Dan Solo, The Nerdologist

Hi Dan, you have founded Nerdi, prior to this you were in a role as Clinical Educator with the Ambulance Service of NSW. Why the change, the desire to create and invent your own business?

I’ve always had a really strong drive to make a difference. It’s why I became a Paramedic. As a Paramedic you can make a profound difference to a small number of people each week. In the beginning I was buzzing all the time. It’s so rewarding to help people in that way

As my skills improved I realised there was always more to know. The better Paramedic education was, the greater impact Paramedics could have. I became a Clinical Educator as I knew I could have a much bigger impact in the community if I could lift the quality of Paramedic education. Instead of affecting a limited number of people each week I could indirectly affect hundreds or thousands through my students by improving their clinical knowledge and thus the treatment they administered to their patients.

As I became more skilled as an educator I started to consider the really big picture. I began thinking globally in terms of education and knowledge as a means to improve people’s lives. I decided I’d have a much more significant impact on many more people if I contributed in this space.

I started to explore opportunities to disseminate quality educational content to the world. I was aware of the difficulties for educators to reach audiences via the current educational infrastructure. Some of these barriers are: the tyranny of distance, wealth, political climate, education level of peers and family, culture, access to technology and the value we place on education.

I also believed my expertise was valuable and I was realistic about my financial situation. I knew I had to find a way to generate sustainable revenue from it.

The opportunities boiled down to just a couple of unsatisfactory options…

1. Give my content away for free on YouTube alongside millions of other people’s videos of games, entertainment, dancing dogs and other non-educational content.

1. Build an educational blog and store. To be effective, this would require a huge outlay in terms of capital, time and relentless effort, with the hope I would eventually build a name and reputation.

The combination of these two solutions was the “eureka” moment for me. I realised I was not unique. There must be thousands of talented, dedicated, driven educators out there with no effective way of doing what I was trying to do. I decided this was the direction I should take. I shifted my focus from the content I had accumulated for dissemination to the content that all educators could have to disseminate.

This was the genesis of Nerdi and of my move from an educator to a startup co-founder.

Nerdi has some pretty large ambitions and can only exist due to the continued evolution of the internet. Give us your view on the immediate future of media/ technology.

I think the immediate future of media and technology revolves around the portable device. We are seeing the most rapidly changing and exciting advances every week in this shiny new field.

In September 2007 Apple released the first iPod touch. This delivered an amazing way to interact with a device far more intuitive than anything that had previously existed. Just a few months later the iPhone came out. Then came the App Store and the ability for thousands of amazingly talented developers to create applications for the devices that took advantage of incredible new technologies, such as the accelerometer. This compelled users to take the devices out of their pockets and start communicating and interacting in whole new ways. The iPhone and iPod Touch were well beyond devices that simply played music and allowed you to phone people.

We’re now starting to see the lines blur between pocket portable devices and computers. The tablet revolution is growing and has produced another round of applications specifically suited to these devices. Again they’re doing things never dreamed possible just a few short years ago.

Apple effectively created an entire new section of the market. There are many companies creating similar devices. Some of those devices will surpass the functionality and usability of the Apple offerings if they haven’t already. Google has created the Android platform. This competition has created an uncanny similarity to the Apple vs Microsoft battle in 1987 with the advent of the Mac and Windows 3.

Then, as now, there are significant similarities. Apples iOS is locked to Apple devices. Android can be implemented on numerous devices. Apple is once again relying on brand loyalty from its customers. As the Android-activated products improve, Apple will experience customer creep just as they did in the 80’s and 90’s. It will be very hard for Apple to stay out in front as the hottest company forever. Perhaps this time they will licence iOS to run on other devices.

We are also seeing other amazing advances as a result of new programming languages such as CSS3, Ruby on Rails and HTML5. These languages have the capacity to greatly improve user experience on the web and improve our ability to communicate with each other in intuitive new ways. We’re going to start seeing new websites tomorrow we can’t even dream of today. Its a very exciting time for technology.

