's going to take somebody 10 to 15 minutes is hours of work for an instructional designer.

00:32:15:03 - 00:32:25:10

Holly

People don't realize the ratio depending upon, you know, the nice to haves or just the basic level. But it's it's hours of work, but it's so rewarding. I love it.

00:32:26:05 - 00:32:34:12

Luke

I always think about whenever I have to go through a training at h.r. And they make me use rise or something like that and I'm like, I know how you did this. Like.

00:32:36:02 - 00:32:38:09

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. No secrets.

00:32:38:12 - 00:33:04:10

Luke

Yeah. As I see you would hear to go to their to go to their simulations are great certainly they they can be awesome simulations can also be really like cheesy and wonky. There doesn't seem to be either like this type of of a middle ground that either you have something that's a simulation that really is captivating and it does like the true essence of what you're hoping for or is just looking like some weird thing that comes out of a nineties and you're like, Oh yeah, I'm not going to.

00:33:04:11 - 00:33:05:14

Speaker 3

Oh, I no, no, no.

00:33:05:14 - 00:33:06:11

Luke

No, no, I'm not going to learn.

00:33:06:11 - 00:33:23:13

Holly

We tried it. You know, sometimes we try to have fun and we try to like I told, I think there's a I think there's some sort of e-learning somewhere in our curriculum. That was Mario Brothers, because I said the other day, I wanted to create something. That's Mario Brothers where he's actually jumping in on the pipes and, you know, doing all the sounds and all that stuff.

00:33:23:13 - 00:33:41:08

Holly

And there's there's some sort of simulation I've found yet that somebody created a while ago, the paintings updating. I was like, we, we try to do those fun types of things. I think some one of my coworkers did something like very Lord of the Rings ish with like, okay, a map. Or maybe it's more like Zelda is probably more like Zelda, I think.

00:33:41:08 - 00:33:56:14

Holly

Sure at this point. But you know, we try to incorporate this stuff because millennials are the dominating the workforce, so they're probably be able to relate to it in some way. So that's also fun too, is bringing in those real world aspects and things that are part of like our culture.

00:33:57:12 - 00:34:22:14

Luke

I love seeing the simulations that have the first person view where you're actually like locked and loaded and you have to look at the character or whatever, like something that makes you go and like confront the scenario where it is in front of you and you have to act upon it. There's no like kind of getting around it, which I know can like sound extreme, but I've seen it when it's done really well.

00:34:22:14 - 00:34:45:00

Luke

I've seen the simulation before that came from MIT Media Lab. That was like essentially a type of a training via with an email where you're receiving emails from this person that are unwanted and you have to like choose how to respond back. And depending upon what you say, it creates that type of like branching path for like a scenario based simulation where it keeps on giving you different emails.

00:34:45:00 - 00:34:51:00

Luke

And every time you send one out, another person writes in to you who comments on like the last person's email and it's.

00:34:51:04 - 00:34:53:12

Luke

Like it was the real world or it was like, Yeah.

00:34:53:12 - 00:35:13:22

Luke

Yeah. I mean, now we don't use email anymore. That was, that was a couple of years ago. Now it's like envisioning like what a Slack message could look like and it's that type of thing. But same thing too. My wife works at Etsy and she showed me what they went through for one of her types of training simulations where you're inside of a conference room and one person says something that clearly rubs everyone the wrong way.

00:35:13:22 - 00:35:28:14

Luke

Like you're like looking around of like, how what do I how do I navigate this conversation? Right. And even though it definitely was this, like, this is kind of like uncomfortable at the same time, you're like, but this is real. Like, if someone actually said that in a.

00:35:28:14 - 00:35:30:22

Speaker 3

Conference and you're like, it happened.

00:35:30:22 - 00:35:41:14

Luke

Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't. Yeah. So it's fascinating to think about that for what you can do with the simulation versus seeing some things feel like.

00:35:42:08 - 00:36:01:05

Holly

You're making a really good point here, Luke, because, you know, I'm saying it for the hard skills like learning the systems, but also for the soft skills too. Yeah, like it's, it's important for that and those branching techniques like, you know, Black Mirror episodes where you kind of chose your own choose your own adventure, not we're not going that dark, but we're not going that way.

00:36:01:05 - 00:36:02:20

Luke

But traveling in a room.

00:36:02:20 - 00:36:06:03

Luke

On a cardio bike, please, like really not like that.

