Translator: Juliana Damia Reviewer: Denise RQ
I envy people that live on the East Coast and the Midwest.
They have so much to talk about.
Arctic blasts, Northeastern hurricanes...
We Californians don't have much,
not even rain anymore.
So we tend to get excited about the only thing left:
earthquakes.
So it should come as no surprise
that my journey begins with a tremor.
Not in California though, but Hawaii.
Yeah, we follow those, too.
A few years ago, I was having breakfast with my then third grader
and happened to mention to her
that there'd been a small earthquake in Hawaii that morning.
Little did I know that she was planning to use that information in class.
What turns out another girl had that same idea.
But she even knew the magnitude.
When I picked up my daughter that afternoon, she was visibly upset.
And murmured something about my lack of parenting skills.
(Laughter)
I can tell you, that wasn't the best afternoon we've had.
But since she was curious about the news, I thought,
maybe I should expose her to some more.
However, when I looked online,
there was nothing to be found for kids her age, or even older.
The only things available,
were monthly based subscription magazines.
This led me to wonder, was my daughter an anomaly?
Or had this important demographic simply been overlooked?
So I decided to test the market.
With this two page publication that I would send to her teacher,
and to any other mother I could solicit an email from.
On a weekly basis.
The response was extremely positive.
Encouraged, I decided it was time to share my big idea with the world,
and we launched online.
Of course, there is a huge difference
between getting positive feedback
from 50 of your best friends,
and launching on the web.
First of all I had all these technological challenges I had to overcome
and then there were all these terms,
SEO, back links, who knew?
I thought, you launch a great website,
if the idea is good, people come flocking.
Of course, the fact that we were self-funded didn't help either.
That'd mean we had no money from marketing or PR.
But I think the biggest challenge I had to overcome
was all these naysayers that suddenly popped out of the woodworks.
The experts.
Who either thought my idea was a little cuckoo
- you know, kids don't care about news, right? -
or also, that maybe even if they do,
I was not qualified enough
to be able to deliver it to them.
The only thing that kept me going were these few kids
that would consistently come to the site.
I will never forget my first loyal reader.
Her name was Ellie.
She would come every single day,
and just put "Wow!", "Awesome!", "Cool,"
to every article I published.
And I thought, if there is this one girl who is interested in the news,
there had to be a 100,000, or perhaps even a million kids who liked news.
Slowly but surely, we began to gain momentum.
Today, with well over a million monthly uniques,
we are one of the biggest kids news networks.
And I emphasize the word 'network,'
because in addition to Dogo News, we also have Dogo Books, and Dogo Movies.
Powered completely by our young audience.
These are amongst very few sites in the world that allow kids
to opine on their favourite books and movies,
and share those opinions with their peers.
In addition to being able to provide this fun platform,
thanks to generous donations from book publishers,
we've also been able to give away thousands of books
to avid readers like Maddy who recently sent me this image
with this amazing message saying
"Thank you for giving me so many opportunities,
this one stack is more books than most of my friends own."
We've also been able to host two Rebus Summer Reading Programs
where we give away a free book
for every three reviews that kids wrote online.
And this fall we donated a total of 1,000 books
to 10 schools that had signed up most kids for the program.
We haven't quite had the same success in giving away movies or DVDs.
And I think that's just because Hollywood does not know we exist.
Of course that will change after this morning.
And we're not done yet.
With our audience growing up, we feel it's time for us to grow up, too.
In a few weeks we will be launching Dogo News Teen.
But since we still don't have money for marketing or PR,
I just have to keep my fingers crossed
that the Ellies of the world somehow find us and we get going.
So how have we been able to achieve this phenomenal success?
In the face of competition, and believe me
we have quite a few competitors now who are much better funded.
I like to think there's a few things we do that distinguish us.
The first is our technology platform.
It has been built with the kids in mind.
This means that in addition to all these learning tools
that are embedded in every article,
we also allow kids to have fun.
They can create avatars, they can write comments,
they can create their own personal badges
to put their favourite books, movies, newslinks.
They can follow other kids.
The great thing about this
is it's all done in a safe, compiled compliant environment.
So parents and teachers have nothing to worry about
when kids are on this platform.
The other thing that distinguishes us is our content.
And by that I don't mean the articles we cover which are very kid-friendly,
but also the way we cover them.
Most of our competitors start with an article that is written for adults
and then simplify it for kids.
We write for the kids.
What this allows us to do is create a very comprehensive piece.
We feel this is very important
given that kids do not have the same historical context to news as adults.
So for them you need to give them
a much better picture than just giving them the event.
A great example is this article about the 25th anniversary
of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
They didn't even know the wall existed.
So if you talk about the celebration of a wall that they didn't know,
it doesn't make any sense.
So what we did is we start with why the Wall was built,
and then we talk about the impact it had on the people of Germany.
And then talk about what eventually led to its end,
and then go on to the celebration.
What's interesting about this is it creates articles that are evergreen.
This could be a current event today
but it becomes a research piece or a lesson plan next year.
But the honest truth is we could have the best content,
and the best technology,
if we didn't have support from thousands of educators
like John Rooney and Ashley Wilks,
who share this site with their kids and other teachers on a daily basis,
we would have not been able to achieve the success we have.
And for that we are truly grateful.
I'd like to leave you with one last thought,
and this is especially geared to women, young and old,
who ever aspired, or ever thought of doing something or starting something.
If someone like me, who was born and brought up in Africa,
didn't see her first computer till she was in her mid twenties,
can start an Internet company,
you can do anything you want.
All you have to do is believe in yourself,
and push to start.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)