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necc-atlanta.gifThe National Education Computing Conference NECC put on by ISTE in Atlanta this week was the most active education tradeshow I’ve seen since the dot com bubble burst in 2000. Ironically the 2000 show was in Atlanta, the Big Peach bookended a lull in the ed tech market that looks like it is over. 18,000+ attendees thronged the World Congress Center in Atlanta for SRO sessions and a mobbed show floor.

The International Reading Association Conference which was held just six weeks ago was sleepy backwater compared to NECC. Even with valid reasons for IRA having a slow year the difference in these shows is so dramatic that one has to conclude that educators are voting with their time and money on the best tools for teaching today.

To bring this point home look at the two pictures below. The one on the left is from NECC and the one on the right is from IRA. Both were taken at the height of show floor activity. At IRA one could have set up pins and bowled in the aisles. At NECC one had to move at herd speed to navigate the hall.

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MathOnNECC07.jpgThe first mutliplayer game tournament for education is being held. The event is being put on by Tabula Digita at ISTE in Atlanta (the show formerly known as NECC). A large crowd has gathered in the atrium above the exhibit floor to watch the final round.

This is a major step in the world of educational gaming. NT Etuk, the President of Tabula Digita, just said that this is really about the students. It is about meeting them where they are – kids living in a gaming world bringing the skills and abilities that go with that to their work as learners. Students have come from as far away as New York, California, and Oregon to compete today.

A new generation of educational games is reaching the market that is multiplayer, on-line, and richly three dimensional. Tabula Digita has the pole position in this emergent market and they are putting on a great show for the educators gathered to watch. The contest will pit teams of students against each other in game of using math skills to navigate and solve problems in an on-line world.

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Few education companies do marketing well. Many are good at sales and distribution, others are product driven and innovative, but very few are able to drive high growth through world class marketing.

What does great marketing look like?
* Reps have so many leads they triage them.

* Customers recommend you to all their friends.

* Annual growth consistently beats your peers – your market share is growing.

There are two core questions that constitute what I call “Big M Marketing.”
handshake.jpg1. What promise are you making to the market?

2. How are you aligning the entire business to fulfill the promise?

The first question drives the strategic vision and the second drives the tactical execution. Yin and yang – you have to embrace both.

yin-yang.jpg It really is this simple – but simplicity is difficult for most companies. You must put the time in up front to get the promise nailed down and then you have to sustain your focus on it long enough for the market to believe you.

So how can you get away from empty sloganeering, sales support masquerading as marketing (you need both), and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey marcom? Here is a brief overview of one way to start doing Big M Marketing.

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Students and Educators might as well live on different planets when it comes to social media, blogs, and other Web 2.0 technologies. The educators are making fear based decisions because the new technologies are unfamiliar to them. The students are too busy figuring out how it all works to bother paying attention to the restrictions the educators are putting in place. Fear and hope in sharp contrast.

AEP-Logo.gifThis disconnect was starkly drawn at the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) annual summit in DC last week. A meeting ran long and I arrived at the sessions a few minutes late. I intended to lurk in the doorway of a couple of different presentations to see where I wanted to spend the next hour. What I observed sent my head spinning.

access_control_keyboard_version_1.jpgIn one room a panel of distinguished educators was discussing the challenges of bringing in new technologies. Their discussion centered on what the lawyers would let them do and the endless committee structures they had set up to screen what was permissible with blogs and other social media. Short answer – not much.

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166x133.aspx.jpgWhere are breakthrough products like the Wii in education? Textbooks and education technology are stuck in a rut. Just like Sony and Microsoft got locked in a war over processor speeds and cutting edge graphics most of the competition in the education market seems increasingly focused on tangential issues to the customer’s core needs. For example…
* More foil on the cover!
* On-line lesson plans!
* 4 million item bank questions!
These efforts all mask the underlying problem. With everyone writing to the standards for the same 4-5 states textbooks are becoming a low growth zero sum commodity game. In an attempt to differentiate their basal textbooks the major publishers are increasingly cannibalizing their supplemental book bags for “free with order” goodies. They are also bolting technology on in an attempt to sex up the offerings.

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face-in-the-chips-small.jpgThere are solutions to the frustration of managing email. The fundamental answer is a shift in behaviors and expectations. David Allen’s Getting Things Done has helped change the conversation from a technology focus to a behavioral focus. Technology is part of the solution – but only if we use it differently. I have not needed a vertical scroll bar on my email for 3 months, something I would not have believed possible a year ago. The technology didn’t change – I did.

