IMG is nothing?

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I was planning to write about Roosevelt High School on Thursday, but the day took some unexpected turns. Note: I’m not going to recap Thursday or Friday, but I am still in Michigan.

Career Day is an annual event at Roosevelt and gives kids a chance to learn about what grownups do, or, what we’re supposed to be doing. Its a chance to connect a title (e.g. dentist, loan officer, circus clown) with an actual person, their experience, and personality. Roosevelt is a public high school, located on Chi-town’s NW side, and sits in a really diverse neighborhood. 2/3s of the kids spoke English as a second language.
I had 2 groups–each lasting about 45 minutes–to speak to about website management/design. Honestly, I was really nervous as the day approached and damn near terrified as I arrived onsite. Its weird: I can talk for hours about nothing (anyone catch the show “Teachers”?), but thinking I may impact a kids future is pretty daunting. Sure,there were teachers present in case I dropped the ball, but who wants to be saved by the Librarian?

I hadn’t had a real plan for Career Day. My best guess was that I’d talk about my average day, stress that I’d gone to college, that I worked hard, and that you can do anything you put your mind to. This seemed like a solid plan, but once we got in front of the computers things changed. I spent the session talking about open source, blogging, and the ease with which anyone can put up a website these days.
Most kids are familiar with the web, but few really know how it works. MySpace, Google, Friendster, AIM are everyday things for these kids, so they know what the web can do; but never consider where the underlying code and apps come from. We took a peek at SourceForge, walked through some basic problem-solving with Yahoo Pattern Library , took a peak at PhotoNow’s site to give some examples of how anyone can put a site together (I know my limits), and talked about how important it was that you be willing to focus and plan in order to produce something. We even took a look at herebox though I wish I’d checked first because there was some inappropriate language for youngsters (according to CPS) on there.

Through the course of the day, I was really impressed with how much they knew. No one was PC-illiterate, or anti-tech, and they listened and asked questions. One kid was ejected from the class, but the vast majority of kids were chill and (pretty) attentive.

One thing that surprised me was that the girls seemed to know more than the guys about the web. There were some guys that had built sites and probably knew more code than me, but the baseline web-knowledge among the girls was much higher. I give credit for this to IM, Friendster, and other community sites. High School girls still want to talk to their friends and these sites give them more options for doing so. Being able to logon and catchup with your girls is a really powerful incentive to be tech-savvy. Maybe the future will see more girls going into and staying in technology, especially as user-driven becomes the norm for sites.

The guys definitely suffered from the desire to be “cool”. Some insisted on ignoring my instructions, while others decided they’d rather be writing email. I can’t hold it against them: I was probably the same at their age. But there were a few guys that were building sites and definitely kept focused.

Overall, I’d say Career Day was a great experience. It was a type of reality-check about how technology permeates our society. While the school had a computer lab, and most of the kids were comfortable with a PC, there was a sizable minority that had obviously not spent too much time with a computer. I wonder how different things would be if I went out to the ‘burbs.

Arrived in town early Monday morning to get our kiosk setup at Wayne State. Can’t say its gone smoothly or quickly (at least not for me); but we’re making progress. I’m happy I planned on being here for a week. So far, the delivery driver has locked himself out of his truck, the techs got lost and were 3 hours late, and now I’m waiting on word from developers in Vancouver to straighten out some problem with credit card data.

Strangely, none of this really bothers me. 4 days in and I can say the staff at Wayne remains great to work with. I try to stay out of their hair, but if I ask for something I get it. Thanks to Kristen, Mike, Laurie in IT, and all the guys who helped me get the 500+ lb crate into the building.

Since I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, I’ve taken to checking out what the students are up to. Mostly just chatting when I get the chance, but also doing a little people watching. It amazes me to see how much activity goes on here. Right now, their gearing up for finals, yet everyday there is a slew of new events to checkout, tables supporting every imaginable cause, and so much socializing. Seeing all this, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what PhotoNow wants to do for students at Wayne and other schools.

PhotoNow was conceived around the goal of supplying affordable, convenient, high-quality photo-printing. Yet with a little tweaking, some creativity, and the application of the right tech we can and will provide more. As I sit in the Wayne Student Center , I think about all the events happening and the relationships evolving and I appreciate how significant a contribution our kiosks can make by increasing the flow of information. We’re alreadt distributing event notices for the Detroit Repertory Theatre & Detroit Historical Museums and will add more non-profits and creative orgs to the list as quickly as possible. Is this good PR? Possibly. Is it good for the community? I certainly hope so.

Let me try to translate the ramblings above:

PhotoNow allows you to print pictures as easily and quickly as anyone can. But why do you print pictures? Because you’ve had a great experience you want to preserve, you want to share that experience, or you need evidence in a pending trial With the exception of the last reason given, you print pictures to solidify your place in time, culture, society. It stands to reason then that the more opportunities you have to place yourself physically/emotionally/spiritually within those contexts,the more pictures you’ll print. That said, PhotoNow has work to do: not only must we provide the means to print but we must also help people find reasons to print.

Maybe I’m over-simplifying, but I think that enriching, or, more deeply connecting the community at Wayne & other universities will be good for business AND FOR THE COMMUNITY. And thats just awesome because that means the business model can also lead to larger goods. Business, by definition, pursues profit or gain; but lucky for me, in this case, I can include other metrics and goals: community building, participation, and a lot of fun.

This actually leads me to some thoughts about youth and opportunity that came up when I was speaking to Roosevelt H.S students about my work as a web designer/project manager. I’ll followup on those thoughts in a post later today.

This is a big week. We’ll be installing at Wayne State next week. So this is the calm before the storm and I’ve got a lot of details to sort out. Also came across Guy Kawasaki’s blog which got me psyched. This evening I’m going to do adapt his “9 Questions to Ask a Startup” into a type of report card. I already have most of the answers, but the VC perspective is a good one to ask from.

It can’t hurt to do a quick checkup under the hood.

A channel to program.

I’ve started posting on Craigslist. PhotoNow wants submissions from digital photographers,filmmakers, animators and anyone that would like to have their work shown in colleges.

I’ve just started receiving submissions. Is submissions the right word? We’re bringing the art to the audience. I don’t know what the audience will do with it.