Intersections in Learning with guest Alan Natachu

Lisa Crockett  
Hi, everyone, welcome to Intersections in Learning. I'm here today with Alan Natachu. He's a learning applications partner at exact sciences. And they're a leading provider of cancer screening and diagnostic tests. So Alan actually started out as an artist, and he moved over to his training career after that, and he was hired as a creative manager at Apple. So that's why we really wanted to talk to Alan, because you all know, the intersection of creativity, and instructional design. It's like every day of our lives, we need to acknowledge it, we need to incubate it in every project. But I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to pass the mic over to Alan to tell him for him to tell you a little about himself.

Alan Natachu  
All right, so my name is Alan, this is my dog, Pizza, he likes to Zoom bomb us all the time. So a little bit about myself. Yeah, I started out as an artist, I went to school. That was my original intention. I went to school at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and study creative writing, but while I was there, but it shifted from Creative Writing to more playwriting, and moviemaking. So, for the last couple years of my study, I really started getting into that. But jobs were kind of scarce in those fields, because I was looking to work and I was doing independent work. But that was more on arts, art house type thing. So I bounced around for a while, I took jobs as a working in a paper plant, taxi driver, tribal government as a grant writer, I'm Native American, from Zuni Pueblo, and I stumbled upon an ad for Apple. And I became a creative by the time I was in it, and that was like a personal technology trainer. I worked individually with people to help them learn about their technology. And I'm really comfortable with working with gadgets and tools and breaking them and reassembling them. One of the cool things that I found is this thing here, this J Labs Frames, it's open ended speakers, which I liked, because it sounds like the noise is right there. But it's not close. I get to hear everything around me. And it has a mic setup. And it works with any pair of frames.

Lisa Crockett  
And it sounds great. Thanks.

Alan Natachu  
And yeah, I did that for a couple years. But it was also in a retail setting. I had worked eight years in retail prior, and I was feeling kind of done. Retail is kind of hard. And being holidays. Please be kind to your workers, your retail workers, everyone you get in contact with anything. Yeah, no yelling just be

Lisa Crockett  
kind. Everybody's struggling everybody, and especially people who are public facing.

Alan Natachu  
Yes. And I was looking for something else. We stumbled upon a position at a local technical college here. Madison Area Technical College. I'm now based in Madison, Wisconsin. And I spent 10 years there, I was a technology training coordinator worked my way up to learning experience designer. And from there, we were doing all sorts of cool things. When I first went there, it was more like, oh, how do you shoot video? How do you do PowerPoints? How do you office stuff. But by the end, we were playing around with augmented reality, we set up a classroom set of VR headsets, and we're trying to demonstrate how you could do an entire class in VR. We're using telepresence technology to connect multiple classrooms across our whole campus region. I forget how many counties but yeah, South Central Wisconsin connecting all sorts of different places. And this was before the pandemic before we had to connect that way. That's a hard sell.

Lisa Crockett  
How did you do that? How did you get them to like, how did you say like, let's try this like and have them be like yeah, let's go buy the headsets?

Alan Natachu  
We've. That's a good question. It was faculty driven. I had someone come in and say Hey, I like to do this. How do we do it? And then that started the ball rolling, rolling. It started with one headset and we started building out around it and all of a sudden just kind of blew up and

Lisa Crockett  
yeah, that's amazing. Did you bring that into the into your work at exact sciences? Is that more or is that more of like a traditional od learning setup?

Alan Natachu  
Not yet. Not yet. That's I'm still working on that. And higher ed i was able to play with a lot of schools I was able to experiment and have all First have fun and to all sorts of crazy things. But it isn't exposition to corporate because I felt like I hit a, a wall. Like I wasn't able to go any further and to says hi. And have you feel