00:36:06:23 - 00:36:21:17

Holly

No, we're not doing that. But like that stuff, it's it makes it so realistic. And I know that you've talked about recently, like how can Higher Ed relate to the real world with instructional design? And it's that's one of the ways that some of the ways.

00:36:22:00 - 00:36:38:09

Luke

That would be, oh, that's actually a great idea. That's a really good idea to make someone experience about what's an email actually like from a person. And of course, 99% of the time people are very kind and wonderful and everything. But sometimes you get that one person where you're like, Who.

00:36:39:02 - 00:36:45:04

Holly

Really, really says a new professional. Like, it's very daunting, like at this point. I mean, you're I'm middle age. You're getting there.

00:36:45:12 - 00:36:46:01

Luke

Yeah.

00:36:46:03 - 00:36:49:15

Holly

Like we're like we let the stuff roll off our backs. We're like, no.

00:36:50:06 - 00:37:01:06

Luke

No. I mean, at this point in time, it's almost surprising if you have someone like big time, you were you like like, wait a minute. Like, I've been here for years. I've been doing this thing for like a decade. And I was like.

00:37:02:00 - 00:37:02:18

Luke

What? You know?

00:37:02:18 - 00:37:05:14

Luke

Yeah, it's it's still happening. It's still.

00:37:06:02 - 00:37:06:09

Speaker 3

There.

00:37:06:20 - 00:37:26:13

Luke

There are those people. But it is interesting. Well, you also mentioned to and I just want to touch upon this is with collaboration sounds like you have an awesome internal team for everything and certainly what people don't talk about enough from instructional design are the people skills. And I never work by myself, ever, ever. Everything is a zoom call.

00:37:26:13 - 00:37:39:07

Luke

It's a slack, it's an it's text is something I'm always working off other people. What is your collaboration process like? Internal team members? Sammy's like, Are you in the same thing where you're constantly just like working with other people on this project?

00:37:39:07 - 00:38:02:21

Holly

Yeah, I've constantly it's very difficult. Once we get to development, we can be a little bit siloed, but even then we put stuff in review for our team to see first before we send it out to this. Me So we can kind of, if we catch some small things before we send out, send it out to this means for review and collaboration, our team is like, I need help with this slack huddle and we are all just open to helping each other because of the different levels of skills that we have.

00:38:02:21 - 00:38:20:20

Holly

Like one person on my team there, they don't feel comfortable writing measurable learning objectives. I'm like, I got you. I was a teacher. I worked in Higher Ed forever, and then his skills, like designing some of these characters or these motion pass or things, I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I need, you know, that's how it looks on our team.

00:38:20:20 - 00:38:41:19

Holly

We're very open. We're very transparent with each other. Like we don't take things personally at all the criticism is really an opportunity for us for growth. So our team is very close in the fact that we all we all understand, we all understand that we're not there doubting each other. We're building each other up just to be better instructional designers.

00:38:42:03 - 00:38:59:06

Holly

And that's really important on teams is that you can trust the people that you work with. And I 100% trust all the people that I work with. I would you know, I would send them anything, even if it was crap. They would tell me if this is crap, you need to fix it, you know? And it's not gonna hurt my feelings.

00:38:59:06 - 00:39:24:00

Holly

I'm like, because, you know, at this point, like, I know that I cut some corners here or things like that for the broader team, working with the smiles and some of the trainers and stuff, I try to get to like my methods or my tactics for getting to know. People are leading with empathy and like understanding. They're so busy, they're smiles in this area, but we can't be like bugging them all the time.

00:39:24:00 - 00:39:41:22

Holly

Like if we have a question we have, we really have to value their time. I try to get to know them personally too. Like what? Since we're not in person and we're not sitting in an office every day. So we talk about different things. Like I recently found out that one of my colleagues, she makes like these cute little like makeup travel bags and she's like, What do you want?

00:39:41:22 - 00:39:57:13

Holly

You want me to make you one? What do you want me to make you? I'm like Baltimore Orioles because love baseball. And so she made me a bag recently. I had no idea that she did that stuff until I started like having a conversation with her about like what she does outside of work. And one of my other friends likes golf, which I engage in as well.

00:39:57:21 - 00:40:19:04

Holly

So like developing that sense of like we're here to do something professionally, but also we have a lives outside of it. I think that really adds to the earning trust peace of working with this me and then delivering on the project and giving them, you know, examples of things that we can do for them from like very basic to very advanced and kind of giving them like, well, what do you, what do you want?

