Dowser » Education

College for All: Sebastian Thrun, Udacity

EshaC — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:48:32 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

by Andre Dua

Something big is up in higher education thanks to the advent of “massive open online courses” (MOOCs), which can reach millions around the world. What most people—including university leaders—don’t yet realize is that this new way of teaching and learning, together with employers’ growing frustration with the skills of graduates, is poised to usher in a new credentialing system that may compete with college degrees within a decade. This emerging delivery regime is more than just a distribution mechanism; done right, it promises students faster, more consistent engagement with high-quality content, as well as measurable results. This innovation therefore has the potential to create enormous opportunities for students, employers, and star teachers even as it upends the cost structure and practices of traditional campuses. Capturing the promise of this new world without losing the best of the old will require fresh ways to square radically expanded access to world-class instruction with incentives to create intellectual property and scholarly communities, plus university leaders savvy enough to shape these evolving business models while they still can.

Consider the first of the two converging trends. As is well known, frustration with the performance of traditional institutions is mounting. Only six in ten students at four-year institutions are graduating within six years today. Most employers say graduates lack the skills they need. Tuition has risen far faster than inflation or household earnings for two decades.

Meanwhile, the online revolution in learning is exploding. Coursera, a for-profit venture that taps professors and lecturers from 62 universities (including Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania) boasts many courses with 50,000 to 100,000 users who pay nothing for access to the best professors in the world; overall, the company has more than 2.7 million registered students (most of them overseas), who take at least one course. A nonprofit partnership between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—edX—offers online versions of courses, with video lessons, embedded quizzes, instant feedback, and student-paced learning. Udacity’s introduction-to-computer-programming course has already been taken by a staggering 200,000 students worldwide.

The key question is how quickly these MOOCs will offer not just a breakthrough mode of learning for the enterprising and the curious but also bona fide credentials that students seek because employers value them. Some early signs: Coursera recently announced that five of its courses have been approved for undergraduate credit by the American Council on Education. Colorado State University’s Global Campus has started giving credit for the introductory computer-programming course offered by Udacity if the student passes a proctored exam, even though Stanford (where the company’s founders teach) does not itself offer credit for the course. Once a sufficient infrastructure of credible exams and assessments around MOOCs is in place—and edX and Udacity students start taking proctored exams at hundreds of regional test centers—we’ll enter a new world.

In this world, students will be able to credential themselves routinely via such courses and assessments as a way to bolster their résumés. When assessors persuade employers that these credentials are reliable predictors of workplace success, employers will be in a position to act as Colorado State does today. That is, they’ll have the confidence to give job candidates “credit” for work done outside the officially accredited institutions of higher education. Once this challenge to the monopoly of today’s accrediting institutions begins, a big chunk of higher education may become vulnerable to the kind of disruption the music industry experienced a decade ago, as centrally controlled and distributed albums gave way, thanks to technology, to customized playlists assembled by individuals. Substitute “degrees” for “albums” and “self-selected credentials employers value” for “playlists” and you have a feel for what may lie ahead.

This won’t happen overnight, but it won’t take forever, either. If a nontrivial portion of higher education is destined to be challenged this way in the next decade, what will that mean for society? And what should universities do? The answers depend largely on what online business models and incentives evolve to govern the roles of teaching talent, colleges, assessment firms, and other key players across the education landscape.

Today these business models truly run the gamut. On one end are graduate schools that charge full freight for online degrees. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, for example, tuition is more than $90,000 for an online MBA. USC has reported more than $100 million in revenue from its online offerings. Traditional undergraduate schools, such as Penn State (via its World Campus) and the University of Massachusetts, are likewise offering degrees online for roughly the same (relatively low) price they charge for in-state, on-campus tuition. Some for-profit providers focused on adult learners charge brick-and-mortar tuitions despite having substantially lower costs. On the other end of the spectrum, online learning platforms such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity may be fueling an expectation that education should be “free,” with students paying over time for the proctored exams or certificates that prove their value to employers. Maybe that’s a promising model, but the notion of free could as easily prove a risky path that undermines the economics of creating new courses. That’s why MIT’s president, L. Rafael Reif, suggested recently that online students should pay modest fees to help the physical university sustain its mission.

As these early offerings suggest, the emerging system won’t be all bad news for traditional institutions. There are new revenue streams to capture, such as fees for certificates with a university’s brand on them or payments to collect when other institutions grant transfer credit for courses offered via MOOCs. There are huge overseas markets to serve, where US education brands are highly coveted. And there are employers to work with to ensure that students acquire essential skills. Beyond this, of course, there’s the thrill of making access to high-quality education available on a previously unimaginable scale—a vision that California governor Jerry Brown has started stressing. Still, university leaders seeking to fulfill their mission in an era of unprecedented change would do well to develop some guiding principles to shape their response.

To start, it’s not sustainable for universities to slash the cost of delivering education through online innovations yet pass on little of the savings to students through lower tuition and fees. For various reasons, that’s what is happening at some schools today. Yet unduly high prices for online students are at odds with the mission of broadening access, especially as state budget cuts push tuition out of reach.

On the other hand, it’s equally important that education not be seen as a free good, because it will always take big investments to attract and retain the talent needed to develop world-class courses and materials. Unless new online platforms are associated with meaningful revenue streams—from textbooks, tutoring, proctored exams, per-degree fees, or creative alternatives not yet imagined—the model will prove self-defeating. There must be incentives to create compelling content if schools are to deliver the best teaching to anyone on the planet.

The good news is that universities are well positioned to develop new models that combine lower costs, higher quality, and better alignment with employer needs. That’s because they have the intellectual property, the brands, and the tradition of public service needed to integrate these interests sustainably.

While no one can predict the future, it seems likely that we are heading toward two versions of hybrid learning experiences in higher education. The first would still be campus-centric, with technology allowing a more efficient and effective reengineering of the learning experience, with lectures moving exclusively online, and with class time reserved for small-group problem solving and conversation. The other hybrid mode would be digital-centric (and much less costly), with a core online component supplemented, perhaps, by self-organized study groups, as we see happening already in MOOCs. Some digital-centric options may be associated with traditionally accredited college brands; others may live purely in the world of alternative credentials. Students from wealthier families and those with adequate financial aid may prefer the residential experience (and the lifelong personal networks that come with it). But the cost–value equation will shift so rapidly in the years ahead, and employers will develop so great a stake in the new system they help design, that millions of students will probably flourish without ever setting foot on traditional campuses.