Lisa Crockett  
so sweet, that letter gonna be mad, they're locked

Alan Natachu  
down. But yeah, and I was, even though I worked on a team, I wasn't working with other people who were an assembler learning experience design mindset, I was working with faculty who were worried about faculty stuff, I was working with admins who were working with admin stuff, but I felt somewhere in the middle and couldn't really bounce ideas off and get feedback and work on making projects even bigger and better. That's how I got into the TL dc side working with my PLN on Twitter and started doing a conference circuit. But position opened up at exact sciences and exact sciences is a leading provider of cancer, diagnostic, cancer diagnostic tests for individuals. Now, excuse me, exact sciences, I know there's a specific thing I have to say. So if you have any other questions about the company, please go to the website, www dot exact sciences.com. And that's one of the biggest things that I have trouble with transitioning from higher ed to corporate is things had to be said in a certain way, or things had to be said, you can't say everything. Like, in higher ed, I was able to do a lot of cool things tagged MATC on it, like Hey, check this out, me etc. And now I got to be wary of the FDA of legal and all sorts of other organizations and to be quiet about that. I love my organization. I love what I do. I can't talk a lot about it, though, feels very double seven. Like,

Lisa Crockett  
I love that. And I love that you love what you're doing. We were talking before we came on the cast about having done freelance work, creative work, and then going into corporate and that transition. And I know a lot of folks that that listen to the cast that could veteran CLDC either go from freelance to the corporate corporate to freelancer, we've got a lot of teachers coming in. And this is all new to them. So can you tell them a little bit about your experience of that transition from that kind of free creative life to corporate and why you love it so much.

Alan Natachu  
Yeah. I was very hesitant to go into the corporate world because I hear a lot of stories. And it's very hard to move from what you're comfortable with into something that's unknown. I do love higher ed, I do love working in that space. I'm very spastic minded. So for me to go full freelance is not a good idea for me. I could do one project at a time, a couple projects here and there. But what I've learned is that I can't do it all the time. I'm just way too spastic. So I do need, I did need that. That accountability from someone else. And working in corporate, I did a lot of research on the company. They're based here in Madison, and I am a colon cancer survivor. And they do provide a test called Cold guard, which is screened for colon cancer in stool. But I am I coming here talking to you, I'm talking about my experiences and not the experiences with the company. And why I could say about corporate moving making that transition is that there's a lot of visit, there's a switch. Coming from higher ed coming for education, there's this kind of like, okay, what now it's hesitant first steps into the org. And it takes a while for you to get into the corporate lingo. Our friends at K 12 Our friends at higher ed, they do a lot of phenomenal stuff and what they learn and how they handled themselves transitions beautifully into the corporate world. But it's also trying to navigate that space. I was working with adult learners before coming into corporate so that made it easier. Some were making the transition from K 12 They find that that transitions a little harder because they've been working with students, K through 12 students versus adults so it's a little bit more of an uphill battle.

Lisa Crockett  
What was the most surprising thing to you? You know environmentally coming in because you'd work with adults so you know that's that's a good start. But the the environment is so different. What was the most surprising thing?

Alan Natachu  
Teamwork. I had a team MATC and I love my team, but to be able to talk to other training professionals, who can understand the lingo to provide feedback and to help whenever I needed it, and I could do the same for them. That was probably the biggest shift. And that's the one I'm most appreciative about.

Lisa Crockett  
I have to say, that's probably the thing I miss the most about freelancing or I'm sorry about corporate from going into freelancing these last like six years or so. Like Jill Julia actually said, freelancing requires more executive functioning, project management, all of that. And it is it's a dream. And even if you don't mind doing it, or you can, you can do it in a past life, I was a pm, I still hate doing it. It takes time away from the creative work, the stuff that I people I worked with, in corporate used to call it the sexy work, right? I thought that was really funny. I'm like, you know, to you, because it's sort of different. But to me, it's, it's sort of like that, that flow, that moment of flow, that creativity, when you could be doing math, but it flows, because you just got it all of a sudden. Alright, so if you had any piece of advice for for some of our folks out here, like our K through 12, folks, or even our higher ed folks coming in, in terms of dealing with subject matter experts coming into this new environment, what would you tell them, the first thing you would tell them to do or think about?

Alan Natachu  
I want to say rely on your instincts. Because subject matter experts are the same whether they're from K 12, or whether they're from higher ed, there may be different language that you would use, but that would, yeah, I would say go with your instincts. And if you haven't worked with a SME before, I like to let them I like to get to know them. If they allow me to. Sometimes they're very technical, and that there's that kind of personal boundary, that's kind of hard to push. But I would get to know them, listen to them, and see what they have to offer and tried to build that relationship so that they trust you and making decisions and allow them to guide you not take over but guide you in the process.

