TTE ADVISORY BOARD: Top Learning Resources
September is a month that offers a fresh start as schools open their doors (or at least ‘virtual’ ones) and students become one with the learning experience. At The Tech Equestrian, learning leads to evolving which is at the core of technology, so we asked our esteemed Advisory Board: What are your favorite resources for learning more about horses? Your business? Technology? Please include at least 3 sources and name(s) of books; online resources; videos and more - and include reasons why.
1. Refind Plugin: I spend a ton of time on my computer doing just about everything these days: working, learning, researching, shopping, etc. The refind plugin scours the media based on your interests and serves up interesting new articles every time that you open a new tab. You can add things to your reading list for later or take a break from what you are doing to check out an interesting article. My preferences are set to serve a combination of educational and informational reads, and the result is that I find things that I most likely would never have found on my own.
2. Codeacademy: I LOVE Codeacademy for anyone who wants to learn anything about programming. I have used it to learn and practice HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They also have a great mobile app to practice the skills that you are learning whenever you have a few minutes to kill. It is designed for anyone with any level of experience or knowledge of programming, and it has been an incredibly rewarding way for me to develop new skills and add some new tools to my toolkit.
3. Horse & Country TV: One of the things that I really enjoy about traveling to horse shows with International level competition is taking some time to watch the schooling area. I feel like you can learn so much about riding, training, and horsemanship by watching and listening to top riders and trainers, their grooms and managers as they are preparing to compete. Not having that opportunity this summer, I started watching some of the Masterclasses on Horse & Country TV. I found them to be similarly stimulating. You get to hear the thoughts of top riders as they work through something with their horse. It is interesting and insightful, and there is a lot more content available on their platform that I have not yet had the opportunity to dive into including live events and produced series and interviews with top equestrians.
- Nicole, BarnManager
My three go to resources for keeping me informed about the industry are:
1. Journal of Equine Veterinary Science
This is really meant for vets, but I'm always able to learn about serious clinical issues facing horses that technology can potentially learn to identify and predict in advance.
2. The Horse - Guide to Equine Health Care
I enjoy reading articles that deal with real world topics of interest to horse owners, which also acts as a bellwether of their technology readiness.
3. Linkedin
Allows me to keep track of new technologies and services that have been developed by my network and to connect with new potential partners.
- Alan, Steed
My favorite resources for learning come from a varied array of resources. I love to read, so I’ll be the first to research and find a book (or multiple books!) on a topic and read all the articles I can find online until I feel more comfortable with a subject I am new to.
For horses, this has included reading the books on riding basics from the Masters: “Riding and Jumping” from William Steinkraus, “Centered Riding” from Sally Swift, “Hunter Seat Equitation” from George Morris.
For business, one of my favorites from early on in my career was “One Minute Manager” by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. I have often received feedback in my professional career that I am exceedingly efficient (sometimes to a fault in the world of chargeable hours, but I still like to be efficient for my clients!) and I attribute a lot of that to my habits learned early on from that book.
For technology, I have actually used the “xx For Dummies” series to learn about a lot of different technology topics, from different types of coding to marketing. I find them easy to read and glean the basic information I need to get started in a topic.
I also follow several of my favorite people across a wide variety of topics in Linked In and Facebook and read articles that they post or share.
- Misty, HorseLinc
There are so many great resources available at our fingertips thanks to technology. Over the past few months I have made an effort to spend time listening and absorbing new information. For information about horse care and training, I take advantage of my village. With friends, vets, farriers, and experts throughout all corners of the industry I always ask around for answers to challenging questions or find out about new products and techniques.
Another great resource is the inimitable Horse & Rider Books (aka Trafalgar Square Publishing) catalogue- their website has amazing reference books and guides for equine enthusiasts.
For business insights, I’ve recently added Inc.com to my weekly reading list. The articles cover a range of business topics, some of which highlight new tech and great strategies we’ve been able to implement at STRIDER . We’re also very lucky to have our office based in the Georgetown Venture Lab which means we get access to webinars and special programming from the Georgetown University Entrepreneurship Initiative, throughout the pandemic the Venture Lab newsletter has been a great resource for access to upcoming learning opportunities. I’ve learned a bit from webinars facilitated by tech companies such as HubSpot and ActiveCampaign as well- and these entities will often automatically email you a recording of the webinar even if you can’t attend ‘live’.
By far my favorite source of business inspiration is the How I Built This podcast hosted by Guy Raz. Each week he interviews leaders and innovators who built businesses from creative solutions to problems. The host recently published a book, too—so that’s been added to my reading list.
- Natasha, Strider
