Is It Back to the Drawing Board for Most EdTech Companies?

00:01.20

Dipesh Jain

Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of Tech in EdTech.Today we have with us a very special guest. I have with me, Camden Iliff. I have known Camden for around two years now and he's been amazing in terms of his thoughts on education and tech and technology. Cam, welcome to the show. 

00:19.48

Camden Iliff

Thanks, Dipesh, I'm happy to be here.

00:23:37

Dipesh Jain

Thanks, Cam. Cam, before we get started would love to know a little bit more about you. Tell us and our audience, about your background, how you got into education and EdTech.

00:34.50

Camden Iliff

So I've been in Edtech for about 25 years and I started as a seventeen-year-old intern out of the university and my mother helped me get this internship with an upcoming student information system. And her school had recently been one of the early adopters, knew the executives there at the company because it was a small company and I was able to get the opportunity to work with some really great people. Then pretty much from there I've kind of grown from intern to software developer programmer, led element teams in the student information system area. I've built grade-book systems. I've built teams all the way to 30 to 60 members, multiple scrum teams, and all the way up to where I am today as a VP of Engineering and Product.

01:44.85

Dipesh Jain

Great! Cam, that's an amazing journey. So from an intern till this VP of Engineering, you've seen the edtech landscape change over the years and it's been changing rapidly, especially I would say since Covid. So the last couple of years have been interesting. We saw a huge adoption in digital after Covid and then we are seeing some interesting data and trends in education. What is your take on the last couple of years in terms of tech adoption, in terms of edtech trends?

02:20.38

Camden Iliff

Well, we definitely saw the one-to-one initiatives start many years ago you know over a decade ago and COVID accelerated that to the point now where of course one the one is a given in almost every school across the US and it's now become just an integral part of how students learn but you know, that's great on the technology front. But COVID has left schools with lingering problems. We all know of the persistent learning gap that students are facing right now, particularly coming out of Covid, we now see rates of absenteeism and chronic absenteeism not just on the rise but we're talking about having doubled in a lot of cases, and schools and schools are facing these challenges of trying to solve these problems that they never had to before. The learning gap but was narrowing, students were improving across the board and all demographics absenteeism was on the decline and COVID reset everything back to a place that schools are very uncomfortable with and don't necessarily have the tools to effectively deal with today.

03:42.67

Dipesh

Yeah, and you know we all have the scores of learning loss. So you're right about all these changing trends. Now when you look at this a lot of our listeners are folks who work at edtech companies. What do you think can companies do to stay agile and responsive to these changes?

04:07.79

Camden Iliff

This really comes down to how we structure our product teams, the type of people that we have on them, and the ways that we engage with schools and the stakeholders in those schools and oftentimes, in the past, there was a very superficial engagement that perhaps a product team was there engaged with schools as software and systems were being developed, but the ongoing relationship certainly diminishes over time and this new age of edtech gives us an opportunity to re-engage at a very deep level and establish deep relationships with educators. And on the product teams, we get into the product road mapping and we need to stay agile out there because our landscape is changing so quickly that a traditional product roadmap just doesn't fit and I've found myself in my own road mapping needing to build in massive empty space in these roadmaps to deal with emerging customer needs. Everything is changing so fast we have to be able to change on the dime and rotate.

05:27.10

Dipesh

Yup, so, what you're saying is again, you know, go back to fundamental stay connected to customers, listen to their voice and their voice should reflect in the product roadmap. And it's a very important point and seems very straightforward but isn't and a lot of this needs the push needs to come centrally. What is your take on how do you set some of the goals for the product team so that they incorporate these elements?

05:54.55

Camden Iliff

Oh yeah, we focus at the company vision and mission level and what we've lost a lot over the years. You've seen massive corporate mergers and acquisitions creating larger and larger ed tech companies. We've seen edtech companies grow into multi-billion-dollar-a-year organizations, gone public for public trading and these large corporations they have a difficult time a more difficult time engaging with customers in a way that people in education have become accustomed to that these are names and faces not numbers and so we need to reset and establish that basically every edtech organization out there, their company vision and mission should match the goals of these schools that they support that if a school has a particular vision and mission, edtech organizations should be matching those, as a public good. It shouldn't be viewed as a profit center and certainly, there's money to be made. But we're not here working with schools because we're trying to make a ton of money, we're here working with schools because we're trying to improve the school experience for students. Shouldn't be asking how we can make more money. We should be asking how we can increase our impact on today's learners and tomorrow's leaders.