Undoubtedly, there will be tumult as we navigate this new world. But if we get it right, the prize—broader access, improved employability, and deeper learning— involves untold benefits for students and society.

This article originally appeared in Voices on Society: The art and science of delivery and was published in partnership with McKinsey.

Fixes: A Team Approach to Get Students Ready for College

EshaC — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 16:18:17 +0000

by David Bornstein, Fixes

When Parker Sheffy, a first-year teacher in the Bronx Leadership Academy II, a high school in the South Bronx, talks shop with friends who are also new teachers, he often hears about the problems they are facing: students not showing up to class on time, not understanding their work, not doing homework. “I’m thinking: I don’t have that problem… I don’t have that problem…” Sheffy recalled. In his ninth grade integrated algebra class, he estimates that 80 to 90 percent are on track to pass the Regents exam, more than double last year’s figure.

“But I have to remind myself that this is not just because of me,” Sheffy said. “I’m one of six people who have created this class.”

Sheffy’s school is one of three New York City public schools working with an organization called Blue Engine, which recruits and places recent college graduates as full-time teaching assistants in high schools, helps teachers shift to a small-group classroom model with a ratio of one instructor for roughly every six students, uses data tracking to generate rapid-fire feedback so problems can be quickly addressed, and provides weekly instruction in “social cognition” classes, where students are introduced to skills and concepts — such as the difference between a “fixed” and a “growth” mind-set — that can help them grasp their untapped potential.

Blue Engine also targets algebra, geometry and English language arts in the ninth and 10th grades because performance in these so-called “gateway” courses is associated with college success.

Despite its modest size and short track record, Blue Engine has already seized the attention of educators and attracted notice fromPresident Obama. Last year, in its schools, as a result of the program, the number of students who met the “college ready” standard — scoring above 80 on their Regents exams in algebra, geometry or English language arts — nearly tripled, from 49 to 140.

Katherine Callaghan, the principal of the Bronx Leadership Academy II, who has worked in the school for more than 10 years, said: “Blue Engine has moved a huge number of our students in a way that nothing else that we’ve ever tried has been able to do.” She added: “Last year we had a 44 percent pass rate on the integrated algebra Regents, with two kids scoring above an 80. This year, we’re on track for 75 or 80 percent passing, with 20 kids hitting the college-ready mark. We’re close to doubling our pass rate and multiplying by a factor of 10 our college-ready rate.”

Gains like this are not often seen in education. So it’s worth taking note. What’s happening?

Blue Engine was born in the wake of a disappointing eight-year educational intervention led by its founder, Nick Ehrmann. And it shows. There is a refreshing humility baked into its model — particularly in the core idea that teachers need lots more support than they are given to do what they are expected to do. Ehrmann got his own start in education as a Teach For America corps member, teaching fourth and fifth grades at Emery Elementary School, in a tough neighborhood in Washington, D.C. He wanted his students in class 312 to make it through college, so working with the “I Have a Dream Foundation,” he raised over $1 million to provide them with tutoring, mentoring and scholarships over several years.

After he left teaching to pursue a doctorate in sociology at Princeton, Ehrmann’s Project 312 became the basis for his thesis. For years, he tracked the students’ progress against a comparison group from the same school. “I fully intended to arrogantly study what our nonprofit was getting right,” he recalled. “After six years, I found that our work had not had a shred of impact on academic achievement.”

Half of the students went on to graduate from high school; almost all of them enrolled in a higher education program; to date, not one has earned a bachelor’s degree; only one has a certificate from a vocational program.

That experience led Ehrmann to redouble his efforts focusing on a question of paramount importance for social equity and the long-term economic health of the nation: How do we help low-income students succeed in college? The current unemployment rate tells a powerful story: it’s 4.5 percent for college graduates, 8.3 percent for high school graduates, and 12.4 percent for those without a diploma. Now consider: only 8 students out of every 100 from the bottom income quartile in the United States earn bachelor’s degrees by their mid-20s (pdf).

There are many causes. But in recent years, researchers have come to agree that a big one is a lack of rigor at the high school level. “The most important pre-collegiate indicator of your success in college is the academic intensity of your high school curriculum,” says Clifford Adelman, a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, who has conducted seminal research on the issue (pdf). “One step beyond Algebra 2 in high school will double the odds that you will finish college.”

David Conley, Director of the Center for Educational Policy Research at the University of Oregon, adds that the key is not just mastering material, but taking courses that teach you how to “organize and integrate information, think deeper and take ownership and control of learning.”

How could we make traditional high schools more academically rigorous places for many more kids? Ehrmann researched a number of models, including the Match High School, a charter school in Boston that gets impressive results by providing two hours of tutoring in small groups each day. In 2010, Blue Engine began working to see if a similar approach could be integrated more broadly into public schools — to close the gap between students being college eligible and college ready.

“The biggest open secret in American education is that we are shoveling kids off to higher education without preparing them to succeed,” Ehrmann said. Indeed,three quarters of students attending the City University of New York in 2011 required remedial instruction in reading, writing or math. That translates into a lot of dreams deferred, because students who are assigned remedial coursework in college — for which they earn no credit but pay full tuition — rarely complete their degrees (pdf, p. 63).

Parker Sheffy’s ninth grade algebra class is divided into six groups. The class begins with 10 or 15 minutes of whole group instruction, then Sheffy and five Blue Engine Teaching Assistants (called BETAs) settle into small group work. The day I visited, during a class on probability, what was notable was simply that all the students were hunched over their desks, pencils and calculators in hand, hard at work, for the entire period. I scanned for students staring into space, but found none. For 45 minutes, there was a continuous flow of interactions between the students and BETAs, with scores of quiet questions and clarifications, and students often assisting one another. It was disturbing to realize that most of these questions wouldn’t have been asked or answered in a traditional classroom. It also made me wonder: Why do we hold to the idea that one teacher should be responsible for meeting the learning needs of a whole class of students — particularly when some students arrive at school three or four years behind grade level?

One of the BETAs, Kym Scherbarth, is a recent graduate of the University of California, San Diego. Scherbarth had considered going into teaching out of college, but she didn’t feel ready to lead a class. “I figured this was a good way to learn how to be an effective educator and decide if it was something I wanted to pursue,” she said. Working closely with students in four classrooms every day, she’s seen where and how students often struggle and learned how to give concise and specific feedback. She’s also discovered that she has a gift for motivating students, particularly those who have not previously experienced success in school.

