In this episode of Build Momentum, Sarah and Katie are joined by John Watson. John is the founder and CEO of the Evergreen Education Group, which runs the Digital Learning Annual Conference (DLAC) and the Digital Learning Collaborative.
Some Questions We Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“We encourage companies to talk about the districts that they are working with to solve a problem for students or for teachers [in their conference proposals]. … “We've identified this problem, and here's how we're trying to address it through a product or a service.”
“That whole partnership terminology is a way of trying to hide the true elements of what the vendor-customer-slash-client relationship is.”
“The approach we've always taken with our conferences, you may have noticed, we don't pay $25,000 to have a keynote speaker show up and tell everybody what they're supposed to think. [In] four years, we've had much more than four keynotes—none of them professional speakers— telling their stories. And that to us is a key element.”
“When you initially look at a budget, it's kind of like, ‘How can this not make money?’ And the answer is because there's always a lot more cost, and everything will be more expensive than you think. No matter how good your people are, it still comes in way, way higher [than projected].”
Connect with John Watson:
LinkedIn
DLAC website
Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn
Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn
About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook
In this episode of Build Momentum, Sarah and Katie are joined by John Watson. John is the founder and CEO of the Evergreen Education Group, which runs the Digital Learning Annual Conference (DLAC) and the Digital Learning Collaborative.
Some Questions We Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“We encourage companies to talk about the districts that they are working with to solve a problem for students or for teachers [in their conference proposals]. … “We've identified this problem, and here's how we're trying to address it through a product or a service.”
“That whole partnership terminology is a way of trying to hide the true elements of what the vendor-customer-slash-client relationship is.”
“The approach we've always taken with our conferences, you may have noticed, we don't pay $25,000 to have a keynote speaker show up and tell everybody what they're supposed to think. [In] four years, we've had much more than four keynotes—none of them professional speakers— telling their stories. And that to us is a key element.”
“When you initially look at a budget, it's kind of like, ‘How can this not make money?’ And the answer is because there's always a lot more cost, and everything will be more expensive than you think. No matter how good your people are, it still comes in way, way higher [than projected].”
Connect with John Watson:
LinkedIn
DLAC website
Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn
Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn
About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook
Hello, and welcome to build momentum, a show where we explore thought leadership and education. I'm Sarah Williamson, the founder of SWPR Group.
Katie Lash:And I'm Katie Lash, the director of the East Central Educational Service Center.
Sarah Williamson:Together, we explore how to leverage key partners, your constituencies and the media to authentically impact your organizations and the leaders who champion them. We can't wait to get started. So let's dive into today's show. Okay, welcome. It's so great to have you on the show today, John Watson, you're one of my favorite people in edtech, founder of Evergreen Education Group, the Digital Learning Council and the Digital Learning Annual Conference. So great to have you on the show today.
John Watson:Glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Sarah.
Sarah Williamson:Yes, Katie, you want to take it away?
Katie Lash:I do. I do. I'm so excited to officially meet John today. Because last year, I had the opportunity to attend DLAC, talk on a panel but we get to meet him here today. So tell me more than John says, I don't know you. Well, tell us about your background and how you got into this space?