Lisa Crockett  
You know, I'm glad you said not take over because that's a fine line. So when do you or how do you get that if you feel that a subject matter expert stepping over that line for you? What would be your advice to someone on how to address it?

Alan Natachu  
I'm sorry, that's tough. Yeah, I would take what they were. This is we're listening and trying to figure out who they are, and what they're passionate about, or what they're trying to accomplish. If they're budget minded, you could say we could do it this way. But it's going to add this many days and this much time to the project, therefore, resulting in X amount of dollars, you could pull on the heartstrings to say this story is going to be better because this evokes feeling and you'll get more of a personal connection if we go this route versus that route. Yes, I know the history of this is very fascinating. And I agree with you, I'll read that book. But we need to shorten that training. Right now it's approaching three hours, we need to kick it down to an hour and a half. You know, things like that. Just try to acknowledge and validate what they're doing and appreciate what they're doing, and provide that. The reason why it would be better if we went the l&d route versus the SME row.

Lisa Crockett  
And I love that you're thinking about the way they approach it because someone more practical is going to want to hear something different. Your message is the same, but how you how you address somebody else makes all the difference in this one. As it is it's all relationship right? So let me ask you this, you conduct design sessions, right?

Alan Natachu  
Yes. And my latest title is learning applications designer are not like learning applications partner. And I work with our facilitators. I work with her designers in creating learning experiences. Because of my background, and with facilitation and my background in designing, I could flow between the two worlds freely and in corporate, I find that you're part you're you do your job, but it's kind of like that's, that's a big silo. But he's still kind of siloed off. And I come in. And I've worked in these different silos, and so I'm able to bounce from place to place. And I'm going off on a tangent. What was the question?

Lisa Crockett  
No, no, no, it's actually beautiful. And I'm sure your facilitators appreciate that because your design is better when you're able to when you've done that facilitation. You know that everyone's different. Monique and I have talked about that, like, I couldn't present her stuff, and she couldn't present my stuff, because we're different. It would be, we could present it, but it wouldn't be the same. So they must appreciate it so much. What I was gonna ask is really just like, what are some of your favorite activities that you do in design? Is there a specific route that you like to take? Are there specific activities? or No? Does it really depend? A consultant answer?

Alan Natachu  
Okay, building, starting out meeting people, that's very important. Age COVID, even if it's connecting through a webcam like this, or if you're fortunate enough to be able to meet in person. I think that's key. We can't, no matter where the world takes us, that's something that we cannot break, we got that, that connections there. And planning. I had to be honest, prior to here, I did not do a lot of planning, I was very good by the hip and very spontaneous, and very, will do it live. Okay, well go with the flow. If it doesn't work, it's all right, you know.

That's something I had to relearn here, how to plan. Going back to my art days, film days, like creating a timeline, creating budget, creating scripts, sending times to write setting times to do editing. I learned how to do some planning, I wasn't very good at it. But I was able to do some planning. And as I transitioned into these different roles, there's various amounts of planning. But in corporate, it's like, I had to make sure all my ducks in a row before I can present. And if I am the bottleneck, I have to be accountable and let them know, Hey, this is the reason why and how much time I'll need to correct the issue.

Lisa Crockett  
You know, that's a really good point, what happens in your project? So when it's you that's easy, right? I didn't make the deadline, I didn't get this developed or whatever. But what happens when you're, you know, we're all in these cycles of looking at the work as we're doing it, especially for doing autonomous learning, as opposed to maybe Live, which is a little more collaborative with the people who are going to present it. But when you get stuck, let's say in a review cycle, you're doing an autonomous learning, and it's not your challenge that made it slow down. But there's lots of challenges. How do you work with your team? And how do you work with your internal client to I guess, get on the same page, because that can be challenging. I know, in freelancing, it it can be really challenging to have those conversations.

