Kate Says

Tough Chick - Sarah Lacy

My first exposure to the name Sarah Lacy was during SXSW (and no, of course I wasn’t there - I was sitting at home in Wisconsin being inundated with SXSW tweets and references) when I started seeing pretty scathing tweets come through about an interview she did - fast forward to now when I’m a devoted Sarah Lacy fan and read her new blog and follow her on twitter, both of which lead me to read a lot of her other business pieces - don’t they say all press is good press - SXSW probably HELPED her way more than hurt her!

The point of all this is that she’s now one of my must-reads each day because she’s a strong writer and a strong woman - I haven’t met her (and probably never will) and have had no direct contact with her, but I like her style. Her new book is out today and I’m excited to read it - “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0“.

The teaser for the book on Sarah’s website states:

“Business reporter Sarah Lacy chronicles the lives of several different people trying to get their dreams off the ground. Max Levchin, the savvy founder of PayPal, looks for another hit with a “web widget” company. Kevin Rose tries to grow his “social news” site Digg.com while ! playing the part of Web 2.0 poster boy. Marc Andreesen, the legendary founder of Netscape, comes back to the game seeking to found his third billion-dollar company. Mark Zuckerberg watches Facebook grow from his dorm room at Harvard into one of the most powerful sites on the Web as he tries to avoid the spotlight. While following these entrepreneurs, Lacy brings to light the entire Web 2.0 scene: the wide-eyed but wary founders of startups, the hated venture capitalists, the bloggers fueling the hype, the programmers coding through the night on Red Bull and takeout, the twenty-something millionaires, and the internet “fan boys” eager for all the promises to come true.”

I’ll be sure to post my thoughts on this book as soon as I finish it!

Note: Another book I’m dying to dig into (and waiting for Amazon to deliver) is Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I found out about this book from Amanda Mooney - shortly after that I saw every PR and social media person on twitter start talking about the Groundswell webinar and all other things Groundswell. Intriguing!

Teachers Gone Wild

This article “Teachers’ Virtual Lives Conflict with Classroom” by Scott Michels from ABC News (shared with me by our district’s New Teacher Mentor) gives (in my opinion) a great example of the best way of dealing with prevention of the “teachers gone wild” issue of inappropriate (as judged by administrators and parents) photos and material on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

“Todd Fuller, of the Missouri State Teachers Association, said a school superintendent recently told him he asked aspiring teachers about their MySpace pages during job interviews. He had a teacher come in and asked her if she had a Facebook or MySpace page and she said yes, and he said would you be willing to have a look right now?” Fuller said. “If that would be an issue for you, you should take pause and consider what’s on your page.” “

I absolutely love this way of looking at the situation. It used to be that we were told to think of what our mothers would say of anything we wrote or did, but honestly, a lot of young adults are drinking WITH their parents (legally or not) and share a lot more with their parents than they did in the past - and the behavior displayed in the above-mentioned photos and MySpace pages isn’t necessarily frowned-upon by parents. It is, however, frowned-upon by most school administrators. I can say that I’d be comfortable having my online postings seen by administrators - and a lot of it WAS seen at a CESA #4 workshop last week when Naomi Harm showed my blog and tweets to the whole group! It’s just SO easy to think that anything we write online is only seen by the little world that we KNOW is reading - it’s the unknown readers that so many forget about.

When dealing with how much information to reveal online and your profession, I think Liz on Lizkdc Dislocation said it perfectly in her post “Tweet Your Way to a Job (Social Media Breakfast 7)”:

“More seriously, social media mean people can also see you have this whole life where you go to bars and ballgames and obsess about passions like your music, or travel, or garden, and have (gasp) family and friends whom you love in a way that you don’t love work. It’s up to you to be comfortable with that. In the end, any good boss or client is going to judge you on what you deliver. If they’re the type to judge you negatively because Twitter reveals you escaped your desk and made it to your daughter’s dance recital or hiked Mount Washington this Saturday rather then spending it in the office . . . this is a great time to figure out how to get a job with people with whom you share a perspective on life.”

So, teachers who feel they have a right to post drunken pictures of themself online may just need to find another profession - one in which bosses ARE okay with that kind of behavior. Let me know if you find one of those bosses, I haven’t yet.