Ultimately this leads to a new way of communicating with each other and enormous new and exciting opportunities to disseminate knowledge and information and share experiences.

What is your view on the idea of a technology rebellion, where people decide to head back to Nokia for a simple phone and texting handset to try and simplify their lives?

I don’t see it as a big deal really. I am, and always have been, an early adopter of new technologies. I have rarely gone back to using old things except where I have had a nostalgic connection with them. I love playing old board games but not at the expense of exploring new entertainment technologies.

The digital photography revolution is a perfect example of a new iteration of a technology that effectively made an old technology redundant. Almost all photographers enjoy the amazing flexibility of digital image making. It doesn’t necessarily produce a higher quality image its just a new way of operating and interacting. Its far cheaper, you can instantly review your photography, and make subtle adjustments on location, which generally enables a far higher quality outcome.

I remember the stress of working as a film photographer, wondering if I got the ‘money’ shot. Was the exposure right? Did the model move or blink? Does the bokeh have the right characteristics? Did I strike a perfect balance between shadows and highlights with my chosen exposure? Now it’s simple, faster and far less stressful. It also happens to be less romantic.

I don’t think there is a lot of romance in my old Nokia phone or even in a new “feature-lite” one though. I think it is safe to say that most people would prefer to carry one device to do everything really well than multiple devices to achieve more or less the same outcome.

With the aim of democratizing education… can you first explain what that means and secondly, how do you measure something like that?

Essentially what I came to for Nerdi was that I wanted to create a platform that would allow for the democratization of education. In essence this means making education easily, cheaply and effectively accessible to everyone. Access to education has the ability to bridge geographic, social, economic, religious, class and political boundaries.

There is no group of people who are more deserving than another of the capital of knowledge that the human race has built. And yet there is an enormous divide between the people who have access to knowledge and those who don’t.

As a Paramedic I often heard colleagues comment on people living in squalor, unable to take care of themselves, their homes, their bodies or their families. One of the contributing factors to the failure of these people to function well in society is their access to education. They were almost exclusively raised and residing in low socio-economic areas with limited opportunities.

I’ve often been accused of being idealistic, which I take as a compliment. I truly believe people can have better lives if they have access to basic human rights. Education is one of these rights.

I hope to provide an opportunity for people to easily access knowledge to improve their lives and outcomes across the full spectrum of need and aspiration. From learning simple skills and acquiring basic information to inspiring creativity and innovation.

I want people to be able to educate themselves wherever they are, whatever their age or circumstance, in whatever topics they’re passionate about, in the time they have available, and in a format that suits them. I would like everyone to be able to access knowledge without barriers, external influence or financial constraint. In a way we are trying to provide the catalyst for a new era of equality, creativity and wisdom.

Measuring this is of course difficult. We’ll be able to collect data about how many people are accessing educational content, what sort of content they’re using most and what devices are used to consume it. In many ways this doesn’t look at the big picture. How much has someone learnt? How much have they changed as a result and how will they leverage their new knowledge? What sort of access did they have before and have we made education accessible to them in a way that makes a difference in their lives? These are the things we would like to measure.

Perhaps in 20 years we can look back at a world where educational wealth has been more evenly spread across the globe. I think this is happening already but we’re trying to make it easier, more urgent, prolific, profound, enjoyable, valuable and practical.

For a person who has made the shift from executive career to entrepreneur, firstly, has this had an impact on what some people refer to as your work life balance and secondly, is work life balance a myth if you actually find what you love?

The trick to attain “work life balance” is to do something you love for work. Be passionate about it. Want to make that part of your life with your family and friends. Get them involved with what you do so they can share your life with you. I love talking to my son about Nerdi. He is excited about it in a way that I was never excited about my Dad going to his work. I don’t want to separate these two things and I think if people were following their passions they wouldn’t want to either.

