This man says he holds the key to the content castle

Nathan Eckel harbors a lot of pride in his practice as an instructional designer. The crest of that pride has become his role as a shepherd for a small flock of local innovators.
This isn’t your typical gang of Jane and John Does who get together to share a basket of fries and sip a beer or two after a Neighborhood Association meeting. This is the Freemasons. This is the Corleones. This is an extremely exclusive crew of folks from a variety of professional backgrounds, hand-picked by the Don himself.
“I’ve learned to be pretty discerning,” Eckel admitted. “Not everybody is a good match. Not everybody has an understanding of what’s involved. Not everybody will even want to go through the rigorous process I take them on to unlock their ideas.”

For those unfamiliar with instructional design, it’s exactly what it sounds like — building processes that optimize the education experience. Eckel was teaching it at Philadelphia’s La Salle University when he wrote his book, Open Source Instructional Design. He quickly found himself moving into teaching what he calls “rapid content creation” to individuals.
“I realized my heart was in helping people instead of institutions only,” Eckel said. “That naturally lead me to the startup and online business environment where people are becoming subject matter experts and thought leaders. They need the tools to look the part, act the part and automate the part.”
Brand. Automate. Monetize.
Eckel appropriately calls it BAM. It’s the title and definition of the process he and his growing band of like-minded educators teach their students. The last event — “BAMcamp” — had 9 invitees.
“I deliberately kept it small because I wanted to go an inch broad and a mile deep,” Eckel said.
One of his students — itr8group cofounder Rory Laitila — was a speaker at that event. Laitila went through Eckel’s “rigorous process,” and his itr8minute and Road to SyncQL campaigns are heavily influenced by Eckel’s rapid content creation process.
“The original inspiration for the itr8minute was Nathan had another client doing a short video update to their client base,” Laitila wrote via email. “I knew that I wanted to engage the market with our development philosophy, but I needed a method that was engaging and that I could be consistent with.”
So, much to Eckel’s delight, Laitila adopted a few of Eckel’s rapid content creation methodologies.
“It was only six, seven, eight months ago that we sat down and I had some rapid content ideas and [Laitila] took what we talked about and ran with it,” Eckel beamed. “He started the iter8minute. He’s adapting that in ways I’ve never even thought of.”
What’s next for Eckel? The content specialist is aspiring to turn his posse of instructional design underlings into an agency of sorts. At the end of the day, Eckel fancies himself an entrepreneur for the entrepreneurial.
“I believe every person can and should share their professional expertise just as [Laitila] is doing,” Eckel wrote us. “That’s what drives me each day.”