He Does It Again

My little (by 20 months) brother has always been just a bit shinier and successful than I (in my opinion) and seems to have luck and success fall in his lap no matter which way he turns. This isn’t going to be a tribute to the All Mighty One, but I just had to share 2 things:

1) He claims that my new plans of working from home will make me weird - while dealing with all of the other upheaval that my new career decision has caused, THIS is what stands out and has me worried. No, I’m not worried about being weird, since I’m fairly certain I’m already there (and those 2 years of staying home with kids will do that to the best of us) but I do need to work out how I’m going to manage my time and maintain human connections while working strictly from home while living 30 minutes from the nearest coffee shop.

2) He’s working on his Ph.D. at Duke right now and shared the Duke commencement address that Barbara Kingsolver gave this weekend. I absolutely love this and wish I could have heard her actually SAY these words, but the transcript was powerful enough. Read it, please! I’m printing it out to read and re-read. This particular quote especially resonated today, given my current ponderings about working from home:

“Not necessarily. As you leave here, remember what you loved most in this place.  Not Orgo 2, I’m guessing, or the crazed squirrels or even the bulk cereal in the Freshman Marketplace. I mean the way you lived, in close and continuous contact.  This is an ancient human social construct that once was common in this land. We called it a community. We lived among our villagers, depending on them for what we needed. If we had a problem, we did not discuss it over the phone with someone in Bubaneshwar. We went to a neighbor.  We acquired food from farmers. We listened to music in groups, in churches or on front porches. We danced. We participated.  Even when there was no money in it. Community is our native state. You play hardest for a hometown crowd. You become your best self. You know joy. This is not a guess, there is evidence. The scholars who study social well-being can put it on charts and graphs. In the last 30 years our material wealth has increased in this country, but our self-described happiness has steadily declined. Elsewhere, the people who consider themselves very happy are not in the very poorest nations, as you might guess, nor in the very richest. The winners are Mexico, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the kinds of places we identify with extended family, noisy villages, a lot of dancing. The happiest people are the ones with the most community.”

- Barbara Kingsolver - Duke commencement address May 2008

So, even though I haven’t talked to my younger, shinier, cooler brother in a while, he’s constantly pushing me to think harder and deeper. For the record, though, my dog is bigger than his dog - that’s all I got.

Do the Math

25 desktop computers
+ 29 6th graders
+ 1 frustrated but trying-to-be-perky teacher (me)
+ 6 laptops (to fill in the gap)
- 8 nonfunctioning computers (that won’t get fixed until summer)
- 3 nonfunctioning laptops (that will probably never get fixed)
+ 3 additional stopgap laptops
- 2 nonfunctioning stopgap laptops (won’t even ASK to get them fixed this year)
+ 1 online keyboarding program
- enough bandwidth to actually LOAD the program
+ 1 offline keyboarding program
- 8 computers that didn’t get the program loaded at the beginning of the year

= The reason technology classes make most “regular” teachers want to scream

Note - these are ALL Macs, before you Mac-fans jump in and tell me what my problem is!

Honestly, I’m the most devoted technology advocate out there, but seriously, sometimes you just need to know when to throw in the towel. I have 3 students using AlphaSmarts (can you BELIEVE that? archaic) and all the students bring books to read while their computers load because it’s SO SLOW. I’m at the point where I really think these students might be better served by spending their time back in their language arts class. I know, I know - defeatist attitude, but we’re 4 weeks away from the end of the school year and this just isn’t working. To all of you with WORKING technology right now, lean down right now and kiss it - go ahead, do it.

My New Arrival

What? NO, I didn’t have another baby! Yikes. Anyway, my Mothers’ Day present to myself is a new writing project - a group mommy blog that I’m doing with Christine Perkett and Stephanie Sandifer. We’re launching This Mommy Gig today and I’d love for you to head on over and visit us there!