That’s not just her intuition speaking. BETAs keep track of student performance on a daily basis — scoring things like attendance and homework effort and accuracy and mastery of the day’s lesson (as indicated by mini exit tests). They meet with lead teachers twice a week to review the data and devise strategies to address problems. The numbers tell them where to focus, what’s working, and what isn’t. “Doing this regularly from the beginning of the year has been very encouraging,” Scherbarth said. “From where they started, I don’t think the students know how big of a jump they’ve made.”

Scherbarth has signed on for another year with Blue Engine and now plans to become a teacher. This is a pathway that others are following and it’s conceivable that Blue Engine could evolve into an alternative model for teacher preparation, one that provides more ramp-up time than programs like Teach For America. This spring, the organization received 578 applications from 187 universities and colleges for 43 teaching assistant slots; one-fifth came from Ivy League schools; more than two-fifths were from African-Americans and Latinos. And all of them are vying for jobs that have a starting salary of $14,400 per year (plus an AmeriCorps educational award of $5,550).

Blue Engine’s model is still in its early stages. While the overall trend is upward, there remains considerable variation among classes. Some teachers have struggled to work effectively with BETAs (younger teachers have found the transition to team-teaching easier). And big literacy gains have so far proven more difficult to elicit than gains in math, with which the organization has more experience.

The model could not be more timely. In recent years, reformers have focused more on individual teacher accountability than on the potential gains that could come from supporting teachers in better ways. Consider the experience of Sheffy, who is clearly a motivated and caring teacher. In his ninth grade algebra class, he is having great success. More than 80 percent of the students regularly complete their homework. In his two other classes (without BETAs), homework completion is much lower, he said.

There is a team behind the good results, and a price tag, too. Katherine Callaghan, the principal, said it costs about $150,000 to have 10 BETAs in the school, money that comes from her discretionary budget. Time will tell if these expenditures translate into bachelor’s degrees. But Callaghan says the effects have already spread to other classes. “Science pass rates are up, too,” she notes. “With all the BETAs, every single student feels known by someone. And they are all telling students that it’s important to be college ready. That’s building a really strong base in our 9th grade.”

For Ehrmann, the big question is: How fast and how far can a group of young people go in the course of one year under the right circumstances? Most teachers recognize that they could achieve better outcomes if they could provide more personalized instruction, grade more work, answer more questions, and have more time to build relationships with students.

The current classroom model limits all this. “That model will be radically transformed over time,” says Ehrmann. “It’s going to become a combination of strong teachers at the center, new forms of human capital, and the right technologies. I don’t think anyone knows what environments will be best for kids. We’re in the process of inventing it right now.”

(photo courtesy of NYTimes/ Byron Smith)

You Don’t Have to Go to College to Succeed. Really?

EshaC — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:21:24 +0000

By Ben Thurman

In 1997’s big hit, Good Will Hunting, Will Hunting scoffed, “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”

Fifteen years on, this idea has taken root as people emerge to challenge the conventional wisdom that without a college degree, life will amount to failure.

The debate about the value of a college education is intensifying, with increasing numbers dissatisfied with their experience. The spectre of debt drives discontent. In the last decade tuition fees rose by 42% and graduates can now expect to pay upwards of $100,000 for a four-year programme.

Rising fees have increased the level of expectation, and with growing numbers unable to secure a job at the end, the sum no longer appears a worthy investment. As degrees become increasingly ubiquitous and therefore less likely to guarantee a chosen career, college education appears less relevant and applicable to the real world.

As long as a degree guaranteed the security of a job and the skills needed to carry it out, the price was tolerable. But when half of college graduates under the age of 25 are either unemployed or doing a job that does not require a degree, people are beginning to question the value of college education and develop alternative solutions to the millennial generation’s demand for applicable skills and employability.

Attracting recent media attention, Enstitute is a new education incubation model that challenges the traditional college norm. Based in New York, it offers young people the chance to learn core skills through on-the-job experience.

In an interview with the Huffington Post in March, founder Kane Sarhan spoke of his motivation:

“I was seeing friends graduating from university with 60k in debt and not finding a job they could love.” Meanwhile, co-founder Shaila Ittycheria, working as a hiring manager, was coming across graduates who had “no problem-solving skills, no reasoning skills, and were totally useless in the workplace.”

The two developed a model that addressed both the disillusionment with college education among young ‘entrepreneurial types’ and the skills gap for hiring managers in vibrant tech start-ups. Enstitute places college-aged entrepreneurs for two years in New York’s hottest start-ups – among them are Thrillist, bit.ly and Flavorpill – to learn practical, applicable skills under the apprenticeship of high-profile chief executives.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sarhan realized the gap between the classroom and the boardroom while still an undergraduate. His decision to take a job under the founder of a New York tech start-up proved a much more relevant learning experience; he hopes to offer young people the same opportunity and prove that, for the young digital elite, the top jobs do not require a degree. “Our long-term vision is that this becomes an acceptable alternative to college.”

He is not alone. Young people today have a widening pool of alternatives for ‘self-directed learning.’ The Thiel Fellowship offers a $100,000 grant to encourage the generation’s most exciting innovators to skip college and pursue their ideas; UnCollege runs programmes that provide mentorship and networks to Silicon Valley; and Minerva is delivering an Ivy League education exclusively online.

Dale Stephens, founder of UnCollege and author of Hacking Your Education, in a piece for the New York Times argued against the need for “a $150,000 piece of paper” when there are so many alternatives: online courses, interning, apprenticing.

“With a connection economy as powerful as ours,” he argues, “the real world is starting to give a greater return on investment than the manufactured [world] we set up in college.”

Alternative programmes are certainly more affordable. Enstitute currently charges $1,500 in tuition and fellows receive a small stipend. Dev Bootcamp – “an apprenticeship on steroids” – teaches programming, coding and other marketable skills in nine weeks. With 90% employed after three months, the immediate return on the investment of $12,000 is much higher than most college degrees.

However, these programs by their own admission target the intelligent, ambitious, ‘entrepreneurial type.’ Currently, opportunities seem to be isolated to technology start-ups. While college is ‘not for everyone,’ technological entrepreneurship is surely for even fewer.

The companies affiliated with Enstitute are very happy with the first batch of fellows. Ben Lerer, co-founder of Thrillist describes his apprentice as “an awesome value at a nominal cost.” The eleven fellows from the first year will surely go on to achieve great things, having learned to develop mobile apps, code programs and prototype screen-based products.

