Communiblog

CommuniTeach Through the Ages

In celebration of the launch of our slick new CommuniTeach 2.0 website, we decided it was time to do a retrospective of The Webpages of CommuniTeach Past. 

Round 1: Beta

This little gem dug up from the archives documents CommuniTeach’s very first breath on the interwebs.

As you examine this relic, please note the ironic tension between the high-art realism of the gilded frames and the janky-chic portraiture of the stick figures within them. Implied in this juxtaposition is an egalitarian appeal to all our pedestrian, imperfect, and apparently woefully undernourished stick-folk to unite in celebration of our Average Joe-ness. With ordinary people helping ordinary people, who needs the machine? However, the ornate golden frames promise that our service will make you so skilled that you will be enshrined in the very Academy itself. We make you that awesome.

Pretty tricky, CommuniGraphic. Tricky, or schizophrenic.

Or, CommuniGenius.

But the CommuniTeach ethic still shines through: “Together we know everything!”

The Teenage Years

Now this is the version of the CommuniTeach website that we all know and love. Easy skill sharing, pretty graphics, the works.

But what you might not have known are the sensational rumors surrounding the image on the right. 

Many have speculated that these two friendly learners may secretly really be avatars of our famed co-founders, Ben and Sarah. Sources on the inside (namely, the co-founders themselves) have denied such claims, but we will let the people decide for themselves:

CommuniTeach 2.0! Finally!!

We are so proud to present to you our baby, all grown up! 

In addition to the sophisticated new look, we have added a new networks feature which helps you teach and learn from your existing social groups. 

We’ve also made it easier to get to know the people you haven’t already met. You can make your profile public and tell the world what rocks about you and your skills. 

If you haven’t already, be sure to check it out!

Cheers!

-The CommuniLifeCycle Investigation Team

Maximize your Impact: Volunteer your Skills

Sharing your skills benefits you and helps those with whom you share, but what if there was something more? 

What if sharing your skills meant that you made a significant social impact affecting tens or hundreds of people and helping empower them to reach their own goals, or the goals of their community?

Rest assured, there is a way: volunteering. Often people think of volunteering as simply giving time, but many volunteer opportunities encourage you to share your skills as well. As long as you are there, why not? It doesn’t cost you anything extra and you are doubling your productivity by giving both time AND skills.

Many great volunteer organizations like Taproot Foundation and Cross Cultural Solutions match skilled professionals with people in need of skills and training to cultivate sustainable solutions for disadvantaged communities.

Through Taproot Foundation, business professionals act as pro bono consultants to nonprofit organizations. This enables small organizations with even smaller budgets access to the business expertise and experience they need to succeed and make a positive social impact. Taproot expands the idea of ‘pro bono’ work beyond the field of law to include marketing, IT, management consulting, etc. and applies the skills to strengthen organizations that help entire communities. The website lists a slew of benefits for you as the volunteer as well. Your work is tax deductible, makes an unique and impressive addition to a professional portfolio or resume, and serves as a valuable networking opportunity.

Cross Cultural Solutions uses skill sharing to improve communities abroad. Students and professionals take their expertise to countries such as Ghana, India, South Africa, Russia and many others to provide skills-based training to individuals and organizations working to improve the infrastructure of their communities. Cross Cultural Solutions’ volunteer opportunities last anywhere from a week to several months, offering a great way to make a social impact with a short vacation or to create a meaningful, long-term cultural immersion experience. Your work with Cross Cultural Solutions also stands out on a resume and is a great way to meet like-minded professionals, as well as travel to parts of the world you may never have had the opportunity to visit otherwise. 

Volunteering your skills, either close to home or in a completely new cultural environment, improves communities by giving individuals and organizations the skills to help themselves.

What are some skill sharing volunteer organizations in your community? What are the resources that you can offer others? Share your thoughts in comments, twitter, and facebook!

Sharing for Grown-Ups: 5 Ways Skill Sharing Helps You

to share: (v.) to use, participate in, enjoy, receive, etc., jointly

We have (hopefully) been taught to share since legos, play-doh, and our toes – in that order- were the most desirable things to put in our mouths. Now that we are more or less grown-ups with more sophisticated tastes (omelets, asparagus, someone else’s toes), where does this childhood concept of sharing fit into our adult economies of Time=Money and Keeping up with the Joneses? Who has the time/money/goodwill to share something they have with someone else?

5 ways sharing your skills helps you:

1) Sharing makes friends. Your mom was right. As an act of cultivating community, sharing builds relationships between individuals and thus necessarily raises the relationship capital of both parties - you make friends. Now you can bond with Mr. Jones over learning his recipe for Killer Kick-Off Chili, even if his kid does go to a more expensive preschool than yours does.

