Swimming with the Sparks Shark

Last night we completed our presentation of our design project, SliceThatPi.com, to a group of MALT alums Shark Tank style. This was a very rewarding experience for a number of reasons. First, I’m a big fan of Shark Tank, which is saying a lot because I really don’t have shows I watch. It’s that and Mad Men. The other reason it was rewarding is because I get a lot of opportunities, particularly this time of year, to judge presentations out of our entrepreneurship program, but no opportunities to do it myself. I’m a big fan of Guy Kawasaki‘s book Art of the Start and this project gave me a good reason to leverage his 30/20/10 rule.

But I have to say… The most rewarding part of the experience was getting to work with my team. Collectively, there is nearly 1,800 miles and two time zones that separate myself from my two teammates, Mars and Simon. Yet the ability for us to collaborate despite that distance was pretty incredible. Some of the various ways we collaborated:

• We are building a site with WordPress that allows for multiple authors and requires no local hosting of files. You can login from anywhere to the browser based editor. This is probably the least exciting but was cloud solutions were virtually non-existent a decade ago.
• We met via Google Hangout three times over the last week not including the presentation itself. Once I dialed in from car and chatted seamlessly while walking across campus to my office. I dialed in another time from my car in the driveway but that was with a laptop and only because my kids weren’t napping like they were supposed to be.
• We scripted out the presentation with a Google Doc.
• Simon created a video and uploaded it to YouTube which could be seamlessly controlled and viewed by the entire group. Very cool.

  

• And then we presented in a Google Hangout on Air, which is automatically uploaded to YouTube afterwards.
  https://youtu.be/tRy8ggYf6lg?t=37m59s

Of course, it’s not the tools that are overly exciting, though mad props to Google, but it’s the opportunity that the tools afford which is seamless collaboration. And, further, a deeper relationship with my cadre mates. I’ve known since Cadre Camp and the Scratch exercise that Simon is wildly created, but he whipped up that commercial in a day. Wrote it, starred in it, and edited it. Incredible. And Mars is deeply analytical, coming up with an excellent competitive analysis which made the case for our project. He is also a VERY strong presenter, which is cool because I haven’t got to see that side of him prior to this experience.

Tying to my action research, this project trigged more elements of Connected Learning than any other prior project. You see nearly all the design elements: production centered, interest oriented, peer supported, openly networked, academically oriented, and a shared purpose. I deeply appreciate it having a tangible outcome in which we were able to receive feedback, as I believe that the key ingredient to learning to feedback and Paul Sparks has done an exceptional job at giving our teams value feedback individually. Thanks Paul for this opportunity and thank you sharks, Erika Maldonado, from Cadre 13, who is now at 2U partnering with universities such as USC and Yale to offer select masters programs, and Robert Martellacci, from Cadre 10 and Founder of MindShare Learning Technology,

I’m excited to see the next phase of SliceThatPi.com. Here’s to hoping we all never spend more than $30 on a computer.