But it is hard to imagine any of New York’s most dynamic entrepreneurs taking on anything less than the most brilliant young people. While this and other ‘real world’ opportunities for young people, such as UnCollege and the Thiel Fellowship, are only applicable for a tiny minority, it is unlikely that they will achieve the goal of disrupting the traditional college model.

Right now self-directed learning through online sources, such as those made available by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford, are not recognized in the same way as a college degree. Similarly, it remains to be seen whether employers will treat the graduates of Enstitute with scepticism when they enter the job market.

Hiring managers still place a premium on college degrees and often will not consider an applicant without one. However, the skills gap that was observed by Ittycheria remains. If college education continues to produce graduates that are “totally useless in the workplace,” employers may begin to consider candidates that have developed marketable skills through alternative, on-the-job experience.

Alternatives to college education remain largely unexplored, and they are currently the domain of a somewhat exceptional minority. However, as long as college fees continue to grow and job prospects look bleak, more young people look set to consider online and practical alternatives to college education. Indeed, as Benchmark Capital invests $25 million in Minerva, it is clear that Silicon Valley believes that attitudes towards higher education are about to change.

(Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons)

Students Take on Social Entrepreneurship Early On

EshaC — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:02:21 +0000

By Adam S. Poswolsky

If extreme poverty is going to be eradicated in our lifetime, all sectors of society, especially young people, need to be mobilized.

Nourish International, a social venture started in 2003 by a student at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, get this. That’s why it engages students on college campuses to use social entrepreneurship to empower community partners in the developing world.

Nourish puts students in the driver seat to take action by running social ventures at their chapters, while contributing investment in sustainable development projects around the world. They have a national office that provides resources, programs and trainings for students to start their own entrepreneurial ventures. The students select the ventures to run, the students select the partner organizations, and the students see the projects through implementation by going to work alongside their partners abroad during the summer.

“Fortunately for the field, many amazing student organizations are now working in grassroots community development,” explains Allie Treske, chief operating officer for Nourish International. “Nourish is unique in that it takes student leadership seriously. Two college students serve on our board of directors, and co-lead our student advisory board, a nationwide group of student leaders who have a serious stake in the future of this organization.”

The focus on student leadership is paying off, as Nourish has already raised over $350,000 in partner communities in 25 countries around the world since 2004, and will expand from 28 to 45 campus chapters by the end of the year, with a goal of reaching 100 campuses over the next five years.

The Nourish chapter at the University of Texas-Austin raised over $5,000 through their Hunger Lunch program, in which they partner with a local food truck, Naan Stop, and sell Indian food on campus. Proceeds from the student-led venture went towards an educational initiative that supports technology infrastructure including computers through DJMV, a nonprofit community partner that works to improve living conditions of poor and marginalized people in Odisha, India.

Nourish selects their projects based on partnerships with established organizations on the ground, ensuring they are meeting the needs of the community members, providing the resources that they want and need. “This enables a group of students who otherwise wouldn’t really know how to go about doing development work, how to actually make an impact in helping the poor,” says John McCreary, a University of Texas-Austin graduate, and former student board member.

Other organizations are also empowering students to create global change. GlobeMed matches students with grassroots organizations to address health disparities. FaceAids has raised $2.5 million to fight AIDS by building a movement of young leaders, with 230 student chapters focused on global health equity.

Like Nourish, FeelGood incorporates student social entrepreneurship, by having students run non-profit delis specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches, and investing 100% of the proceeds in partner organizations eradicating global hunger. FeelGood was started in 2004 by Kristen Walter and Talis Apud, then students at the University of Texas-Austin, and now has chapters at universities across the country.

Nourish projects allow students to learn social entrepreneurship skills,but also receive hands-on field experience working in community development. Students at Ohio State University partnered with the Global Health Network, a nonprofit primary health organization focusing on maternal and child health, to build the capacity of health workers in Oyam, Uganda. After six weeks, the students taught sexual and reproductive health education to local youth, constructed latrines, and visited the homes of new and expecting mothers. The students were also involved counseling and testing over 700 women and their spouses as part of an outreach program for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Some organizations are working to ensure young people get passionate about eradicating poverty before they even go to college. Global Citizen Year sends high school graduates to work on service learning projects in Senegal, Brazil, and Ecuador for up to eight months for an impactful gap year before college.

“By living with a family in a single community, our Fellows remain in one place long enough to learn the local language and customs, and to develop the trust and relationships which help them understand why people are poor, and what actually works (and doesn’t) in addressing the root causes of poverty,” explains founder Abby Falik. “In contrast to classroom based study of poverty, this learning comes through first-hand observation and experience.”

Organizations like Global Citizen Year and Nourish have demonstrated that the personal experience of working in grassroots development keeps young people passionate about poverty eradication, long after they graduate college.

(Photo Courtesy of Subject)

Don’t Want that Sandwich? Can’t sell it? Don’t throw it away, though!

EshaC — Mon, 13 May 2013 06:10:01 +0000

Dana Frasz is a food entrepreneur. She wants to recycle food, taking the food that’s not consumed and putting it into the hands of those who cannot afford it. She wants companies to stop wasting so much food – at the grocery story and in restaurants. She wants us all to be aware of how much we’re throwing in the dustbin. Too idealistic? Frasz would argue otherwise. Hear her talk about her passion – FoodShift.

How much waste is there currently in the US and how accurate are these figures?

40% of all the food produced in the US is wasted.

This figure is from national experts on food waste – author, Jonathan Bloom wrote “American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half its Food” and Dana Gunders has been researching this issue for at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

What are grocery stores doing currently to prevent food waste? Are there any policies in place to prevent this?

Some grocery stores are donating excess food or marking down the prices of food that is still good but may be past its peak freshness, damaged in some way or cosmetically imperfect. There is a federal policy in place to encourage food donation. It’s called the Good Samaritan Food Act and it was passed specifically to encourage the donation of food. It protects food donors from liability as long as they are donating to a non-profit. Many food donors can also receive tax deductions for their donations.

What has been the toughest part for you, as an activist and a social entrepreneur, in this effort?

I am really disturbed by the excessive waste and consumption in American culture.

Our materialistic lifestyles in the US have negative social and environmental impacts around the world. Rather than living in harmony with the earth, we are perpetuating a culture that is dependent on exploitation, extraction and acquisition. Food waste is not only a waste of nutrition, it squanders water, depletes soil, wastes fossil fuels and adds greatly to the world’s carbon footprint.

