The Education Business Blog

What do you do with 112 degrees of dry Texas heat on a Sunday afternoon? We sheltered in the Alamo Drafthouse for the Harry Potter matinee and brunch.

Our 17 year old son Peter was sitting between Leslie and I, his broad shoulders connecting us as a family. The cartoons had run, the infamous "no talking" video had played (nsfw), french toast was cooling, the lights dimmed.

As the Warner Brother's logo emerged on screen I began to cry. This final movie, at the start of Peter's final year of High School, was a moment that caught me completely off guard.

It was the realization that the childhood of both our boys had been wrapped neatly by J.K. Rowling's books and movies. Peter is a young man and will only be living with us for a few more months. Our children literally came of age to this iconic coming of age literature. There are millions like us.

I remember reading the first books to our boys when they were still wearing footed jammies. 7 was the magic age at our house when Harry was introduced. When I was home we'd settle in on the couch in front of the fire. When I was traveling I used first generation video chat to read to them from afar. They'd be snuggled up in one of their beds with a laptop before them and I'd be in some bleak Westin. The distance didn't matter, magic happened as the words flowed.

A couple of months after the first movie came out Leslie was walking into the supermarket with our two redheads. A five year old girl stared in awe and whispered to her mother that the Weasley brothers were there. Some days of mischief proved the wisdom of her words.

Having friends at Scholastic made me a hero - we were guaranteed copies of the books as soon as they were available. Thank you Jean.

Our sons were roughly the same age as the main characters as the series unfolded. The personal struggles of Harry, Ron, and Hermione bumbling through puberty were the same ones our boys encountered. Not the dark magic part though, thank goodness.*

The Potter series created opportunities to discuss the role of good and evil, the nature of friendship, the power of learning, and human sources of danger in the real world. The fantasy context made these conversations safer, but there were valuable lessons embedded throughout. Only one other series rivaled Harry for the depth and complexity of the issues presented - Lord of the Rings.

These stories will resonate for future generations; the long tail of cultural influence is just beginning. But there will never again be a generation that grows up alongside the unfolding saga, first in print and then in the movies.

It was the languorous unwinding of the story over years that was part of the magic. Too often in our "everything, all the time" culture when something captures our fancy we swallow it in one large gulp.

With Potter you had to wait, you had to remember, you had to savor. Just as we have with the story of our own boys growing into men. It was that echo that gobsmacked me.

The good news is that unlike stories with tidy endings life just goes on. Our children transition into young adults, their adventure continues to unfold (but the stakes get higher). I hope that the lessons from the books and our discussions come in handy.

The art of storytelling is not a natural act for education media companies, but as we move to transmedia it becomes essential to holding an audience. The craft of narrative has a long and healthy future ahead of it in education, but we need to be recruiting for this outside of our normal orbit today.

Thank you Ms. Rowling - your story was a lovely frame for the childhood of our sons.

OPOL

* Spoiler alert - I'm pretty certain that had Bellatrix LeStrange ever come between Leslie and the boys that she would dispatch Bellatrix with the same gleeful ferocity as Mrs. Weasley.

I just got back from two weeks off, really off as in "I read 6 books" off.* The whole family sat on a chilly island in the Northwest and just let the old mazooma roll in. I highly recommend it.

My time away generated the germ of a couple of meta posts about publishing in the era of social media. But, before we get to that I saw the worst use of social media on on my flight out. If there were social media police these guys would be doing hard time.

I use an off-site parking lot when I travel. They get all the fundamentals exactly right - there is always space, you are always picked up within 1-2 minutes, they are clean, drivers are pleasant etc. etc. They normally bring their A game to everything they do.

But as I sat there groggy at 4:30 AM on the shuttle bus I noticed a poster in the shuttle bus that made my jaw drop. The photo below isn't all that good so I'll summarize the headlines here.

"We're Social

• Like Us!
• Tweet Us!
• Watch Us!
• Connect with Us!
• Check In Now!
• Show Us Love!"

Not once do they mention the customer or give them a reason to do anything - it is all about them. Why would I tweet them? People who tweet at the level of "just parked my car" earn the ignore button. Why would I watch them on YouTube? Seriously - are they giving lessons on how to park? To save y'all the pain I actually looked up their YouTube video and as I suspected it is nothing more than an advertisement.

This is the old media mindset at work in the new media. You can just see the cigar chomping VP of Marketing shouting "Get me eyeballs!" and the team scrambling to get webstats showing traffic, any traffic.

But social media is a two way street. You must give people a good reason to interact with you and you need to conduct a respectful conversation with them when they show up. Nowhere should you be taking about yourself.

So in the spirit of bringing solutions rather than just whining here is what I'd do. Each of these suggestions could be employed by any company.

• Focus on the services most likely to generate business - on this list only Yelp really comes to mind. Send an email to frequent parkers the day after they get home with a Yelp link asking for a review. Then respond to the reviews (good and bad).
• Tweet regularly on airport conditions - busy, calm, delays, etc. - give customers a reason to pay attention to your feed.
• Allow the members to link their frequent parker cards (yes they do that well) to social media and then give them awards for every 5th or 10th use of the card that is broadcast to their network. Give your customers bragging rights.
• Create some videos with truly useful information for travelers (links to cool packing software, tips on how to pack light, information on when the best times of the day are for security lines, etc.). Skip the ads, provide a service.

Now, go make yourselves useful to a customer....

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* For the curious this was true vacation reading not high lit - 1 from Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series and 5 from the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell.