Following @Kei's call for collaborators I wanted to take the opportunity to extend the call to potential visitors of the unMonastery in the EdgeRyders network, my personal friendship circle and further afield.
Since arriving in February Kei has been working hard to establish a chapter in the Open Tech School network here at the unMonastery in Matera. OTS is a community initiative offering free programming workshops and meetups to technology enthusiasts of all genders, backgrounds, and experience levels.
During this time many workshops have taken place - in fact as I write this the space is being set up for a workshop focused on mapping tools. We’d like now though to expand its potential by bringing people with different skills to teach lessons and workshops. So if you’ve been thinking about visiting the unMonastery in Matera, perhaps now’s the time?
There are a few caveats, although we teach some workshops in part English and broken Italian, it’s obviously a huge preference that you’re capable of speaking some Italian, fluency is a major plus point. Next, the unMonastery is a heavily bootstrapped project meaning at this time we have enough budget to keep the lights on and stay fed but sadly we can’t assist with travel expenses - you have to want to come :-). What we can offer though is food, a comfy bed, friendship and an interesting time at an exciting project only in its infancy.
If this is something that appeals to you and you’ve got a skill to teach please get in touch through this visitors form telling us what you could offer, we’re thinking May, June and July - and if you’ve got questions please don’t hesitate to comment here on EdgeRyders.
Thanks for the provocation on Twitter - we have an idea, but we would have to recruit people from our Italian network, we are absolutely flat out here at “Restart HQ”.
We thought of a course of 3 sessions where people would learn to keep a laptop for longer. It would be like laptop resilience in age edge of tight budgets, covering how to deal with slowness/rot, how to optimize a machine (including intro to Linux), how to physically maintain it. It would be BYO crap laptop.
We could pay for transport for travel from some trusted volunteers from our Italian network, if they would agree to document the process for us. A sweetener would be if OTS Matera could help with the documentation and sharing… is that possible?
Hi Janet, I love this idea! And OTS Matera could certainly take care of the documentation.
Do you have a timeframe in mind? We’re working to coordinate visitors on a weekly basis for workshops, so knowing possible dates would be a good start to making this happen.
Hi everybody, so we have potential volunteer(s) interested for the week of July 7-11 - can we schedule a call next week between Ugo, the volunteers and a rep from OTS Matera? We’re flexible but Mon-Wed, towards the evening is best.
That’s great! I’d be happy to schedule a call for next week. I’m in the US currently, so I’m available midday - evening your time - Monday and Tuesday. Just let me know what time works best, and I’ll be free.