What is your solution?

Food Shift is working with Oakland schools to ensure surplus food from the cafeteria is redistributed to students and families rather than thrown in the garbage. We are working with a local grocer who has expressed interest in paying Food Shift to recover food from their stores. This would allow us to employ someone in the process while reducing waste disposal costs for the business. We are interested in developing food recovery and redistribution models that increase access to more nutrition food, reduce waste and generate revenue in some way so they can sustain and scale – like low-cost markets and value-added products.

How feasible is it?

We have trash and recycling removal in this country, why not have a food recovery service sector that recovers and redistributes surplus food as an extension of our current waste management system?

It may sound crazy, but it is realistic strategy and could create a lot of jobs in the green economy. Generating revenue from food that would otherwise be wasted is possible, but by no means easy. It’s a difficult challenge to ensure food safety, to establish new distribution channels and to pilot new models that are outside of the current norm.

Why do stores not simply list fresh foods items as 50% off at night, an hour or so before closing? That seems to make sense to avoid waste and still make some money.

It makes so much sense – and people love a good deal. Berkeley Bowl estimates it sells $1,500 per day of produce off its bargain shelf, which offers bags of damaged or nearly expired produce for 99 cents, Andronicos is running a program with Food Star to sell cosmetically imperfect produce at a low cost and Zero Percent is a technology that is allowing food establishment to post their surplus through an online application at either a discount or for donation. These are all great innovations that more businesses should adopt to reduce waste, save money and protect the environment.

Are there models for food waste elsewhere in the world (that you’ve read/seen) that you would like to see implemented here in the US?

The United Kingdom is leading the way on this issue. A campaign there called Love Food Hate Waste has reduced food waste by 18% over the course of 5 years. The UK has also standardized date labels so they are not so confusing for consumers. Many grocery stores there provide storage instructions for fruits and vegetables and informational tips and ads are displayed in over 12,000 stores. Instead of buy-one-get-one-free promotions, some UK stores are piloting a buy-one-give-one-free or get one later program. I also really like Rubbies in the Rubble – a company in the UK making jam and chutney from rescued produce.

What can each person do?

Become a food waste champion within your family and circle of friends! There are lots of recipes and other tips online. Here is a storage guide. And until May 12th you can vote for Food Shift in this contest to win $50,000 of free advertising on San Francisco’s public transit system. If Food Shift wins this contest, it would mean thousands of people would be exposed to informational ads about the social and environmental costs of wasted food. Our campaign would be the first of its kind in this country and would inspire and invite Bay Area residents to be part of the solution. Help us win by voting now and sharing with your friends! http://bit.ly/ZfntKG

Online Dating for Teachers: Finding the Right Classroom

EshaC — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:20:41 +0000

BY Adam Poswolsky

If online dating works so well for people looking for love and happiness, maybe the same concept can apply to people looking for other types of fulfillment, say maybe even teachers looking for the right school to work at, and educators looking to hire the right teacher for their school.

myEDmatch, an education technology start-up based in Kansas City, is using the same principle behind online dating to create a matching service for teachers and schools.

After working as vice president of education for The Kauffman Foundation, co-founder Munro Richardson realized that the biggest challenge facing high-need schools was finding the right teachers for the school. Teacher turnover is an enormous cost to schools—the total cost of turnover in the Chicago Public Schools is estimated to be over $86 million per year—not to mention the externalized cost on student achievement when a teacher leaves a classroom. 600,000 teachers change schools annually (the rate of attrition is 50% higher in poor schools than wealthier ones), and the estimated cost of teacher attrition in U.S. schools is $7.3 billion a year.

The website allows teachers, both working and unemployed, certified and non-certified, to sign-up for a free online profile, and search for open positions at schools around the country based on their “fit” — this includes information you wouldn’t normally find on a school’s website, such as expected work hours, working environment, and a school’s educational and cultural values. The service promotes transparency for teachers, letting them review and compare schools much like a car buyer would in Consumer Reports.

On the other end, principals and school administrators can recruit from a database of teachers from across the country and find teachers that are the right fit for their school (as well as check out a teacher’s virtual portfolio: a video of leading a class, sample lesson plans, and examples of student work).

Adam had the opportunity to talk with Munro about why he started myEDmatch, and his mission to improve American education and reduce teacher turnover.

What is your story? How did you become passionate about education?

I grew up in Kansas City, I’m a product of public schools in Kansas City. I did well at the University of Kansas, and then got my Master’s at Harvard in East Asian studies, before studying at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. After, I worked on Capitol Hill for Joe Biden on the Foreign Relations Committee for two years, before moving back home and getting a job at a community foundation, and then moving on to The Kauffman Foundation. At Kauffman, I managed their education grant portfolio, helping start a $130m college access program, and launching a charter school.

How did you realize something needed to be changed about how teachers are recruited?

We came across a problem when we were starting our charter school (the Ewing Marian Kauffman school)—that was the challenge of finding the right teachers for a high-need school. In October 2009, I went to Boston and New York City to visit 12 high-performing urban charter schools to see what the schools were doing well, and really to ask, “Where do you get your teachers?” The most frequent answer was, Craigslist. It’s a lot easier for a school in New York City and Boston to attract high-quality teachers; in Kansas City, it’s lot more difficult. We had a recruitment firm, but it didn’t solve the teacher pipeline challenge.

I had coffee with Alicia Herald, my co-founder, who was then the executive director of Teach For America of Kansas City. Alicia was constantly getting requests from schools wanting TFA alums to share their job postings with their networks.

Alicia had a Jerry Maguire moment: sites like Match.com and eHarmony were doing matching for dating, we could combine the efficiency and effectiveness of online dating for the process of recruiting teachers.

In September 2012, both of us quit our jobs (we both had very good jobs), and jumped into this full time. We’re trying to solve a very simple problem: teachers finding the right school, and schools finding the right teachers.

How does the site work?

The site includes three main features that help educators and school leaders connect across different school networks, cities, and states.

First, an online profile for educators to detail what their school is looking for in its teachers (and for teachers to detail what they are looking for in a school, as well show a digital resume and virtual portfolio of their work).

Second, is a list of job postings, and third is a beliefs-based matching system to help connect mission and culture fit teachers and schools.
This is based on research I did over several years at Kauffman and the practical experience Alicia’s had from hiring and placing teachers with TFA.

