1 Tech Stories Online Collaboration Projects Skypeathon 2015 & 2016 (Sept-Dec 2016) The transition from traditional sales and marketing to community management has seen us follow the progress of various education ambassador programs with a specific interest in early stage super user programs. The last time we checked the number of ambassadors in Scottish education there were not too many. Upon the recommendation by valued member of my PLN, Malcolm Wilson, to check out what Microsoft was doing in Scotland and found there were over 50 MIE Experts. Microsoft was also a main sponsor for The US Digital Citizenship Summit and we were keen to find ways to add value for them supporting this event. This led to us curating information for the 2015 and 2016 Skypeathon. We curated data from Twitter and the Microsoft Education Community (MEC) to find people who had clocked up Skype miles during the Skypeathon and via MEC. Connections and journeys made during the 2015 Skypeathon
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Tech Stories Online Collaboration Projects
Skypeathon 2015 & 2016 (Sept-Dec 2016)
The transition from traditional sales and marketing to community management has seen us follow the
progress of various education ambassador programs with a specific interest in early stage super user
programs.
The last time we checked the number of ambassadors in Scottish education there were not too many. Upon
the recommendation by valued member of my PLN, Malcolm Wilson, to check out what Microsoft was doing
in Scotland and found there were over 50 MIE Experts.
Microsoft was also a main sponsor for The US Digital Citizenship Summit and we were keen to find ways to
add value for them supporting this event.
This led to us curating information for the 2015 and 2016 Skypeathon. We curated data from Twitter and the
Microsoft Education Community (MEC) to find people who had clocked up Skype miles during the
Skypeathon and via MEC.
Connections and journeys made during the 2015 Skypeathon
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The Three Nations Challenge
While the data from the 2015 event is impressive, even through there are 50 MIE Experts in Scotland we only
found a couple of schools who got involved with the 2015 Skypeathon.
When we heard about the “Three Nations Challenge” which was a competition to see who could clock up the
most miles between Scotland, England and Wales we encouraged members of our PLN to get involved.
Based on the data that we have curated so far, Scotland went from 2 Schools clocking up 30,000 miles in
2015 to 14 organisations covering almost 150,000 miles in 2016.
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The significance of this for the Skypeathon and the value of EdTech Startups having one or two advocates on
tech tools gaining traction? When we compare the Atlanta area in the US with the 2015 data as well as the
rest of Georgia the data is quite compelling.
Based on the data we have curated so far there were 9 schools who were involved with the 2015 Skypeathon
and in 2016 there were 29 schools involved.
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Pokemon Go Report (July-Sept 2016)
When Pokemon Go launched in July 2016 there was a considerable amount of content from educators and
the views and commentary had a wide spectrum of views.
Working with a number of thought leaders including the ISTE DigCit & Games and Simulations Network PLN
we produced a Pokemon Go report that looked at this overnight phenomenon in education.
The success of Pokemon Go was a great opportunity to draw out ideas from our 2013 Developing
Relationships and Delivering Value report thanks to the ISTE DigCit and Games PLN inviting us to contribute
to this report with the The Technology Adoption Cycle section.
UK Digital Citizenship Summit (Nov 2015- Jan 2016) Having explored the EdChat community and Scottish schools use of social media Digital Citizenship Twitter Chat Moderator, Marialice Curran asked if we could discuss her work with Digital Citizenship Summits.
Two months after an initial Skype call the first international Digital Citizenship Summit had been planned on a zero budget thanks to an amazing community effort from almost 200 educators, suppliers and media partners pitching in and helping out. I was delighted to be nominated in the “Best New Community Manager” award for the Community Manager Appreciation Day Awards as a result of my involvement with this project.
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Innovate My School Press Release
#DigCitSummitUK event to promote effective edtech use
When we heard that EdShelf was winding up the business, given the similarity in what we had been trying to
do in UK Further Education we wrote a blog post in support of Co-Founder and CEO Mike Lee to try to
encourage educators to sign up to the site.
