by Gigi L. Johnson | Aug 16, 2013 | Education, Events and Projects, Music, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts
[Revised Jan. 22, 2014]
Back in August 2013, SXSW started its crowdsourced panel picking process for 2014. Each year, thousands of people pitch great ideas to be voted on in a big crowdsourced process. According to a recent email, 700 people pitched SXSWedu (education) panels for that conference. More than 3,000 pitched for SXSW Interactive. Who knows how many pitched for SXSW Music. A person can only pitch one for each.
We submitted 3 pitches around innovation: educational, social media, and interpersonal:
- SXSWedu (March 3-6, 2013): “To MOOC or Not To MOOC: Real Questions at the Core” (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/22546).
- Pitch: MOOCs (Massively Open Online Classes) have dominated the educational trade press in both 2012 and 2013, stirring both enthusiasm and anxiety. This session will look at their impact on higher education planning, economics, and “the rest of us.” What have we learned from MOOCs? How can universities use these learnings to create our own environments for the next decade? This session will frame ways to have concrete and beneficial discussions about learnings from these broadly MOOC-labeled experiences in our blended university environments. Questions can arise beyond the economics of learning at scale, focusing on the learning science, design, and differences in qualities, as well as the real learning outcomes. With this lens, we also can examine what “works” in the 700-person lecture hall and in more intimate distributed learning platforms.
- Find a supporting Prezi at http://prezi.com/4v2xo7rreyur/to-mooc-or-not-to-mooc)
- SXSW Interactive (March 7-11, 2013): “Pixelating Reality: How Smartphones Shift Now“ (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/24245).
- Pitch: Many of us carry smartphones wherever we go. Increasingly, we are leaning on them as active and passive gathering devices of data and images. Google Glass and other recording devices bring the question further front and center—how is our recording and perpetually digitally checking in affecting our everyday lives? How are those check-ins and recordings shifting our being “present” in our shared Now and Here? Are we increasingly taking the opportunity to be digitally Elsewhere and not Present?
- Find my supporting YouTube video at http://youtu.be/VdTW_82j3G4.
- SXSW Music (March 11-16, 2013): “Building Your Digital Brand Using Social Media” (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/24226).
- This ties into my Udemy course and my UCLA Music course as well, plus benefits from work this summer in helping relaunch a long-time software product.
- Pitch: The digital world for musicians continues to change dramatically. We can self-market and create communities directly with listeners and also can thrive in online communities with influencers and other musicians around the world. Digital has transformed not just the way we get the word out, but also how we create and collaborate. Internet marketing has morphed into Internet community crowdsourcing of rich relationships—a very different world for musicians and musical organizations. How can you – a busy musician and/or support team – use the resources of social media to use your time, energy, and money well to create your long-term audience and profitable Super Fans?
- Find a supporting Prezi at http://prezi.com/apns-9wld0vo/building-your-digital-brand-using-social-media/.
We were thrilled that our favorite won: Pixelating Reality. You’ll be able to join that session at SXSW on March 11 at SXSW Interactive.
by Gigi L. Johnson | Aug 10, 2013 | Events and Projects, Innovation Shifts, Organizational Innovation, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change
We enjoyed sharing the following slide presentation with the Professional Development Workshop at AOM 2013 in Orlando, Florida within an overall session called “Translating Scholarship into Practice: How Can Scholarly Research Be Translated Into Practice?” It also can be found at Prezi.com at this link.
by Gigi Johnson | Mar 7, 2013 | Cross-sector shifts, Education, Events and Projects, Innovation Shifts, News and Updates, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts
Thanks to all who attended our 9 am presentation on March 6, 2013 at SXSWedu in Austin, TX, on Blending the University. We had a full house of 125 seats plus folks tucked along the back wall. We also had a robust conversation on the question of organizational challenges with blended learning design during the session and following throughout the day.