00:40:19:04 - 00:40:43:22

Holly

What do you want to pick from? Do you think this is going to work for you? Should it be a job aid or should it be a full blown learning experience, a simulation or branching scenarios? You know, and this is how much time it's going to take. Again, the transparency about like people when they would send in tickets and I'm sure you got this to here is presentation and Google slides make this an interactive e-learning.

00:40:43:22 - 00:40:47:03

Luke

Okay yeah yeah.

00:40:47:19 - 00:41:03:20

Holly

And I'm like, we don't that's not what we do here. It's about behavioral changes. I'm like, we have to think about like, what are you trying to get the learner to do? There may be some room for informational pieces, but at the end of this, what is what behavior change do you want to see in the learner and the like?

00:41:04:09 - 00:41:21:20

Holly

I don't think about it like that. I'm like, Yeah, that's why we have instructional designers, because we think about it like that. Simply watching something move on the screen or clicking something isn't necessarily a learning something. It doesn't know. You did it, have you. Yeah, go ahead.

00:41:22:00 - 00:41:29:20

Luke

Have you seen that Toy Story meme that says how I get through my training and it's ham and he's using the remote, he's.

00:41:29:20 - 00:41:35:06

Speaker 3

Going, he's hitting like a million times. That's yeah. It's like I've seen that.

00:41:35:11 - 00:41:48:04

Luke

That's the real world. This is like how fast can I smash the next button when something is done very poorly and you're like, Get me, get me out of here, please. And yeah, having someone who just says, Make it pretty an interactive, and you're like.

00:41:48:13 - 00:41:55:00

Holly

We can do that. We can do that for you. But I feel like that should be a aid learning experience now.

00:41:55:00 - 00:42:16:21

Luke

Now, you mentioned about like learning new things about your team members. One of the things that my team started to do at my director's request for us is to do something better called was no idea if you ever heard of this before, but essentially so yes, you got that exactly at me. So it's essentially a presentation about you.

00:42:17:06 - 00:42:17:16

Speaker 3

And.

00:42:17:20 - 00:42:19:01

Holly

People so uncomfortable.

00:42:19:01 - 00:42:38:18

Luke

Have so it's so funny to see like what happens because of course we have a big team and all the extroverts right away we're like, Oh, go first. So like all the extroverts like myself go in. I presented like I wind like day one. And of course you got to do like essentially like a slide show about like you, your life and like, you know, all these different things.

00:42:38:22 - 00:42:57:12

Luke

But the purpose of it was that we kept on hiring so many people and we are pretty much like we are in person, but like primarily we're remote for things. So lot is people coming, coming on to the team and we don't know anything about them besides like what you do for your job. So you mentioned about how your your colleague was able to make you up that Baltimore Oreo thing.

00:42:57:20 - 00:42:59:11

Luke

And so there's so many.

00:42:59:11 - 00:42:59:21

Luke

Things.

00:43:00:05 - 00:43:25:10

Luke

That that people have, like these amazing hobbies and passions that you don't know about. And especially for some of the folks who maybe do not talk as much and they get to do a presentation about themselves. And we had an engineer last week go up and talk more about his life and come to find out this person who I've I've talked to, of course, here, and they're about different types of problems with like tickets for different types of things or courses and other different like bugs and whatnot.

00:43:25:16 - 00:43:32:21

Luke

Come to find out he's a champion cyclist. Wake Boarder jiu jitsu, like all this stuff and you're like.

00:43:33:02 - 00:43:36:05

Holly

Isn't that hilarious? And you find stuff out, right?

00:43:36:07 - 00:43:37:04

Luke

It's like, you do.

00:43:37:04 - 00:43:38:08

Speaker 3

What is this?

00:43:38:08 - 00:43:57:18

Luke

It's like, Yeah, you know, it's what I do. And I'm like, How is this never come about any conversation. So anyway, so that's why I love these was like, I know, as you said, but some people are like, this is super uncomfortable, but this, it gives a platform to actually share more about you and then you find interest with your colleagues and you're like, We have this thing in common.

00:43:57:18 - 00:44:01:01

Luke

I no idea. So it's like a bill that culture in a different way.

00:44:01:09 - 00:44:06:01

Holly

It's called relation. Relation I call relational capacity because I took a train as a teacher. Oh.

00:44:06:09 - 00:44:07:01

Luke

I like and.

