August 27, 2014
AlligatorZone had, what we have come to realize, a very successful session in Sunnyvale Public Library on Saturday, August 23rd, 2014. One of our volunteers flew over from Tampa Bay specially for the pilot session. With three successful AlligatorZone sessions under its belt, the program has already made several adjustments to make it more valuable, both to the kids and to the startups. The Sunnyvale session was yet another learning experience, because it had a larger number of seats reserved, it was at 3 p.m. on a Saturday, and because Sunnyvale is in the heart of Silicon Valley, “ground-zero of startup activity” — as Sean Murphy of Bootstrappers Breakfast put it. Some of the lessons learned from AlligatorZone in Sunnyvale Public Library are being shared towards the end of this report.
With over a hundred sign-ups for seat-reservations, we did away with the wait-listing setup in eventbrite and opened up blocks of seats, because the library advised us to expect a large percentage of no-shows.
The large number of sign-ups before any publicity efforts, coupled with outstanding support received from the Sunnyvale Public Library made for a trip that started from Tampa Bay in anticipation of an exciting session. However, there’s always uncertainty in the numbers that would actually show up, particularly when it’s a free event.
It was a beautiful weekend afternoon in Sunnyvale. The library was very busy. However, there was no way of telling how many people would show up in the meeting room for AlligatorZone.
Wendy in the Sunnyvale Public Library had created an eye-catching banner emphasizing the alligator on the Z that we designed. We originally had a different tag line – more business like. This new tag-line that we made: ‘where kids meet cool startups’, was less confusing and more direct. Though seemingly trivial, it played a critical part in how the program was initially interpreted and announced. It was announced in the general programs calendar, not in the Youth and Children’s program calendar. More on that in a bit.
Liz Hickok, Supervising Librarian at Sunnyvale Public Library ‘got’ AlligatorZone the moment it was pitched to her in an unplanned meeting at the library a few months earlier. A few phone conversations later, and after a few exchanges with the Hillsborough County Library leadership in the Tampa Bay Area, we had firmed up a date and time for the first session of AlligatorZone in Sunnyvale Library. Later on in this report, you will see a video of Liz talking about how heart-warming it was to see the kids participate in AlligatorZone, contributing to the discussions with the various startup founders.
The Sunnyvale Library was prepared for a strong turnout as indicated by the number of sign-ups.
Liz Hickock, Supervising Librarian, Technical Services, Sunnyvale Public Library, who evangelized the AlligatorZone program at the library is seen here helping Bruce Kim, founder of startup ExtraMile with the audio system.
As presenter, Larry Davis, Cofounder and CTO of startup VisualStager was getting settled in, the first of several attendees walked in.
Seen here in the foreground are Larry Davis, CTO and co-founder of VisualStager, Jake Heller, founder of Casetext and, Bruce Kim, founder of ExtraMile. Seeing only grown-ups in the audience at the start made me wonder if kids were going to show up. As the program was being announced in the early weeks, it was initially placed in the adult services calendar, as I learned later. As we got closer to the event date, and the tag line was changed, there were more targeted announcements to kids and parents. Changing the tagline to “where kids meet cool startups” seems to have made all the difference. A few words, but they mattered. We learned an important lesson in communicating in a simple and elegant manner.
Liz Hickok of Sunnyvale Public Library welcomes everyone, highlights the cooperation and collaboration with Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative in bringing AlligatorZone, the program where kids meet cool startups, to Sunnyvale Public Library, and credits SiliconGlades for the creation and design of AlligatorZone, a program where kids meet cool startups.
The meeting room started filling up as Bruce Kim of ExtraMile (www.extramilehq.com) started talking about his startup. We asked different kids from the audience to introduce each speaker, using a short introduction script that we had already crafted for each.
As Bruce started taking questions from the audience he got wonderful suggestions from kids, teens and moms and dads.
After the session, Bruce mentioned that he actually got a golden nugget from one of the kids in the audience.
A teenage member of the audience introduces the next presenter Larry Davis, cofounder & CTO of startup VisualStager, as Larry gets ready to demo his product.
Larry gets the crowd engaged with the product demo.
A parent offers a suggestion to Larry. We had a hard time keeping up with requests for the microphone from members of the audience.
Jake Heller, founder of Casetext (www.casetext.com) waits as a teenage member of the audience completes her introduction of the final presenter of the day.
“How many goats are you allowed to own in the city of San Francisco?” asks Jake Heller.
Jake, you know how to rock this gig!Jake Heller #founder of @casetext entertains kids with law trivia @alligatorzone pic.twitter.com/R9Ckek83Tj
— Pam Fox Rollin (@PamFR)
Jake took several interesting questions. Listening to a young child ask questions such as “Can you edit the site” made one realize that this audience of kids was tech-savvy.
As Sean Murphy, founder of SKMurphy, Inc. and Bootstrappers Breakfast, who graciously accepted our invitation to attend, later observed, “these kids are digital natives” and ought to be taken seriously.