07:39.21

Dipesh

And when you do that, I believe money is a byproduct of you creating a massive impact so that was very helpful. But if we take the mission and vision and we come back to like I'll go a little micro. How do you, how can companies effectively understand customer needs right? Like I mean it's everybody speaks about understanding the needs of customers. What are some of the common mistakes that you see when you try to understand customer needs there goes and align with the company goals?

08:11.92

Camden Iliff

For years I've been involved in the hiring and management of dozens of product managers and I've found that with education, we are a very niche market and that when you float these positions out there for PMs and BAs, you're going to get a lot of candidates who are very well-qualified. PMs and BAs across the board and in different categories and different market sectors. But it's hard for them to learn what it means to operate a school that even colleagues from other companies who I had conversations with, I asked them how do you, how do you go about finding good PMs and good BAs, and really the answer for the education space is that you don't find PMs and BAs. We find out there, is people who know schools already, school operations, classroom operations, and district operations. The way that our industry does business and then you train them to be a PM or you train them to be a BA or a PO, or whatever the case may be, whatever position you need and that's easier to do than it is to teach an inexperienced product manager how schools operate. So I've made that policy across the board and when I hire for these positions. And really, you know the best product managers in edtech, they surround themselves with people in education. They seek out current and upcoming challenges with just the people around them. It's their friends, their family. You spend here and there 9 to 5, doing what they need to do in edtech, and then go and just completely leave that behind it becomes part of your life thinking about how schools work. It's the articles that you read and the people you hang out with. And if you feel your entire company, you're going to build amazing products, and the best tools I've seen out there are those that were started by teachers or former teachers and maybe that person brought in keen business professionals to help create a strong corporate structure to turn that teacher's vision into reality. But so often you see products being built by professional product managers who only have experience in direct-to-consumer markets and whose experience in education is that they were a student for half a decade and a half and that doesn't that doesn't make for a great Product Manager. Most people have no clue really how complex school operations really are.

11:11.30

Dipesh

Yeah, and um, that brings me to an interesting point of late to more and more edtech product managers or product leaders that I'm talking to have had the experience in school. Um, some of them lot of them have been teachers. Some of them have been administrators so they very intricately understand the nuances of operating schools and classrooms and it gives them a very unique vantage point from a product development perspective. So which is needed and you know when you talk about aligning goals to customer needs. How do you measure that this company has done that successfully or this company hasn't? How do you measure the success of aligning the goals with customer needs?

11:59.93

Camden Iliff

I've always measured the success of products I've worked on by the success of the learners that are out there in the schools that we support and you know I want to see test scores and graduation rates improve and the customers that I serve. I am constantly looking to compare my customers with schools who don't use our products. I want to see a struggling school product and I can be part of turning that school around and you know you finally made it and truly are successful as an edtech organization when word gets around that if a school is having problems in a particular area that your product is actually the solution that they're not going to be able to turn around and have a strong impact on learners without your product in place.

13:04.55

Dipesh

Right. And you know I think that kind of impact. Yeah, it's amazing to feel that you know what you've done has created, has helped somebody, has touched somebody's life, has changed somebody's schedule, has made them feel more empowered. So that's I think that's a good way of looking at how you measure product success. Now you know you mentioned one thing about aspiring product managers. I had a question, this is more tactical. If there is a product manager out there or BA or you know somebody who's not in edtech they are in another domain but are looking to move to edtech, what are some of the tactical advice that you would give them? You know if somebody is an experienced PM but in another domain wants to move into edtech.

