E-180 : ça marche!

C’est mardi passé qu’a eu lieu le premier Marché des savoirs de E-180, organisé en collaboration avec À go, on change le monde! pour le Réseau des entrepreneurs sociaux du Québec. Comme l’a indiqué Heri Rakotomalala (à qui l’on doit aussi les photos) dans son billet sur Montréal Tech Watch, rien de mieux pour un startup technologique que délaisser l’écran afin d’aller tester des présupposés fondamentaux au succès de son entreprise live, avec des humains.

C’est ce que nous voulons faire avec E-180: faciliter la rencontre avec celui ou celle qui est en mesure de nous donner un coup de pouce pour démarrer ou pousser plus loin la connaissance dans un domaine. Créer un endroit de rassemblement pour tous ceux qui croient que l’éducation est une relation et qui sont prêts à donner un peu de temps pour partager leur savoir au dessus d’un café.

Et s’il y a plusieurs mois qu’on y pense, le Marché des Savoirs fut l’occasion de finalement tester l’idée. Celle-ci n’est pas nouvelle: plusieurs d’entre nous apprenons déjà de cette façon, en offrant le lunch à l’ami d’un ami pour en connaitre un peu plus sur un sujet. Une plateforme web sera un outil extraordinaire afin de regrouper les fans de cette approche, mais ce qui compte, c’est de dévoiler les connaissances des gens afin de les connecter.

Un exemple: Anne-Laure Putigny, spécialiste en entrepreneuriat et chargée de projet pour À go, on change le monde! veut faire le Marathon de Montréal en septembre. Aude Leroux-Lévesque, documentariste, veut mettre sur pied sa boîte de production. Et il se trouve que le partenaire d’Aude est un marathonien. Match parfait: “E-180, ça marche! Bien que je connaissais déjà Aude, le Marché des Savoirs m’a donné l’occasion de faire des “connaissances” un sujet dont on discute, qui devient d’actualité. C’est ainsi qu’on dévoile au grand jour des compétences qui auraient simplement pu rester dans l’ombre. Aude et Sébastien sont venus prendre un verre chez moi, et Sébastien avait vraiment préparé un plan d’entraînement sur la base de son expérience. Ça va me sauver un temps fou, et je crois bien avoir orienté Aude et Sébastien sur un bonne piste en ce qui a trait au développement de leur plan d’affaires” rapporte Anne-Laure, maintenant membre du comité fondateur d’E-180. (on est vraiment contents.)

Tous les matches n’ont pas besoin d’être aussi réciproques: il est possible que je veuille obtenir de l’aide pour mettre sur pied un système de comptabilité et que celle qui m’aide n’aie pas envie d’apprendre la photo. Qu’à cela ne tienne: à E-180, on croit au karma. Et la plateforme web aidera à récompenser ceux qui distribuent leur savoir généreusement.

Pour partager vos connaissances ou voir les offres et besoins dévoilés lors du Marché des Savoirs, consultez le #E180 sur Twitter ou revenez d’ici la fin de la semaine: je mettrai cette information en ligne. Contactez-nous si vous désirez rencontrer un des participants. christine [at] e-180.com

Marché des Savoirs: 5@7 du Réseau des entrepreneurs sociaux du Québec, ce soir!

E-180 et À go, on change le monde! unissent leurs forces pour présenter le premier Marché des savoirs, inspiré de l’approche communautaire d’échange de connaissances de E-180. Seront réunis entrepreneurs sociaux aspirants et accomplis du Réseau des entrepreneurs sociaux du Québec!

Venez vous rafraîchir et découvrir qui, à l’intérieur ou à l’extérieur de votre réseau, aurait envie de partager un peu de sa sagesse avec vous.

C’est un rendez-vous à:

L’Amère à boire, 2049 Rue Saint-Denis et sur Twitter au #E180!

Bientôt ici-même: des photos de Heri Rakotomalala et une liste des participants toujours à la recherche d’un acolyte!

What would Indiana Jones learn from Darth Vader?

How often did you meet with someone for coffee, just to “pick their brain” on something? Imagine a web app where you can actually find these people who, inside or outside your network, would be willing to share a bit of wisdom with you. That’s what E-180 is about! Kinda like the Couchsurfing of knowledge.

If you think this is a service you’d use to jump start your learning on anything, take a moment to

We really, really want to win. We really really want to make this thing happen! You can even tell your friends and vote every single day for the next… 2 MONTHS! (yes, it’s a loooong time). If you want to invite us to an event, to your TV show, to conference so we can talk about this: give us a shout and we’ll do it!

Meanwhile, we heard of two people you might know who used our Facebook page to share knowledge at a coffee shop. (yes, you can do that.)

The story behind E-180 in the Havard Ed. Magazine

Nobody teaches us how to be a great social entrepreneur. Just like many other things in life, one has to figure it out by herself, or to find the resources to make it happen. The know-how, the network and the cash, of course.

It’s been 2 years that I’m working on E-180, and we are just about to see the work coming into fruition. The pace has been slower in the last couple of months for one simple reason: I had to commit to a (great) full-time job in order to release some of the financial and emotional pressure that was created by the entrepreneurial lifestyle. My friend Peter Deitz wrote a great post on Social edge about personal debt and social entrepreneurship:

A perfect storm has formed around the failure of philanthropic capital to address the needs of social entrepreneurs, the ease with which personal debt can be accessed, and the stubborn enthusiasm that social innovators often bring to their projects.

