Tragedy Strikes

In February of 2009 in the Mogoon Village in Kenya, tragedy struck. Their water source, the “borehole” as they call it, had broken down and there was very little hope of raising the money required to fix it. With one of the longest standing droughts in Kenya, the community struggled to hang on for life; schools closed, 2 seasons of crops didn’t produce, disease infiltrated and consequently both animals and people passed away. Without affordable access to water, many fell ill to dehydration, cholera and didn’t have the immunity to fend off malaria. In other words this was a major health risk to hundreds of people in the region.

Convergence Training Gives Thanks at Thanksgiving

Back in the United States, Randy Kohltfarber of Convergence Training, is enjoying the luxury of an early morning water ski session. In a ski boat, surrounded by gallons and gallons of water, he sits with his skiing partners Kara Anderson and Dr. Gerri Fujii. Kara recalls her recent trip to the Nakuru Orphanage in Kenya where she was a volunteer worker. When Randy hears about the tragic broken water supply, he decides to offer support and pay for the water source to be repaired.

Click the link below to read the full story about the interwoven lives of people across the globe and how Convergence Training sponsored the repair of the Kenyan village’s water supply.

Read the full story here

See the PowerPoint with photos and details

Click here to visit LifeWater.org

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A local newspaper, The Columbian based in Vancouver, Washington, has featured Convergence Training on the front page of their business section. The article is part of their weekly “Clark County at Work” feature and details how Convergence has dealt with the difficult economic times, what our greatest challenge has been, and what lies ahead in the next six to eight months. There is also information on what Convergence does and some statistics on our company.

The electronic version of the article can be found here: View Article

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Well, it may be pretty bold, but we’re making a statement: BuyBetterTraining.com. The name says it all.

What is BuyBetterTraining.com?

Its our new online store, redesigned from the ground up with new technology and a fresh new look! We’ve got new products, more screenshots, and lots of great new information! Not only does it look great, but the stuff under the hood is pretty cool too. Its faster, easier to search, filter and find products, and the checkout process is quick and painless.

What does the new store sell?

Just like our old store, we’ve got all the safety training essentials you need including our popular Bloodborne Pathogens, Fire Safety, and Asbestos Awareness. If you need more than a single topic, we have our 28 DVD Set full of environmental, health and safety training. We’ve also got our Surface Miner Training products (Basic, Standard, and Advanced) that provide training for MSHA Part 46. In addition to the core products, we’ve made room for the future. We’ve got categories all lined up for our Driver Safety courses and our Industrial Essentials library.

What about the old store?

Over the past year and a half, we’ve had a pretty steep increase in products, viewers, and customers, and we finally outgrew our ecommerce platform. In order to provide a better shopping experience and to better support our growing customer base, we have launched a new store at BuyBetterTraining.com. Our old site will continue to be operational until December 31st, 2009. You may shop and complete purchases at the old site, or give the new store a test drive (but please be patient while we work out all the kinks!).

Check it out!

We’ve been working hard to prove to everyone that they don’t have to settle when it comes to training, and now our store stands out just like our products do. So, give it a test drive yourself and check out our new store now!

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With a shortage of Swine Flu Vaccines and President Barrack Obama’s recent declaration of a national emergency, Convergence Training has developed our new H1N1 Flu/Swine Flu Awareness Video that’s appropriate for nearly any audience

Director of Product Development here at Convergence Training, Randy Kohltfarber, explains that “Our goals for this new video are to provide information and tools that can help prevent the spread of the H1N1 Flu, reduce the potential social and economic impact on our country, and ultimately save lives.”

Like our other safety training video products, this video uses our distinct visual style including 2D and 3D graphics and animation.

The Swine Flu Video is being offered for purchase and download in flexible, easily-sharable formats to encourage broad distribution of the training on our new website:

www.H1N1Video.com

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Convergence Training would like to welcome two new media designers to the team, Jason Raines and Chris Dunable. They will be helping us keep up with our growing workload of training projects.

Jason has several years of pulp and paper training experience in his media repertoire, and Chris brings a diverse and extensive 3D background to the media development team. Jason’s Adobe Flash skills have already proven useful in helping with our Contractor Training projects. Chris has started work on our upcoming Defensive Driving courses.

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Convergence Training, a division of Capstone Technology Corporation, announces the launch of its new reseller program designed to expand distribution of safety training DVDs through relationships with established online retailers of safety training videos and safety products.

In January of 2009, after years of developing custom safety and operational training courses for international manufacturing clients, Convergence began actively marketing a line of commercial safety training DVDs and compliance software. Less than a year after opening its online store, Convergence is now extending its distribution strategy to established online safety resellers to meet increased demand for their unique training products.

Now, even as the U.S. economy struggles and unemployment remains high, Convergence safety training DVDs and compliance software sales have been consistently on the rise. “Safety training has always been a tough-sell. But with increasing pressure on Safety Coordinators to do more with less, our customers view our products as high quality, cost-effective training tools,” noted Randy Kohltfarber, Director of Convergence Product Development. He added, “And with more diversified sales efforts, we can focus our resources on what we do best, producing superior training tools that improve safety and lower costs.”