John Watson:I got into the space for a couple of reasons. One is I had been working for a lot of years in experiential education, other aspects of non traditional education. The other piece too, is I don't know if you to know Julie Young, the founder of Florida Virtual School, and really one of the foundational people in our space. Julie once said to me, I think people in our space either loved or hated school and buy our space meeting, online learning, innovative schools, that sort of thing. And Julie put herself firmly in the love school, I put myself firmly in the hated school category. And when I talk to students now who are in online schools, hybrid schools, Alt Ed, independent study in California, I just hear echoes of myself, students who are myself a long time ago. These are students who are looking for different options that they're not getting out of traditional schools, and different opportunities, things that excite them, engage them. And those are the folks that we get at the Digital Learning Annual Conference where we're organized around online hybrid blended learning. But what that really means is how to use those tools to deliver different approaches to meet needs for really the full range of students.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, I think I didn't love school either. I don't know if I hated it, but I definitely did not love it. So I totally get you there. I love that analogy. Okay. So John, you know, our show is all about thought leadership. And I love how I've heard you talk about thought leadership before, particularly as it relates to DLAC, because it's an interesting balance of how you have to bring on a tech vendors, and you have partners, and you have sponsors, but then you also have all these tech companies who are trying to present and you have to balance that between district administrators and educators who are presenting as well. So tell me about how you think about thought leadership, particularly when it comes to that conference. And then in the broader industry, as well,
John Watson:We see both the lack of the Digital Learning Collaborative, as the communities that have the conversations about what's happening in these different elements of digital learning. And what it means to be a community to us is sharing ideas, sharing best practices, being honest and transparent about what's not gone, well being vulnerable. All those elements. And I think those are the elements that are especially important for the vendors for the providers being part of the conversations that are trying to drive the conversation, being transparent about what's going well, and what's not going well, if I'm in a conversation with a provider, and they're basically saying, oh, yeah, we can do that. And we can do that. And we can do that. We can do that. And that. And that meant that. Like, yeah, you just convinced me, you probably don't do anything well,
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah,
John Watson:the conversations that I think resonate really, really well, especially from the provider standpoint, starts with, here's the ways that we've identified an issue that somebody in that education value chain is happening, whether it's teachers, administrators, when you think about student support, student engagement, etc. We've identified this problem, here's how we're trying to address it through a product or a service. And I think it was your podcast a week or two ago that where one of you said please don't tell me you're partnering with us anymore, right?
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. What do you think about that words John?
John Watson:It drives me bonkers. And you know, I think that's Katie.
Sarah Williamson:Oh, yeah. It's Katie.
John Watson:I think it was the moment when I decided I had to send this around. Because the way you put it just nailed it for me, which is, hey, we might get there. But that's about the starting point. And you know, what, if somebody comes to me and say, Hey, we want to partner like, great, I don't write checks to partners, right? That's a different category. And so, the starting point is, first of all, All, let's just be clear about what we're doing. You know, I think, again, that whole partnership thing that terminology is, it's a way of trying to hide the relationship hide the true elements of what that vendor customer slash client relationship is. And I feel like let's just be honest about this. And, and yeah, we might get to the point where we're partners because we're exploring some issues together, were adding to what we might be offering as an organization. But that's not the starting point. I'm just quoting Katie here by the way.
Sarah Williamson:I know, Katie. Come on!
Katie Lash:Yeah. It's so funny that you say that I actually noticed. I mean, we don't pre script these all the way these podcasts, of course, but like, we always have some prompting questions. And I noticed that Sarah use the word partners on one of these questions. She can't help herself. Did you notice that? It's coming up later, yeah, it's coming up later. I was like,
Sarah Williamson:Oh my gosh, Thanks for calling me out Katie,
Katie Lash:I was gonna call it out, for sure. Later, but since John went there, then like, where? Yes, I love that. So yeah, I think that that's been a very first thing. One of the very first things I said to Sarah, was that there are some companies that I was there were partners, but not the breadth of them that say, so
Sarah Williamson:That doesn't happen the first day
John Watson:You get there. Katie, how do you feel about companies that say, we don't sell products, we sell solutions?
Katie Lash:Oh, that one's again, probably catchy for the first 30. And then, now we're past it. So yeah, I mean, I can't there's got to be a different way. Or the question is, Do companies not know that others are saying the same thing, but that really might be the root issue here? Because they're not all being sold to buy one another? So maybe they don't know that everyone's wearing it out? I don't know.