Alan Natachu  
I yeah, I. It sometimes you have the luxury of patience. Because it's a, it's a soft deadline, and you can let it go for maybe a day or two, maybe even up to a week. And you can work along with the people who need that extra either hand holding or extra nudges, to try to get them going. But if it's something that has a hard stop, something that needs to get done, by this time, otherwise, other systems, it's just one domino effect thing start to fall, then we need to, then I would I personally work with that person. But I also get in contact with their higher ups and say, Hey, I need their help, what can we do to help them get moving on the project. And if I'm not able to make that connection with their higher up than I asked my manager to make that connection for me. It's that whole accountability, accountability accountability piece, trying to get trying to get the ball rolling

Lisa Crockett  
short, when you're on a hard deadline systems going to open up we need to instruct the learners on how to use the system. When you're in a situation like that, is there an opportunity to hire out external people? Whether it's an elearning developer or or someone even come in and help train your trainers? I'm sure there's a million different jobs. But are you able to do that? Or do you have like a team plan for stuff

Alan Natachu  
like, good question, I'm not sure. Because we can't bring in people like for training and trainers and whatnot, but for like a spontaneous, you know, this needs to get done within a couple weeks. I don't know how that process goes. which can't be translated as a good thing because we're on our hands and we're working and we're getting those deadlines met and we're communicating when they're not met and how long we're gonna get him done. Or how long ago

Lisa Crockett  
that is a good place to be in that means. That means few overnights and few multiple nights in a row hitting up against that deadline. So it's That's the hardest part. Okay, so if you met somebody brand new person outside of the industry, not at the LDC person, no cheating? How would you explain to them what you do for a living?

Alan Natachu  
I would tell them

I am the chef of learning services. You may not see what I do in the kitchen, but when it comes to you, I hope that you enjoy it

Lisa Crockett  
for a lot feel like I want to steal that but too good.

Alan Natachu  
Oh, go for it. Yeah, I don't hold any copyright. And one of the things about me is I hate gatekeeping. If you find an idea, you think it clicks and you want to use it? Go for it. Am I

Lisa Crockett  
I love this. We're all chefs, even those of us who can't cook as well, money. Sorry. I hope she's laughing on the other end. Okay. Moving on. If there was, if you could have any skill to do your job, the job you're doing now that you don't have what would have been like

Alan Natachu  
voiceover Whoa. To bring that rich, deep voice into my elearning and provide it on time and be consistent so it doesn't drain my voice.

Lisa Crockett  
So I learned years ago, I stopped even like saying maybe I'll do that for you. I definitely go to professionals for that. Um, okay, let's see, what more do we have? Do I have any questions in the chat? I've been lowly not looking into the chat. So Monique, if there any in there, feel free to jump on it in. Okay, so you're getting prepared to do to do one of your really cool, cool projects, when he did get yourself into the zone.

Alan Natachu  
Music. But that depends on what kind of zone I'm looking for. If it's kind of a slow, slow burn where I need to keep energy going. I go to movie soundtracks. Lately, it's been the good, the bad and the ugly. That's all too slow burn, because it kind of gets me in the go. It's kind of grooving, but it's not too fast. But if I need something that gets me pumped right now and I need to get started and get out the door, it's going to be more of electronic music trance progressive. If it's manual labor, moving stuff, schlepping stuff. It's classic rock.

Lisa Crockett  
Oh, nice, favorite classic rock artists. And I know we're not in the seed round, but I have to ask

Alan Natachu  
because we're their queen. David Bowie.

Lisa Crockett  
We are the champions. Yes. Oh my god. Awesome. Awesome. Now I'm going to we ever did we ever get to let's see, we got this own. Definitely music. When you're doing your own personal development, you want to learn something, you've seen something really cool. You want to use it somehow. Where do you go? What do you do?

Alan Natachu  
I try to find examples and try to recreate it. Because one of the things that I love doing is taking things apart. I'm a tinkerer. I love destroying stuff putting a good together duct tape in it however, just tried to get it back to wonderful childhood that way.

Lisa Crockett  
Great Frank things.

Alan Natachu  
But I find that going through the process and recreating it is one of the best ways of learning how to do it. I want more time to do elearning challenges of the was it articularly Here

Lisa Crockett  
I've been wanting to do those forever. I did one one

Alan Natachu  
and I yeah, I just don't have the time of between this and home and whatnot. Work home social it's kind of hard yeah, and but if I find something and I'm like okay, I need to figure out how to do it then I will take it apart and use the tools that I have to recreate it. I was very big on doing using PowerPoint that's like my go to tool, PowerPoint and Keynote great graphics, movies, gifts, introductions all sorts of cool stuff.