13:51.58

Camden Iliff

You have to immerse yourself as you move into edtech. The learning how schools operate and certainly is one thing. If you can get into a classroom to observe teachers over the course of days or weeks. If you can, if you can near folks at the district level or a school office level and see the challenges that they face day to day basically take on those roles as if they were your own. You know hands-on experience is always best. But in the absence of hands-on experience, there's dozens, if not hundreds of trade shows out there and there is of course a lot of those trade shows that stream their content for free or for paid knowing what educators are hearing, what they're interested in, knowing the trends of the industry these are going to be out there. These are gonna be there where networking and engaging in these industry conferences can really help whether it's an MTSS conference. It could be a teacher education technology conference. It could be an IT conference and all of these there's niche say roles within a school all have their own conference and pretty much every state out there. Certainly, some of the big national players like ISTE, a great place to start and sign up and go, work to attend every session you can to talk to people and vendors, and then I've also you know I wasn't an educator I did not come. I did have a lot of people around me. Um, whether it's my mother, my stepfather, aunts and uncles, and cousins who were teachers and school administrators and that was great but you really don't start to understand what they're doing and it as you're trying to build software until you start to say read the same books they're reading. You know what interests this principal? How is that he or she thinking about the ways that they can improve their schools? When you look at teachers or curriculum directors of the district, how are they strategically aligning their knowledge with improving the student's success and will read those articles from those influencers out there? And many years ago for me, it started with a district that invited me. You know I was just a programmer for a long time, of course engaging with a small company, engaging with districts directly you need just schools and teachers directly and they were just around me. But of course, I had the job but I was invited by a district superintendent. They had hired an expert grading policy to come and do an engagement with their teachers to high schools in their district. And so I was able to attend a three-day workshop with the district and hear what was being taught to the teachers in a way of grading for student success and this really changed for me the way that I thought about how I built software for schools. I was able to understand that these weren't just problems that a school was facing but these were fundamental philosophies that we had to adopt and integrate into our product strategy in order to build the most impactful products for our customers. So It's learn what schools do, learn what those folks are learning, see what they see, and try to put yourself in their shoes and that gets you ready for a transition into education products.

18:17.20

Dipesh

That's, that was a very comprehensive answer. Thank you so much. Um, yeah that reminds me of another. So when I was new into edtech, I started by, in sales. I remember I was reading a lot of sales books and sales content and somewhere I saw a post on Linkedin where the person said that you know if you want to be successful, master your domain. Learn your domain better than anybody else. And that was really a trigger for me. So now what we do is even anybody on the sales and marketing team has to talk to customers. Um, you know just to understand their life, understand being in their shoes, um develop that kind of empathy because that's when you'll be able to develop strategies or content or anything that is directly that directly impacts them. So yeah, so the checklist is, immerse yourself in the domain, talk to people out there, go to trade shows and I'm sure when you reach out to people, people are more than willing to help you understand this better. So yeah I think that's that's pretty comprehensive. Thanks, Cam. You know we are in 2023 right now and no conversation is complete without AI and I have some more questions for you. But I do want to talk about AI. What do you see? How do you see AI in the current realm and of course a lot has been written and spoken about in the last few months, but any thoughts on your end, what do you see, what are your hopes, and what are the challenges that you see? Love to hear your take on that.