Sarah Williamson:I think you could be onto something there. Yeah,
John Watson:One of the things I find myself routinely saying to our consulting clients who are often DLAC sponsors, and Digital Learning Collaborative members, is if you're not looking at the websites, the materials of all the organizations that you consider yourself competitors with and differentiating what you're saying versus what they're saying, then you need to rethink just like foundationally what you're doing. Because just like you said, Kenny, it's like, there's too many that are saying the same things. And that becomes a problem.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. Okay. So back to the DLAC question real quick. So when you are reviewing these hordes of proposals, I just want to get into this for a minute, because I am on the program committee. And it's fascinating seeing all of these submissions, and so many companies that are talking about what they offer, and they like sharing their solution within the description and within the content of the panels. And almost in every episode, I'm like, instead of thinking about yourself, take a step back and think about the value you can provide to your audience. And it's not about you as a product or solution. And what do you think about that John?
John Watson:The sessions at DLAC. And by the way, this is probably true of all sorts of other things they could probably be doing as well. But since we have control over the sessions that do like, I could put it in those terms, we encourage companies to talk about the districts that they are working with to solve a problem for students or for teachers, you know, if it's something like PD, let's say, what's the problem that your client solved using your product, service expertise, whatever, and let them tell the story. And then you as the provider, are clearly there. Because by the way, at the end of the day, if you're a company presenting, sponsoring, etc, DLAC, you're there to get some leads out of it. And we are 100% supportive of that. Just to be clear, I know we're being I'm being a little snarky at times here. But bottom line is that providers are not just a critical part of the overall digital learning system, they are a fundamental part that because there's literally nobody is running a K 12 online blender or hybrid program without using some online provider. That's exactly zero.
Sarah Williamson:That's a good point.
John Watson:So everybody's using something. And so there are stories to tell. And I understand that if a company is coming to me, like they need exposure, they need leads, they need all these things. So I'm not saying Look, don't show up. I'm saying yeah, be on the stage, be on the panel, let the client or clients lead. And then you chime in and add some elements of what it is about your company that's doing this really, really well. I was just running a webinar with a client. And there's no particular woman with this client who did this incredibly well. We had three school people, they would all talk and then every so often, the woman from this company would just add a few words about Yeah, and here's how we think about that. And how we approach it. It was just perfect. And because I think it's a less is more kind of situation, right? She's impressing people because she doesn't feel the need to talk a lot. She's just saying the right things that are going to resonate with the audience.
Sarah Williamson:Oh, yeah. Love it. By the way, Katie is also speaking at DLAC again this coming here on the rural schools panel.
Katie Lash:Wooh wooh!
John Watson:Excellent.
Katie Lash:I have a lot of rural schools that I serve. Yeah, but I love I mean, John, I think what you're saying goes back to like, we all know what we're doing there, right? Like, we're going to these conferences to buy something or to learn about something new. And there's going to be people there that are trying to sell if we're all on the same page. That's like, a goal, but like this can be artfully done that like everyone wins, like everyone leaves feeling like their needs are met. So I completely agree with you. Let's go find examples of people who are doing it really well. And then, like, we could write case studies about them. How does that sound? I don't know.
John Watson:Agreed.
Katie Lash:Question here. So you're looking at all of these submissions, what themes and trends are you seeing right now? What do people want to talk about? Is there anything that surprises you?
John Watson:A few of the themes? First of all, there's the continuing shift from emergency remote learning to longer term, online and hybrid and blended learning. And so we're seeing the districts that may have been starting their program for the first time during the pandemic, and now they want to grow it, they may have expanded it during the pandemic, they're learning those lessons. So I'd say that's a major one, an offshoot of that is significantly increased interest in elementary digital learning, because for a lot of folks online and hybrid meant High School, maybe a little bit of middle school, when you think about elementary, there's a different set of student interests use cases, essentially. And they really are quite different. We were talking a fair bit about the idea that people generally talk about K 12, education, like it's one thing, and I do that all the time, too. But that's lumping together a high school junior and a third grader, and they're clearly experiencing everything about the world differently, right, including how they're experiencing instruction and learning. And therefore how we think about delivering different types of instruction to students of very different grade levels has to be very different. And that carries over into the digital learning realm as well. So that's another one. The third one, I'd say is around policy, and the extent to which there are still quite a few states that have policies that are just restrictive, in one way or another. And it feels like, again, coming out of the pandemic, essentially, everybody experienced some form of emergency remote learning a fair number of those folks, students, parents, teachers are interested in extending that, but into different innovative forms of hybrid and online learning is still entirely too many states that are putting up either barriers, or what I tend to think of as sand in the gears. It's like, they're not saying you can't do that. They're just going to make it hard every step of the way.