I’ve written before about how I struggle with mixing personal and “business” here and I’ve been neglecting writing about my mommy business for too long. To satisfy my need, I’ll be ranting and raving and gushing and sighing about my adventures with my adorable but sometimes often maddening toddlers on This Mommy Gig. Stephanie, Christine and I are all working moms with kids of different ages and have come to a rousing consensus that balance is a myth - it’s all about juggling and trying not to drop ALL of the balls at once. We’ll all be writing on our own schedule, no prescribed posts or rotation. If you’re looking for some reading and just can’t get enough of my words here and want to meet Stephanie and Christine, head on over to This Mommy Gig and see what we’re up to!

So, Happy Moms’ Day if you celebrate - and if you don’t, and get sad/crabby/wishful today, Happy YOU Day - buy yourself some ice cream or a new book/shoes/bottle of wine - we love you. Yes, Melanie, I was thinking of you (and many other women I know) when I wrote that………

For the techies who couldn’t care less about my adventures in motherhood, I’m hosting the new site at Dreamhost (on recommendation from Jeff O’Hara) and am having a great experience with this hosting company. They have a one-click install of WordPress 2.5.1 and you can do almost-automatic upgrades there as well.

Reality Sets In

Picture me, standing on the edge of that cliff……..or wait, stepping over the edge. That’s how I’m feeling right now. I have the courage and determination to DO THIS, but reality is setting in. Taxes, daycare rates going up, not enough time - those on top of the rest of the pile. Thanks for all the support yesterday because oh.my.god will I need it. Staying strong……….

Cliff image by Steve Parker

I Resigned

I just turned in my resignation for my teaching position for next year. This is really hard to write about because I have so many feelings swirling around, but the prevailing emotion is excitement (I think) for what lies ahead. I’m closing the classroom door after only 1 year of formal teaching, but I’m not leaving education forever - I’m actually not leaving now, as I’ll still be working with online learning through my consulting work, but it’s definitely going to be a huge change.

I can’t write very much about my emotions about leaving the traditional K-12 classroom right now, I just can’t. They’re so jumbled and constantly changing that I need to let them solidify a bit before I try to form them into something comprehensible. I’ll work on it. Know that I’m not doing this lightly and it was NOT easy.

I honestly don’t know what my professional life will look like come September, but I do know where I’ll be working. I’ll be sitting in my dining room or living room or really messy home office/diaper changing station and wearing sweats slamming away at my laptop. My boss will be someone I’m really very close with - me. It’s an incredibly scary thought, but I’ll be working for myself, managing myself, and forcing myself to work hard enough to earn money doing what I love. If I’m lucky my kids won’t be in the house while I’m doing this, but you just never know - this summer I’ll be trying to get all of my work done during nap times and in the few hours I can find a high school babysitter. Oh yeah, and before the kids wake up and after the kids go to bed and……….sometime?

Writing this was difficult - I hate even somewhat making it sound as if I’m leaving the education community because I’m NOT. Nothing will change, I’ll still be me, still be doing a ton of work relating to education and educational technology. I’ll also (hopefully) be doing more writing, more site creation, more consulting, more research. For now, though, I have almost another month of being a 4th and 6th grade keyboarding teacher, honestly one of the most intriguing jobs I’ve ever had. What lies ahead is fairly murky, but I know I’m doing what I need to do to be happy. I owe that to myself.

Life’s crazy - I’m just trying to steer it where I want to go.

An Offering (while I dig out)

As I attempt to dig myself out of the pile of craziness that life has thrown at me in the last few days, I offer you these resources instead of the long post I said I was going to write about blog ads, specifically ads on education blogs. Since I formed a lot of my opinions on the matter based on what I read in these, they’re actually probably worth a bit more than what I was going to write.

• The Business of Mommyblogging - Queen of Spain (Erin Kotecky Vest)

Erin Kotecky Vest does an amazing job of describing how each blog is a brand and should be treated as such. My question is, why do educators have such a different viewpoint on ads? Take a look at most of the blogs she links to - they all have ads. In my opinion, the content isn’t diminished by them.

• Blogosphere to Stratosphere - Entrepreneur.com (Justin Petruccelli)

This article details how some bloggers have gone from "mere" bloggers to book authors almost overnight. This article is where I got the idea to poll my community about putting ads on my blog. I’m not in any way in the league of these bloggers, but thought the concept was worthwhile. A quote from the article:

"After turning down earlier offers from advertisers, Moulitsas finally agreed to sell ads in 2004, when his traffic was at its peak because of that year’s highly charged presidential election. But before he made his final decision, the 36-year-old Berkeley, California, resident polled his readers. The ability to interpret the results directly created a built-in safety net against user backlash."

