One week after leaving Matera, the Lote3 experience stays actively with me. I finally got the chance to get my head around it and document this highly interactive session from Sunday, Day 4 that felt most generative to me personally. Why? Because it prompted me to act on what was said and take peer advice very seriously. I guess this is a big big thank you to [rhithink] for proposing and facilitating it, and to [pacheca], [JamesL], [annaJ], [havartu], [nat], [JulianoS] and everyone who shared advice in all honesty <3
This was a session where anyone coming in was invited to share personal projects and list the kind of skills they would need help with or ask for guidance. For me the question was how do we learn new web tool fast while living and working online, in times of fast, competitive, resource-constrained learning? (proposal here). And I got some very helpful hints by listening to how others do it.
- Online tutorials: recommended by Julian as his step-by-step, easy to follow learning process which actually works.
- Online communities: lots of useful platforms recommended and explained in more detail by Anna, such as Quora.com, Lynda.com or Echo. note to self: might be difficult to learn by engaging with multiple online communities, pick the one that works for you!
- One very important advice I got from Rhiannon was to Make learning social and enjoyable: “I needed to build my own website. Not a big one, just a wordpress. I didn’t know how to do it, so like through a friend of a friend I met someone who could help”
To ensure rewards are in place you could use something like timebank: e.g. exchange one hour of coding for cooking dinner for someone. This could turn into even more useful learning for even more people here on Edgeryders if we manage to turn it into social contracts which make sense for us as community members.
- Referencing the ER platform: create simple wikis where you ask for help (the underlying assumption in this social contract is that by asking you also make yourself available to others’ requests) -> this is easier to implement if and when more of us take the lead and teach others how to do it by example. I think it was [Jamesl] who mentioned the need for a format to ask for help?
I was amazed at how quickly personal dilemmas like Rita’s time management problem resonated with the group, and how we figured out together it’s more a problem of life management which, again, most of us have! Anna suggested a pretty cool idea to get ourselves into critically assessing achievements and where we are going, what is most worth our time etc The idea is to design ourselves and fill in a personal blank sheet of paper, like a spider web map: you put up a goal and plot several smaller things you’re doing or achieving in different points in time and how they indicate an overall picture and a linear progression in time. I already started doing that with a format from mindvalley which I found useful (see video below), has anybody else started?
Alternatively, you could set yourself in a reminder mode and get in touch monthly with friends to discuss achievements & milestones in a way that helps everyone understand better where they’re going: what Natali said stuck with me - “we want witnesses to our lives, with whom to share achievements”.
Finally, I was most impressed by the easiness with which we made ourselves available to one another, showing care for each other’s dilemmas. This is what I’m left with: a personal commitment to offer help and also ask for it in a way that not only doesn’t burden others, but makes it worthwhile their time and shows my availability to return the effort. Thank you all so much!
I would like to ask you guys to revisit our Sunday afternoon in “the best skill workshop location” (James) ever in Matera and take the time to add your reflections or simply re-iterate your availability to others. To help you revisit, here’s most of our session on the unMonastery radio, via [aden] <3: http://www.spreaker.com/user/6572514/unmonastery_radio_2
Photo below by James L
This seems like quite a session! I fully subscribe and agree with everything: it resonates so much: upskilling, life management, tutorials, social and enjoyable learning and so on.