12 10 / 2011
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:
City: Pittsburgh
Competitor: Ben – Fearless Co-Founder
Secret weapon: Chocolate covered matzah
After a busy morning running his first 5K race and becoming a one-man brass band, Ben parked himself at a beautifully hand-decorated table in University of Pittsburgh’s Pitt Towers.
Note: clever pen-as-paper-anchor technique (top right) and garbage can poster-propper-upper (behind poster, not shown.) Yes, Ben is available for MacGyver-ing LearnIts.
A scientist by trade, Ben took advantage of the large sample size of passersby to do some field research on effective CommuniPickup Lines. These are the results of his experiment
Results show: CommuniTeach > free chocolate.
In the process, he met some interesting folks who are sure to liven up the Pittsburgh branch of CommuniTeach:
Admit it, you know you want to learn throat singing too.
After several hours of diligent recruiting, Ben hurried home, anxious to find out how he stacked up to the other competitors. Of course, in order to do this he had to create a scoreboard for the occasion:
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the CommuniChi team got a little distracted…
City: Chicago
Competitor 1: Sarah – Fearless Co-Founder
Competitor 2: Jordan – Professional CommuniBlogger (aka, myself)
Secret weapon: Time Out Chicago Magazine
…but can you blame us? Chicago proved an exceptional poster child for free learning this weekend, and you can bet Sarah and I took full advantage of it!
First stop was Open Streets on State Street, a giant street festival in downtown Chicago that shut down 7 blocks of car traffic to make way for dozens of demonstrations and workshops to teach Chicagoans about healthy lifestyles and alternative, active transportation.
So instead of finding new members, I made friends with the awesome breakdancing group The Brickheadz Crew (breakdancing LearnIt, anyone?)
Then I took a break to read Time Out to find out all the things going on in Chi this week
Afterwards, I met some of the amazing folks at West Town Bikes, a great community resource which offers free bike maintenance classes and educational youth programs in Chicago.
The festival also featured free yoga, aerobics, skateboarding, Capoeira and countless other workshops, but I had to rush off to meet Sarah at the Chess Rules and Strategies LearnIt. Teacher Billy Joe Mills floored all of us with his infinite chess wisdom and I am pretty sure he made all of us much smarter too.
With most of the Learners from the Chess LearnIt in tow, Sarah and I then made our way to Chipotle’s free festival Cultivate. The festival was designed to teach people about sustainable farming, naturally raised meat, and many of the issues the farming industry faces, all while eating scrumptious food and listen to groovy bands. As a result, Sarah and I learned SO much.
First thing we learned – How not to raise a pig: (For “Jordan” read “cramped pig”)
Then we learned about the connection between sustainable food, sustainable clothing and sustainable community learning!
Our tactics may not have been as, er, directed as Ben’s, but we sure embodied the spirit of CommuniTeach by devoting an entire day to all of the great free learning opportunities in Chicago and talking to lots of fascinating people, spreading the word.
Results:
6 CommuniCities brought their best.
6 Ambassadors fought for the title.
Only 1 could win.
3rd Place: Emily, our Boston Ambassador, added 10 new members!
2nd place: Sarah and Jordan teamed up to take over Chicago, adding 24 new members (12 per Ambassador)!!
1ST PLACE: Ben in Pittsburgh with 54 new members!!
With all the participating cities combined, we added over 100 new members to our growing CommuniTeach family. This means more skills, more knowledge, more friends for all!
Have suggestions for how we can spread the word? Chat with us on Twitter (@CommuniTeach) or leave them in the comments!