00:44:07:08 - 00:44:32:12

Holly

Like people you understand how much you have in common with other humans. It's it takes very little conversation to figure it out. I met very little people where I have at least one thing in common with them, some sort of trauma experience. Like I'm an extroverted introvert, not quite extroverted as you, but like my in. I won't get too much in this, but like my trauma is a big part of my life.

00:44:32:16 - 00:44:53:16

Holly

Like I've had a lot of death, a lot of situations that I've been through personally that impact me on a daily basis. And so that, you know, having that conversation with people and just letting them know what's like a couple of weeks ago had a really bad grief week. It was just one of those weeks I told one of my coworkers and my boss, I'm like, you know, it's it's not a good week for me.

00:44:54:01 - 00:45:13:19

Holly

I'm doing what I can and, you know, be and understand very understanding about, you know, take the time that you need, that sort of situation. I really like that for our workforce nowadays. But you just you just don't know what people are going through, whether positive or negative, like people are getting married or having kids or getting dogs, whatever.

00:45:13:21 - 00:45:22:17

Holly

Whatever they're doing, they're going in Taylor Swift in Sweden. You know, my one coworker is going to Iceland in August.

00:45:23:06 - 00:45:26:04

Holly

And I go, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's their goal.

00:45:26:05 - 00:45:34:22

Holly

So I like I having those conversations with people you don't forget, like too personal. You just, you know, like, we're not robots, we're humans.

00:45:35:08 - 00:45:36:18

Luke

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

00:45:37:01 - 00:45:54:00

Luke

Exactly. And that's the way for you to be able to do more from trying to actually build out those relationships in your network and everything else. I mean, like, it's, it's so once again, things that you wish that you learned about in school that like kind of whatever. And it's funny because now, of course, that I say that out loud.

00:45:54:00 - 00:46:17:07

Luke

I did have a teacher try to be able to tell us how to make friends were changing schools where eighth grade it's done we're going into a new high school and sixth grade science teacher was trying to explain to us about how we can make new friends with people and she was trying to show us about how to properly shake hands and like how to compliment people and all these other things that, of course, for Dummies sixth graders.

00:46:17:07 - 00:46:23:09

Luke

Like, like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah. Now, as as a 36 year old, I'm like, wow, you are so right.

00:46:23:22 - 00:46:26:07

Luke

Yeah. So but it's.

00:46:26:18 - 00:46:42:02

Luke

The act of just being able to compliment someone and then therefore that starts a conversation and then that leads into the next thing. And then all of a sudden now you're like, you know, close friends of this person years down the road. And like, that's all it really takes to really get that going. And, like, I mean, like, I mean, heck, even you and I.

00:46:42:11 - 00:46:48:10

Luke

I know I shot you a LinkedIn message being like, hey, you talk about great stuff. You want to talk sometime?

00:46:48:23 - 00:46:50:20

Holly

Yeah, we're like, That was in years.

00:46:50:20 - 00:46:52:22

Holly

Are we going on now for three or four?

00:46:52:22 - 00:46:55:05

Luke

At least for it was. It was.

00:46:55:05 - 00:46:56:17

Holly

And we were once in person.

00:46:56:18 - 00:46:59:14

Speaker 3

We met in person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:59:14 - 00:47:05:07

Holly

When I say on LinkedIn that some of my very, very best friends I met on LinkedIn, I referred to you.

00:47:05:07 - 00:47:08:18

Luke

Yeah, I, you are one of the only people I have met in person.

00:47:09:07 - 00:47:10:00

Luke

From online.

00:47:10:04 - 00:47:13:04

Luke

In person. You are one of like the four people I've met.

00:47:13:04 - 00:47:15:06

Luke

So yeah, it's, it's awesome.

00:47:15:06 - 00:47:34:12

Holly

You don't realize like people are so turned off by the digital space sometimes and how. But you can develop very deep connections with people in a digital form. Like I have a very good friend that we're setting Amazon. She lives in Phenix. I've seen her once in person and we talk every day, we talk everyday and we say, what's frustrating loss?

00:47:34:13 - 00:47:52:10

Holly

You know, we talk about golf, we talk about all kinds of stuff. So it's just it's just so eye opening. And I think that one of the things corporate does well is it lets people have that space. You know, we'll do like not necessarily happy hours, but we'll do like after work. You know, I told my team, I was like, we haven't talked in a while.

00:47:52:10 - 00:48:12:09

Holly

I'm like, we haven't talked of work in a minute. So I arranged like this, let's have a conversation and let's see what everybody's up to. You know, one of my my managers from Puerto Rico, one of my manager, and another one live in Texas. One lives in Seattle, one lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. Another one lives in Idaho.

