Saturday, February 07, 2009

Jaw-Dropping, Exciting, and Historically Groundbreaking--Coming Soon

This past month I spent some days in Florida at the annual company meeting for Elluminate, Inc. I've known Rajeev Aurora, their vice-president of Marketing and Strategy, for some time and we'd developed a friendship over many discussions of our shared interest in the growing alignment of "online meeting" and social networking technologies. Rajeev had called me after I blogged on the closing of my consulting contract with Ning and asked if I might be interested in doing work for Elluminate.

I went to the meeting pre-disposed and wanting to find a way to work together. My work with Ning had convinced me that I can play a valuable with technology companies: to represent education and educators' needs to them, and to authentically represent the value of their services to educators. I was also an avid user of Elluminate for Classroom 2.0 events, and had experienced several epiphanies around the incredible changes I was seeing take place in how collaboration can happen when using their online tools.  I was somewhat amazed at the good fortune to potentially work with another company that, like Ning, I felt was going to make such a difference in the world.

What I saw in Florida was significant. In retrospect, I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that a company built around offering online collaboration tools would itself be inherently collaborative, but I was genuinely taken aback by the collegial and highly productive nature of the company.  I was very impressed, and there was a quick consensus that the fit was good when they offered me a job as their Social Learning Consultant.  

What this means from a practical standpoint is that I will continue in most of my other endeavors, but with the substantial added bonus of having the resources of Elluminate available for helping to support and promote the significant potential of online collaboration.  In addition to the weekly Classroom 2.0 show, the PBS/Classrom 2.0 interviews, and the new Future of Education interview series, I'm going to be looking for ways to leverage my association with Elluminate to explore the frontiers of online conferences, social networking, and connecting educators in real-time online.  

Look for some fun announcements this month that I believe are going to be jaw-droppingly exciting and historically ground-breaking.  How's that for a teaser?!

7 comments:

  1. Congrats, and I look forward to my jaw dropping.

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  2. Anonymous6:35 PM

    Yep- I've been wanting to learn more about this one. Congrats on the new hookup- should prove interesting.

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  3. Two months ago I didn't read educational blogs, knew nothing about nings, twitter, Pageflakes, Diigo etc. Then I stumbled across Classroom 2.0, started to read a few blogs ... and it's a stimulating trip! Don't know anything about Elluminate yet, but I'll get round to it. Look forward to hearing more.

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  4. Sound exciting Steve. One of my favorite first books is Learning in Real Time by Jonathan Finkelstein from Learningtimes. Looking forward to your next chapter.

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  5. Anonymous11:04 AM

    Congrats! The folks at Elluminate have been great--always quick to respond to questions/concerns and their product is very consistent. I look forward to seeing new and exciting things now that you're on board!

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  6. Congratulations, Steve - they've found the perfect guy for the job! If I were you, I'd celebrate by spending a few days in Hawaii discussing web 2.0 with educators.

    Picture perfect.

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