A few educators led by Pre-Service teacher Alicial Leonard and connected educator Eric Sheninger got behind
the campaign and a successful kickstarter campaign was established
“William is a rare breed that combines an unyielding passion for his work and the tactical knowledge to rally a community to a cause. These traits make him an especially effective community manager. He is dedicated, thoughtful, thorough, and can often see angles that others miss. And he's in touch with all the latest social media tools on the market, which add to his efficiency and reach” Mike Lee, EdShelf
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EdTechBridge (Dec 2013-July 2014)
During an #EdTechChat session in December 2013 we wondered if there might be a place for a Twitter Chat
where #EdTech Suppliers come together to share ideas and resources.
When we found out about Steve Isaacs and Katya Hott’s SXSWEdu presentation in March 2014, we supported them with their #EdTechBridge Twitter chat.
.
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“William is one of the most enthusiastic, supportive and hard-working people I have ever met. William reached out to me about sixteen months ago when the #EdTechBridge community was just forming. The community has a mission of bringing together EdTech stakeholders in order to collaborate and build better EdTech products. William was drawn to our mission based on his passion toward EdTech and the idea of educators and developers developing strong relationships. This was in line with work that William had already been working on so the synergy was obvious. William quickly realized that we could benefit from working together to further our shared interest in this space. William rallied behind EdTechBridge in a tremendous way and to this day I am certain that our success was helped tremendously and certainly accelerated by William's early involvement. William never asked for anything in return and preferred not to be mentioned in terms of his involvement as he truly wanted to support the effort and was not looking for individual attention. William was our strongest supporter and essentially took on the role of community manager early on. Quite honestly, I didn't even know such a role existed officially in companies. William served as a mentor to Katya Hott and I as we were getting started and I learned so much from him. His influence helped to shape the growth of #EdTechBridge for sure. William featured and promoted #EdTechBridge through his blog and social media presence in a tremendous way. We have continued to work together over the past sixteen months on a variety of projects. I have always maintained an interest in having educators represented at conferences and felt that it was often cost prohibitive for teachers. William launched the #Get2ISTE campaign which has successfully raised enough money to send several Chat moderators to ISTE this year. In addition, William created and maintains the Chat Moderators Google+ community which is very active and serves as a community hub for edchat moderators to interact and share ideas” If I were in a position to hire a community manager, there is no doubt that William would be on the top of my list! Steve Isaacs, EdTechBridge
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#UKFEChat (Dec 2012-June 2014)
Having spent 7 months being a regular participant of #EdTechChat and other Twitter chats when we noticed
that a small group were trying to establish a chat a little closer to home with UK Further Education chat, we
offered to help out.
We supported the chat by attending each week as well as providing some sales and marketing outreach
within the sector.
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Developing Relationships & Delivering Value Research (Sept-Dec 2012)
The “Open to Public” and Social Norms projects saw educators confirm their participation within a short
period of time and, in many instances, without any sales calls or meetings. These experiences, along with
attending Bill Aulet’s Inbound Marketing workshop, we decided to explore the way ideas get traction.
Working in collaboration with Oxford Cambridge Review and Ed Invent, and with the kind permission to reference the books below, we produced our “Developing Relationships and Delivering Value” report which explored what major tech companies do differently when getting traction with new ideas. We then spent most of 2013 trying to make these ideas work in FE.
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Further Education Colleges Commercial Services (Aug 2012)
In 2012 we were commissioned to identify new ideas that were commercially viable in UK Further Education.
Given the budget cuts the UK FE Sector was facing at the time we came up with 9 ideas that had income
generating potential.
One idea was based around the fact that we found that some college commercial services were identified as
“Best Kept Secrets.” When we consulting with the sector 230 colleges expressed an interest in this idea
within 3 weeks and 10 Colleges confirm participation without a single phone call being made. This was our
first experience of Inbound Marketing and Social Selling.
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Academic Research
Social Norms
We have conducted market research in collaboration with academics, authors and industry leaders to
produce 8 reports on various topics.
“Tech Stories ‘Developing Relationships and Delivering Value’ report is brilliant and very readable. It captures
many of the key points from my book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship, and applies the principles to the
education sector very well. Education Technology is a difficult sector for any cash strapped entrepreneur, for
many of the reasons outlined in this report. We look forward to sharing the findings from this report with our
students and staff” “Bill Aulet, MD of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and author of