Epic Fail 2,001 And What I Learned

Today I was the guest moderator of #satchatwc. I was excited to be asked! Unfortunately, I put off until the last minute to plan and prepare. (story of my life) I thought that I came up with a good idea: Moving from Good to Great with the theme/ graphics etc. centered around moving. The questions would be based on Jim Collins' book. I planned to have a Voki dressed as a mover "moderate" the chat. Such were the plans....

But, this week was one of those hectic weeks! It was a great week, but all of my energy went into my kiddos. I didn't make time to prepare things for the chat. Last night, I tried to get everything ready but could not stay awake! I went to bed but was up at 2:30 am forcing myself to prepare for the chat. Being so tired took the fun out of the process.

Making the Vokis took a lot longer to make than I had anticipated. I didn't have time to make the graphics that I pictured in my head. I quickly made some for the questions in Canva. They were not pretty! The questions were pretty standard- somewhat lame. I scheduled the tweets. Luckily, I checked everything about 30 minutes before the chat started. I'd forgotten to add the hashtag to all of the tweets! I guess I was so worried about the Voki/graphic being the same that I overlooked that important detail. I hurried and rescheduled them, but Tweetdeck kept freezing up on me. I was exhausted but got a second wind.

The chat went fine- sort of. I think the Vokis took time to load and that it made it hard for people to follow along and respond. Some didn't even see the Vokis. I had everything on a Smore (luckily!), but it's still hard to follow a chat if you're switching between two screens. I'm sure that it was harder on a phone.

I love the people on #satchatwc! They are my friends in every way, and THAT's why the chat turned out at all. People came to support me. They were positive and kept the conversation going even though I sensed that things weren't going that smoothly. The Vokis did NOT work for a chat! I will not use them again!

I tried something new, and it didn't work out so well from my point of view. I'm grateful that Shelley Burgess is so gracious. She's extremely kind and didn't mind too much that I experimented. Some people genuinely enjoyed conversation with each other despite the tech issues. More than anything, I feel like I let the #satchatwc community down. I wasn't as prepared as I should have been and I felt it. I'm embarrassed but moving forward.

I'm not sure that moderating a chat is for me. When I've done it with someone else, it's been fun. I enjoyed talking with my friends today, but maybe not the responsibility of the chat. I'm STILL having a hard time keeping caught up and finding the questions in other chats. I feel bad when I miss responding to tweets. I don't want to ignore anyone.

Today, I could beat myself up because of a public fail. But, I did something different, and I'm proud of that. Sometimes you have to risk to learn!