Katie Lash:Oh, John, we have to talk offline, I have some projects that I want to pick your brain about, because we're facing some of that with some of the districts that were trying to do some pretty creative things. And I do have to say we have like, amazing support from our Department of Ed. But you're so right, we have some policy pieces that we need to take a look at. We have some... Yes, you might have people I need to know. But yeah, I love that. You said that. And the elementary conversation is prime in my area too, right now. But like, there's an avenue to do that on purpose instead of the emergency. Right?
Sarah Williamson:Oh, my gosh, I mean, the emergency does not work. I mean, I have three elementary students not plopping kids in front of a screen. No, thanks. That's not going to solve any problems. You gotta get creative with them.
Katie Lash:Actually though, I have to say, my girls, they're on fall break right now. And their e learning earlier today. They were so good at it. And I think honestly, in a weird way, right? The emergency situation made us like, take a deep look at what we would do when we do it on purpose.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah,
Katie Lash:So like, it's really, girls had a really interesting experience it they were doing a good job, and I'm so impressed by how independent that they get. So I love it. Okay, so John, you kind of already went here. But I'm so curious, other than the words, partners, or we don't sell solutions, what are some other things that made you so intrigued by that, by that podcast? What made you send it on
John Watson:Your discussion about the volume of emails you get, because I don't get the volume that you're talking about? But I get a ton of these right? Still. And I'm sure you're seeing this, there's all these emails that are coming in now that appear to be personal. So it's clear, they're not coming through an email program, which means also that you don't have a simple unsubscribe option. I'm not talking about like Nigerian prince spam kind of stuff I'm talking about. The big thing for us is I'll get multiple emails a day offering to sell the lists of K 12 administrators. And the flip side of that is we're trying to break through and we're trying to get out to people and figure out okay, how do we get somebody to notice us and of course, What's in one sense, you could say, Well, John, that's what everybody's trying to do, right? But the difference because we're operating, we think of ourselves in the online and hybrid niche within ed tech, which is a niche of education. So we're so small, that I firmly believe that we are sending out a very high percentage of emails that people actually want to get if they'll notice them. Right. And it drives me crazy. When people essentially say, Oh, I just found out about DLAC. Now that, I know, we've been emailing you for a while now. And I don't mean, it's driving me crazy in terms of I'm not annoyed at them. I'm annoyed at the world that's created this scenario where it becomes incredibly difficult to share what is truly valuable information. And so we're constantly thinking about that volume. And you were talking a lot about that. Katie, it didn't give me a solution.
Katie Lash:I know. I wish we had one. I wish we had one.
John Watson:It was affirming.
Sarah Williamson:John, I think it sounds like you need some thought leadership.
John Watson:Can I share one thing? I wrote an email to somebody a few months ago, it was somebody I didn't know. But I had some sort of connection to I don't remember why exactly. But it was like a three or four paragraph email. And it was about hey, here's what we're doing, if you like and collaborative and what you might be interested in, I sprinkled real references throughout. You know, I don't know what they were I can't remember offhand. But they were real things like, Hey, here's some people we've worked with, you probably know, here's some programs, here's some things that you're doing. It was like a month later, I got response. And it was, hey, I had to read this three times before. I was convinced that this was a real email. And again, I wasn't angry at her. I was so annoyed. Like, I probably spent 20 minutes crafting that email. And that's a non trivial amount of time for a single email. And how do we break through and it drives me crazy.
