This is a great thing, I am actually really pleased because our mission and DNA remains the same, we just have more resources behind us now. It was just tough because of all the uncertainty that it brought with it.
I have a new title that has the word "senior" in it. Except no on is really junior to me, so I am not sure what it means. It sounds good, though, right? I am having a hard time saying it, like I feel funny saying "Hi I am SENIOR coach..." It seems like I am trying to say I am important.
Anywho, I kind of led an effort with the ideas behind a campaign to generate buzz Mon-Wed and then Wed evening to let our teachers all know that we have a new name and the structural changes. We were having a couple of bigwiggers (our chairman of the board, the former CEO of AOL and our new CEO of the foundation) I was so nervous that I hardly ate at all for a few days. I think I lost about five pounds this week just from stress. But then I just ate a huge steak and am halfway through a disgusting brownie that I somehow feel obliged to inhale.
Here are some pictures to describe the campaign:
The shirts I designed:
The plan was to send out some tweets that there were free T-shirts for the first five participants who went to the registration desk. I was super worried about that part because we had just introduced people to our twitter name and I didn't know if people would think the shirts were weird or if they would even want them. OR worse, not follow us. But guess what? First tweet out and they were gone in 4 minutes. Success!
After doing this all day, we had about 100 people wondering around wearing the shirts (about 25% of our conference!) The best part is that they had no idea what they were actually a part of! It kind of got me choked up that people were willing to follow us because they believe in what we are doing in spite of having no idea what we were up to...
Then we had the banquet:
I didn't catch a pic of it, but we had these little pots with soil and a seed (they were sealed) and they were silver with our new logo on them.
We had a keynote who posed this great question:
And then we had our two bigwigs. Also, this guy sent in a video because he was busy. Recognize him? Yeah, I know, people are largely ignorant of non-elected politicians:
Former Secretary of Education, Bill Riley. He probably signed your high school diploma or something. Anyway he said he loves what we do and he is excited to see us scale-up. Like get bigger.
Then here is the little speech I wrote for our team. It was kind of cheesy, starting with a reference to the little seeds and how they were going to grow. Each person was going to start the cheesy part by saying "I am a part of it..." or "are you a part of it..." but then someone had the genius idea of saying "My name is _______ and I am a part of it..." Just adding the name bit was good because then the schools were cheering for the coaches after they said their names.
I put myself last in case the cues didn't work and I had to ad lib but then I got super emotional and couldn't really put it together quite right. The guy next to me on the end is my former team teacher from three years ago and we just hired him to work full-time with us. He had a line that said "if you look up each one of these balloons represents a student who has graduated from one of our schools... 2000."
Note the new logo. Then I had a line about how many more students will now have the opportunity to succeed because of this new opportunity. I really stumbled over my words and felt like I ruined it but there really was a lot of high emotion so hopefully no one noticed.
So the cue was for the balloons to drop as soon as I said that and a slide show would roll. The balloons dropped and the slide show started, but the A/V guy at the center didn't cue the music. My big question: So aren't balloon drops kind of rare? And he only had to do one thing!
Gratuitous balloon shot:
The music finally cued, like 4 minutes later. Lame. BUT afterwards everyone was hugging and crying, at least from our org, and the teachers were really cute. All the brand new teachers (like starting their first year in the fall) were like "I am a part of something!" I had a several teachers say that they were really inspired to go back and continue being a part of it.
I have such an amazing team and I am so thankful for my wonderful job and the opportunity to affect social change.
Sorry for the self-indulgence. It was an amazing evening and I wanted to record it here.
I am now going to go to sleep for 12 hours and then get on a plane back to Utahr. Hope to see peeps in Nevada on Monday or Tuesday and then back home for two days before going up to Norcal.
--From Grand Rapids