• Federated Media Publishing
  

What’s Federated Media Publishing? Their site states:

"At FM, our mission is to support independent website authors and audiences, by connecting them to marketers in an ongoing and robust conversation that feeds everyone involved."

Now, this company deals with the big league bloggers, the ones getting hundreds of thousands of hits each month. What I found really fascinating was that in their 12 categories of blogs they partner with, there is NOT an education category. What does this mean?

Now, I’m not trying to heavily monetize this particular blog, I’d need to spice things up quite a bit more. I am really interested, however, in the complete non-business view of edubloggers as a whole. Is there a potential market for ads on education blogs? I’m in research mode here, not push mode, please don’t take this as an endorsement for edublog marketing. It just makes me wonder why this particular niche is so different than the wider blogging world.

Now back to digging……………

Hear Me Roar……..or not

This got me thinking today:

When I blog about business and tech I feel really ballsy and tough - she-power all over the place, hear me roar……..

When I blog about classroom stuff I tone it down and seem to shrink, feel timid and unsure………

Must ponder and analyze to death - I AM ballsy.  I AM.

Who’s stifling me? Am I doing it to myself?

Full Disclosure - The Elephant on the Blog

Ok, after a very interesting debate with MANY people on Twitter a few minutes ago, I’m telling you this:

If you click on a book on the Amazon widget on my sidebar that lists the books I’m currently reading and highly recommend and then you actually purchase that book, I might make a few cents. When I write about a book or product I truly have passion for (and you know me and my passions - when I love something, I LOVE it) and you click on the link and it takes you to Amazon, and then actually you purchase it, I might make a few cents.

Also, if you click on the link for the Professional Learning Board courses in my sidebar, I make a commission if you actually pay for the course directly after clicking through from my site. Why?  Well, I believe firmly in the company, I do consulting work for them, and think that my readers might benefit from that resource.

That’s it. As Melanie jokingly warned me about, I’m not going to be writing about things FOR the ads - you all know me well enough for that. My rationale for the Amazon widget is that I was trying to get a Shelfari widget on my blog forever and it would never show up. I can do the exact same thing through Amazon with the potential (but probably unlikely) benefit of a dollar or two a year.

I’m doing some research on ads on blogs for a client and am considering ads on the new blog I’m starting (will be revealing it soon - it’ll be in addition to this one, different demographic). Twitter came through for me and the very condensed consensus (non-consensus, actually) was:

• educators hate ads on education blogs
• ads need to be tasteful and add to the content
• there’s a difference if the person is writing on own time or company time and who gets the money
• no porn ads (really?)
• needs to be a blog with ads, not ads with a blog
• there needs to be transparency (which is why I’m telling you this)
• and one of my favorites, “haters will hate on anything” from Cody - just saying that bloggers need to do what they personally feel comfortable with

I’m going to be writing more about this very soon (with more insight on my own beliefs, limits, etc) because I find it highly interesting, but I just wanted to put this out there now - it’s all about transparency.

Before I go into this more deeply in the next post, would you like to weigh in with YOUR stance?

Where do you draw the line?

What do you find acceptable on the sites you visit?

Are bloggers somehow held to a moral code (not making $$) that magazine and newspaper writers aren’t?

Hit me with it…………

Thanks to the following for the lively debate:

@indigo196
@melmcbride
@lornacost
@nnorris
@jljohansen
@AmandaMooney
@Brunsell
@Twalk
@codyks
@imcguy
@vdub144
@GetitDoneGuy
@WiredPig
@dogtrax
@MichelleCox
@smheadhunter
@LaurieShuls

And for additional thoughts on this, read these: (I’ll share my thoughts on them next time)

Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business - Wired Magazine
How to Charge $$ When Your Customers are Conditioned to Free - AttentionMax
Ads on a blog?!?!? - CodyTalks (and full disclosure, he mentions me there!)