Sarah Williamson:She read it three times. I think that's a win. That's pretty impressive.
John Watson:And then she wrote back, but it's what else? I don't know. Maybe the AI generated emails are getting better than I realize now such that they bake that I don't know, that's not what I'm getting at. Maybe you both are. That's not my world, yet. It's pretty easy to tell.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, I still think it's really easy to tell.
Katie Lash:Oh, yeah, I can for sure. Tell that. Yeah.
Sarah Williamson:Do you get those? I've got one of those emails today from that same company that changes its name and changes this industry. And then it's like an $1,800 to$3,000 sponsorship fee. And I've seen every client I've ever had, has gotten this email, and it's this spammy company. It's like CTO awards. It's women leadership awards. They just changed the name in the industry. They must be killing it. But it's basically a scam. And they have these online publications. But it looks real. Every client I've ever had like, oh, this, let's do this. Let's do so they are getting clever. Some of them.
John Watson:I know, years ago, my colleague Christian(inaudible) and I had a call with an organization. And we walked out of our little office in Durango, Colorado, to go have lunch. And Chris said to me, you know, we just have to decide if we want to make money or be ethical, because it's really hard to make money and compete with people like that.
Sarah Williamson:Oh, see, you chose to make money. Is that what you're saying?
John Watson:It's not gonna be on the podcast is it?
Katie Lash:No he chose not to like slip past the secretary by being like, Hey, I'm President Katie. You know, he chose not that route from
Sarah Williamson:Oh, right. The slimy route. Yeah, not the slimy Secretary route.
John Watson:I love those accounts as well. Those are pretty amusing. People who know you.
Sarah Williamson:Oh, they don't know or Yeah,
Katie Lash:I know that. Not at all. They like googled my name
Sarah Williamson:Oh, oh, my goodness. So he won't answer us ethical, or, make money,
John Watson:Trying to straddle the line to be able to make enough money to be financially sustainable without losing our ethical Northstar.
Sarah Williamson:Are you looking to build brand awareness and expand your impact as an organization, but maybe you're struggling to find the ROI with your general marketing and PR efforts, it could be time to try something a little different. At SWPR Group, we approach every organization through the lens of how you can help them add the most value to the conversations that are happening in education today for one of our clients, the Institute for Education innovation, this led to the launch of Supe's Choice, an award that we co created to build incredible brand awareness and his firmly established organization as an industry leader driving impact, growth and awareness on every level for Edmentum. This meant the launch of thought leadership panels at education conferences, and a new webinar series featuring influencers and partners that are making a difference in education. What will your success story be? Let me know when you're ready to get started. Reach doubt at Sarah with an H at sarah@swpr-group.com. We look forward to hearing from you
John Watson:I'll tell you a quick story year one of DLAC, we were actually holding a meeting of a bunch of our Digital Learning Collaborative members. And some people wandered in, who didn't know that it was a private meeting was happening right at the start of dealing. And it was actually really awkward. For me, it's like, it's really awkward to kick people out. But it was a pretty big website, you know, either they're gonna listen to get something out of it, or they're gonna realize they're in the wrong place, whatever. And they didn't leave, they listen. And I went up to them after this chatting. And it turned out, they were not the right fit for DLAC at all. And I felt terrible about it. And I felt like I didn't feel like I said to them, was there something that on the DLAC website, or that we emailed you that made you think this was the right fit? And it was the most interesting turnaround at that point, because they then wanted to convince me that DLAC was a fit for that. It made sense for them to be there.
Sarah Williamson:That is interesting. Okay, I'm just dying to ask you. So one of our next ventures may be to create a conference. Hell us, John, how difficult I imagined it's very, but tell us about launching a conference from soup to nuts like, that sounds like a huge undertaking. Tell me about it.
