#tmfuture – two further thoughts

#tmfuture – further thoughts

As a sometime presenter and lurker, and sponsor of a couple of teachmeets, I have been fascinated by the debate and thought over the last week or so on this topic. Its wonderfully summed up by @ewanmcintosh ’s blog earlier today but I also loved @chrisrat ’s post too which I thought was a voice of reason from a clear commercial mind.

I have two further thoughts that I hope will move the debate on and provide some options for Teachmeet going forward. One comes from my experience in publishing and business over the past few years and the other from the Year 6 class that I work in as a teaching assistant. (Actually they both come from peeling and chopping carrots but that is not so relevant).

1) Teachmeet publishes stuff and sponsors itself

Teachmeet generates huge amounts of content be they presentations, video streams, podcasts and twitter feeds. It is clear from various posts that everyone wants to get more people involved in Teachmeet (as organisers, presenters and lurkers) but there will be some people who might want a bit of a Teachmeet experience before attending.

Could Teachmeet curate, aggregate and publish the experience for a small fee to a wider audience? Then use the money generated as the 5-10% for international expansion.

This is, of course directly the opposite to what bands do when they release ‘free albums’ and then charge £40+ for a concert but it could be a way of generating the 5-10% of income to ‘go international’. Something about owning a bit of Teachmeet strikes me as an interesting starting point (I don’t tend to see a band before listening to their stuff at  home).

I imagine that this might cause a bit of controversy but I thought it worthwhile putting it out there. There are enough publishers involved already to help and I am pretty sure that what Teachmeet does is not competitive with most potential sponsors out there.

My aggressively commercial self says run a batch of Teachmeet t-shirts (Teachmeet: Watch teachers do it live in front of 50 people – but only for 7 minutes!) and punt them out at £10 a time, but then again … perhaps not.

2) Teachmeet Experts (on web and via twitter)

In Class 6W everyone was an expert. Everyone had a certain talent (from drawing to cutting, to reading to working the projector) and that talent was known across the class. When I needed to try to re-start the projector then I would ask Joe, when I wanted some great handwriting for a class poster I asked Vicky and when I needed a bit of Turkish translated, I’d ask Umut. It worked, was inclusive and meant that the class could function pretty well as an autonomous unit.

Could this work for Teachmeet too? I can see the need for venue finding, audio-visual help, financial help (including negotiating and getting sponsorship), recruitment of attendees, scheduling and budgeting. Then, if you want to run one yourself, there are two or three places you can go to get help.

I am sure an improved website will allow this to happen easily but I also think there is probably an opportunity for people to provide tweeted (or telephoned) advice on a specific area of expertise.

It will be exciting watching how Teachmeet develops at home (and overseas) over the coming months and years. The times I’ve spent at Teachmeets have been some of the highlights of my 18 years in education.

Filed under: Blog entries by ben