Learning From The Best: Jose Burgos, TriCaster Rock Star
By Jim Bask
By Brian Leopold
José Burgos is a rock star. Everyone says so. He’s the Michael Jordan of the TriCaster, the Mohammed Ali of TalkShow, the Peyton Manning of 3Play. Sit José down in front of the TriCaster, and he’ll not only make it sing but tap dance as well. If you need the ceiling of your chapel painted, you call José. End of story.
But unlike Michelangelo, if you’d like to learn to paint something yourself, like say, a portrait, Burgos is happy to share his knowledge and drop a few tricks of the trade on you as well, all in the hopes of turning you into your own version of a TriCaster rock star. As one of only three authorized NewTek trainers, Burgos has taught well over 1,000 operators to use NewTek products. Maybe he trained you. Burgos’ students have come from all over the world.
“I recently had a guy come from Africa to train with me,” Burgos says. That makes every continent, but Antarctica. So obviously, somebody needs to sell a TriCaster to some penguins so José can check the last box on his quest for worldwide domination.
NewTek Vice President of Training, Don Ballance is a Burgos believer.
“José is one of those rare individuals who has not only mastered the use of a very powerful tool but also has the ability to break the technology down and make it understandable to people with all different skill sets and backgrounds,” Ballance says. “That’s what makes him such a great trainer.”
Making Technology Understandable
“I can teach anybody to run a TriCaster,” Burgos insists. Over the years, José has taken on all comers; people with technical backgrounds, people without technical backgrounds, engineering types, artistic types, administrative types, people from every imaginable background and experience level. “Being a qualified trainer means I’m able to address each client’s specific needs and understand what they’re hoping to accomplish,” Burgos says. “Then, I can come up with a workflow that efficiently accomplishes their goals and train each staff member accordingly.”
According to José, getting a new operator up and running doesn’t necessarily take weeks of training. “In a niche situation, I can train a person in one day,” Burgos says. “Take, for example, a middle school who wants to do a daily show to broadcast their morning announcements, possibly do a sports report, maybe even run some videos. When I walk away from that one-day training, I can guarantee they’ll be able to do their show without a problem.”
Hiring José to train a middle school to run their TriCaster might seem like using a nuke to kill a mosquito, but according to José, learning from a skilled operator is the most effective and time efficient way to become proficient in a hurry.
“People always talk about the TriCaster being an “intuitive” tool, but really, it’s not,” Burgos says. “It is straightforward and easy to explain, but just because you understand computers doesn’t mean you’ll automatically understand the TriCaster.” In fact, according to Burgos, too much reliance on computer knowledge is the number-one obstacle beginning users face in learning to use this powerful and versatile tool.
“Take file management, for example,” Burgos says. “TriCaster handles files completely differently than a computer does. If you didn’t read the manual, you might import a file into the TriCaster the same way you would when trying to transfer a file to the hard drive on your computer. But that’s just not the right way to do it. That, by far, is the number-one pitfall novice users fall into. I tell them, it’s a TriCaster, not a computer.”
Training Intermediate Users
But it’s not just neophyte TriCaster users who call on Jose for help. He also does a fair amount of work training intermediate to advanced users. According to José, training an experienced user is much different than teaching the TriCaster to rookies. It involves showing them the best ways of optimizing their workflow to efficiently tackle complicated production scenarios…[continue to full article]