01TedED - Empowering Co-creation With Communitygetsatisfaction.com | 877-339-3997

THE NEED FOR CONVERSATION

It’s hard to find someone out there today who has never been impacted by a TED Talk. TED’s education initiative, TED-Ed, takes the mission a step further by creating video lessons that are short, entertaining, and optimized for use in the classroom.  Educators, students, and all life-long learners can enjoy TED-Ed Lessons.

“Getting people to watch our videos was only half the battle,” said Jordan Reeves, Community Manager at TED-Ed. “And once they watched the videos, there was no place for them to engage with us in a conversation.” Conversation is very important to the TED model.

According to Jordan, “Education is one of the most important rights we have.  So, development of a great video works best when it’s not one-sided. We value the back-and-forth with our community — a place for people to deliberate, to conceptualize, to praise, to complain.  It is through conversation

that we co-create the best content for educators and learners.”

To deliver on their promise of “Lessons Worth Sharing,” TED-Ed launched a Get Satisfaction community to facilitate conversation with teachers using TED-Ed in their classrooms and people interested in participating in a conversation about education around the world.

The Science: How It Works

Strategy and Planning - The TED-Ed team knew they needed to create a friendly, welcoming environment in the community before they launched it to the public, so they reached out

to some key players to ask for help. Together, those Champions and TED-Ed employees seeded content that they knew would spark the interest and conversations of “TEDsters” (the name they use to describe the members of the TED community at large including the teachers, students, parents, life-long learners, and animators who bring TED-Ed lessons to life).

Set-up and Management - The TED-Ed community is displayed prominently on the website’s main navigation so that it’s easy to find. To ensure the greatest collaboration and get closer to their users, the entire TED-Ed team participates in the community.

Jordan ReevesCommunity Manager

THE COMMUNITY EFFECT:

“Previously, people came to the website to consume our content. Now they come to participate.”

The Community is a prominent feature of the entire TEDed experience.

THE COMMUNITY EFFECT: INNOVATING TOGETHER

Empowering Co-creation of Content with Customers

02 TedED - Empowering Co-creation With Community getsatisfaction.com | 877-339-3997

“While the rest of the TED-Ed team drops in to comment on existing topics or start new ones of their own, I spend all day in the community connecting our members with the TED-Ed staff, other community members, or experts in the TED community at large.  It’s the dream job — I get to converse with brilliant people and introduce them to other brilliant people as often as the opportunity presents itself. In addition to creating new content, I make sure that all the appropriate people have seen the topics that are started every day in the TED-Ed Community. This ensures the whole TED-Ed team remains focused on the needs, feedback, and priorities of TEDsters.”

TED-Ed directs everyone to the community and encourages them to share their experiences there. Thanks to Get Satisfaction’s Community Health Analytics, they have identified one community champion, Della Palacios, and are in the process of developing a system that will recognize many more.  The SEO value of the community draws new people into the conversation who may not even be familiar with TED-Ed, but who have searched for information in the education space. This allows them to expand their influence and bring more educators and learners into the mix.

But TED staff don’t just listen and respond, they pose questions to their community so that they can foster collaboration and co-creation … and ultimately, the community means that everyone can find the right way to participate. This is where the magic happens.

The Art: Community Impact

One of the things that makes TED-Ed work is matching great lesson ideas with the animators who are willing to animate them. With the community, animators

“The ripple effect of one conversation in the community, turning an idea into a video with more than 1 million views... The creativity set in motion is astounding.”

~Jordan Reeves, Community Manager, TedEd.

can determine which ideas attract the greatest interest by looking at the stars and me-too’s certain ideas receive, and they can participate in the conversation to better choose the ideas they work

on. This allows them to take ownership in the creation process, and ensures that everyone is excited about the work they’re publishing.

Through conversations happening in the TED-Ed Community, several new TED-Ed Lessons have been brought to life. One of the lessons that was conceptualized in the community received 1.1M views in the first 3 days! By drawing on the ideas, creativity, and inclusivity of their community, TED-Ed was able to create a lesson that was infused with enthusiasm. The TED-Ed Community is a powerful collaboration engine that generates ideas, helps to bring those ideas to life,

Attract the greatest interest by looking at the stars and me-too’s certain ideas receive..

THE COMMUNITY EFFECT:

TED is one of the most beloved brands around. Their ethos of radical openness, collaboration, and co-creation allows them to produce

content that is at once interesting, relevant, and of the highest quality. Their audience doesn’t just consume TED-Ed content, they are part of the TED-Ed story. With community, they’re bringing to life the TED-Ed mission of “Lessons Worth Sharing” to the greatest extent possible.

THE COMMUNITY EFFECT: INNOVATING TOGETHER

Empowering Co-creation of Content with Customers