00:48:12:13 - 00:48:43:08

Holly

I'm like, Let's catch up with each other. What are you doing? Because we've been so heads down into the project, so we had a little get together and it's amazing once you the thing I was going to say is once you develop these relationships with people, how much easier it is to do the projects together because you feel comfortable with each other and you trust each other and there's not kind of like this awkward like intake all you're meeting them for the first time situation, like you already know them and you don't know what they're about and what they do.

00:48:43:18 - 00:49:01:10

Holly

And I have them explain their jobs because I still don't have any idea what the hell some of these people do, and I don't know how they do it. And, you know, asking about what this acronym means, it's like I still don't know all of them, but yeah, the project goes a lot more, it goes much more smoothly.

00:49:02:06 - 00:49:24:00

Luke

Makes sense. Makes sense. How is your, you know, speaking of acronyms for things because especially in instructional design land, we have Ubud and Udall and Sam and all of these other different ones. How is trying to be able to adopt that? She mentioned about Agile and Scrum and you know, there's plenty of organizations that say that they're agile and that they're nimble.

00:49:24:01 - 00:49:43:04

Luke

Then like you find out like they're really not. But yeah, Amazon, if there was one place that I would pray that actually is agile and nimble, flexible, it would be Amazon. So like how is it adapting to that? Because in education it's slow, it's methodical, and then like now here you are into that type of world. What was that like to.

00:49:43:07 - 00:49:43:14

Holly

Oh.

00:49:43:14 - 00:50:11:12

Holly

My gosh, it was a it's completely overwhelming. You don't know which way to look, honestly, like some of these ideas like Amazon does a lot of internal awards at our big events. For people who are being like, when I got the job at Amazon, they're like, you know, this is a big deal, right? Like the the recruiter said that like it's a big deal to get a job at Amazon because of the the expectations that you have to meet and the there's two to interviews that's it.

00:50:11:18 - 00:50:35:22

Holly

You do a phone screen and then you do a group interview. And then usually you're if you're at that group interview, you're one of the one of the two final candidates, and that's it. And they say it's a it's a huge deal. And I'm like, I felt all kinds of pressure. I'm like, I don't know why I'm here, but then like just talking to people and, you know, speaking to educational experiences definitely is 100% overwhelming.

00:50:35:22 - 00:50:55:03

Holly

But once you start to get a feel for what the culture is like at the organization and how they operate and using all the different terms, you kind of I drink the Amazon Kool-Aid, let's be honest. It's like you're going to drink it. It's on Amazon. Like Jeff Bezos literally started this in a garage selling books like started, you know, used.

00:50:55:03 - 00:51:15:14

Holly

But I remember college. Don't you like saying, like did you go on Amazon to see if you could read that or get that for a cheaper price? Maybe because I'm just a little bit older than you, but it it's just crazy. It's it's absolutely crazy. And I love the fact that some of the things that have stuck, some of the people are still there that have started it.

00:51:15:14 - 00:51:35:20

Holly

And they talk about their experiences coming into Amazon as well. And I think that's like every corporation, like the people that stay for long periods of time, they start these different initiatives. Like this month we have Gamm, which is global accessibility Awareness Month, and we have a big conference that Amazon does with a whole bunch from all across across the world.

00:51:35:23 - 00:51:58:17

Holly

Like you don't realize how big Amazon is until you get into it. It's just so many different big events and there's, there's dev con, there's like all these different things that are that are happening. It's very overwhelming. But you find where you want to go and like where you want to put your, your, your extra time in terms of like upskilling or professional development.

00:51:58:17 - 00:52:18:12

Holly

But yeah, it's super overwhelming. But it's also like you remember the reason you got into an instructional design and you remember the reason like why you do these things that have to do with learning and education. It's it's huge reminders of that. We should be always pushing forward and we should always be making people better every day.

00:52:18:12 - 00:52:36:01

Luke

Goodness, that about it myself. I love it. I love it. What what do you pay attention to right now for different types of trends? I mean, obviously, I'm paying attention constantly to AI, as I've talked about on this show a million times. But like, what are you paying attention to right now that could potentially impact the lives of Amazonians?

00:52:36:01 - 00:52:39:16

Holly

So Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I've got Amazonians. Oh, God.

00:52:39:16 - 00:52:41:03

Luke

Out of nowhere. All right. Yeah. What do you.

