a break from audio tours: online communities

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, Jim and Theo go behind the wheel as DoorDash drivers in an attempt to make customers & their food delivery experiences a bit more special :) 

We bring in our good friend and edtech guru, Alberto Arenaza of Transcend Networks, to talk all things community on Twitter Spaces. What are the phases of building an online community? How do they get better and not worse with scale? Is there a roadmap to facilitating authentic connections?  We end with some personal reflections on this exploratory phase in our Learn in Public journey and where we might go next.  

Spurred by our struggles with making an audio tour, we take it to the streets of the Gaslamp District for a true crime history guided tour. Afterwards, we get the inside scoop of operating and creating a tour with the owner, Rae Walaska!  For those interested in Rae’s tour, book here: https://murdernmayhem.com/mystery-tours/historic-true-crime-tour/

We're trying to make an audio tour right here in our lovely (& temporary) neighborhood of San Diego, and we've documented our research process!

We're taking a left turn to start out the new year! In this episode, we discuss why we are expanding beyond education technology companies to focus on powerful learning experiences that can happen anytime & anywhere, such as the Van Gogh Immersive and audio tours in Hawaii. To be honest, we're not exactly sure where this new direction is going, but we're grateful to have you on this journey with us! Join us this Sunday (1/23) for our Twitter Space with Alberto on online learning community: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1ypKdEMvBPpGW  

We have our first guest, Vikram Somasundaram! Vikram (Vik, for short) is the VP of Business Development of On Deck, an education startup focused on professional learning with a particular emphasis on community that recently raised a $20M Series A led by Founders Fund. Prior to On Deck, Vik cofounded EduSight, a personalized digital portfolio for K-12 students that sold to NELSON in 2018, and served as the VP of  Sales & Customer Success at Prodigy Education. Vik is a veteran in the education space, so we had to dive deep into the K-12 market. We talk about the district leader buyer personas, three waves of K-12 edtech from 2000 to now, and where Vik would personally invest. There's so much industry wisdom here, but if you'd like to jump straight to On Deck, the timestamp is 56:39. And if you're interested in joining the On Deck EdTech fellowship to reinvent the future of education, you should apply here: https://www.beondeck.com/edtech/. Feedback for the podcast welcome! Shoot us an email at [email protected]; it's how we get better :)

And another ed-tech IPO! This time, it's Duolingo, the language learning platform that centers its curriculum of 40 languages for 40M monthly users on gamification. Is it an education company or is it a consumer company? Turns out it's a little bit both and is the perfect embodiment of the classic ed-tech struggle of navigating between impact & profit. Feedback for the podcast welcome! Shoot us an email at [email protected]; it's how we get better :)

Jim and Theo dive headfirst into the analysis of Coursera, the online behemoth in higher education that jumpstarted the MOOC movement in 2012, experimented with every imaginable business model, and recently went public on the New York Stock Exchange at a $5.9B valuation. This episode was recorded on May 2, 2021. Feedback for the podcast welcome! Shoot us an email at [email protected]; it's how we get better :)