Category Archives: Rukuku

Calling all gyms, fitness companies to partner on Live Gym initiative

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For gyms, customer retention is key for maintaining recurring revenue.

We are launching a small pilot project to study if our live training platform can be used at gyms. The goal is to help increase customer retention at gyms by providing scale to fitness training beyond the confines of the real estate.

Here’s the scenario that causes the problem, which we are aiming to solve for gyms:

Many gym-goers – ourselves included – establish a workout routine, stay with it for a while, and then lapse once due to reasons ranging from inclement weather, a family event, a work assignment to illness or trauma. One of these lapses eventually becomes permanent, and the person cancels their gym membership. Our view is that gyms can provide live distance classes to their customers so that they can work out at home, hotel room or wherever they may be at that moment.

This format would be suitable for group workouts like Zumba, yoga, barre or cycling.

For details and to join the Live Gym project, please write to support@rukuku.com

Five Cool Rukuku Features That Everybody Loves

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Our users often email us about features they find most useful in Rukuku so we decided to summarize the fan mail in this post. I will highlight five free features that contest the top position in the “What I love about Rukuku” list.

1. Unlimited participants

Whether you have 1 active customer or a thousand, we are happy to accommodate your needs. We do not impose any limitations on the number of participants in your courses, webinars, or conference calls. Compare this offer to various competing offers out there, and it will become clear that unlimited is hard to find.

2. Free conference calls

Our web conferencing solution is free. Speak for as long as you need, as often as you want – it is free regardless.

3. Free course composer

Create your courses and course materials using our Composer. The tool is absolutely free.

4. Free private classes

If you need a virtual meeting space for an impromptu private class, Rukuku offers that functionality for free. Go to Auditorium, click on Private Classes, and Start New Private Class. Invite other participants by sending them a unique access link using the green “Invite” button. Combined with point #1 above, this is a total winner.

5. Free Storefront

If you want to monetize your courses, we offer you an amazing tool – Storefront. It is a subset of the general Marketplace that resides on your website. You control what items you want to display in your Storefront via a management dashboard. See how it works here: http://malcolmedmonstone.com/online-courses-with-malcolm/

That’s all folks! Don’t be shy to drop us a line about your favorite Rukuku features.

Amazing! Rukuku CDO’s Art Returns From International Space Station

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Rukuku’s co-founder and Chief Design Officer, Oleg Tischenkov – also known in the art and design world as olegti, has just shared some heavenly news! His art has flown to space and come back to Earth after six months on the ISS. Here goes the story:

IMGP5484a Oleg draws a series of comics called “Cat”. He started the strip while he was working in Moscow, Russia. The “Cat” is amazingly popular in Russia: several heavy volumes of “Cat” comics have been published and invariably sold out. The English version of the strip is available as an iPad app “iCat”.

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Exactly a year ago Oleg drew a strip about flying to space and mailed it to one of his fan friends in Moscow who liked it a lot. In fact, the friend passed the strip on to Sergey Ryazansky, a Russian cosmonaut who flew to the ISS last year, and served as a Flight Engineer on Expedition 37 and Expedition 38 before returning to Earth aboard the Soyuz on March 11, 2014. Sergey took the strip with him to space, and then brought it back with him in the Soyuz TMA-10M on March 11.

Oleg has received his strip back in the mail today! As far as everyone involved is concerned, this is the first hand-drawn original comic strip in the history of human kind that flew to space, resided on the International Space Station for six months, and returned back to Earth.  Congratulations, Oleg!

That officially makes Rukuku visual design truly heavenly and super highly technological. Sky is no longer the limit.

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A truly amazing achievement!

Take this job and fill it! Education and Employment in the EU

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Last month, global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. published a report on unemployment among young people in the European Union. The report’s authors – Mona Mourshed, Jigar Patel, and Katrin Suder – found that, while unemployment among young people remains persistently high, employers in the EU struggle to find workers with the right skills.

EU, Europe, young people, unemployment

Young people in the EU struggle for work. Employers struggle to find good workers.

In fact, one third of the employers they surveyed said that the lack of skills is causing major problems for them in terms of cost, quality, or time. Twenty seven percent said that they had left a position open in the past year because they couldn’t find an applicant with the right skills. Ironically, the problem was worse in countries with higher unemployment.

The study’s authors make several recommendations on improving the situation. One, in particular, stood out for me: “Innovate with design, course delivery, and financing to make education more affordable and accessible.” These principles have guided Rukuku’s development from the beginning, and it is exciting to see McKinsey highlighting them in this report.

Also, one possible solution recommended in the report involves breaking up degree or vocational programs into smaller modules, giving more flexibility for students to structure their educational tracks around their schedules, budgets, and personal goals. Again, this is a big part of Rukuku’s approach, breaking down our classes into modules to increase flexibility. We hope to help students around the world develop the skills necessary to fill more positions.

To see McKinsey’s executive summary and/or download the full report, click here.