How does myEDmatch address the problem of teacher turnover?

Teacher attrition is a huge program.

By some estimates, 40% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years of starting to teach and 50% leave within 6 years.

This human capital challenge really is the soft underbelly of the education reform movement. Opening more charter schools or closing and turning around existing schools alone won’t work if we don’t get the right teachers in the right classroom so they’ll stay longer.

Principals spend the majority of their time in the second half of the year focused on teacher recruitment. We use information from both teachers and schools. Just like online dating, the more information we have about you, the better we can do to match your preferences. You can meet someone within certain parameters. Set the location, the kind of school (charter, urban, catholic, etc.). There are filters just like in online dating.

How does the platform benefit teachers?

There are many different pedagogies and styles for learning today (STEM, college prep, experiential, arts education, emphasis family involvement, no family involvement). There are schools that favor pay-for-performance, faith-based schools, public schools, magnet schools, charter schools, and private schools. Educators have very different views about each of these.

myEDmatch allows educators to pick exactly the type of school they want to work for, but also schools can find educators they would never know about. A teacher may be a bad fit for one school, but a perfect fit for another school. Actually, you can have a school in rural North Carolina that would be a great fit for a teacher in Spokane, but they would likely never know about each other absent myEDmatch. We’re excited about making these kinds of connections.

We’re trying to create greater transparency, and empower teachers to choose where they work just as much as the schools choose them.

25% of new teachers (1-3 years experience) leave the classroom each spring. It’s about evenly split between those who quit teaching and those who leave the classroom.

Most teachers cite working conditions as the cause for this decision. We think it’s because they didn’t have enough and the right info to make a good decision about where to work. This also benefits teachers who graduate from Ed school—many of whom never teach because of the amount of work it takes to find a job—find job opportunities more easily.

Can’t teachers and schools just use existing job boards for job searching or recruiting?

These solutions are missing the crucial discussion of “fit.” After No Child Left Behind, there’s been a huge focus on teacher quality (pay-for-performance, measuring student growth) when it comes to hiring. But we’re adding the discussion of fit. You need get to get the right teacher in the right school. If a teacher doesn’t have the skills, you can train up for that, but if it’s not a mission and culture fit, it’s not going to work, period.

Where has been the greatest surprise getting myEDmatch off the ground thus far?

Well, we anticipated having strong interest from charter schools, especially in high-need communities in areas like Kansas City, which lacks the volume human capital of a large school district like Boston. But we’re also getting from interest from reform-minded school districts, as well schools in Boston and Chicago, places where we didn’t think there would be as much interest since there is already so much talent in those cities.

Is the site free?

The site is free for teachers. Schools pay a fee to use the site.

When does the full-version of the site launch?

You can sign-up on the site now. We’re anticipating a full launch Spring 2013.

(Photos courtesy of Creative Commons (top) and Subject, Munro Richardson (right))

Social Enterprises Respond to Delhi Gang-Rape Case

EshaC — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:01:39 +0000

Justice for Women offers a free self-defense training course at NMIMS University in Mumbai, India. (Photo Couresty of Subject)

Dowser asks what role can social enterprise play in the conversation on women’s rights in India.

by LiAnn Ishizuka

“This is not the first rape case and this is obviously not the last, but the kind of fire it has ignited in the hearts of millions is what differentiates this case from the rest,” says Sakshi Kumar, founder of Justice for Women, a grassroots initiative offering free self-defense and martial arts classes to women across India.

Kumar is referring to the fatal December 16 gang-rape attack of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in Delhi, continuing to make international headlines and spur a national outcry of protests, demonstrations and political unrest in a country of 1.2 billion.

As the trial of the five suspects, including a sixth person who will be tried in Juvenile court, is underway, a number of social enterprises, non-profits and international movements are reacting to the larger discussion of women’s rights.

Women Defend Themselves Online and Offline
Justice for Women, entirely volunteer-led, began as a Twitter hashtag in response to the Guwahati molestation case. Kumar decided to take action through social media and set-up a blog, Facebook Page and YouTube channel forming an online platform to marshal resources and stand up for women who have been wronged. Seven months later, Justice for Women now organizes classes teaching women everything from Krav Maga to Karate, in academies and institutes willing to volunteer their services.

In addition to the free workshops, Kumar adds, “we’ve written letters to various authorities suggesting ways to cure the crisis of gender inequality in our country; by means of our blog, we’ve been educating women about laws and rights on various issues from cyber stalking to domestic violence; we guide women in need to appropriate organizations where they could get immediate help.”

Conversations addressing sexual assault continue online at Gotstared.at, winner of the 2012 U.N. World Summit Youth Award in the category “Power 2 Women”. Dhruv Arora founded the site to create a virtual platform inviting women around the world to upload pictures of what they wore when being harassed.

Arora said he started Gotstared.at in January 2012, during a time when many claimed that women who dress provocatively invite rape. With over 14,000 “likes” on the Facebook Page, Arora also posts posters with bold statements about the issues of rape and sexual violence to “get a conversation started around these much-ignored issues.”

Empowering Men to Fight for Women
The Equal Community Foundation takes a unique approach to women’s rights — mobilizing men to uplift women. The non-profit organization, based in Pune, runs “behavior-change programmes” such as their Action for Equality programme, engaging men aged 14-17 in low-income urban communities to be positive agents of change.

Founder and CEO of ECF, Will Muir, says their focus is on violence and gender based discrimination. Through his work he aims to inspire a new generation of social programming, and professionals who dedicate their lives to the cause of women and child rights.

In response to the Delhi gang-rape, Muir notes that, “there are men in every community who care, and there are organisations, albeit only a handful, working to develop methods that will tackle this problem at its root. This is an issue that can only be solved with men, and we want you to know that ECF’s staff and volunteers care and want to help.”

According to a 2005 UNFPA report, India’s national sex ratio is 933 females per 1,000 males, largely due to female foeticide, infanticide and discrimination against girls. ECF states only 5% of organizations in India engage men as part of the solution, and wishes to change this statistic.

Activist and famed playwright of the Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler, had this to say: “If the good men who are not doing the raping, if the good fathers who are teaching different things do not rise up and speak to the other men and train, educate and work with the other men, we will never end violence against women and girls.” Ensler is currently touring India and Bangladesh promoting her One Billion Rising campaign, an international movement calling one billion women and girls to action on the 15th year anniversary of V-Day on February 14, 2013.

