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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.

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Pokemon Go Report article in the October edition of The Time Education Supplement

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ISTE Curation Project (Apr-Jun 2016)

As part of our ongoing search for tools that could help curate large data sets in education from Twitter chats

and conferences, we discovered Declara in 2015 and explored this during ISTE 2015 where the platform

showed a lot of promise.

Between April and June we curated 100 collections from ISTE 2016 presentations, including links to all the

background reports and research that was included as part of the presenters proposals when the sessions

were submitted.

Our research highlighted that the presenters spent a good deal of time putting this information together but

with over 1,053 sessions some of which have 671,950 words and 3,112 links.

The idea of this project was to see if a hardy band of #SITE2016Pirates could successfully implement ideas

from Aggregate-then-Curate: How Digital Learning Champions Help Communities Nurture Online Content.

Given the size of the data this is a project that we will continue to visit and hope to produce the kind of

resource that we did with the Pokemon Go Report (See Reading ISTE Data Like a Book).

“William underestimates his impact and knowledge, so whatever you read or he tells you, amplify

by x10!

Detail - William is in a class of people that have an amazing ability to work deep into detail,

familiar to me at AltaVista, Microsoft these folks can shut out distractions and go diving into data

in a way that is truly impactful, emerging days later with insights and action plans that will change

your business

Passion - William is an unstoppable, fearless force, often taking unpopular or unfamiliar causes

and executing action with tireless rigour.

Heart - You will find anyone that knows William or has had the pleasure to work with him will call

out his huge heart - he engages in things that are completely important to him. My advice is that

when you don't quite understand what or why he cares about something so much he wants to

share with you, that you take the time to really listen, there is nothing but gold in the communities

William builds” James Stanbridge, Purpose Bridge

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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

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Connected Educator Appreciation Day (Nov 2015)

As part of our UK Digital Citizenship Summit plans and developing our Crowdfunding Educators PD efforts we

established “Connected Educator Appreciation Day” in November 2015 on Black Friday to provide another

opportunity for suppliers who enjoy the support and advocacy of their fans to acknowledge everything that

connected educators do to spread the word about their favourite tech tools.

When canvassing educators about tech tools that they were fans of and would advocate for if they would

fund their PD to attend BETT and the UK Digital Citizenship Summit, two tools that were continually

mentioned were Twitter and Skype.

We arranged a Thunderclap to “Show our Friendship First” and while it was too late to get involved with the

2016 UK event, they did support the 2016 US Event.

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Scottish Schools on Twitter Research (Sept-Nov 2015)

Following Chris Van Der Kuyl’s keynote at the 2015 Scottish Learning Festival and his call for greater

collaboration we spent some time assessing the use of social media in Scottish Schools.

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Get2ISTE (Apr-June 2015)

Through being involved with Nurph and seeing the value that educators like Nikki Robertson advocating for

this resource without any remuneration we were able to use this case study as a way of drawing out the

argument for suppliers crowdfunding educators PD. The 2015 #Get2ISTE campaign saw 5 educators

crowdfund their way to ISTE.

“William’s passion and commitment to change and innovation in education is unparalleled. He is very

creative and quick with implementing strategies. He is a great communicator and worked alongside

my team to help make our first attempt at #Get2ISTE a successful one” Andyshea Saberioon,

PledgeCents

PledgeCents CEO, Andyshea Saberloon Twitter profile picture is with Get2ISTE delegate Kharima Richards during ISTE Closing Keynote Speech

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GetNikki2ISTE Post: An Amazing friendship... But we had never met or spoken when this post was written

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Chat Salad & Nurph (July 2014)

We’d been looking for tools to curate all the data that’s been shared on social media during events like ISTE

and Twitter chats for a while. When we found out about the capabilities of Nurph we produced an EdChat

Resource Plan to highlight the potential of educators and EdChat moderators of adopting this platform.

We also added almost 400 EdChats to Nurph’s Twitter Chat notification site www.ChatSalad.com.

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#SaveEdShelf (July-Aug 2014)

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

Disciplined Entrepreneurship

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Awards

CMAD Best New Community Manager Finalist

I was delighted to be both nominated for and be a finalist for the 2016 “Best New Community Manager”

Award in 2016. It was also fantastic to see some other Education based Community Managers being

nominated.

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“Influence”

Various forums and online analytics cite the @EdTech_Stories Twitter account as being an “Influential,”

which is a little surreal... I’m an EdTech sales guy who saw that current practices were not sustainable so have

been trying to “Get Social” to develop some skills that were more in-demand than cold calling.

Here are some examples of “Influence”

Onalytica: Top 100 Influencers and Brands - Edtech and Elearning

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