Something I tried

So, in keeping with my theme for this last year of trying new things, I finally tried something that took a year of effort.

I'll skip the whole story about how difficult it was to organize and how stressful it has made the last month and jump right to the satisfying end: I organized a group of five other business owners and local professionals to give an hour-long presentation at a nearby high school.  Having seen from the teenagers at my church that high-school students are given pretty poor career advice ("Do what you love" and not much else,) I have started a crusade to transfer career advice from those that hold it
(successful professionals that enjoy their careers) to those who need it (young people.)

For the format of the presentation, I moderated the panel and limited each speaker to eight minutes. The speakers were asked to be ready with specific, concrete stories to illustrate their most valuable experiences.   My presenters consisted of two business owners, a public defender, a nurse and an engineering group manager.  There were 500 students (all juniors) in attendance.

My intent for the whole project was to bring in a variety of potential role models so that hopefully each kid would connect with at least one of the presenters.  It's impossible to know if that happened, but I'm hopeful.  I learned some things about managing the time and preparing the presenters, so I'm looking forward to having a second chance at it in a couple of weeks at a different high school.

When a friend of mine named Todd Sierer (who lives in New Jersey) heard about the project, he offered to get involved.  That gave me an idea of a way to connect smart, successful people with a larger audience.  Todd had a successful video blog in his previous job and I can imagine this project snowballing if I could draw from his star power. (Check out his video blog project, An Engineering Mind on YouTube.) Not to mention that I know some other superstars in other parts of the world as well.  (I'm sure that my cute little cousin Devin "Supertramp" Graham owes me a favor for something, doesn't he?) I could curate a collection of video blogs or interviews in which interesting, successful people could share their best career advice.  As cool as the live presentations are, there would be a big benefit to putting career-related, inspiring videos on a website where people from around the world could find new perspectives.  I imagine that this could get bigger and inspire more people if it became like TED for young people. (You can see the website in its current state at experity.org.  Yeah, I know it's not very impressive.  I made it myself.  You don't have to be rude.)

So that's what I've tried so far, and that's my idea for what to do next.  Do you have any suggestions on how to make it better?  Does this inspire you to try something new?  Join the conversation in the comments.