Current State in Delhi
For Gauri Singh, CEO and founder of The Maids’ Company, the recent uproar of the gang-rape attack meant creating a shuttle system to safely transport her female employees to and from work. Based in the outskirts of Delhi, Singh’s social enterprise, which she started 18-months-ago, manages 90 maids who are also co-owners of the company and share equity.

Gauri states that her work is focused on “the economic independence of women – both low income and middle/high income women. Through [The Maids’ Company] we provide secure jobs with good wages to low income migrant urban women.” With increased income, Gauri believes women are able to resist domestic violence and improve their bargaining position in their families.

“For me personally, the situation at home has changed a little,” Kumar says. Calling Delhi home, she adds that everyone has become more vigilant and proactive.

“Women have started carrying weapons like pepper-spray & knives along. They’re realizing that it’s as much their responsibility as anyone else’s to ensure safety.”

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For more information about the social enterprises, non-profits and movements mentioned:

Justice For Women (comprised of a team of four volunteers — Sakshi Kumar, Dr. Anita Hada Sangwan, Ankita Garg, Zena Costa)
Gotstared.at (founded by Dhruv Arora)
Equal Community Foundation (founded by Will Muir)
One Billion Rising campaign (founded by Eve Ensler )
The Maids’ Company (founded by Gauri Singh)

The Four Challenges of Running a Social Enterprise in India: Villgro’s Uniphore Explains

EshaC — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:20:35 +0000

Caitlin Marinelli of Uniphore breaks down the challenges of running a social enterprise in India. Uniphore designs and delivers mobile solutions for businesses using Multilingual Speech Recognition and Voice Biometrics. Photographed here are two of the users of Uniphore’s platform (Photo Courtesy of Uniphore). Uniphore works under the umbrella of Villgro, a rural network of innovations for social impact in India.

By their very nature, social enterprises are destined to face a wide variety of challenges. The target customers or employees of these businesses are a group of people for whom traditional business models have not worked well in the past. As a sector, social enterprises need to work together to build a context in which including the poor in our business operations is profitable. Specifically, we need to achieve four things: (1) Creating buying power (access to credit and income generation); (2) Shaping aspirations (consumer education); (3) Tailoring local solutions (targeted product development, bottom up innovation); and (4) Improving access (distribution channels, communication links).

These four challenges all stem from the demand side of the equation. But the core belief of social enterprise is that we can, indeed, overcome these hurdles with time as the sector becomes more sophisticated.

However, it is developing this level of sophistication within the social enterprises themselves that seems to be the biggest hurdle today. Indeed, in India, many difficulties associated with running a social enterprise spawn from the lack of an enabling environment for these kinds of businesses to prosper. The three biggest challenges in this country are investment and financing, finding and retaining talent, and policy and regulation.

In developing countries in general, the investment climate is underdeveloped, due to problems of risk, market size, informal production, lack of financial guarantees, etc. In addition to these challenges, social enterprises often have funding and financing needs that are not met either by traditional grant programs or by traditional debt/equity instruments. The good news is that new areas of social philanthropy and social venture capital are emerging. Nevertheless, both traditional venture capitalists and social venture capitalists seek a degree of certainty in the rate of growth of their potential investee. Often times, social enterprises present a business plan demonstrating a huge need, given the size of the social problem they aim to solve, but they are unable to confidently establish the level of demand. The demand is hard to determine because the target market is much less studied, and the predictability of their purchasing power and patterns is limited. Furthermore, even when a product is field tested, it is not guaranteed that the same solution will be as popular in another locality in India, given the diverse cultures and preferences. Therefore, social enterprises often present a nebulous picture of their serviceable market, which limits the confidence of risk-averse investors.

The second major challenge in running a social enterprise in India is the ability to find and maintain talent. Like any young business, social enterprises often face constraints of how much they are able to pay their employees. While some people are willing to forego a higher salary in lieu of their belief in the mission of the company, this is not common, especially in a developing country like India. Especially as a social enterprise grows, they need to focus on hiring senior management for specific roles such as finance or marketing. Experts in these roles are not typically from the ‘social’ sector, and therefore are unwilling to trade away their high salary.

Maintaining quality employees is another huge challenge. For example, at Uniphore, our sales agents are expected to grow the business and meet their targets. They are not given any leniency because the ‘market is more challenging.’ Furthermore, after the sale is made, we expect them to move on and keep chasing new customers. They don’t always get the privilege of seeing the solution deployed or its impact on peoples’ lives. This pattern of extremely hard work, constant need for creativity and resourcefulness, and limited short-term rewards is common amongst many social enterprises. The combination of these factors can contribute to a high level of burnout, if not properly addressed.

Finally, social enterprises in India often face policy and regulatory challenges. For example, there are no specific legal frameworks for social enterprise, so businesses either designate themselves as SMEs or non-profits, though their income structures don’t fall neatly into either of these categories. Moreover, India, like many other developing countries, faces problems of public authority, regulation and oversight. The most flagrant of these issues is, of course, corruption. In one instance, Uniphore had created an application for a government welfare scheme in which beneficiaries used voice biometrics to authenticate their identity and approve that they received their benefits. Despite the increases in efficiency and enhanced outcomes of the welfare project, the government eliminated the use of our application, as it exposed all the fraud and corruption that was happening in the system. This story is typical of the challenges that social enterprises face, as the transparency and visibility that we try to create within poor communities is often in conflict with the vested interests of those in power.

Together, financing, talent, and policy challenges create a very difficult environment for running a social enterprise in India, and inhibit the sophistication of the sector. As we evolve, we must work together to create strategies, organizations, and forums for addressing these barriers – exchanging best practices and lobbying for favorable policies. When we define ways to systematically address these problems, the social enterprise sector will be much better equipped for taking on the enormous social problems of this country.

Tom Carter’s Epic Journey Through China

EshaC — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:38:50 +0000

American photojournalist Tom Carter travelled over 35,000 miles, hitting 33 provinces, on a limited budget, with just a backpack and a digital camera. He encountering 56 different ethnic minorities, each with their own distinct languages, customs and lifestyles, which he catalogued in his new book, CHINA: Portrait of a People, which has over 800 images from his journey. Through his photography, he is able to capture the essence of an ancient land and a modern superpower. Dowser spoke with him to see how he got this project running…

How were you able to bring this project to life? What was your budget and did you get support from any foundations, organizations, etc to make this happen?

