HourSchool classes

I attended my first workshop at General Assembly tonight, Introduction to the Sydney Startup Community, at the Fishburners co-working space. I attended not so much to learn about the elements of the startup process, which is not so new to me now, but to check out Fishburners for the first time, get a sense of how the newly-launched General Assembly Sydney was going and meet other local startups.

General Assembly is part of a new educational ecosystem which is fueling a renaissance in lifelong learning in our society. Whereas it used to be about lobbying your work to send you to (expensive) day-long workshops or multi-day training programs or saving up the funds to learn a new skill, now, for free or at low cost, you can choose to pursue continuing education and professional development on a huge variety of topics and in a manner that suits you and your learning style.

This has been achieved in many cases by democratizing now only who can learn but more importantly who can teach – allowing those with the knowledge to share it with those most eager to gain it, both online and offline. It’s this sudden supply of topic experts and new platforms which link us to them which has reduced the cost and increased the availability of learning opportunities. It's an exciting trend.

General Assembly began in New York where they maintain a campus with permanent classrooms, co-working offices and community space. GA Sydney launched just last month and already has a full roster of upcoming classes at low cost, usually around $40. Skillshare allows anyone to propose a class and take bookings through its website. Where General Assembly tends to focus on tech and startup oriented classes Skillshare is literally for anything, you can do classes in bee-keeping or knitting, photoshop or poker.

Codecademy does away with the classroom completely, breaking down the process of learning to code into simple bite-sized chunks delivered online and inspiring over a million people to commit to learning to program this year (how many of them are following through however is unknown).

And the opportunities keep multiplying in a million different directions, with services like coachy which allow you to line up online coaching with a topic expert and Ohours which encourages you to offer real-world “office hours” to share what you know. Our Pitch Some Good event in Austin during SXSW this year was won by HourSchool who, somewhat like Skillshare, facilitate in-person teaching on, for instance, motorbike repair, in an hour a pop, and also included Pocket Hotline who facilitate telephone help lines on a variety of topics including rails, adhd and baking.

Whatever you want to learn, there’s probably someone prepared to teach it to you. And if you’re a bit of an expert on something interesting, fun or useful, why not offer to teach the rest of us? We’re ready to learn.

This most recent weekend was one filled with learning and community, leaving me feeling both smarter and more connected to Washington DC than I was before. It made me realize, or remember, that learning from one-another is one of the most vital components of community; where we are connected by our common ideas, ideals and aspirations; where we realize that all of us know so much more than any of us. On Friday night I attended the opening night of the Social Justice Camp, an unconference bringing together the grassroots social justice community in DC and emphasizing the importance of arts in bringing about social change. Friday was an Ignite-style event, with a dozen speakers giving short presentations on their work. It was great to hear more about the work of homeless advocates, food security organizers and social change muralists. It had a nice feel to the event, as unconferences always do, of everyone being on the same level, there to share and learn, without a divide between presenters and audience.

This feeling continued on Saturday night at the first Columbia Heights Arts Salon. This was an event for local artists in the Columbia Heights area of DC, hosted in four local homes. A series of house parties combined with showcases for local talents - with houses dedicated to performance, visual art, photography and digital installations. K performed to open the evening, the first time she's performed solo in two years. The fact that she felt encouraged and inspired to create and present a work in five days is testiment to the platform this sort of event creates. The event was put on my the newly-formed Columbia Heights Arts Foundation (CHARTS), which you can find out more about here. K and I are going to try and get involved and see how we can help them as we're really inspired by their vision of building community through the arts.

Then on Sunday it was K's birthday which we celebrated at a tea party for about 16 at which everyone presented/taught something. The variety of things I learnt that afternoon was amazing: drama games, canvas stretching, the scale of the universe, productivity techinques, how to draw a superhero, speak Russian and wear a corset. Everyone had something to share, a passion or a skill, a professional competance or a hobby. We all have things to share, but rarely are we invited to share them. Everyone came away from the experience inspired and uplifted - having maintained our attention for almost six hours and enjoyed every moment of it. This is a really different way of learning from what we get in our institutions - peer-to-peer, relaxed, and human.

This is what community looks like. It is open, vulnerable and participatory, based on common values and able to support its members to share and grow. Experiencing community like this, inside a room, with our shared energy strong and perceptible, is like a jolt of electricity - it animates and inspires. But elements of this community are also found online, and social media has given us a platform to replicate many of these features.

The people I feel most connected to online are those I actively share with and learn from. Twitter, in particular, has given me access to a set of peers who share my values and are looking to collaboratively learn how best to use these tools to affect social change. It is only through trial and error that this learning will take place, and the more we share the faster we can learn. This is why I was part of launching the monthly #4Change twitter chats. This is what inspired the estalishment of sQuareOne (now called the Vibewire Enterprise Hub) in Sydney. The creation of spaces where peer-learning happens.

As my friend Morgan puts it, We Operate Best Together. And we learn, build and grow best together too.