With every R-Series purchased, Vapourtec provides training on-site after the installation. I quite often carry out training and I am always careful to be thorough, even laying traps for the users between experiments to see if they have learned or not. It’s always well received, but then I leave and after a few months, things can be forgotten or new users join the group and aside from the manual, that experience can be lost.
Enter YouTube. It’s the ideal platform to show some videos of an experienced user (which I humbly have to tell you, is me) going through the process of preparing and running a reaction, so that our users have something to refer to if they can’t quite remember. It’s a great idea and has been really well received, but recording the videos can be quite the experience. A professional video maker, Jim – from Green Spark Productions, arrives with a car load of cameras, lights, microphones, and my lab becomes a film studio. I always make an outline of the video, with key points that I need to cover at each stage, and I keep it nearby to refer to. But, to be honest, there are a lot of bloopers. In one particular video in which I am carrying a nanoparticle synthesis I have to say “iron tetrafluoroborate hexahydrate and 1,2,4-triazole” (which are the reagents for this particular synthesis). Needless to say, it took quite a few goes, and when I finally did say it, I had totally forgotten what I was supposed to say next. Not to mention dropping things…
Overall, it’s a great experience though. I’ve really enjoyed making the series so far and the benefits to our customers and distributors around the world are clear. Already (at the time of writing) one of the videos, a Suzuki coupling, has had just over 1000 views! People at conferences have even started mentioning them to me; it’s not easy being a super star, but I manage.
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Return on August the 29th for the next blog about temperature control in the Vapourtec Ion