Don’t miss out: keep your DTV email current

We’re excited to announce that Duello.TV will be opening its doors again soon for subscription access. But before we officially launch we’re looking for some insider feedback on some of our new free offerings.

We have developed a ton of cool new things over the past year, including online HEMA courses for longsword and rapier, new training exercise videos, as well as all-new video library content for our novice longsword and rapier curriculum.

GETTING STARTED COURSES

What we’d like feedback on today is our two free Courses for Italian swordplay: Getting Started with Longsword, and Getting Started with Rapier.

Longsword: 8 lessons, 15 min video

Rapier: 11 lessons, 18 min video

We designed them to be 1) useful resources that a new practitioner could use to try out HEMA and get started in the very basics, and 2) a small sample of what is available in our full Fundamentals Series beginner courses. Take a look at them and tell us:

– What do you like about them most?
– What grabs your interest?
– Can you spot room for improvement?
– Are they a suitable introduction that a newcomer could participate in and enjoy as a one-off?
– Would you recommend them to someone wanting to try HEMA for the first time?

Log in now and try them out: Getting Started with Longsword, Getting Started with Rapier. As DTV members you’re already enrolled!

All constructive feedback is welcome! If you like it, let us know– if you don’t like it, we want to hear from you! We’re fine tuning and constantly rolling out new features, so the site will probably be changing from visit to visit. We look forward to hearing from you.

Devon & Greg

P.S. If you know someone who would love to participate in this evaluation and send feedback, please feel free to forward this email to them. Non-members will be prompted to register for free. Thank you!

As I posted last week, Duello.TV will be undergoing some changes over the coming months. In fact we’re already hard at work at quite a few of them. I wanted to share a little bit about where we’re going and solicit feedback from the community about what they feel would be valuable for you. Leave your comments here

Over the years we have had a loyal following both of subscribers and members, however as the internet and the practice of HEMA has grown, we have begun to feel that there is much more we can offer to help individuals learn and grow using new tools and technologies. The ten-to-fifteen-minute highly detailed videos we offer are great for instructors and certain higher level practitioners, however they can be a bit daunting for someone who is trying to start from the beginning.

The main features we’re planning to offer on the new DTV are as follows:

An Individual Learning Portal

Aimed at solo practitioners and the individual members of study group and other schools interested in learning what we have to offer. This will include:

• Structured courses where videos are shorter and more actionable. I.e. 2 to 3 minute discrete lessons.
• Guided assessments and quizzes.
• Progress and level tracking.
• Daily training advice and drills.
• Forums for asking questions and getting guidance.

A Study Group Portal

Similar to what we offer currently with the unlimited access plan but with more guidance for setting up and running classes from our material. This will include:

• Lesson plans.
• Drilling guidance.
• Level assessments.
• Forums for asking questions and getting guidance.

What do you think? Does this have value for you? What would you add and where do you think we’d do best to focus? Leave your comments here.

To help support our development of the new site, we’re offering our unlimited access subscription (gives you access to all 400+ lessons on rapier, longsword, sidesword, grappling, and more) for only $9.95 per month. This package and price will be going away after December 6, 2015, so sign-up now to get the deal and help us out. We’ll also give you advanced opportunities to check out the new stuff as we build it.

Sign-up and support us here. You can also get access to our free membership and get free content and stay in the loop on our project.

Thanks everyone for your ongoing support and feedback!
Devon

Happy New Year everyone! Over the holiday I wrote a post on the Academie Duello blog looking back over the past year at the school. I thought the same would be worth doing here on Duello.TV where so much has happened.

A Fruitful and Productive 2015

We are always working to improve the content on Duello.TV both in how we deliver it abroad as well as to better represent our learning and delivery at Academie Duello. This year one of our major new projects was shooting the Abrazare Level III video series for Unarmed and Dagger. Along with extensive treatment of hand-to-hand grappling and unarmed combat, these videos explore all of the traditional Italian dagger masters and their plays. This material covered more than 60 individual techniques. It was a lot of fun to shoot, though probably less so for Greg who did most of the falling.

When you have the opportunity to run material through hundreds of classes you get a lot of feedback and iteration. Nearly all of our longsword material (6 tracks worth of stuff) has been updated to fit our new pedagogy. We also shot a whole new series of videos on Approaching Gioco Largo that reflects how we have developed in the school in the past two years. We have already received tons of compliments so I know it’s working for others and not just for us.

Looking Forward to Great Things in 2016

In the new year we are growing our intermediate curriculum videos further which will mean improved and expanded material for rapier and sidesword as well. Look for more on the deceptive fight with rapier, as well as general combative strategy in approaching and receiving with sidesword. I’m working on developing all of the new curriculum plans for the school now, so look to see these changes reflect in DTV content as our calendar updates progress.

Beyond content changes, we have been making changes to Duello.TV under the hood. Our membership engine was upgraded which allowed us to have people pay directly instead of through Paypal. It has also setup the needed backbone for much better access control and progress tracking for individual members. This will make our new features with DTV possible.

Which brings us to the most exciting news. As you all know we closed down new Subscription sign-ups at the beginning of December and began moving forward on the format of the new Duello.TV. Our main goal this year is to upgrade DTV from a knowledge repository, with little guidance, into a learning portal that will help bring members through each stage of their learning. This new format will bring in some key features:

1. Courses. Here you will go through smaller objective oriented lessons that includes new more focused videos, theory questions, and the capacity to get assessment on your form. We’re designing these with both individual practitioners and study groups in mind. There is a sample course available already, check it out and give us your feedback by email or in the comment boxes below each lesson.
2. Video Assessment. We’re working out exactly how we want to do this, but the plan is to have the ability to review student’s form remotely, so we can better help practitioners truly excel in learning new techniques.
3. Discussion. Our new site will allow for much more discussion around individual techniques and lessons. Here there will be the opportunity to learn more about the why behind our approach as well as how it relates to the various historical sources we use.
4. Progress. As you move through content and assess on it, the new site will better allow you to track your own progress, or manage the progress of others in your group.

We plan to start rolling out trials to some of these new features very early in the new year to our paid Subscribers and we’ll be looking for feedback and guidance as we go.

What are you looking to get out of DTV? What features do you appreciate the most? What is lacking? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

It has been a great year of swordplay at Academie Duello and Duello.TV and it has been great to meet so many DTV followers in-person and by email. I hope to meet many more of you in the coming year both online and in person. All the best to you, and enjoy your training!

Devon & Greg