I have never spent as much time with family as I do now. I have bought my work into my home. I very seldom spoke of my work with my family in my career because I was working in an organization that was doing a good thing but I had no personal connection with the organization itself. When I was at work I wanted to be at home. Now home is work and vice versa. It is a liberating arrangement. I contribute in a much more important way at home now and I love it.

It has also allowed me to be far more productive. I now have access to my work at 2am when I dream of a fantastic way of doing something. I can talk with my peers all day or night about the best way to create, inspire and achieve our goals. I have built a community of colleagues, friends and family who are invested in what I am doing because they are invested in me as a person. They are proud of me and are pleased to see me doing big things with big ideas. I have definitely blurred the boundaries between work and play and that has been fantastic.

Why Nerdi, in regards to the name that is, and who is the Nerdi brains trust – the people making this thing happen?

My wife and I often joke about what a nerd I am now. When I was 13, the worst thing in the world you could be at school was a nerd. We were in a race to see who could get to the bottom first. We never valued the opportunities our high school education provided us. I went to a sad school with teachers who were burnt out, frustrated and lacked support to inspire kids to learn. I actually thought I was dumb by the time I left school at 18 because I had not achieved what I thought I should have.

After school I completed a Bachelor degree and once again learnt the same lesson. I was dumb. It wasn’t until I finished university and wondered what on earth I was going to do that my wife Andy (yep, married quite young) found a really exciting course in New Zealand…Adventure Tourism. I’d done loads of travel and Andy and I were doing back-to-back ski seasons at the time. It sounded like a great course so we flew to NZ and I started the course.

It was fantastic! For the first time in my life study came easy. I was inspired by what I was learning. I was able to sit for hours doing my work because I absolutely loved it. I did loads of fun stuff like cutting the snow pack to see the weakness or strength in it, raft guided on grade 5 rivers and flew around in helicopters through canyons only a few feet wider than the rotors. These things weren’t the only things I excelled at. I also blitzed risk management, leadership and pre-hospital care.

Then it dawned on me…I was in fact not dumb at all. I was actually really intelligent. I just needed to be inspired. I needed to choose what I was learning because it is natural to do well at what you love. This became my mantra for educating students for the next 10 years. If you’re learning something you love you can learn anything and succeed. All of a sudden I had truly become a nerd, ironically, doing the coolest thing ever – setting off avalanches in the remote New Zealand Alps!

When Paul Voulas, the other co-founder of Nerdi, my wife and I started talking about names for Nerdi we definitely wanted to have some sort of reference to education. We also didn’t want to be too serious – education should be enjoyable. We played with words like geek, geeky and nerdy. We eventually settled on Nerdi which is a bit of a word play with the i from iMac, iPhone and iPod. I think Apple made it cool to be a nerd so it’s a subtle homage to that.

I love working with Paul. He has a totally different take on the world to me. He’s really obsessed with technology and has loads of experience in tech development and software engineering. He totally out-nerds me, which gives my 13 year-old-self some comfort. Paul is full of fantastic ideas. Much of what Nerdi has become is as a result of robust conversations between us. We basically spend our whole day joking with each other and Nerdi has benefited enormously from the laughter.

Together we‘ve been able to combine our experience, expertise and enthusiasm to create a platform that will revolutionize education. I am really proud of this. And insanely excited.

When can we expect to engage and learn from Nerdi?

In November Nerdi will be ready for user testing. In January we will open an invitation only Beta. We’re currently letting content producers know there’s an incredible new platform to share and disseminate their expertise. Once we have enough content we’ll be able to open it up to the world. Its hard to say how long it will take to reach the critical mass of content because nothing like this really exists at the moment.

Educators have never been focused on creating content for sale due to a lack of opportunity. We are essentially repositioning non-formal education as a commodity and that may take time. However, like the App Store and eBay, people may quickly recognize the enormous potential of Nerdi and start climbing over each other to establish themselves early and get the biggest slice of the pie. And that’s going to be the best possible outcome for educational consumers worldwide.

