Not a Millionaire

Despite a weekend Vegas and $550 million dollar lottery, I am not a millionaire. Ah well, maybe next time.

So what am I going to talk about this week?

I'm at a loss, actually. I've had a catch-up week, coming back from a trip to Vegas (productive and fun!) and then a major US holiday last week. I spent the beginning of November prepping for the NCTE convention and the Doug Buehl webinar (which went extremely well--we have the archive up for free is you missed it). I came back and am kind of in a holding pattern. I'm waiting for Venn Diagram and the Android version of Trading Cards to be available for testing. I've been doing a lot of small, uninteresting-to-write-about job maintenance projects: follow-up on emails, researching traffic projections, designing banners for the homepage.


That last one is a new thing for me--my coworker Becky usually handles that for the IRA side, along with Christy on the NCTE side. But alas, Becky is no longer in the office having given birth to her third child this past weekend.

The last few weeks have been kind of boring for me, I guess! So let's look ahead: What does December have in store for the RWT team?

The already mentioned testing of apps is a big one. We have a 2013 work plan to draft out (which will give me more to talk about as we figure out what we are looking to do in 2013). The survey for the mobile site should be out next month as well.

One of my goals in December is to get out in to our social media platter and figure out how we can be more interactive with users. Fix up the areas that we aren't really representing ourselves. We have a Pinterest account, for instance, and I've not really familiarized myself with using Pinterest.

I know one area we will be adding something in the next couple weeks is YouTube. But I'll save that post for next time, when I have something to show you rather than just talk about. The showing is important for this one.

Wes

Halloween, Hurricanes, and Las Vegas!

The Delaware-based side of ReadWriteThink faired the recent Sandy storm well. We look around at the destruction that just missed us to the north, and our thought go out to those who were hit hard my the hurricane.

Halloween has now come and gone, and with it, my sugar rush.

And that moves us closer to NCTE's convention in Las Vegas next week! Whoa! I've never been to Las Vegas before, so this is really exciting for me. I not only get to represent IRA, meet with the NCTE team, and have a fabulous and productive dinner with the RWT Advisory Board, but I get to see Vegas! AWESOME!

OK, business. What have we been up to here?

Word Mover (which I have mentioned before) is now out on iTunes! It's free and it's fun, so download it, create some poems, and share them with us.

This week had us preparing a webinar presented by Doug Buehl, one of IRA's authors (DevelopingReaders in the Academic Disciplines and ClassroomStrategies for Interactive Learning). More information about the webinar can be found here.

I've had several chance to meet Doug over the years I've worked at IRA. He's a great speak, very interesting, and I think pretty funny. He's got a great whit. He's also very knowledgeable.

We're still very focused on what the next big thing for ReadWriteThink will be. We are pondering a mobile-friendly version of the site, but we need some feedback. Is it even a good idea? If so, what areas should be mobile friendly? How do we best present information in the mobile format?

We'll have a survey coming out to better help us decide how users will use the information. I hope to have some more info after the group meeting and advisory board dinner in Vegas.

Hmmm? What was that? How did the 5k race go?

Thanks for asking! It went horribly! It was my worst 5k time ever--I'm blaming the 15lbs of gear I had on as part of my costume.

Wes