April 15, 2010

Turning Lemonade Into Helicopters

Apr. 15, 2010 at 11:53 AM | By Todd Gibby | Comment Count

I spent a few great days at the higher education UCEA Annual Conference last week in San Francisco. The highlight for me was listening to Tina Seelig’s keynote “Entrepreneurship is an Extreme Sport.” Tina is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering. In addition to having built an amazing program and achieved many professional successes, for which she has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, Tina is also a dynamic and motivating speaker. During her presentation, she shared great stories about her students at Stanford, lessons to be learned from entrepreneurship, and opportunities to make your place in the world.

One particular story that stuck with me had to do with an experience she had while grocery shopping. She was approached in the aisle by a man with a simple question. Seemingly new to the U.S., he was puzzled by how to prepare frozen lemonade; so he asked Tina how to do it. She helped him out, struck up a conversation, and ultimately exchanged cards with the gentleman. As she had learned in their brief conversation, he was in Silicon Valley to study entrepreneurship. As a result, she offered to assist him in any way possible, and he actually later took her up on this offer on a number of different occasions. They stayed in touch, and many years later she contacted him while traveling abroad in his home city. Although he was busy during her visit, he arranged for colleagues to meet up with Tina and some of her associates. Much to her surprise, he sent his family’s helicopter to give them an aerial tour of the city, fly-up to the mountains to view his family’s ski chalet, and take a breathtakingly scenic return to town via the coast.

Her lesson for the audience: happiness and success in life take some luck. But it also takes hard work. And, it takes more than hard work…it requires taking some risk; making yourself available to others; “putting yourself out there to succeed or fail,” as she would say, without worrying too much about what you might / might not get back in return. To sum it up, she quipped; “Entrepreneurship and life is more than taking lemons and making lemonade, it is also about taking lemonade and turning it into helicopters. “

This is great story from an exceptional storyteller; and I’ll certainly carry it forward. In reflecting on it, though, I realize that I also had a “lemonade to helicopters” kind of experience in the lead-up to UCEA. It had to do with a presentation proposal I had submitted months earlier, with the hope of being selected to speak at the conference. My presentation was not accepted, I learned. But, I was informed by conference organizers, there was good news: two other people had submitted similar proposals, and the three of us had been selected to present together.

As anyone who has presented at industry conferences will tell you, this news in no way signified anything approaching good news. Although being selected to present in front of peers and clients is a distinct privilege, presenting as a triumvirate (or potentially, more accurately, as a Cerberus) can be a “lose-lose” proposition. This approach generally results in: more work, less control, less air-time, less cohesive message, an often disjointed flow of the presentation…and there is no possible way to wake up and whip off your slides at 4:00AM the morning of the event!

But, this experience was totally different.

I was slotted to present with Amy Pikalek from the University of Wisconsin Extension and Matt Gehrett from Fresno Pacific University; and they were phenomenal partners.

We actually linked up with one another shortly after learning of our co-presentation, agreed upon a coordinated approach to the session, and began working on it months in advance. We created an “Online Marketing for Higher Ed” survey and polled 90 respondents from UCEA and Eduventures. We then compared the results in our session to real-time polling that we did via PollEverywhere. It was a ton of fun. We also shared some of the content that each of us likely would have covered independently, although it now had the context of the higher education surveys and of the expertise of our co-presenters. We had a lively audience; and we had some excellent discussion. I also got to know two fantastic people, with whom I would gladly present again. Those slides are available below; and I hope you find them useful.

In any case, the slides, and this process, were definitely useful for me. They represent something completely consistent with Tina Seelig’s message. It might be overstating it to say that we were handed “lemons” when asked to present together, but we were able to take a surprising turn events and make it into a really enjoyable and productive experience (at least for the three co-presenters and hopefully for those in the audience as well). And who knows, perhaps Matt and/or Amy have a helicopter I don't know about?

View "Putting a Face to CyberSpace."