John Watson:How long do you have? How long of an answer do you want?
Sarah Williamson:It was very difficult. I imagine
John Watson:There's a few aspects that come into play. First of all, yes, it was very difficult. It was the second most difficult thing that I've ever done professionally. The first was working on fishing boats in the Bering Sea and storms with 30 foot waves where I was terrified, I was going to die, which had the advantage of lasting a short amount of time, whereas the run up to DLAC lasted about six months. So it never hit the peak of absolute terror. But it was a long time. The advantages that we had are, we were able to bring in people who knew how to run conferences. And so there were a couple of us don't know how to run conferences. And then there were a bunch of people who do know how to run conferences, and had been involved in conferences in our space as well. And so I think that some of the best things that happened at DLAC come from the combination of people who know what they're doing, and people who didn't know what they were doing, who would ask the questions of why don't we do it this way? And so that way, why are we doing it that way? So for instance, it was pretty rare in education conferences, trying to reach any level of scale, which I'll call, you know, did it 2022, we had 1100 people on site. So whatever you consider scale, it's not like 50 people or under people, it was pretty rare to have a conference that was running 15 minute sessions as the base session, right, and enforcing five minutes of discussion after that. And doing all these sessions, which we call table talks that are literally conversations around a table and doing all these different things. You go to most other education conferences and their 60 minute lectures, right? Where people will tell you how bad a 60-minute lecture is for students, except that's what they persist in. And it was a variety of elements, but one of them was some of us who are newer say, Well, why, why do you have to do it that way? And pushing that with the people who are experienced enough to say, Okay, you could do X, but not Y. X. Sounds great. And we can pull it off that other thing? No, that's a terrible.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. No, and I imagine there's so much that goes into it. And it's tons of work. But has it been rewarding?
John Watson:Oh, it's been incredibly rewarding. But both the lack and the collaborative, we have an incredible team. So we've got our core team, then we've got our consultants who were working on these projects as well. But then we have all the people who show up and all the people who are collaborative members. And a lot of them really feel a sense of buy in and ownership. And I truly believe that we and they have created this platform, this network, this community, where some of the most interesting thinking in our space is happening. And it's happening at scale, because now it's 1100 people in Atlanta a few months ago, and another 500 online, all having these conversations, and they're bought in it's amazing to me how bought in they are so do you like once Monday to Wednesday, we had midday on Wednesday, and we do a little gathering Wednesday evening, just as some key people and some of them are just people. It starts small. It gets a little larger, still not large.
Sarah Williamson:Katie wants an invite.
Katie Lash:I was just thinking about we're key people I mean, just throwing it out there.
Sarah Williamson:Well, I was wondering why I haven't been invited yet. That's what I was wondering when he said that,
John Watson:Because Alison Powell is in charge of the invitations. Here's the thing this group is so, at this point, we've had the conference basically for three days. So here it is nine o'clock on Wednesday, and people are still talking about the same stuff. They're jazzed about it. And they're talking about, okay, what do we do next year? How do we make this better? And I'm not talking about our staff. They were there. We were there, but it's other people. How do we make this better? How do we grow it? How do we make it a year round thing? And it's incredibly energizing?
Sarah Williamson:I think it's pretty cool how you have this super engaged program committee to I think that's pretty rare. At a conference for all of these volunteers just be so engaged and just wanting participate in some way.