00:52:41:03 - 00:52:41:18

Luke

Do? Good job.

00:52:43:02 - 00:52:51:23

Holly

Obviously. Yeah, I is. We have our own internal A.I. system that was built. We're not. We're not allowed to use ChatGPT. Oh, because it's a third party thing, so we have.

00:52:51:23 - 00:52:52:05

Luke

Oh

00:52:52:06 - 00:53:19:12

Holly

Interest in definitely paying attention to that. And I think the different devices that are coming out, like you mentioned, the Apple Vision Pro like how is that going to impact our training if people are at home with these devices and we can literally do a video inside of pharmacy fulfillment center and have these interactive experience with actually grabbing stuff instead of just clicking on the screen or actually grabbing the experience.

00:53:19:19 - 00:53:37:15

Holly

So I'm paying attention to those things along with I'm still and I know this has been a buzzword in education for a while, the adaptive learning piece, how we're customizing it. I'm still very much paying attention to that because I don't think we're doing that enough in corporate at this point. We're kind of just like, okay, here's the system.

00:53:37:15 - 00:53:52:22

Holly

This is what you need to know. Go do your job. But how are we customizing it to maybe six months down the road? They might need to be retrained. Or if they're leveling up, what's the next step for them? Or if they're ready to look like they come in with some experience, maybe they can level up, you know, maybe do some more advanced tasks.

00:53:52:22 - 00:54:09:09

Holly

It can be a different, you know, a different spot. So I'm really paying attention to like how all that's going to interact with each other. Like, where is that? Where's a common ground where the challenge is going to be? Are we providing the technology is now or we just, you know, because you can't assume everybody has those devices at home.

00:54:10:12 - 00:54:21:14

Holly

I really want to see where I the hard like the physical technologies and the personalized how they all kind of mesh together and work together.

00:54:21:20 - 00:54:22:04

Luke

Yeah.

00:54:22:12 - 00:54:51:16

Luke

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it Amazon who also created some type of, like of a card board? Yeah. An old school. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Because I know that for one class that we had, there was a VR component. And you're thinking about four different forms of costs. That was one of the ones we recommended is that if you were not going to go down the traditional type of Oculus Path and you wanted a less expensive version, Amazon had these other ones.

00:54:51:21 - 00:55:02:20

Holly

Yeah, it's like Amazon, I think it was called like Amazon Cardboard or something like that. I really think it was very simple. I don't even. Yeah, but yeah, that was definitely that's definitely still that's an option. That's the thing. And it was very affordable.

00:55:03:06 - 00:55:19:09

Luke

Yeah. Have you seen, um, speaking of Disney and whatnot, have you seen that latest technology? What's like that type of movable treadmill underneath your feet that, like, glows as you're walking out of it? That way in a VR space, it actually feels like you are legitimately walking towards something.

00:55:19:09 - 00:55:20:03

Holly

Oh, my God. Have you.

00:55:20:03 - 00:55:27:00

Luke

See that? That's now that just came out like two days ago. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, Oh, man, here we go. Like we're getting.

00:55:27:00 - 00:55:27:15

Luke

Yeah, kind of.

00:55:27:18 - 00:55:38:03

Luke

And of course, the biggest thing is, as you mentioned about, is like, who can afford these things? Because it's also cool as far as it goes expensive. Oh, I'm never going to buy one.

00:55:38:17 - 00:55:39:16

Holly

Yeah. You can't go.

00:55:39:16 - 00:55:40:21

Holly

Expensive. Absolutely.

00:55:40:21 - 00:55:58:20

Luke

No, not not until that thing comes down to a price that is so I mean, I even I just got a ps5 recently because I refused to buy one at top. I was like, I'm not spending like $700 when it came out, something like that. I was like, absolutely not. You it's no, no, no, no. I will. I will pay to play my old school PS4 but still barely runs.

00:55:58:20 - 00:56:08:16

Luke

But it's running. And I will be like that with technology where it's just like you. You want to be the cool kid, but at the same time, whatever, whatever the visual cost is fine.

00:56:08:18 - 00:56:16:02

Holly

Like, Oh, I don't even know. I didn't even like I heard about it and then I saw the price and I'm like, I'm not even paying attention right now. Now there's other stuff.

00:56:16:09 - 00:56:19:09

Luke

It's like $2500. When it first got now something stupid.

00:56:19:22 - 00:56:20:04

Luke

I was like.

