At that time, I really didn’t know what was involved into being a student body representative, and to this day, I still don’t really know. When it came time for the monthly student council meeting, I always forgot to go. I never voted on anything, I never participated in any way. However, come time for the field trip to see Jeb Bush talk and class pictures, I made sure I was there (I was a pretty crappy 6th grader huh?).

I jumped on the bandwagon before I knew what was actually in the bandwagon. I pretty much ate some cookies that I found in the bandwagon and jumped off before I had to do anything. So the question is: Was I an actual student council member?

There’s a lot of discussion going on about companies, and how they are (semi) “Joining the Conversation” (See Brian Oberkirch, Alex Hillman and Jeremy Owyang for some good reading).

Companies like to talk. You know they do. A lot of it comes out like Charlie Browns teacher: “blah blah blah. blah blah.” . The phrase ‘Joining the Conversation’ has been mangled, dumbed down, and twisted into “talk talk talk”. Essentially, they want the cookies, just no risk involved.

At some point in time, ‘Join the Conversation’ meant being human and real. As a person I could talk to you and you would listen, and reply. Talk. Listen. Discuss. That’s the easiest way to sum this whole thing up.

Last year, I had a client who wanted to have a blog. As I was wrapping up the theme, I began to add in the comments to the theme. The client freaked. No comments, they said. We don’t want any negativity on our site. We want to be able to control the content on our site.

There is no, “I support social media… kind of”. You do or you don’t folks. No one gets to eat the cookies on the bandwagon and then jump off.

If you don’t mind though, I think i’m going to go grab some cookies. mmm.

Friday was the launch of the new iPhone 3G. Like any Apple user, I woke up at 5:30, got my Starbucks and headed down to the Apple Store by 6:30. I was about 40 back in line (another 100 formed behind me). I was pumped, and I brought everything I needed.

I’ve never had an exceptionally good experience at the store until today. And I wasn’t even able to get an iPhone 3G.

The Apple staffers gave us free water and Starbucks, I was so excited for that, especially in that it’s not cheap stuff. A regional HR person, who was brought in to help with the launch, came through the line to talk to us and answer questions, as did many other staffers.

As I entered into the store 2 1/2 hours later, we we’re informed that because we had been at AT&T so long, our  family plan which had a locked price wouldn’t work without creating a new plan that was 2x the price, at least at the Apple store. It made absolutely no sense. We already have an iPhone on that plan, so why would the new one make a difference? We left the store to call AT&T, who confirmed that in fact we should be able to buy the iPhone, keep our same plan, with the additional $30 a month for data, which is what we expected.

So we went back. After talking with another staffer and explaining the situation, he graciously put us back into our original spot in line, some thing I didn’t expect at all. He then sent back for another staffer to come and follow up on our situation. After we explained the situation, he still said that they could make the sale to us without a new plan, and profusely apologized for the inconvenience: he’s probably one of the nicest Apple  staffers I’ve ever dealt with (and unfortunately I didn’t catch the name either). While he went to confirm with the manager, the HR woman I referred to earlier came to talk with us. She assured us that we would be taken care of, and although at the end of our time at the store we weren’t, I know they all did their best in the pressing conditions they we’re in. They then directed me to an AT&T store, in the same mall.

We went. They we’re sold out. We went to the next one. Sold out. And another, which you guessed it, was sold out.

A bit disappointed, I headed home, and jotted down the three paragraphs above me and sent it to El Jobso, CEO of Apple. A lot of people email him, with questions, comments and criticisms. I sent the email as a compliment to the retail store though, so I really didn’t expect an answer.

However, Sunday came around, and I received a call:

“Hi, this is Amy from Apple, I understand you sent a message to Mr. Jobs”.

Holy Crap.
So I explained the situation in a little more detail, and once she heard we never made it to a staffer to actually buy the device, she arranged for an iPhone to be on hold until I could try purchasing an iPhone to actually see if it would work.

I was pretty uneasy, just because all of the confusion, but Apple was the only place that had the iPhone in stock around here, and if they we’re going to hold one for me, why not go and try?