Leading online safety stores, including www.trainingabc.com, ComplianceAndSafety.com, and SafetyDVDs.com, now carry Congergence Training safety DVDs and compliance software. Bjorn Ansbro, Convegence’s Business Development Manager, is also currently developing reseller and affiliate relationships with national equipment distributors, office supply retailers, and federal organizations. Bjorn notes that, “While building these relationships is critical to our growth, our new reseller program is just one step toward establishing and building a lasting presence in the industry.”

Convergence is a producer of occupational health and safety training videos, learning management software, and regulatory compliance tools for general industry, mining, pulp and paper, and construction.

For more information on Convergence Training’s safety training videos, compliance software, and online training services, visit www.ThinkConvergence.com or call 888-634-7346 x231.

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After launching our reseller program, reaching out to hundreds of new customers, and deciding to develop and release many new titles, we have decided to upgrade our online store. We have decided to use ZNode, a powerful e-commerce platform that is designed to be adaptable and customizable. In the next couple of months, look for a brand new design as well as a host of new features to make the shopping experience more enjoyable and easier to use.

New features include:
– Better product organization
– More design and layout flexibility
– Post product reviews online
– Built in customer service forms
– Faster performing with less lag time
– Advanced product search
– Better image and thumbnail support
– And many more!

Visit the ZNode Website

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Convergence Training is pleased to announce that we have launched a new website, dedicated to our pulp and paper customers.

Specific topics covered by this new website include:

• Custom Machine and Process Training – Site-specific, media-rich, 3D courses
• Contractor Training Solutions – Training and software to save time and money
• Mill Safety Training – Off-the-shelf, media-rich, 3D courses
• Learning Management System Software – Deliver, track, and report
• Mobile Training Device – Rugged task and classroom management in the field

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Do you have many miners at many sites?

Do you need to get MSHA Part 46 training to those miners?

Do you have a hard and costly time getting those miners together for training?

If the answer to any of the above questions is “Yes!”, then MSHASafetyTraining.com has an enterprise solution for you.

After many requests, MSHASafetyTraining.com is proud to announce our award winning MSHA training is now available in an online msha training solution. Our Surface Miner Training, combined with our Online Learning Management System, provides a fully-integrated training management solution. You can set up training plans, deliver training, test trainees, and automatically produce records of training in a centralized internet-based system. Access the system from any PC connected to the internet. With our online system you will save time and money!

Check it out here:
Surface Miner Training Online

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Over the last couple of years, we have been getting more and more requests to have our safety training DVDs and MSHA Part 46 training translated to Spanish. Because of the additional requests, we are looking into translation services and budgeting to see what it would take. Not everyone fully understands some of the challenges we face by undertaking the translation. There are several different ways to approach it with different levels of end-product quality. Here are the options:

Add Subtitles and Audio to Safety DVDs – $$$
The “easiest” way to get into Spanish is to target just our DVD products. We can get the scripts translated and recorded in Spanish, and just add an alternative audio track. This may sound simple, but keep in mind we have over 16 hours of combined EHS and MSHA training. The cost just for us to have the script translated and recorded could be more than $50k! In addition, the downside is that only the audio gets translated, so all the graphics on the screen will be in English and American standard measurements. For native Spanish speakers, they could hear appropriate text, but the animations and graphics may not coordinate.

Translate On-Screen Graphics and Add Spanish Audio – $$$$
The next step would be more translation including the on-screen graphics. This would include doing the above translation, PLUS a translator would have to watch all of our training, transcribe the text and graphics on screen, and then we would have to manually update all the text. I’m guessing that cost would be another $50k or more, plus the time it would take someone internally to make all the required graphics changes. There is still one downside to this method, and that involves the 3D scenes. Any of the photos, or textures used in the 3D scenes would still be in English.

Update 3D Scenes, Translate On-Screen Graphics, Add Spanish Audio – $$$$$
The ultimate translation job would include both of the previous steps, PLUS the translation of all 3D assets. This can be truly difficult because it will involve photoshopping texture files and photos to remove English text. It would also require a lot of time to re-render the 3D files, which would then need to be re-imported into our video editing software (Adobe After Effects). Imaging showing a render with a street sign that says “one way” on it in English. It wouldn’t make any sense to someone who couldn’t read it.

In my opinion, the last path would end up with the most usable training product for Spanish speakers. If you only translate the audio and/or some of the graphics, the training can’t possibly be as effective or engaging. Since we are talking about some fairly technical information that definitely has the ability to save lives, wouldn’t you want it to be as effective as possible?

If you are interested in Spanish version of any of our training, contact us to let us know. info@thinkconvergence.com, 1-888-634-7346

MSHA Training Guide and Online Training Tools

Download our free guide to learn about MSHA, the MSHA Part 46 and 48 training requirements, and how to use online tools to satisfy MSHA Parts 46 and 48.

Download Free Guide

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Because of some of the recent media coverage, we are working on creating a swine flu awareness training course. The course will be brief, but will provide specific tips on preventing infection of swine flu and influenza. The 3-5 minute H1N1 safety training will be available soon and will be economically priced.

Check out these in-progress renders:

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Convergence Training will be meeting with prospects and clients in a weeklong trip to the Cincinnati, Ohio area. We will be meeting primarily with pulp and paper customers and surface mining operations.

If you would like to schedule a meeting with a Convergence representative in your area, visit our Contact Us page and let us know.

We look forward to our trip and meeting with everyone!

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