At the beginning this next month (October) I will start an awesome program called Code Academy. It is a new program here in Chicago that teaches Ruby on Rails web application development. Why would I want to learn how to program if I’m so heavily into video creation and motion design? Simple… video and the web is all becoming so integrated together it seemed like a natural progression for me to add to my skill set.

After creating video for 10 years I had to make a choice for myself on which direction I wanted to go in this field. Did I want to stick and move forward with only the broadcast and/or film side of things or did I want to also get deeper involved and embrace the new roads that have been created for content delivery? I chose the latter. Recently a good chunk of work I have done has been mainly targeted to be used for website and mobile devices so I felt wanted to get a better idea of how those delivery methods can be created, and even create some of my own.

Digital publishing is just starting to take off. Right now tablets are limited mainly to the iPad and a few other Android tablets, but with Windows 8 right around the corner, tablets are going to be the common place in households everywhere. That means more and more magazines and newspapers will begin to deliver their content in digital form. That is fantastic for video and motion creators.

Articles will increasingly contain videos to compliment the articles, animations to display info-graphics about topics, and advertisers that will want to use it all. It has already begun. I am subscribed to Wired Magazine as well as Golf Digest. Both of these publications allow me to download digital copies of the issues to my iPad along with the paper copy that shows up in the mail every month. I’ve seen some cool stuff done in the issues in regards to the articles, but what really amazes me is the types of things advertisers are able to do with their full page ads in the issues (and how many aren’t taking advantage of anything). You can take that static ad from the paper issue and take it to the next level. Embed a video in the ad, have a photo slide show of your product, take advantage of an internet connection and pull in twitter feeds or user forums for people to share about those products. Additionally that then could allow those advertisers to pull data back to themselves and breakdown who their customers are and how they can better improve their company and product to serve those customers.

So that’s why I’m learning code, Ruby on Rails to be exact. My hope is to be able to help bring these new engaging experiences and help create theses new delivery methods for videos and animations to be seen and used where they haven’t been before. I even have a first project lined up for myself and I’m super excited to share it with the video community in a few months. I hope it can help us all create better products for our clients and save a little headache and time in the process.