Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > October > 09 > Entry
Mark Cuban’s message
(Entrepreneur Mark Cuban)
About two years ago, I met a fine journalist named Chris Carey through the Knight Wallace journalism fellowship, a program we’ve both been through.
At the time, Chris was a top-notch investigative journalist on sabbatical from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who had a dream. He wanted to run his own website dedicated to investigating fraudulent companies.
One site Chris liked to read was the blog of Mark Cuban, an Internet-era millionaire and now owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team.
This is where the story starts to get interesting.
Cuban writes about all sorts of stuff on his blog, including business, and his interests sometimes overlapped with Carey’s.
Carey commented on the blog and began an E-mail correspondence with Cuban, discussing his idea for the website. One day, Carey asked a simple question: would Cuban consider backing such a website financially?
“Yes,” Cuban wrote back.
The site is called Sharesleuth and it’s a winner. But the fascinating thing is Cuban backed Carey without ever meeting him in person until well after the site launched. He invested thousands of dollars in Carey’s idea solely based on his online conversations with him and some independent research he did to check out Carey’s prior work.
On Friday, Cuban spoke to a room full of journalists at the Online News Association’s convention in Washington, D.C. Afterward I asked him about Carey. I wanted to know why he did what few investors would do — spend money on a guy they’ve never looked in the eye.
“He had the goods,” Cuban said.
Based on what he had seen of Carey’s work and what he had learned about Carey’s prior experience he was confident the project would work. Cuban saw no need for the “gut feeling” emotional reaction of meeting Chris in person. He had something better — actual evidence that the guy had what it took.
There’s another blog I like to read called ProBlogger, written by blogging bigshot Darren Rouse, who this weekend also wrote about all the virtual acquaintences he depends on in his blogging business that he’d like to meet in person, includng his three business partners.
The lessons for parents and educators? Here’s a few:
—The Net puts a premium on communications skills, especially writing. Nobody would go into business with someone they’ve only met online if the potential partner wasn’t an expert at communicating ideas, using the written word. If kids have great communication skills, many more possibilities will be open to them.
—You can reach out to anyone. What are the chances Carey could have ever even reached Cuban if not for the Net? Communication with almost anyone is much easier now, and that opens doors that traditionally have been closed.
—Ideas are more powerful than salesmanship in an online world. This is something I tell high school kids when I’m asked to speak — the future will be exciting for those who work hard at learning to shape and refine their ideas and collaborate with others. You aren’t likely to get by on a charm and a nice smile in cyberspace.
—Physical distance is less important. Chris Carey can stay in Michigan and Mark Cuban can live in Texas and they can start a venture together entirely by E-mail. Rouse is in Australia but some of his professional partners are in the U.S.
Somehow, these lessons need to be imparted to kids. Are schools adapting to these realities of the Internet age?
(Image credit: www.nndb.com)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Journalism, Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Andrew Pass
October 18, 2006 6:59 AM | Link to this
Scott, This is one very interesting post. I’m not sure however that I agree that writing skills are more important than verbal selling skills for the majority of the population, yet. I run a consulting business that sets up seminars among other things. There is so much spam out there that often the best way for me to get people to pay attention to my emails is to call them first. Certainly, if one is interested in only networking with a small group of people they can do so completely on-line because after you’ve communicated with somebody on-line several times they begin to know who you are. But it takes a lot of work, perhaps more work than a single individual can do, to communicate with the masses on line. By the way, I think we have begun to develop an on-line friendship and I enjoy reading your writing. Andrew Pass http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.htmlBy Oldprof
October 9, 2006 1:09 PM | Link to this
Another aspect: corporations—at least those in the know—are now employing a “90/10” model to provide professional training. The “90%” is technical skills, which are to be learned with little human assistance: to learn a new programming language, the IT department provides a manual, a tutorial disk, and a help line number. The only training that requires lots of human contact lies in the “soft skills” areas: leadership, conflict resolution, sales—in which case, the student might be assigned a personal coach. I guess, at some point in perhaps secondary education, we need to ensure that students can self-educate in technological skills.By Oldprof
October 9, 2006 9:57 AM | Link to this
Seems to me that the only place where this sort of environment reigns is in online instruction, which of course happens exclusively in colleges and those cyber-charter schools. I’m not certain, however, that K-12 education needs to be devoted to the four lessons you’ve identified (spot on, IMO). First, just because the adult world operates in that way doesn’t mean that children should—most kids need to have a direct positive relationship with a teacher for education to work (i.e., “affective teaching”). Second, the proliferation of youth-oriented websites, email, blogs, and youtube will likely take care of orienting kids to cyberspace without formal instruction. Just teach ‘em grammar (in grammar school, preferably), clarity of thought, math, and the range of arts and sciences; let the brave new world of e-commerce take care of itself.