Important question, and we would love to hear your take, how important is failing to get to where you need to go? Or do you prefer to focus on “quick wins”?

People often say you need to fail to learn. I don’t really agree with this because it’s really only half of the equation. Every person has wins and failures all the time. Both make you stronger. You can learn from both. The trick is to never close your mind, to never be complacent, regardless of what you have achieved. To keep pushing, always exploring how you can do things better.

Nerdi has enormous potential but we have to educate our audience about the opportunities we are creating. This may take time. We’re in it for as long as it takes and we’re excited about this. That’s the difference with doing something you love. When you have belief and passion you can overcome any obstacles, keep learning, evolving and striving for the best.

Social Media… how important is it and how often do you engage in tweeting, is it randomly or do you have a disciplined approach? For example, when you get up, are you straight on the iPhone?

Social media is relatively new to me. I love it. I’ve had a huge ideological change toward it recently. I come from a very private family – a hangover from the persecution my Grandfather endured during the Second World War. He told me never to tell anyone who I was or what I believed. He was terrified by Facebook when it came out. He thought it was a conspiracy so “they” could find “us”. I’ve always rejected his paranoia but I think a small part of it did discourage me from sharing my life first on Facebook then Twitter, etc. Now I’m kind of playing catch up. I love tweeting more than Facebook. I just like the format better.

I speak to my young cousins who have only known a world with social media and they assure me their 900+ Facebook friends really are their best friends and they know them all really well. I find this really funny but I also think they’re at a huge advantage when it comes time to network, get jobs, meet people and share their lives with those they care about.

A lot of my friends think you’re a wanker if you have more than 50 friends because how could you possibly know that many people? In essence I think what they’re missing is that Facebook and other social media technologies are not just about finding long lost friends (which my cousins won’t ever have to worry about… They couldn’t lose their friends even if they wanted to.). It is about building a personal brand, reaching out and making people’s lives better.

It’s about communicating, connecting, sharing – things we all instinctively crave. No one is really excluded now. Even the unpopular kid at school can have a massive group of online friends and be the coolest kid in his ‘space’. Whatever his interests are – online games, miniature dogs, anime movies or Turkish tattoos – there are guaranteed to be thousands of people worldwide who share his passion.

These technologies are crucial to a business like ours. Every time someone ‘likes’ what we’re doing they’ll ‘talk’ about it across a myriad of online platforms to all their friends and followers. This is way more world wide web than the world wide web ever was. I also love that there’s no such thing as six degrees of separation any more. It has to be down to about 3 degrees. Can I count my cousin’s 900 friends as 2 degrees? Does he really know all those people?

In terms of a schedule, I dedicate the first part of my day to exploring blogs, Twitter and Facebook to stay connected and current. I tweet every day, mainly from my iPhone as its always with me. I guess you could say its a disciplined approach as I actively include it in my day but the beauty of social media is its immediacy and ability to transmit your ideas, reactions, news in the moment, in the emotion, in real time.

What is your best ever piece of advice?

It’s a bit embarrassing because it is such a cliché… “Live every day like it was your last on earth”. I love this mantra because it reminds me not to take what I have for granted and always strive for more. I’m constantly trying to find ways to improve my life, my friend’s and family’s lives and make the world a better place. This is the thing that keeps me focused.

OK, where can we find you online?

Best place to start is www.nerdi.com. When we launch it will have a blog or you can follow me on Twitter @dansolocreative, or us @TheNerdi.

Thank you Dan Solo (Best name ever), please finish this sentence… “What the world needs now is more…

Tolerance. No, not tolerance – a celebration of diversity. We need to do much more than just tolerate people. It’s insane that we keep hurting each other. It doesn’t matter what color your skin is, which god you believe in, which country you come from, your sexual preference or your gender. Everyone should be treated with respect and dignity. Our diversity should be embraced, admired and cultivated.