Teen Talk - Take 3 or 4 or 5

Hang in there - this is not a repeat blog regardless of the title. I wonder how often this happens to those who regularly blog..........the groovy topic of the day is to relay findings from our last teen focus group. Five intrepid teens ranging in age from almost-going-to-college to middle school came into a rather stuffy warm room to pore over the wide world of the internet. Among my observations and their comments come the following:

• "myspace is dangerous" - no one had an account


• "i didn't know you had a teen site"


• liking bright colors


• spending lots of time engaged with the games. it's amazing how quickly they find this!


• from one in the group who asked "who is the website targeted for?," "what's your budget?," and "how do you market this?" - my initial response was to hire her :) she suggested advertising in her school's high school newspaper - what a concept! Based on her question of target we said it encompassed 11-18 year olds. Quite the large age range considering the topics and reading that falls in between........ Alyson and I talked further after the meeting and wonder about creating 2 pathways under some of the content areas. For instance, click on Read It! and you can then find "middle school" and "high school" reading lists appropriate for either age range. Under Teen Topics, we can be writing to both age ranges. To interest the older teens, edgier materials can be written and posted.

As always, these are great sessions in which to get to know our public better and to put a face to them. With all of the wonderful input received from our teen population, our job is to now go and create something that lives up to their expectations and becomes a living, breathing space for them.

Now it's time to find a great salsa recipe!