Tag Archive for: community

Free Online Tutorials

Since launching our Learning Management System and our community, we’ve learned a lot about how to help our customers get the skills they need to be successful with Jama Software. Over the past couple of years we fielded complaints about the usability as well as feedback for desired features in each system. When we thought about the qualities we wanted in these tools, it boiled down to three:

  • easy to use
  • easy to search
  • and easy to collaborate with

Most importantly with the LMS, we wanted to make the content available free for our customers. This year, as our contracts expired with our service providers, we had the opportunity to make some changes to improve our customers’ experience.

We made the decision to move our learning videos to YouTube. When we considered what else makes learning easier, we thought about learning styles and how some people like to read, some like to watch, and some like to discuss. It became clear that we could provide the best experience by merging our education content with the Community, that way relevant articles could be linked to videos and moderated discussions could readily occur.

We’re excited to kick this effort off with about thirty videos on our YouTube channel. Right now you can access those via our new community. This is just the first step towards an integrated experience; soon we will have pertinent how-to and best practices articles linked from each embedded video, providing much-needed context. Based on your feedback we plan to expand that to role-based learning. It is our goal for the community to become your first (and last) stop for learning everything Jama.

At Jama, we enjoy opening our doors to different groups and organizations. We feel it’s important to give back to our community, encourage networking with peers and supporting local organizations within technology.  Most recently, we hosted the Computer Science Class from St. Mary’s Academy.  St. Mary’s Academy is a private girls school in downtown Portland focused on educating and inspiring the next generation of leaders in our community and the world.

St Marys 1

Mike Bedney, Jr. is on the faculty at the school and championed a tour of local Software Companies in downtown Portland for his Computer Science students. The intent of the tour was to showcase women in technology positions within software, their roles within our company, what they enjoy most about working in technology and provide guidance for the students that may help them in their pursuit of a technical career path.

St Marys 2

The students were able to meet 5 of our staff from all across our organization. One of our Graphic Designers, Customer Support Community Manager, Solution Architect, Quality Assurance Engineer and Talent Partner. They all have a unique story to tell about their journey into technology and excellent advice for those interested in pursing a career in this field.  Opportunities are abundant in hi tech and continue to grow exponentially as new technology continues to be developed.  We need to encourage and educate the younger generations of the diverse technical opportunities that are waiting for them.St marys Thank You