The scale of the problem has grown so rapidly that cultural norms and behaviors have not had time to adapt. As a result feelings of guilt and frustration are widespread as people watch their inbox grow faster than they can clear it. Anger at spammers is epidemic (I hope there is a special place in hell for them involving all the devices they are trying to sell us). These are not healthy emotions.

Some have taken to declaring email bankruptcy, throwing up their hands and cleaning the slate. As usual Scott Adams is brilliant on the subject of email as a weapon. But the best description of the problem I’ve seen was recently posted at 43 Folders.

pebbles-small.jpg “Email is such a funny thing. People hand you these single little messages that are no heavier than a river pebble. But it doesn’t take long until you have acquired a pile of pebbles that’s taller than you and heavier than you could ever hope to move, even if you wanted to do it over a few dozen trips. But for the person who took the time to hand you their pebble, it seems outrageous that you can’t handle that one tiny thing. “What ‘pile’? It’s just a f#@$ing pebble!”

Theres more…

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Taming email is primarily a behavioral problem. If people can be brief, direct, and considerate things will improve.

I’ve shared this list of ideas with groups I’ve managed for the past 10 years. It hasn’t solved the problem – but it has helped. Sharing this list sets expectations clearly and helps people change their behavior.

This is not an exhaustive list; please feel free to ad your own peeves and ideas for reducing clutter in the in-box. Also – feel free to call me on my lapses.

Here are the rules – more detail is below the fold.

Brevity

* Be brief – really
* Attachments, use sparingly
Directness

* Include clues in the subject field
* Make the “To” field mean something
* Be up front with requests
Consideration

* FYI should really be NTK (Need to Know not Nice to Know)

* The Round Trip Rule
* Reply All is a Dangerous Weapon – Don’t Shoot Yourself
* When it’s urgent…
* Don’t Take It Personally
* When upset – use your toes not your fingers’
* Don’t argue with a jerk in public – most people can’t tell the difference
* How to nag
* Jokes – The Laugh Out Loud Rule
* Minor issues

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Web 2.0 is providing another nudge to the conversation economy. As advertising becomes less relevant the power of engaging your customers in a real dialog increases. Listening should be a core competency at the corporate level.

Socrates_teaching.jpg

A productive conversation is Socratic, it focuses more on good questions than on staking out positions, and both parties have to be open to learning something. It is a relatively quiet affair, based on mutual respect. It helps the participants distinguish between facts and opinions and arrive a reasoned judgment.

But most marketers are having trouble letting go of dictating a message to the market. We have been taught that the louder we shout and more often we shout the more likely we are to get results. But what happens when everyone is shouting as loud as they can? White noise.

A brilliant article and a subversive video got me thinking along these lines recently. David Armano makes the case for the conversation economy in this article. At the same time the Bring the Love Back video is a hilarious take on the consumer breaking up with advertising.

In a nutshell consumers/buyers want to be heard. If you are still talking at your customers instead of with them you are missing a great opportunity to earn new business.

Follow for a taxonomy of the kinds of questions marketers can ask to get the conversation going….

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TORONTO – From the vendor perspective the big story out of IRA this year is attendance which is less than half of the number that attended last year. Final numbers are not available yet but rumors on the exhibit floor ranged from 5,000 to 7,500 and at times it felt like 0. Prior years have ranged from 17,000 to over 20,000. It is a shame because there are some exciting new products out this year from companies large and small.

No one had a definitive explanation for the drop off. It can’t be budgets, because Toronto isn’t any more expensive than Chicago was last year. In fact it has some significant bargains ($2 seats to the Bluejays anyone?). Perhaps it was just too difficult politically to send someone to a foreign country on a school budget. Maybe people were scared away by having to have a passport.

Whatever the cause it seems pretty clear that in the post 9/11 world American educators are not as able or as willing to embrace the International aspect of the organization. This is tragic because it is happening at precisely the time that the rest of the world is growing ever closer.

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Ren Reynolds over at Terra Novahas a good post today with a budding discussion thread about how the Virtual World industry should put together some agreed upon policies and procedures for children’s’ on-line safety.

For this to work sites need a combination of technical and behavioral approaches.

More below the fold…

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