00:56:20:14 - 00:56:21:23

Holly

With normal middle.

00:56:22:12 - 00:56:23:16

Holly

Notice, no instructional.

00:56:23:16 - 00:56:25:06

Holly

Designer can afford.

00:56:25:06 - 00:56:25:15

Holly

That.

00:56:25:22 - 00:56:46:11

Luke

Nope. No, no, no. Instructional designer higher education is going to be buying that anytime soon. I am confident in telling you that. So, you know, now it doesn't make any sense. Well, I know that we've been talking for quite a bit. So let me ask you one other thing as well, too, is like reflecting upon your career path, your journey, all the different things that you have been going into.

00:56:46:14 - 00:56:55:19

Luke

What's something that you can share with the listeners at home that it really helped you out with being able to get to where you are today, that they can take some steps right now to be able to follow in your footsteps?

00:56:56:19 - 00:57:20:18

Holly

I would say it's not just one thing. It's definitely perseverance and not getting you know, like not getting bogged down by like the noise that's out there. And everybody's like talking about LinkedIn. We're about you. And I kind of came up together in the LinkedIn world, like as an I don't even call myself an influencer. I don't even know where that people.

00:57:21:05 - 00:57:22:14

Holly

Are, whereas something don't know.

00:57:22:14 - 00:57:41:11

Holly

What we're doing. We're just here. We're just like at this point in our career, we're just giving back. But it's not just it's not just one thing, but really, I think putting yourself out there and sharing what you know, because not everybody knows everything. I know you did something recently. You can say, I don't know. You read like you did a post about that.

00:57:41:11 - 00:57:42:21

Holly

Yeah, of course I love that.

00:57:42:21 - 00:57:43:22

Luke

Like, of course you.

00:57:43:22 - 00:58:07:03

Holly

Don't you aren't required to know everything and especially if you're getting into this job market is very competitive, as many as instructional design roles and e-learning developers and content creators and all these different things, it's super competitive now, you know, trying to trying to land a role in this industry. And the one thing you have to do is be confident in your skills and know where you want to go.

00:58:07:21 - 00:58:25:12

Holly

Like no matter what it's like, it's drowning out the noise, other people's opinions, if you know you want to work. Amazon wasn't on my radar. I'm not going to lie. It was not on my radar. And I just happened to talk to somebody that knew somebody and one of somebody I met down here when I moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, worked in Amazon.

00:58:25:12 - 00:58:44:02

Holly

And she's like, you're very articulate. You do a lot of great. I'm a web designer. I think you should come work for Amazon. I think you'd be a good fit. There wasn't even on my radar. So I just had a conversation with like a friend. So putting yourself out there, knowing where you want to go and not not getting turned off by some of the negativity that's out there, you kind of just drown it out.

00:58:44:02 - 00:59:08:07

Holly

I think that's what's so important nowadays because people are going to have opinions about what you do, what you say. You know, if you sell something and you shouldn't be selling this or your time or whatever, if you know that you want to be an entrepreneur and you're going to sell a course or you're going to sell some sort of coaching something, do it, try it, see if it works, and then if it doesn't work, try something else.

00:59:09:05 - 00:59:35:04

Holly

I That's what life's all about. We're not here for a very long amount of time. So at this point, I'm just giving back. And I think once you start doing that, it feels really, really good to do that. So figuring that out and then at some point look like we're gone, we're on the back nine for retirement. I mean, we're we're rounding the base hole going into the ninth hole, and we got to start thinking about those things.

00:59:35:04 - 00:59:52:00

Holly

Even if you're at the early stages of your career, start thinking about like, what's your what's your next move is going to be. And I just I know JD Dolan talks a lot about that. What's your next move and thinking about your current role? What's the next what's next point where you want to you want to be? So that's a variety of things.

00:59:52:01 - 01:00:12:18

Holly

It's not I wish it was a silver bullet, but it's not. It takes a lot of hard work. Do you remember when we had like I had like 50 followers in 2020 and I was like, this is ridiculous. Like, this is LinkedIn world. We should be this vast community of people. And now I'm approaching 32,000. We're around the same like.

01:00:13:13 - 01:00:21:03

Luke

Oh, you've soared way past me. Don't, don't give me that. You know, you're like, you're on a rocket right now. And I'm like, Hey, go, go, go.

01:00:21:03 - 01:00:22:13

Luke

You all you're killing.

01:00:23:06 - 01:00:35:15

Holly

But it's just like never in my life that I imagine on any social media type platform that that would happen to me, just sharing what I know, just sharing my passion and talking to other people.

01:00:36:04 - 01:00:37:00

Holly

But the thing is that.

01:00:37:06 - 01:00:37:14

Holly

Is.

01:00:37:21 - 01:00:57:09

Luke

I know why people follow you is because you're human. There's there's a lot of people out there who like, as you mentioned, about just like how important it is to be vulnerable, admitting mistakes and everything. And I know that's hard to be able to do, but at some point in time, it's just like, I hate the whole like I know it all mentality where you make it up on the fly and hope for the best and it's like, Come on now.

01:00:57:15 - 01:01:16:09

Luke

And a lot of your posts you talk about, you always share about the behind the scenes of things and how things work and what it's actually really like. And you talk about disappointment and wins and all the all the emotions that come with things, which is awesome. So it makes plenty of sense to see from how much you keep on growing and growing and growing.

01:01:16:09 - 01:01:18:15

Luke

So yeah, it's been awesome. It's been awesome. Thanks a.

01:01:18:15 - 01:01:31:16

Holly

Lot. Has been a great journey. I'm so happy. I'm so happy with the journey and it's like I wouldn't I wouldn't change anything about it from the beginning till till now. Like all the people that I've gotten to meet. It's so awesome, so amazing.

01:01:32:13 - 01:01:50:05

Luke

You know, I'm currently reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's new book, which is very random, but I've stumbled upon it, so I'm reading it right now. So one of the things that he said, though, you actually comments about this and it was something that I've been doing for a while and I didn't really figure out like how it phrased it into words.

01:01:50:05 - 01:02:14:08

Luke

And he does a much more eloquent job than I do inside of the book, but it's essentially taking the power away from the naysayers and then using that to fuel your motivation to, as you said, that you want to be able you want to become an entrepreneur. You try to be able to do something. People make fun of you for your product or whatever it is, and you use that as fuel to be able to say like, All right, how can I go out now and do this?

01:02:14:08 - 01:02:48:14

Luke

Even better and prove those people wrong? And like, that is something that motivates me, which is like you have to understand, like your source of motivation, especially for upskilling and for always are different things. And that negativity, as much as it sucks to hear like in the first, like the 30 seconds when you hear about it and you're like, all right, I'm going to remember that as I go and conquer this new thing and then go and prove you wrong is like that mentality that is interesting, especially for a social media day and age where it's just you have a million keyboard warriors who are just like firing things off and not be thinking anything

01:02:48:14 - 01:02:59:00

Luke

else and trying to be able to use that in a way that actually can become a positive spin on things, something that we all need to do more. It's really hard, but like it.

01:02:59:00 - 01:03:16:01

Holly

Took me till almost 40 years old to not be a people pleaser. I'm not gonna lie right now. People please. And not. And really focus on who I am, you know? And that's that comes from me professionally and personally, right? Like, you know, say no to things. No is a full sentence.

01:03:17:09 - 01:03:17:20

Luke

I love.

01:03:17:20 - 01:03:21:03

Luke

It. I love it. Oh.

01:03:21:10 - 01:03:25:08

Luke

That's awesome. Well, Holly, let's end. I could talk to you all day, so I'm going to I.

01:03:25:12 - 01:03:27:02

Holly

Know we could open for days at.

01:03:27:02 - 01:03:41:04

Luke

Some point in time. So I need to be able to to make sure I'm being respectful of your time and and not just keep on blabbering on all night and day. You do a lot of amazing things. Where can people go to find you? Learn more here about what you're up to. Please share away.

01:03:41:18 - 01:04:05:00

Holly

Absolutely. LinkedIn world is my jam. I'm out there all the time. I'm posting job postings Mondays and Fridays for us. Base Wednesdays. I do every other week international. So follow me for that. Also our podcast and I have a co-host now Nadia Johnson at a bad tag. We're doing some changes, but we're still going to retain the same fun level of like talking to people, getting to hear their stories.

01:04:05:00 - 01:04:27:07

Holly

So at About.com, you know, it's it's all LinkedIn world to me now. It's that's where it's at. That's where I make most of my connections and that's where I love the post. So for me out there, I have a website of like my portfolio and stuff, it's on my LinkedIn page but you know, nothing like official. So definitely come connect, follow some of your message.

01:04:27:07 - 01:04:28:23

Holly

Open, total.

01:04:28:23 - 01:04:37:20

Luke