Rory Peacock

Mind Blown with STEAM

Posted on November 15, 2015 by Rory Peacock Work Projects

The Carnival has come to town! Well it at least has come to San Francisco so I decided to go to it. Just didn’t sound as good to open the post with “I have come to the Carnival!” Not the same ring.

I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful briefing with Cisco and VMWare out in the San Jose area over this past week. Hoping to bring back several things to put in place at the ESC though the focus of this post is centered around the weekend event prior to the briefing known as the STEAM Carnival.

I decided to fly into California two days early to visit and review an event that was introduced to me by some friends at Cisco and iSchool Initiative. The STEAM Carnival was founded by two guys name Eric Gradman and Brent Bushnell who run Two Bit Circus. These guys were running around the place having so much fun and making minor modifications to the attractions in the process as well. It was a pleasure to actually get to meet them briefly in passing and then have a sit down with Brent a couple days later. More on that shortly.

The Carnival was so amazing that my oldest son bought his own plane ticket and flew to California on his own to join me. Seeing the Carnival through this perspective made this something that I HAVE to bring back to the students of Region 11. This has to happen!

I can’t describe all of the great things that we experienced at the Carnival without going on and on forever. I will say that a couple of highlights of the event included the Dunk Tank Flambe, the Wave Pendulum, the button wall, and this rocket ship game where Cooper and I dominated several small children. Play to win!

Two days later I had the privilege to sit down with Brent at a small coffee shop and share my idea of bringing the Carnival to DFW. The conversation started slow and then picked speed as I learned of his fondness for STEAM education. Come to find out his dad is Nolan Bushnell who invented Atari. What a cool family!

Fingers crossed we can make this happen in the future in DFW. I want this experience for our kids!

Change Just Happened

Posted on September 19, 2015 by Rory Peacock Speaking Opportunities Work Projects

So my new role gives me the opportunity to host our quarterly (well four times a year) Technology Advisory Committee meeting or TAC meeting for Region 11. To my understanding, this previously consisted of 50-60 people attending and get spoon fed information regarding state, regional, and local policy and change and then partaking in a lunch while listening to a vendor give their spill on their product or service. (Long sentence there)

Yeah that style might not play well with my personality so I decided to shake it up a little bit with my 50-60 attendees, get them active in the meeting, and even take it global. Piece of cake! So how did this work out? Well…

First off, my 50-60 attendees turned into 120! We had to open an additional adjoining room to fit everybody in the space. Largest attendance in a while from what I understand. I guess everybody wanted to size up the new guy. No problem we moved the wall and began presenting to an L-shaped audience.

Second, let’s get them active. So what better way to do this than to have them participate in the famous “Marshmallow Challenge.” If you haven’t seen this, please check it out. It is fun and productive for large groups especially when your audience is a large group of technology administrators who are not accustomed to activity during the TAC meetings. Lots of smiles and laughter so I can’t complain there either.

Finally, how did we go global? Well when your meeting falls on Global Collaboration Day and your distance learning staff decides to broadcast your challenge and open it to schools across the world (Yes…we had Zambia, Australia, Canada and 3,200 other students from the US join us), it comes fairly easy actually.

Without anymore detail, we were able to show off the capability of our Zoom distance learning tool, engage a somewhat traditional crowd and still provide the needed information for their districts. Throw in a fantastic lunch and a good night’s sleep. I think we might be able to do this.

Lookout…There’s a Turn Up Ahead

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Rory Peacock Personal Stories

Sometimes a phone call can throw your mind into a whirlwind and get you thinking the preverbial question, “What if?” Well that took place recently when a former colleague and existing friend informed me about an open position at the Education Service Center in Fort Worth. He said they were looking for someone “just like me” to head up their entire technology division which services over 75 districts and upward of 500,000 students.

So as not to be rude, I decided to take a peak at the job description and decided that even though I felt completely confident in my abilities, my resume was not going to be one that stood out in the crowd. After a couple of days of deliberation, I went ahead and hit the submit button on the application so at minimum I could tell my friend that I applied. Within an hour, I had a phone call to schedule an interview. WHAT?!?!

Speed forward to the ESC board room with 9 individuals sitting around the conference table and myself at the end ready to receive from the firing squad. Now I would like to proceed to a few of my tips on interviewing:
1. Open the bottle of water and drink it through the process. Personally I have never hired a person who didn’t drink the water. Shows me that they are relaxed.
2. Never answer the first question, “Tell us about yourself” with the phrase I used. “Well I am completely happy where I am, and I am not really looking for a new job.” Did I really just say that?
3. Write down everyones name because trying to send a thank you email to people whose name you don’t know through the online Staff Directory is tough!

Ok so long story short, the questions flew, and I had a fun time answering, laughing, joking and quite frankly just being myself. It wasn’t until two days later when I got the call for a second round that things GOT REAL. When I walked out of the second interview, the phone call to my wife went exactly like this. “Well I killed the interview and have no feeling at all that they will offer me the job. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.” I didn’t understand it either though it made perfect sense based on how I was feeling.

So even though I tried to make this a short post, I am officially stepping into my new role of Deputy Executive Director for Technology Services. Let the new journey begin!

Rory Peacock

Rory Peacock

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