CHINA: Portrait of a People was funded entirely out of pocket and came about by sheer chance. I arrived in China in 2004 as an English teacher, and worked for 2 straight years without a vacation to save my salary so that I could go backpacking across the 33 provinces in China. I took pictures along the way, just for fun, and after another 2 years and 35,000 miles logged, I had amassed a cache of photos which I was urged by my friends to turn into a book. I found an independent publisher in Hong Kong who saw the potential in my work, so together we created CHINA: Portrait of a People, which became the most comprehensive book of photography on modern China ever published by a single author.

What compelled you to visit every corner of China – was there a specific drive, though, desire that led you to go on this journey?

Before coming to China to teach, I had spent 1.5 years backpacking down the entire length of Mexico, Cuba and Central America, so I had the wanderlust in me to continue seeing the world, but I didn’t have the funds, which is why I decided to teach English abroad, which is an ideal way to travel AND get paid for it. Once I arrived in China, I felt compelled to see it all, because a land this vast and rich with history deserves to be drank in at leisure, not just a quick holiday to the famous sites. It was not until after I completed my journey that I found out that I was one of the only foreigners to have travelled that extensively across the country, so it unwittingly turned into a groundbreaking journey. But the journey itself was not easy: I nearly lost my life more than once, and my limited budget required me to sleep in the worst places imaginable, subsist on street food, and travel by any means necessary to get from village to village, city to city. Many times I wanted to cry and go home, but I persisted.

In one sentence, how would you sum up China, a country that’s become such a fascination in the US given the economic ties?

Summing up China for me personally, I would refer to it as a true Land of Opportunity where anyone, including foreign immigrants, can start over and pursue their dreams. America has lost that title, unfortunately.

What places/ regions/ people surprised you along the journey? Did you find things/ traditions/ customs in parts of China that got you thinking or amused you?

What surprised me the most is that the Chinese are not just one single homogeneous race; there are over 56 ethnicities in China, as physically and cultural varied as any western country. The photos in my book attempt to capture that diversity in as much as I was able while drifting cross the country.

What do you want the viewer/ reader of this book to walk away with after seeing it? What was your goal, your point that you were trying to make - do you feel that you were successful?

I had no point or agenda while I was traveling and taking pictures. All I was doing was seeing the land and meeting people along the way. The photos were an afterthought. But after sifting through the thousands of images I had taken, what I found is that I had indeed captured nearly every aspect of life and humanity of Chinese society, from the daily ordinary lives of the People to the nation’s unique industries and subcultures. Perhaps that is why this book has been so well received: because too often professional photographers and journalists have a specific agenda, whereas my photos are completely neutral, candid and honest.

What advice would you give to other young journalists who have such projects in mind but are struggling to bring them to life- where can they go for funding, support, or how can they structure their projects so they are practical and possible?

I don’t think there’s much funding for photographer anymore unless you are attached to a news agency or corporate publisher. The industry is oversaturated with photos; everyone has a digital camera now. I’m sure there are grants to be had, but that takes time and a lot of paper work. But I don’t believe money is essential to travel and art. My journey and my book prove that resilience and a genuine respect for your subjects are equally as essential. If you want to travel but don’t have the money, consider teaching abroad. If you only have a short time to visit a country, consider venturing off the beaten path; avoid the tourist sites. It doesn’t cost any money to walk the streets all day like I did, and you will invariably learn and see more of the culture that way than if you had spent all your money on some tour.

(All Photos Courtesy of Subject)

Guy Kawasaki on APE-ing a Writing Career

EshaC — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:40:47 +0000

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. His latest book, APE – Author Publisher, and Entrepreneur breaks down self-publishing, giving you a detailed blueprint for publishing your writing. (Photo courtesy of subject)

Your top tip for a newbie with a story idea, looking for an editor/publisher:

My top tip is to not look for an editor or publisher but to begin writing. Write for the sheer pleasure and challenge of the process. A very good test for one’s seriousness as a writer is whether you’d write a book even if a traditional publisher hasn’t sent you an advance for $100,000. Because the odds are extremely low that this will happen. To use another industry, would you play music only if a label bought your song?

So start writing. Keep writing. Then when you’re done, pitch publishers because they will require a completely done manuscript anyway.

My second-best tip is that the day you start writing, you should also begin to build your marketing platform if you know for sure that you want to publish a book. When you finish your book and you self-publish it, you’re going to need a platform to sell it from. It takes a year to build a platform so get started now.

The challenge with self-publishing is marketing – you’ve got to do it all yourself and try to create buzz. How best can one do that?

First a duhism: the best source of buzz is a great book, so write a great book.

Second, not such a duhism. Here’s a mental framework from which your tactics can flow. Think of NPR. It provides great content 365 days a year. A few times a year it runs the fundraising telethons. The only reason why we tolerate the telethons and some of us even give money is because NPR has earned the right to fundraise because of its great content.

What does this have to do with a self-publisher? You should constantly provide content via Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn that is valuable to your followers. This will establish you as a sector expert. Then when your book comes out, promote it all you can and ask people to spread the word. This will work because you’ve earned the right to promote your book because you’ve been curating great content.

What is your take on the changes in media/ publishing- are you at all worried about the influx of content (some of it good, some of it questionable)?

I believe in the saying, “Let a hundred flowers blossom.” I hate a closed system where a handful of people or entities pick the winners. I say give everyone a Macintosh, Word, and access to Kindle Direct Publishing. Let’s see what sells and what doesn’t.

What do you think it takes to be a writer in today’s world? Is it harder, easier, require you to be a multitasker, an entrepreneur?

It takes talent, moxie, and the willingness to work hard. This hasn’t changed much in the past two thousand years or so. What has changed is access to markets. Because of technology more people can reach more markets, so it’s easier to be a writer than ever. “Easier, ” though, is not the same as “easy.” For sure you need to be a multi-tasker because you need to build your platform as your write your book unless you make it.

APE gives a great overview of how to take a project from idea to reality – what piece of the puzzle do you think is the harder to achieve – is it the idea, the financing, the distribution – and what’s your advice for getting over that hurdle?

Ideas are easy, and it doesn’t take much money to write a book. By far the hardest thing to achieve is awareness of you as an author and awareness that your book exists. There is no shortcut to achieving awareness. The totality of writing a book involves two to three hours of writing per day and one to two hours of marketing per day for twelve months. That’s “all.” This is why there are so few successful authors. It’s not easy. If it were easy, more people would do it.