19:55.81

Camden Iliff

Yeah, you know it's certainly top on everybody's mind right now is how to apply AI in your business and I mean that there's basically a simple statement out there that right now every business your business today should have an AI plan and whether it's a startup, whether it's a business have been around for decades. We need to, We know that AI and machine learning, are one of the most transformative technologies that we have seen in a while and we've seen of course that accelerated growth recently, but so we all have to have a plan. We have no set of guidelines as a business to kind of guide us on how and what to integrate in AI. You know at a minimum, AI should help with business operations. We already know that helping employees be more productive and on a high end you know we of course need to look to adoption and with full integration of AI technology into the products that we build. But too often we see AI being added to products where it just doesn't belong. AI basically it's AI for AI's sake. And I see these companies and their marketing and I have AI this and that.  I've written algorithms for that in the past and I'm trying to think well could an AI do it better like well yeah, maybe and I think about what it takes to train that AI model in order to do that effectively. And I start to question well I wonder if anyone's actually using it and more than likely nobody is and it's just a marketing ploy and that's the, I can't stand that person. You know I want to implement technology that actually makes an impact so we certainly don't want to just do it for marketing sake. But we should be cautious in selecting a particular technology. When that technology is changing faster then we can integrate new versions of that technology. Find yourself very easily investing in an AI technology that is surpassed by another system within months. I mean this industry is changing so fast and if your competition integrates that newer technology, now you are behind the curve. So you know, is it good to have old AI when your competition is the new AI? Should you wait and you know set that last you-know person to implement the best software that is for the best AI software that is going to be say saving the most money because they're not reimplementing technology over and over again? You may invest in either building or integrating AI technology into your products. And the worst case scenario is that your customers just don't use AI features that you've invested thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars on because there's actually a better free version out there right now. And as an example, if I was building a system today that helped teachers, let's say, build and share lesson plans, you know it's a common use-case scenario. It makes sense to have an AI-like ChatGPT built into your software that could help write that first draft of a lesson plan. But that's assuming of course I integrated you know GPT 3 but we know that GPT 4 blows version 3 out of the water. So why would teachers use the AI that I integrated into my software when they could actually go and get a better product elsewhere and even though that better product it may take a couple of months, but you want to come out or it's next year but you see your investment basically not being used because yeah I guess we know oftentimes edtech companies a lot of us are small and so when we invest we need to know that investment is going to last for the future. And AI will last but it's so rapidly changing and improving that it may not be the best choice to invest today if it's not going to actually have a long-term impact on your schools that you serve or in your business operations. But there is real value, I believe there is real value for AI in edtech products and that value comes when you use these AI platforms and blend them with the data in your products to create new features that can help teachers and learners, and school office administrators or whoever you're serving out there. It's basically blending your operations, your data, what would really bring the most value to the customers is the information in your system, the information that generates the information you've generated to provide if you're a content provider. And then you build in machine learning and AI that doesn't age out basically. So I'm all in favor of using the latest and greatest technology but I definitely am hesitant to commit too many resources towards AI and my products right now. I know a lot of people are not like me though and I see some interesting features that I hope can make a difference for schools and educators. But I haven't seen any real data on if those features are having the intended impact. Um for me I'm focused with my AI plan on internal operations. As an engineer and leading an engineering team, you know I think about and I'm but trying to replace my programmers or anything, and person every programmer worries that the AI is going to replace their job. Um, but AI is great at writing code. It's a great first draft. It could create scaffoldings and methods and designs and entities that would be tedious to write. AI is great for documenting code. We've seen some of the GitHub integrations. It's good at creating user documentation and operating even as a support chatbot. We know that if you send in enough good information to get heard from someone at Microsoft this was a few years ago really that a, as they implemented their support chatbot, it actually decreased the number of tickets that were opened for Microsoft that had to be resolved by human by 90% and it took about twelve months for that transition to happen. So over the course of twelve months, Microsoft was able to reduce their human support ticket need volume down to 10 percent of what it was before. And that has real operating consequences and benefits to an organization. Especially if that support that's being provided by that bot is effective and that's all about the data and how you train it. So you know when I look at my team that's where I'm focused. It's not necessarily on how I build in AI into my software. It's how AI makes my organization a better and more efficient organization.

28:36.60

Dipesh

Very interesting. So what you're saying is there are two uses right? One is improving internal efficiencies where you definitely see value right away. When it comes to incorporating it in your product. It goes back to your earlier point about understanding your customers well. If you know your customers really well you would know where that option will be and where it will not be there. So rather than investing time and effort and money into things where there won't be usage. I think when you understand your customers deeply, you're probably able to make those decisions much better. And you know again, we can go on and on about AI but I do agree with you on the impact that it is going to have and for companies to have an AI plan. It is almost an imperative at this point in time, which brings me to some questions about, you spoke about your processes. Cam, you've had an interesting career journey. You've moved from an established company to you know, to a startup. How has that been? How has the journey been in your career to managing different kinds of aspects of teams?