John Watson:Totally agree, it goes back to, we know the value of the people on the program committee, and we've had other advisors, some in formal roles, some in informal roles, and they've been incredibly valuable part of the approach we've always taken with a conference, you may have noticed, we don't pay $25,000, to have a keynote speaker show up and tell everybody what they're supposed to think all of our opening speakers have been practitioners telling their stories, zero of them, and we've had multiple, so even though it's been four years, we've had much more than four, none of them are professional speakers, they're telling their stories. And that to us is a key element. And by the way that might change over time. You know, I'm not saying that's always going to be the case. But I so firmly believe that there is so much expertise within the lack attendees. And I also, so firmly believe that that's the expertise that needs to be raised up, have you thought of you by chance ever been, there's this place on the campus of Stanford University, I think it's set up like a mini UN, it might be at the Hoover Institute, I don't know, hey, like this big round theater kind of thing. And give me a picture the UN like the General Assembly. Anyway, the point of this is, I was there with somebody else. And there were a lot of people, you know, talking policy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this is blah, blah, blah, what we should do. And I leaned over to this woman, also very, very smart experience. And I said to her, I don't think any of these people have been in a school in 10 years. And I live in fear of being the person who looks so out of touch, I haven't been in a school and ever run a program. I wasn't ever a mainstream classroom teacher. And so that, to me, it causes this really deep seated fear that I'm going to, in some public way, make comments that people are gonna say he's so out of touch. And the way I saw that is by making as few public comments as possible. Instead, having us be the platform for other people.
Sarah Williamson:There's a peer to peer. Yeah, that's brilliant.
Katie Lash:I think there's a huge trend of that, though, like I love that. when we're hosting things to obviously way smaller scale than what you're talking. But the whole model of like having a person talk at them workshop all day long, like that's almost non existent. It's like, let's leverage the expertise in the room, we might have someone driving the conversation or someone like plant the seeds. But then I love that you said that. And I did notice that I do like, it's so true, like best practices that we tell teachers to not do with kids we do to the adults. And if you're like me, I can't sit that long. I mean, the students can't sit down long. I can't sit that long. Like I've got to be engaged in conversation. So I love that you do that. I love it.
John Watson:Yeah. Well, we tried to give people, attendees choices the same way I think students should have some choices. Sarah, back to your question about the conference, a couple of observations that probably wouldn't land on your podcast, I can tell you, when you initially look at a budget, it's kind of like, how can this not make money? And the answer is, because there's always a lot more cost and everything will be more expensive than you think no matter how good your people are, it still comes in way, way higher. And there's a whole lot of elements about that. And so there's this really key element of logistics and cost containment that are so important. And I do those things terribly. And so if you want to have a financially sustainable conference, you have to have people who are taking that stuff really, really seriously.
Sarah Williamson:Are you able to make a profit on the conference?
John Watson:We have not made a profit yet, when you consider when you fully account for staff time, we'll get there we're on the path. I mean, keep in mind, we're four years in and two of those years have been significantly COVID impacted, which had all sorts of ramifications for us. It's not just being a drag on attendance, it's also having to ship dates and things like that. So the growth has been really great. In some ways. It's not been where we would like it to be in some other ways, not that we wouldn't be huge, but we've certainly been hindered by the pandemic, at least to some extent.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, I think most in person conferences have been, you know, everyone only wants to attend so many virtual conferences now, that's for sure. Okay, so I feel like we're over time so Any final questions, thoughts, Katie, we have so many thoughts and questions, I'm sure still, but
Katie Lash:I'm way okay with this. But we didn't talk about the like, how do districts work with their partners, but I just wanted to re emphasize that, but that's okay. That's okay. Because this conversation was great, John, like, I really hope that folks hear about what you're doing. And I love what you're doing. Well, actually, really quick before we go, what's next for evergreen Education Group? The DLC? What's next for you guys? Any big plans on the horizon?
