Digital Content in the Age of Coronavirus

The coronavirus has had an enormous ripple effect beyond the core concerns around the virus itself. Conferences, events and festivals have largely been cancelled, including South by Southwest, Coachella and now the NBA. Academic institutions have closed their campuses to varying degrees leaving teachers and staff to rethink on the fly how to teach the rest of the semester online. Imagine shifting a fashion design class from the studio to online in a week?! 

And while over the past decade businesses have been shifting their workflow and technology support to include more “work at home” options, and while schools now have fully functioning remote learning platforms and trained online faculty, very few of these organizations have any experience in going completely digital. It’s becoming clear for many institutions that managing wide scale operations online without any previous experience doing so, and without any “best practices” in place, is challenging on many fronts—training, implementation, software bandwidth, finances and disparity in access to technology. What’s more, many organizations are rushing to digitize content, which simply takes time, whether it’s capturing images and uploading them into online systems or recording lectures and training modules for online delivery. 

In short, the coronavirus is forcing change in the most immediate way possible. And while most experts are focused on today or the very short term, decisions and changes made now will dramatically shift how we as a society work, learn and socialize forever.