Updated November 6th 2024, from my home in Auckland, New Zealand.
Work update
After 12 months of mostly bone dry drought, the rains have started to arrive. I’ve finally found myself with about 40hrs of weekly work again. To make it happen, I’ve cobbled together 3 EdTech sales/business development jobs.
- Thinkladder — positive mental wellbeing for students (20hrs)
- EduMaxi — te reo singalong books and an English language learning app for Chinese and Vietnamese speakers (10hrs)
- Infrairis — animated explainer videos (10hrs)
I feel incredibly grateful to be helping to sell things I really care about in an industry I love: EdTech. The drought was mostly my fault: I’m not someone who can do a good job selling something I don’t really believe in.
I’m curious to see how all these adventures pan out. In the 4 or so months I’ve been at Thinkladder so far, I’ve discovered some things I didn’t know I would enjoy as much as I have: partnerships and helping to raise investment.
In each of these roles I am doing the job of 5 departments as the first or one of the first sales hires. They’re the kind of gnarly, uncomfortable roles that make it easy to get out of bed in the morning. Rain, hail or shine.
EdTech Jobs NZ
The EdTech community that my friend Adam and I have built this year has swelled to 140 people. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who was bemused at how hard it was to find their next job in EdTech. Every spare moment I get outside of my paid work, I’m chipping away on building this community and building a system to make it easier for us to be able to help anyone at any EdTech with any business problem.
We’ve started a fortnightly email newsletter that goes out to the community. It feels a bit radical to be giving away everything we know, instead of hoarding industry contacts and secrets to ourselves. It feels just right. I don’t quite know yet how any of this will turn into a business, but it’s been a lot of fun so far to build a community and wear the founder hat once more, having previously worn it about 6 years ago when I set up a TV production company.
Happily, this compliments the other work I’ve been doing at EdTechNZ too, NZ’s only governing body for EdTech. For all the ways I’m trying to help others, I feel like the one getting the education here.
Families meeting
I’m counting down the days until I get to see my family and my partner’s family meet in person for the first time. In Dec/Jan, everyone’s getting together in Vietnam. It’s been 2 years of planning to pull this off, from having the idea, to saving up the money, to making the surprise offer as a Christmas gift, to booking the flights, to it now actually happening.
I have a feeling it will be the only opportunity we will ever have to bring our parents together—they’re all in their 60s and they don’t really like travelling outside of the country of their birth. I’m grateful to live in a time where it’s more socially acceptable to live your life the way you want to live it, without needing the nuptials paperwork.
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