SharePGH

A calender of learning opportunities in Pittsburgh

Just launched our sistersite, SharePGH. 'Tis a calendar of skill sharing events in Pittsburgh.

Skill Shares, Community Teaching, Distributed Learning

Skill acquisition around the world is getting easier and easier, and Pittsburgh is no exception. Two trends are coming together: the rise of the virtual, and the rise of the local.

The Virtual

In the below talk, Chris Anderson (the TED curator, not the Wired Magazine editor) makes the compelling argument that the rise of broadband is allowing video to become the go-to medium for skill transfer. He argues that humans are primed to transfer visual understanding into physical understanding, and that online video allows anyone in the world to learn from the videos of anyone else. Thousands of hobbyists post months-worth of video every day showing how one can fix a toilet, make a creme brule, or start a one-square-food garden. The internet allows a global host of experts, expert amateurs (pdf link) and amateur professionals to quickly move their knowledge into the hands of others, usually with a high level of feedback and conversation (via clarifying questions in comments and author-responses to those comments and questions).

This influx of how-tos, demos, and explanations makes it easier and easier to Do It Yourself. 

Importantly, the skill acquisition revolution, combined with a growing focus on living locally and sustainably, is allowing all kinds of marginalized experts to come out of the woodwork and share their knowledge before it is lost, both online and in person.


As artist David Calman Lasky put it:

It feels alien to live in a world where I have no understanding of how
I have water, or why, or heat, or food. The more I learn, the more I
find that I can't do everything on my own, but I also learn some of
why things are the way they are, and it makes me feel more able to
change the way I am living my life. In the end, it feels empowering to
learn how to provide something for yourself. Systems in the world- like
the commerce of utilities and living expenses- are demystified.

From woodworkers to Master Gardeners to canning, skills and tools that can be used to build resilience are making a comeback. The lines of apprenticeship may have died out for a generation, but there are new applicants lining up to learn.

The Local

Video is an excellent medium, but it cannot always replicate the speed and accuracy of teaching one-on-one, in a shared physical space.

In addition to the global, internet-driven trend, there has been a local resurgence in teaching spaces in Pittsburgh.

Technical projects and electronic gadgets find a launching pad at HackPGH. Art and technology meet at Assemble. Communiteach connects those who want to learn to those who are willing to teach. The Union Project is a spawning ground for dozens of community initiatives and projects. The Mr Roboto Project is a long-running d.i.y. space that just moved into a new home. Carnegie Mellon's Studio for Creative Inquiry has begun hosting a series of local conferences. PodCamp Pittsburgh is an annual conference of new-media folks sharing what they know.

Each of these local, physical institutions has a distinct, physical presence, but also has a strong web-presence. Communiteach in particular is exclusively a web-platform for connecting teachers to learners.

This double-hit of a strong, connective internet presence combined with an open, specific physical location is an ideal way to link digital activity with physical activity. As John Robb, asymmetrical warfare expert and author of Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, puts it:

"Localize production – virtualize everything else"

Production, in this case, would be the actual in-person transmission of skill from one person to another together, in real time, in a physical location. Everything else- the coordination and invitation beforehand, the marketing or branding of the event, the recording and archiving after, can and should be done virtually.