29:51.39

Camden Iliff

Oh boy, you know, starting off my career twenty-five years ago and I was basically a startup back then right? I was, we were in a single digit number of employees and when I came on that organization, they did have customers and that was great. I had a lot to learn and I did a lot of things that, that I thought were good at the time. Um, but looking back probably wasn't the best. And you know I was young and my career has certainly come full circle where now I get to reset, I get to start with a new organization, small and nimble agile just like it was for me and my team twenty-five years ago with my former employer. And but I have all of the benefits of 25 years of failures, mistakes, and learning, and apply to this team and make it even better. It's a real blessing that I do have this opportunity and so even though it was really hard to part ways that you've committed so many years to I've committed many years to, but you can always look forward to growing in your career and being able to use everything that you've learned to make the next organization even better.

31:28.99

Dipesh

Yup, it's I've mostly worked in agile-size organizations, so you know, um I sometimes think of how do you make the transition. So it's interesting to see that journey and I'm glad that you're able to take the lessons from what you learnt into a new setup. So that's interesting and Cam, it's been great speaking with you. I do have some parting questions but before that, is there any question that I've not asked that you want to talk about which is to education, edtech, or technology?

32:10.34

Camden Iliff

You know I think one thing that I'm I might have missed and or forgot to say is that there are some real game changers out there and we, I that I'm looking at what's if there's one thing that I want to see I think is coming is that something like virtual tutors and it's unfortunate. I think we're always kind of seeing it, but when we talk about AI eventually replacing real people we talked about developers. But when we actually look at replacing real people in the industry. It may be that that tutoring is gonna be the first to go in education. That content seems well documented for all of the ways in which we engage with students and supplement their instruction and seems like AI is a prime candidate to replace that.

33:08.86

Dipesh

Yeah, and what do you when you talk about virtual tutors and AI-based tutors what would you think would be some of the I mean of course the advantage is scale, but are there any other advantages that people are probably not seeing right now that a virtual tutor or an AI tutor can bring in?

33:31.15

Camden Iliff

Well, you know it's the 24x7 ability for students to access resources and certainly, we need. We've had the internet for a long time and you know with a good search, methodologies, and techniques, you can pretty much find anything and you can find articles written by folks and read up and you find plenty of YouTube videos on all those topics and I'm sure students have been using those resources for a while. But if they're offered a one-stop shop that's the easier way for them. You know students, they're going to choose the path of least resistance just like all of us, and if they can access quality content quicker and easier then they're going to be attracted to that.

34:21.17

Dipesh

Yeah, and you know the other I mean when I think about 24x7, and I'm sure you've seen you come across the scenarios as well. There are a lot of times when I'm doing something completely different and a question hits my mind like okay and if I don't get the answer then and there, that question disappears. So I'm pretty sure that you know if I'm learning a concept and I'm doing something else suddenly I remember, Okay I need to find this answer so I do see the constant availability being a big benefit. I do agree with that. So it was you know this has been great, Cam. Thank you so much. What are some of your parting thoughts as you know as you reflect on this episode out to companies and to people in the product teams? What are some of your parting thoughts?

35:11.96

Camden Iliff

You know I've been thinking about that for a while as we've talked and you know whether it's the future of edtech, whether it's emerging technologies whether it's finding a niche for your organization to make money, to fill a need that schools have out there. What ends up coming down to is still the relationships that so relationships in the long haul long run versus relationships today that the people around us, the folks in other organizations, the folks in schools that the edtech is a community. It's seeing the same people even when they move from company to company. It's the same people with the same passions. They're just sometimes jumping on one with a new company for one reason or another and are able to apply those passions. You know this is this industry it sticks and that's one of the reasons why I love it so much so you can build these relationships over the course of decades and really make close close friends. Out there. So I enjoy and then definitely will continue this. I hope everybody feels the same way I think they do and I’m so happy to be part of education.

36:52.48

Dipesh

That's great and you know it's amazing that we’ve come a full circle. We spoke about technology. We spoke about and we end with saying that okay relationships, the human element is so so important. So, Cam, thank you so much. Where can the audience find you? How can they connect with you?

37:08.32

Camden Iliff

Oh you could definitely find me on Linkedin Camden Iliff on Linkedin. I'm happy to talk with anybody out there and connect with you.

37:17.30

Dipesh

All right. Thank you, Cam. Appreciate your time and it was great speaking with you today. Thanks.

37:23.02

Camden Iliff

Thank you. Have a great day.

37:25.67

Dipesh

Thanks.