...And now for the quiz
Training is not exactly in the fabric of our company. We're small, not that it should be an excuse and every year there is a training budget - usually based on 1985 prices - but it's always removed when the going gets tough.
Sometimes, however, we're required to do something because it's all legal-like. This week we had to learn something about the Data Protection Act. Being a relatively new Act, for once we were treated to a relatively new training video, or, in fact, DVD.
Old fashioned training videos followed a similar format. Comedy legend, usually John Cleese, would introduce the subject in a slightly pompous headmaster style. This would put us at our ease, but inform us that it was a subject to be considered seriously, one of those 'if we all work hard we'll have a lot of fun' things bosses are keen on.
There would be vignettes of an over acting hapless fool demonstrating how not to do the thing the video is about. There's usually a rather plain secretary who roles her eyes at the idiocy, quietly getting on with her work and correcting his mistakes. This is because she is a woman and therefore sensible, obviously. Then once the vignette is finished a graphic of the blatantly obvious learning points are read out by said comedy legend.
It seems that training videos have moved on. Rather than hand holding through the key learning points, it's a half-hour wobbly camera production in the style of The Office. For this particular video it was a training film about the Data Protection Act of people on a training course about the Data Protection Act. There were no graphics with learning points; it was all supposed to have gone in by osmosis. The Office's genius is not in what is being said, but how it's being said. The dialogue is not necessarily funny, but it's transformed by the situation it's in - the pettiness, the childishness in a supposedly serious and adult situation. In a training film it loses some of its impact if you're encouraged to ignore the dialogue. In the end you learn nothing apart from the fact that Stewpot from Grange Hill is now acting in training films.
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