Global Lynda.com

A couple of months ago, I finished my course at Product School. This course allowed me to get a better understanding of how product development happens, the ways decisions are made and technology products are iterated, and how to validate ideas with customer feedback. In the course, we were advised to pick our final project based on our "superpower" and a company we either work at, would like to start, or love. I couldn't help but focus my project on internationalizing Lynda.com.

I've been a fan of Lynda.com for more than 10 years. I've been a subscriber continuously for more than six years. The number of things I've been able to teach myself using courses on the site would (and did) fill an entire slide with logos. In December, I went to a talk and got to meet Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin, the founders of the site. Last summer, LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com.

So, What is Global Lynda.com?

Global Lynda.com is my four-phase rollout product plan for driving the internationalization and localization of Lynda.com into more than 20 languages. The initial validation phase involves translating the English-language subtitles for the most popular 20 courses in the Spanish-speaking world into Spanish. When users can switch their language preference to Spanish and some customer validation happens, other languages can be rolled out in batches.

Why am I Interested in This Project?

I've been doing internationalization on the web for a long time and consider multi-lingual internationalization and localization one of my core assets. I've built web experiences in more than 20 languages for a variety of companies, including Apple, Remedy, BMC Software, Cloudmark, and SurveyMonkey.

Lynda.com is a critically important learning resource for people from all walks of life. With LinkedIn's 400 million strong userbase and the quality and breadth of Lynda.com's course offerings, LinkedIn is positioned to be a dominating force in the education technology space. With competition heating up, LinkedIn can leverage its massive global reach to drive Lynda.com's engagement internationally and become the go-to resource for both education and certification, both professionally and recreationally.

Documents

• Product Requirements Document
• User Personas
• Metrics Case Study
• Language Rollout Phases
• Go to Market Plan
• Presentation (PDF)

Note: Many of the documents, particularly the metrics case study, have assumptions based on research I was able to do on the internet, without access to Lynda's or LinkedIn's metrics.