If you’re at all into crafting digital images, editing sounds, producing videos, or putting together web sites, chances are you’ve come across one of Lynda.com ‘s instructional videos. Based in Carpinteria, the company has produced educational and training materials for countless computer applications, popular and niche, software- and internet-based alike, from Access to Zbrush 3. It turns out that’s not just a meaninglessly memorable name; there really is a Lynda, the company’s founder and winner of Entrepreneur of the Year in the 2010 South Coast Business and Technology Awards. (And yes, she bears more than a little resemblance to that icon in the upper-left of Lynda.com’s pages.)
She’s also the keynote speaker at the MIT Enterprise Forum Central Coast’s Wednesday, June 16 event, “Never Stop Learning in the Digital Age: How Lynda.com harnessed the internet for education.” She’ll be joined by two Lynda.com-using co-panelists, introNetworks CEO Mark Sylvester and CSU Channel Islands CIO Michael Berman, and a moderator, Radius Group Commercial Real Estate General Manager Brian Johnson. They’ll discuss how Weinman and the web site that bears her first name have risen to such prominence in their field over the past 15 years, having become synonymous with instructional videos for the digital arts.
A player in the computer graphics and web design scenes for just about as long as the web has been able to deliver a graphical user experience, Weinman quite literally wrote the book on the intersection of those two subjects, Designing Web Graphics, in 1995. She’s since published many more volumes on related topics, taught at the Art Center College of Design, worked in the animation and film industries, all the while consulting for and presenting at firms no less eminent on the digital landscape than Adobe, Microsoft, and Disney. Fortunately, even if you miss out on this wide range of experience she’ll have to share, you’ll still be able to catch her talk after the fact on Channels 17 and 21.
“Never Stop Learning in the Digital Age” is the latest in the MIT Enterprise Forum’s ongoing series of events designed to bolster the local entrepreneurial community. The Central Coast chapter, one of 25 across the United States, has been working away at its mission to disseminate the knowledge of experienced business leaders in and around Santa Barbara since 1986. This latest effort happens from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Cabrillo Pavillion Arts Center (1118 East Cabrillo). For more information, visit mitcentralcoast.com.