As in every AlligatorZone session that we have done so far, the venue becomes a gathering place of like-minded individuals and families in the community. Thank you @PamFR for the tweets!
The hour was over and Liz wrapped up the session thanking everyone for attending, and making a request to them to complete the library’s comment cards. We couldn’t find comment cards for the kids programs so we used some of the Adult Services evaluation form. AlligatorZone, is however, a program for kids and teens, and the family members accompanying those kids.
Here are some of the comments received, and our reaction to one of them, which had a hidden lesson for us.
This evaluation shows that we have still a long way to go before we communicate clearly what we want to accomplish with AlligatorZone. The program has several benefits and nuances. We hope to get the language right soon. It also calls for a need to standardize the language being used to communicate the program to patrons across various libraries where AlligatorZone is extending its program.
After each AlligatorZone session (though we failed to do this in our very first one held in June in Valrico, Florida) we seek feedback from the startup founders who presented their companies to the kids and families. This time we also decided to capture feedback on video from one of the parents, and with his permission his kids who seemed very engaged and impressed all the startup founders.
VisualStager cofounder and CTO Larry Davis talks about how he saw himself from his childhood days in the young members of the audience.
Here’s a video of Casetext founder Jake Heller on the value of interacting with kids at AlligatorZone!
Here’s a video of a parent and his kids at AlligatorZone on why they thought it was a very valuable program.
Let us now summarize the lessons learned from this session of AlligatorZone.
- Right-sizing the audience is an art, not a science. Success is to be measured also by the quality of interaction, and not merely by how many seats were requested or filled. Despite 137 seats being reserved, only 47 actually showed up. Even though it was our highest turnout at any session since we first began in June 2014, we did expect a larger crowd based on the reservations. We will try other combinations to see if a weekday evening brings in a bigger crowed. However, at the same time, we are getting requests from another library specifically interested in attracting a smaller group of parents and children, not a large public gathering, to ensure that the kids have richer conversations with the startup founders. Smaller audiences may be better. We do not yet know the sweet spot, the ideal ratio between startup founder and kids.
- Taglines matter. Targeting the announcement to grown-up audiences sent a mixed signal. The new tagline now clarifies the positioning of AlligatorZone better. It took us a couple of meetings with library officials in Tampa Bay to realized that our earlier tagline that went something to the effect of ‘helping entrepreneurs identify opportunities and threats’ was causing confusion about our target audience. Sunnyvale Public Library will be looking into more targeted marketing.
- Be patient with parents as they have a lot of juggling to do. There are many variables in attracting a young audience to AlligatorZone, however the kids can’t show up if the parent has other priorities. Finding the right time and day of the week may take many more attempts. It calls for patience to get this right, so we must not be too hard on ourselves.
- Offer some reading material. Grown-ups in the audience may need or come to expect a printed program or agenda. One member of the audience asked for reading material as she walked in. She said she has trouble hearing. We will plan on arranging for that in future.
- Kids learn through play. Did you read one of the hand-written comments from a child? Kids want to play independently with the technology that is being demonstrated. We will look into trying out other formats for closer interaction, not just with the founders, but also with their startup’s offerings. Expect some cool things from AlligatorZone in the foreseeable future, inspired just by this request!
The learning continues. AlligatorZone will however, take its time growing and perfecting it slowly for our audience of kids, teens and their parents. When we learn to slow down to the pace of children, life becomes more beautiful. We want to make AlligatorZone a beautiful experience. We hope to grow AlligatorZone keeping the children’s needs in mind first. We will be testing another new format in Miami-Dade county at the Pinecrest Library next month for a class of 4th and 5th graders on a field-trip to the library, so our learning will continue on many fronts. We will do our best to share lessons learned. Stay tuned.
Thanks are due to Liz Hickock, Christine Mendoza, Susan Kaplan, Patrick Sweeney and Wendy at Sunnyvale Public Library. Thanks are also due to the participating startups, and to all members of the audience! Thanks to the Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative, The City of Sunnyvale, StartupDigest, Bootstrappers Breakfast, and our friends at CoderDojo Silicon Valley for helping promote AlligatorZone.
Thank you again for this opportunity to make a difference, one child at a time, one startup at a time, in your local community, even if just a small difference.
Follow AlligatorZone on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AlligatorZone. Join us for the next session of AlligatorZone. Reservations are to be made at AlligatorZone.eventbrite.com. AlligatorZone is one of several impact programs being designed at SiliconGlades. If you know of startups that would make for interesting presenters to an audience of kids, teens and families, please send your suggestion to events [at] siliconglades [dot] com.
This report was posted by a volunteer from SiliconGlades, an innovation firm that designs hyperlocal social impact programs such as AlligatorZone. Don’t you love jargon? Let’s rephrase that: SiliconGlades designs programs that bring your community together for a common uplifting purpose, right in your neighborhood.
