@Sree offered an hour’s worth of tips and talking points at his @Teach21c keynote this afternoon. His full slidedeck is here: http://bit.ly/sreeteach21
He floored and honored me with a personal shout out. I invited him to speak at @TEDxNYED 2012 because he’s awesome and I wanted him to share his message about social media and education from the TEDxNYED stage. Well, he announced today that he will be assuming the role of Chief Digital Officer at @MetMuseum, and the video of his TEDxNYED talk had been an influential part of his portfolio. As my friend Sharon Clearly (@cleary1066) would say, “That’s bananas!” (The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKkeS8gpndM)
Among many notes and quotes I wrote down, he summarized an article he wrote about Roger Ebert and what Ebert brought to the social media table:
1. Be interesting in real life.
2. Great content gets you great followers.
3. Be humble.
4. Engage with others.
5. Social media has changes the role of expertise.
Finally, here is Sree’s social media success formula. Your tweets, statuses, updates, posts should have as many of the following attributes as possible:
Helpful
Useful
Timely
Informative
Relevant
Practical
Actionable
Generous
Credible
Brief
Entertaining
Fun
Occasionally funny
Katelin O’Hare and I are meeting with the 6th grade Art classes this week to introduce our Renaissance Photoshop project where students locate a Renaissance painting and layer themselves into it. In the past we’ve used Dove’s Evolution of Beauty campaign video to kick-off a discussion about image manipulation. This year, I gathered examples from additional resources, news stories, and ad campaigns.
Three noted moments from the ensuing conversation:
1. When looking at examples of image manipulation in advertising and fashion magazines, one 6th grader came up with the analogy: “Photoshop is to models what steroids is to athletes.” This spawned a really interesting discussion.
2. When asked where they should start their search for images of Renaissance paintings to use for their project (before we introduced Artstor), many students called out Google! One child then piped in, “The problem with Google, is that you don’t know if the images you locate will be an authentic image or an altered one.”
3. When asked why Artstor rightfully charges for a subscription to their amazing digital repository of art, one child said it was because, “They take really big photos of paintings and then host them on their computers and let us download them. It’s like iTunes for artwork. That costs money.”
I finally have time to watch the TEDxNYED 2012 videos! I was too busy running around backstage (and all over the Museum of the Moving Image) on the day of the actual event to witness any of the live talks. Recently, our production team from True Life Media (@truelifemedia) uploaded the edited videos to a TEDxNYED YouTube playlist on the TEDxTalks channel. Now that the school year is winding down, I have available pockets of time to watch the talks. Baruch Hashem.
Looking back, April 28th was probably one of the most stressful days of my recent history. Still, even with all the anxiety (and figurative/literal blood, sweat, tears), it was gratifying when volunteers generously showed up on Friday and Saturday for much needed assistance, speakers enthusiastically thanked us, attendees waved aside the glitches, and when people shared positive and thoughtful tweets and blog posts.
These last few years, I’ve learned a lot about how to organize, delegate, and negotiate, and the process has changed me. I clearly have a ways to go, and I greatly appreciate everyone that has been a part of my development – most recently, this year’s batch of TEDxNYED co-organizers including Basil Kolani (@bkolani), Kiersten Jennings Chou (@choutofu), Tammy McKenna (@tmck76), and Matthew Moran (@matthewpmoran).
Museum of the Moving Image (@MovingImageNYC) for their glorious theater and helpful staff including B.G. Hacker (Director of Events) and Chris Wisniewski (Deputy Director for Education)
Clare Anderton for helping us design the program and nametags
Tabitha, Akio, Dong, Zoe, Milagros, Lautaro, and the high school students from Horace Mann and Dwight (apologies if I missed anyone…) for their generous volunteerism
Karen Blumberg 