Lisa Crockett  
When you're going to create some NF T's Oh no, not so much. I'm trying to learn what these things are. So what I've said is basically all I know but I have like what are these things and people are making money at them this is awesome. I wish I was an artist but I'm not okay, um favorite quote or mantra that you live by?

Alan Natachu  
Be like water Bruce Lee

Lisa Crockett  
Okay, I have five minutes so that means speed round questions for if there's anything you guys in the chat would like to ask them to speed around. I will do my best to look to the right. What is the last song you listened to? Elon,

Alan Natachu  
oh, the state of trance 1000 episode. Song number 76

Lisa Crockett  
find it now. You need to email that to me later and we'll send that out to anybody who's interested. Because I need to hear that last book that you read. Book, not article, not magazine.

Alan Natachu  
Piggy and elephant.

Lisa Crockett  
That's awesome. Are you doing the voices?

Alan Natachu  
Yes, you have to do the voices. Voices. That's

Lisa Crockett  
how you prep for the voiceover work. Okay, favorite food or drink?

Alan Natachu  
Morning Coffee to Splenda cream. Diet Coke, iced tea. Slightly sweetened. Favorite food tamales. Tacos. Oh, yummy.

Lisa Crockett  
Oh my gosh. Okay. Who do you fanboy or fangirl?

Alan Natachu  
Everybody here until DC. I mean, I'm huge supporters, everyone here. And yeah, I mean, like, it's, uh, yeah, I I'm very happy and nervous to be here right now. Just let you know.

Lisa Crockett  
You're awesome. And this has been so much fun. Are you kidding? You should do your own show. This is like, this is kind of a blast. And you get to talk to so many cool people. And otherwise I wouldn't be able to be like, Alan, you want to just chat with me? I guess I could. I guess we all could we all should do more of that. Okay. Um, yes, it is the best group. It is definitely the best group. Could your partner best friend any of the above? accurately? Describe what you do for a living?

Alan Natachu  
No, but it's hilarious.

Lisa Crockett  
Have you heard them try? Yeah. Anything fun for sharing? I know, Mike said something with coaching. And I was like, Oh, my. That is not how I'm making my listening. But okay.

Alan Natachu  
Like training or? Yeah. Oh, go play.

Lisa Crockett  
Okay, one more, and I will let you off the hook. And this painful experience will end. Oh, alright. Last PG thing that kept you up all night.

Alan Natachu  
Let's see. All right, it's gonna sound lame. But taking my medication late because it does have the stimulating effect. It is. Yeah.

Lisa Crockett  
Well, is there anything else you would like to share with this wonderful crowd before I pass the mic over to the to our producer Monique to close this out for the day.

Alan Natachu  
Thank you, this has been fun. I want to do more of these scheduling and whatnot. Kind of prevents me so I'm gonna have to make more of an effort to come back on. And do some cool things with the group. And be kind to yourself into one another. It's the holiday season. Some really enjoy it. But for others, it's a very hard time. Just because of stuff and just be kind to yourself, be kind to others.

Lisa Crockett  
Alright, Bonnie, take it away. Thank you, Alan. And we can't wait to have you back. Now I'm going to have you on my list for panel discussion. So let me know if there's anything you'd like to specifically attack

Alan Natachu  
anything everything just find something just let me know.

Lisa Crockett  
What do I do I have Monique, I can't hear her. Oh, I think we may think we may have lost our producer I'm not positive. Then I guess I will do my best to close this out. So guys, I would love to announce our next guest. But we do not have our next guest scheduled yet. Because Monique and I have not gotten together for our 2022 sessions. But we will be talking over the next week and we'll have a schedule worked out. We'll let you guys know. And if you're interested in joining us like Alan did, please, please, please come join us. This is so much fun for us. It's such a great community. You guys know you're here. So we'd love to talk to you and have an awesome rest of your day. And I don't know if I can close you but Monique if you're there you can close this out

Alan Natachu  
and now comes the time where we do interpretive dances until the session ends

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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