Krypton Community College
Connecting into groups
[update: Shane put up a Meetup Everywhere page]
On Monday, I'll be posting the first curriculum, a course based on some of Seth Godin's (that's me) published writing and the challenge of shipping work that matters. It includes discussion questions and links to text, audio and even a bonus workbook.
This update is about choosing, contacting and organizing your course. No doubt, you (and some of the attendees) will want to review the curriculum in advance, but in fact, that's not the key question, any more than people need to know every book that will be covered before they join a book group.
Instead, the challenge is helping people understand that this is painless, worthwhile and most of all, the sort of thing that people like us like to do.
I've put together a simple online forum where you can go to exchange notes and check in with other organizers. It's run by volunteers and it's not a tech support system, but it might be a good place to find fellow travelers and to connect to find answers to shared questions.
To kick off your discussions, here's a sample invitation you might consider sending to colleagues and friends. Of course, you should change whatever elements of this aren't quite right, including dates, times and any or all turns of a phrase. I have no doubt that you can write a more effective and detailed invitation, but wanted to get you started…
email subject: Are you busy Tuesday afternoon?
I'm hoping you will join some of my friends to join a free course based on the work of Seth Godin.
Krypton is a new online/offline project based on a simple idea: we learn better when we do it together.
It's a free course that makes it easy to organize an in-person 'book group' to discuss ideas–books, websites, TED talks and other varieties of useful learning.
We meet four times, once a week for four weeks. Everyone in the course gets a PDF document with links to articles, etc., and we come together to discuss and figure out how to push each other to dive deeper into the work. Unlike traditional school, there are no tests, no memorization, no proving you did the reading. Instead, I'm trying to put together 8 people who will share their experiences and figure out how to grow from what's on offer. That's when the real learning happens–not from the spectator, click-clicking for access to information, but from on-the-hook teaching and defending and building.
Learning together.
The first session will be in the conference room near my cube, at 4 pm on Tuesday, October 1. Drop me a reply and let me know you'll be able to come. I've also invited Jenny, Andy, Jo-ann, Sasha and Ted. If you can think of someone else who should be there, let me know!
You can find out more about the thinking behind this at the Krypton site.
I'm excited about hosting this course, and I hope you'll give it a try and join us.
Tracey