2) Everyone wins. Especially with skill sharing, you raise the ability of those with whom you have formed a relationship. Your community has become better and more able. When you share your gardening tips with Mrs. Jones and her friends, the whole neighborhood becomes a more beautiful place.

3) You are the expert. When you teach a class or share a skill, your peers recognize you as an authority on the topic. This respect may even result in leads or referrals for your business. Are you an accountant? Share some great tax tips, your neighbors will think of you next time they – or people they know- are looking for professional financial guidance.  

4) Favors come back around. No harm in throwing some good will out into the universe. For the time that you spend teaching Mrs. Jones how to change her tire so she doesn’t get stranded in rural Wisconsin again, she will likely spend equal time in the future teaching you how to organize your inbox (yes, 976 unopened emails is too many.) 

5) You have nothing to lose. A skill is not lessened when shared. In fact, the proverbial two minds instead of one will likely increase the teacher’s ability as well. You never had a golfing buddy until you taught Mr. Jones the secrets to your signature swing. Now he is almost as good as you, and the competition is making you better every day.

So the next time you are practicing your skills all by yourself, or are all alone and wishing you were practicing your skills with someone, think about ways you can maximize what you have by sharing it. Make friends, get smarter, and it doesn’t cost a dime. Just ask the Joneses.

Have you ever swapped skills with someone? Tell us about it! Join our discussion in the comments, on twitter, and on facebook.

Find great people to share skills with in your area at www.CommuniTeach.com!

CommuniSmackdown: Which city will prevail?

At a recent meeting, the members of the CommuniTeam challenged each other to a weekend CommuniSmackdown to see who could recruit more new members for CommuniTeach in their city.

Rules:
1) Members must sign up between 12:00am Friday–12:00am Sunday, CST
2) No hair pulling

Prizes:
1) Eternal Glory
2) The losers each send the winner a book of their choice

A mere 48 hours after the competition was concocted, the Ambassadors for each city were off to the races! Here’s how it all went down:

Read More

What is a National LearnIt? And what does it have to do with comics?

Here at CommuniTeach we aren’t just interested in getting a group of people in a room together to learn interesting things from their neighbors for free. Oh no. Our aims are much higher than that.

To appropriate a visual from the inside of Fearless CommuniFounder Ben’s head:

Imagine a warm, cozy coffee house where people are gathered to learn and share skills. Zoom out. Imagine many cozy coffee shops all over the country bursting with inquiring minds. Zoom out again. Imagine the entire world overflowing with knowledge and community and good cheer.

This is our goal. We hope to build a culture of learning that connects communities from all over by uniting them with a common learning experience.

We took our first steps towards this moon walk last Wednesday, at our first ever National LearnIt where two cities, Chicago and Pittsburgh, simultaneously learned how to draw comics from a slew of talented CommuniTeachers.

In Pittsburgh, over a dozen learners settled into the temporary farmland of the Digital Salad installation at Assemble, a unique art gallery venue, and turned their attention to teachers Ryan Yee, Lizzee Solomon, Shawn Atkins, and Jason Lanza, who began the evening with individual overviews of their own work and influences. (Check out their stuff, it is amazing!)

Jason then led the group through a workshop on how to draw the human figure. With individual help from the other teachers, even the most novice learners were able to produce respectable male and female human figures ready for comic action. (Next step: learning to draw clothes too!)

Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the talented Nina Pagano offered a complementary lesson in creating comics. Surrounded by colorful paintings, photographs and sculptures in the Park Schreck Gallery, the Chicago learners built a short storyline by each offering an action or a line of dialogue. The resulting story involved a lack of milk, a mutant mechanical cow, and a mysterious orange man. (You can’t make this stuff up, folks…)

Each person drew their own version of how the story should look and everyone’s comics turned out quite different- some humorous, some scary, some both. Nina used this variance to demonstrate the different styles of storyboarding that can be used in drawing a comic about the same essential story.

Basically, if the two LearnIts had a baby, we would have the best-drawn, best-planned CommuniComic in all of history.

Thanks to everyone who came out for helping us host our very successful First Ever National LearnIt! Can you feel the community growing already?

Finally, here are some other great events related to this LearnIt:

• 24 Hour Comics Day, a 24-hour, worldwide, comic drawing-palooza, in a comic store near you Sat. Oct. 1st 
• Park Schreck Gallery’s opening reception for their new exhibit Blur, Saturday, Oct. 1^st 
• Assemble’s pop-up farmers market, Friday Sept. 30^th

Don’t forget to check CommuniTeach.com for all the great upcoming LearnIts in your city!