So this morning I headed over to the Apple Store. And it worked.

A minor miscommunication might have screwed up my Friday a bit, but treating me like a rockstar ended up making my week. I have never had such an awesome experience somewhere. When you treat your customers awesome, they’ll be sure to let everyone know.

I was sitting in a wing of the Carnival Centre of Performing Arts at Future of Web Apps in Miami. I was excited, tired, and determined at the same time. I just dragged my entire family 350 miles from home to come to this conference, so yeah, I was going to try.

Unfortunately, my attention span is sparse. very.

So lunch is rolling around and I’m losing some focus, but I go ahead and jump in to Leah Culver’s (of Pownce) talk on the future of web services. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I heard (though I didn’t realize it then), ended up being the best advice I’ve heard all year.

She referred to API’s as being one of the keys to the future of web services, so that Websites stop being your product and become just one of many views of your product (others such as a mobile app, desktop app, widget etc).

And then she said, “I’m sorry.”

As it turns out, Pownce had a pretty crap API, and she knew it. She went on to explain how it was her fault that the API wasn’t as good as it should be. “This was the biggest mistake we ever made with Pownce”, she said. She then went on to announce the new API.

This radiates awesomeness.

I’m serious. Tell me the last time a big company owned up to their mistakes,  even when there was no pressure on them to do so. All Leah had to do was say “Hey everybody, new API!” and it’s done. But no. She went beyond that and owned up to the mistake. I can’t express how awesome that is to me.

Because she sacrificed the embarrassment to owning up to what she did wrong showed hundreds of people in the room how important the API was, and how important it is to please your community (in particular, the developer community).

There’s so many things I learned at FOWA, but this strummed a chord for me. There’s so much you can learn from success, but there’s a lot more to learn and apply from mistakes and failures. Spread the knowledge folks. You’d be surprised who it affects.

What most of us didn’t know was that one of the kids in the corner was checking his email: Probably not the best decision on his part. “NO EMAIL”, she screamed, completely oblivious to the fact that she just singled the poor kid out to the whole class.

“But I was just”–She quickly interrupted, “NO EMAIL! Young man there is no email allowed on this campus, do you hear me?”. “Yes ma’m”, he gave in. There was no point picking the fight.

As quite a depressing story this is, there is a lot of truth to this story. Every day, students are discouraged from using technology where they spend their time the most. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but think of it this way: How was tech perceived in school, say, 30 years ago? Yeah, that’s right: Technology was the-thing. And when technology was the shit, you get all of these amazing people coming out of school, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who went on to create some killer companies.
However, nowadays, it’s commonplace for schools to rip up kids for using technology in any form or fashion. As you saw in my story, the kid in my class got told for checking his email. Beyond internet usage, most schools ban iPods, Cell Phones, and block certain other websites using a web blocker.

iPods and Cell Phones are extremely useful tools. We use them everyday, and in fact, I’m using my iPod just as I type. That said, schools still ban them, on the excuse that these tools are devices for cheating, although, they will let you use a TI-84 calculator which has more data functionality as an iPod or phone. And it plays games.

As well, I’d love to elaborate on the great invention of Web Blockers. There’s a solid argument on why: Not all kids actually learn (shocker, right?). Some kids idea of school is to jump on a proxy server (A website that will let you override any type of website blocker that a school installs), and watch YouTube. That’s just being a kid. But with all due respect, that’s a teacher’s job isn’t it? I mean, isn’t that what they’re getting paid for? Shouldn’t they be watching over their kids in the first place?

And then there are some blockers that just go way overboard. For instance in my Graphic Design class at school, the teacher has to ask the kids for cheats so we can use Google images for collage projects. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

There are so many teens that are EAGER to learn about these technologies, however when we’re spending so much time telling them that all of these technologies are wrong, it creates a really difficult experience at school. Once schools stop treating technology as a burden to the world and begin to embrace it you’ll find that students will become a lot more interested. If you take anything from this chapter, take this: The reason why schools aren’t having success is because they spend more time limiting their students and not enough time listening to them and understanding what’s best for their students.