John Watson:Can I treat this like a politician? And answer the question Katie didn't want to ask instead of the question you did ask. And then if you want answer the question, you just have to because I love the question about district leaders working more collaboratively with partners. Because one of the things that we see quite a bit is program leaders, in my experience, don't tend to spend as much time being incredibly clear about their goals as they should be. And when I say goals, I mean specific and measurable and actionable, and all those pieces. And then what happens is that the vendor is left having to at least somewhat interpret what the district program is looking for. Whereas if the district people take the time to be really, really clear, and by the way, this is really hard, we spent a bunch of years as an earlier iteration organization, but we spent a bunch of years working with districts that were setting up their online and hybrid programs. And invariably, they underestimated how long it was going to take for them to work with us just to identify what they wanted to do. There was zero exceptions to that, because there's so many people that have to get involved. And if you don't spend enough time upfront, then what's going to happen is you're going to realize you missed something, or somebody who needed to wait and didn't get a chance to weigh in all those elements. And then the other part of that, too, is that educators tend to be so collaborative by nature, that it's always the end. And there's the tyranny of and because when you're in the planning room, it's easy to say, oh, yeah, and we'll do that. And we'll do that. And we'll do that. But then the reality of time and resource constraints hit, and now you're finding yourself having to choose between what you thought was going to be completely additive. And so it's not actually in the strategic planning, because you said, you're going to do all those things. But now reality hits, and you have to choose to have those seven things. And so now you're back to Okay, now we're going to make this decision. And so to me, the thing that districts can do better is to be really, really clear. Here are the things we're trying to do. Here's how we're going to measure success. Here's the timeframe that we're thinking about all those pieces. And then the other thing that I would do, and we're a tiny organization, we're not a public organization. So we don't have to go through all these hoops. But I just like to encourage people don't submit, if you're not a fit, and you know how I can say that, like, show us that you're actually the one that does what we're looking for, because we're telling you exactly what we want.
Katie Lash:Yes, I love it.
John Watson:Okay Sarah, what was the question you wanted to ask me?
Sarah Williamson:If you have anything exciting coming up? Anything you want to share, that we should watch for new reports, other than DLAC are submissions are still open, right?
John Watson:For 24 more hours? Or maybe 29? or so? I don't know.
Sarah Williamson:Oh nevermind,
John Watson:I don't know exactly what time
Sarah Williamson:When this airs, you're out of luck. Sorry. Next year, there's always next year,
John Watson:There's always next year. The thing that we are most excited about now is going back several years, we actually launched the Digital Learning Collaborative, the membership group, about the same time that we started planning for DLAC, but then DLAC, because it was a thing. And it had a deadline, because we said, hey, we're running a conference, it's going to be in Austin, it's going to be in April. It's like, oh, now you gotta go do it. Right. And so the collaborative was always the thing that fell behind. We're now at the point where we've invested considerable time and resources, we're about to roll out a new platform, we're going to be rolling out a content library, wrapping it, a lot of the live videos and webinars that we've been doing. We are truly at the point within the next couple of months, where we'll be realizing the vision that we've had, it's taken us a while to get here. But that vision being look, DLAC is a thing that happens on site, and online real time, three days a year. And the collaborative encompasses those same conversations for the rest of the year. And that's been happening. We've had incredible webinars, we've had virtual happy hours, we've got all these discussions, but it's going to the next level. And we're excited about that. Because what we're seeing is the excitement in our members and the number of people who are signing up or joining these sessions, the discussions that we're having in the webinars and other real time events is just great. I think a lot more people are primed for this kind of stuff. Now, post pandemic as well. It's a lot more are common to be holding zoom meetings and that sort of thing. So the idea of, hey, I can either be in the face to face meeting or in the Zoom meeting and in the past that that was maybe a weird dichotomy. I don't think it is anymore, and people are much more comfortable with those ideas.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. Awesome. Okay, John, this is actually your second time on Build Momentum. So thanks for coming back. I appreciate it.
John Watson:I did well, makes me sound good.
Sarah Williamson:We will. So fun to see you.
Katie Lash:Yes, see you in a few months.
John Watson:That sounds great. Thanks for having me on.
Sarah Williamson:Yeah. If you're looking for more of this thought, leadership goodness for your organization, you're in the right place. Visit us at swpr-group.com To learn more about how we work with education organizations and their leaders, superintendents and influencers to increase your impact. Again, that's swpr-group.com. Thanks for tuning in today and we will see you next time on Build Momentum.