Reflections from TEDxUBC, FastForwardEd

Can we afford to wait for the next generation of educators to “be the change”? Tomorrow’s teachers are in our classrooms today! @terryainge #TEDxUBC

Much more to come from the event, er, movement. One of the most amazing experiences of my life as the TEDx licensee.  What an incredible mash-up of teenagers, university students and adults passionate about helping youth succeed.

TEDxUBC trended at #2 in Vancouver on Twitter (ahead of the Canucks!) during the event yesterday and was one of the Top 10 Vancouver trends of the week according to Trendsmap.com. Over 100 people watching the livestream, others mind-mapping online, prizes for best tweet, entertainment and mostly The Power of Youth.  Here's a screen capture from our Wall of Tweets.

Thank you next generation for letting this generation serve you.

The Directors of TEDxUBC: Faye Chen, Randy Sangha, David McMichael, Judy Eng and myself are amazed and humbled by the talent and enthusiasm of our student volunteers and contestants. Our generation is truly in good hands when your turn comes.

Oh right, it's already your turn.

Here's how you can get involved in rethinking, remixing, hacking and creating a 21st century solution for our education system.  Get involved, starting with the links below:

• Build on the speaker’s, attendees and viewer’s ideas with TED Talk mind-mapping courtesy of Mindmeister.
• Join the conversation on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tedxubc
• Join the Wall of Tweets by posting with the hashtag #tedxubc on Twitter.
• View the TEDxUBC photo stream on Flickr.

TEDxUBC speakers and directors: Bill Jensen, Matt Giammarino, Chris Kennedy, Carla Rieger, Sunddip Panesar Nahal, Dan Pontefract, Paul Cubbon, Yellow Banana,  Josh Klein, Bret Conkin, Alex Jurgensen, Jeff Piontek, Faye Chen, David McMichael (missing: Basil Peters, Barry MacDonald, Elysa Hogg,  Judy Eng, Randy Sangha) 

Join the conversation. The first step to a learning revolution.  

The action step is then up to you!  

Take a cue from best tweet prize winner Terry Ainge an innovative teacher in Delta.  Fittingly, we presented Terry with a copy of TEDTalk speakers  Josh Klein and Bill Jensen's Hacking Work.

@terryainge Can we afford to wait for the next generation of educators to “be the change”? Tomorrow’s teachers are in our classrooms today!

Monetizing events - How to create a longtail

How do you create a "long tail" for events that you hold? Read on.

We have been working with a progressive local event holder in Vancouver, Angel Forum, and a high profile content provider, Basil Peters, to test and refine a new business model for events that treats the content as an asset. The learning has been very interesting around the appetite for web casts and the willingness to pay a fair price for watchable, relevant content delivered via the Internet.

At riiPlay.tv we had questioned the current practices of holding live events and not capturing them for follow-on benefits like better retention, reach and revenue generation. In addition, the practice of charging high fees for live events then capturing them and distributing the content "free" afterward didn't make much sense either. While viewing the content online may lack some of the networking benefits of live attendance, the convenience of accessing the content on demand certainly has value.

As Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine said in his epic book, The Long Tail, "Information has value. The Web allows for more niche products to get global attention... in the years to come more and more products will be marketed online taking advantage of the ability of Web methods to fine-slice consumer groups and influence word-of-mouth more effectively than any other time in history."

In interviews like this one with Charlie Rose , he extols the virtues of "free" and that the long tail is creating a variation that 5% of the audience may pay for. This requires driving enough scale that the 5% model can work. There are many examples of this freemium model on the Web, but research conducted amongst attendees completed by riiPlay.tv and Angel Forum, both point to a strong appetite for the content online (not surprising) and a willingness to pay for it (surprising if you follow Chris's model).

So, while various conferences are now charging for video archive access, live streams or DVDs of their content many more are missing the opportunity that exists. As well, these efforts are often executed poorly in terms of capture quality and almost always, in terms of delivery. We believe the future is a recipe using micro-payments, digital rights, reputation management, residual income and filtering to deliver Knowledge on Demand in an exciting new way.

We will keep you posted here about best practices related to our experience proving this new event learning model, other relevant examples and invite you to comment. For a peek at one event leading the charge check out Angel Forum's Exit Strategy Web cast here.

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