Please enjoy and share the presentation.
by Gigi L. Johnson | Feb 20, 2013 | Innovation Shifts, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change
February has been the month for innovation conferences on music and publishing. Last week was
O’Reilly’s Tools of Change Conference (in New York with amazing food). Yesterday was Brian Zisk’s
SF Music Tech Conference, and today starts Ned Sherman’s
Digital Media Wire Music conference in New York.
Recurring themes have been abundant start-ups facing creators to help them into continuing to shift distribution platforms, as well as various efforts in creating thoughtful fan data tools. Innovation on both coasts and with both industries is in the face of long-standing industry leaders, all embracing digital in workflow, marketing, distribution, and social media . . . to various degrees. We’ve been having a good time chatting with companies as they have been launching over the past year or so. One company eagerly approached us yesterday at SF Music Tech, eager to tell us that the company that they dreamed of last October is launching in April.
Revenue? Business models? The issue we find the most interesting is business development. How do you cost-effectively sell into these spaces, especially in working with traditional distribution and rights holders? We keep running into one frantically running biz dev person at many of these companies.
We’re seeing the issue with more startling contrast in the educational media and technology space, with biz dev people trying to sell one small product to many universities, and amazed they can’t get scale.
by Gigi Johnson | Feb 10, 2013 | Events and Projects, Innovation Shifts, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change
We’re getting busier and busier around educational technology change with many higher education organizations now. In this season of MOOCs (“massively open online courses”) and other education innovation announcements, I am focusing with many organizations on how to plan educational design with all of this output. How do we syndicate and create multiple use streams? How do we interact with publishing companies and other universities with all of this multimedia content? How do we collaborate and re-purpose what can otherwise be expensive limited use content?
Although technology has helped with the interaction of students that are far away from the campus, with now online available classes and many other advantages, you can even opt to apply for the mba scholarships in usa, and take advantage of all the great benefits that come with it, not only money wise but you will be able to have your career with one of the best education systems.
At least one university we’re working with is rethinking their academic publishing arm — what can we do with all of this media being produced in MOOCs and blended course environments?This week, I’m heading to the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference to think about how multimedia distribution might fold into all this expanded production in higher education.
by Gigi L. Johnson | Nov 15, 2012 | Innovation Shifts, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change, Work Everywhere
For the past two weeks, we have been running presentations and workshops on education in the cloud and digital education in creative industries. I’ve also been going to a variety of conferences, including heading today to Billboard FutureSound in San Francisco.
At last night’s event, several of us began to compare notes on all of the digital learning companies that we see launching. One of our advisers, on the investment side, said that he had two companies just pitched to him yesterday.
What are the barriers to entry in this business, now that you can perch your new learning environment on flexible cloud-based tools and infrastructures-in-the-cloud? Audience?
For many years, I have taught part-time at UCLA. Every year, friends have come to me saying, “What I really want to do is teach.” I have told them how much it pays (and they are taken aback), and they still want to do it. UCLA does get picky, and has turned down many fine VPs of divisions of companies because they lack both the right credentials and teaching experience. UCLA Extension provides a wonderful alternative, within their structure and fine teacher training, for a lot of this content to get out into the professional worlds.
Now we are mixing the abundance of User Generated Content with all of this unmet teaching demand. I spoke with two start-ups last week. Each is “allowing” the teaching faculty for their programs to invest all of their own time and recording energy to create their classes, and “only” taking 50% of the revenue for letting them teach on the platform. Other older entities are more gracious to the teachers (some keeping 15-30%), but all of these seem to put the production risk onto the eager teacher with no guarantees or advances. Many seem to offer deals to learners with deep discounts to drive continuing interest in the platform.
There are some great programs that do have nice revenue streams for the teachers online. The newer models, mixing new abundance into education, seem to be taking willing content producers and promising them lights to shine.
Perhaps I’ll be less cynical when I see review structures come out and customers not flock to the next new freemium educational product.