There’s not a lot of room for mistake when each dollar is crucial. But after a year of funded knowledge-building (called J.O.B), I’m ready to jump full steam in the project that I’m wholeheartedly committed to.

The Harvard Ed. Magazine wrote an article on E-180 back in January 2010, and it’s my pleasure to share it with you as a reintroduction to our work, after almost a year of silence. It explains the why and how of it of this dream of mine. And in a couple of days, we’ll be able to make a great announcement, that could accelerate the course of the events… Stay tuned!

Lancement des podcasts: Hacker l’éducation

La série de podcasts produite par E-180 pour Parole Citoyenne, Hacker l’éducation, est maintenant disponible en ligne! Trois composantes traditionnelles de l’éducation sont revisitées par des expertes en web, des pionnières qui ont véritablement plongé dans la grande révolution numérique !

Vous pouvez écouter librement (et gratuitement) comment

le prof

la salle de classe

et

la gang

sont toujours présents en ligne, et comment leur rôle, bien que transformé, contribue à redéfinir l’éducation et l’échange de connaissances sur Internet.

Bonne écoute ! N’hésitez pas à les commenter !

E-180 is invited to TechStars for a Day!

We are planning on launching our Beta by August and in order to do so, we are looking for the best developer, the best mentorship and some seed funding.

It happens to be exactly what TechStars is offering: the tools necessary to work faster, better and harder to get where you need to be at the end of the Summer. We applied, we got invited to go to TechStars for a Day in Boston next week, we’re ecstatic!! TS4AD is “an invitational one-day mini-camp for TechStars applicants.” It’s not a guaranty you’ll get in the program, but rather a day of networking and tips on how to succeed as an emerging tech entrepreneur.

We’ll keep you posted on the event, the great people we meet, and share some tips on how to take your incubator application to the next level.

Meanwhile:

- Apply to an incubator yourself!

- Know what they’re looking for!

- Learn about how to get into an incubator by being the underdog!

- Reflect on the trade off of “equity vs value added” of an incubator!

News: Writers wanted

There are so many outstanding people doing groundbreaking stuff in the world, organizations who truly care about developing people’s potential to its full extant, human beings who are willing to question the way traditional education is made and to innovate to achieve their goals.

We don’t know them all.

That’s why we are looking for collaborators: writers who want to share their thoughts on education, on social entrepreneurship, or on the educative impact of social media. It could also be on any other topic that is of interest for people who believe that human beings naturally aim to achieve their greatest potential, if presented with the tools and opportunities.

You can be a mother, a professional writer, an home-schooled teenager, a professor, a blogger: as long as you are passionate about your topic.

It can be one article, a series or sporadic contributions.

Send us an email at info[at]e-180.com with your name and the topic you would like to cover.

News: 2009 = E-180′s Year!

Many new things to come this year for us!

We will be launching our Facebook application next week. With this app, you’ll be able to share your learning resolutions with your friends, and find people who can help you to achieve it. Kind of a first draft of what E-180 will be.

Also, we will produce video podcasts on non-traditional education and will enhance our blog content by collaborating with authors from around the world who want to share their vision of non-traditional education, social entrepreneurship or social media.

All of this to keep you busy while we are working on E-180′s official platform.

So stay tuned for the updates, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have comments or suggestions!

Thoughts: Our wishes to you

Happy New Year to you friends, mentors, and readers! We wish you to find something (or someone, for that matter) you love and to fully embrace it in 2009!

We also want to thank you for your support, whether it took the form of criticisms or kudos. We really appreciate to hear from you, because education doesn’t mean to be alone in front of a computer all day: it’s a relationship, and we need you to make it work.

Plus, we love emails and comments. It means you care. It also means that humans are truly beings who need to contribute and to learn, which is the fundamental premise of our work.

In 2009, we’ll break a leg for you!

Thoughts: The paradox of competing in the market of good

We’ve been looking around for great educational websites for a little while, and often receive links from friends saying: “You can do better!”, or “Check this out: they do a great job!”… Nothing ever raised a red flag like two sites we discovered yesterday: TeachStreet and School of Everything. O Pain: they also want to do good.

Catherine and I were on the phone, horrified to read words like “democratization of education“, swearing when we came across “connecting teachers and learners independent of educational institutions“. Our very wording! Our revolutionary ideas! Our way to change the world!

How weird is that? These guys, respectively based in the West Coast and the UK, agree with what we preach: education doesn’t belong to institution and people are entitled to direct their education. That’s what we call consensual education: this reciprocal educational relationship between two consensual individuals. It is not about teaching nor about learning: it’s about an interaction which leaves two people better off.

That is the paradox of social entrepreneurship: even if our ultimate goal is to change the world, we need users and funding. Our existence can only be justified by demand. Demand for better learning opportunities, for safer neighborhoods, for a cleaner environment. Even in social entrepreneurship, markets can be saturated.

It feels irrelevant to drive on competitiveness in the social sector. But isn’t it what fosters excellence in a capitalist society? Yes, and that’s where the “social” of “social entrepreneurs” takes all its meaning: as social entrepreneurs, we measure our success in terms of “change” of benefits for the population we serve, not in terms of profits. While I was thinking about all of this in my bed, at 3:37am, I concluded that as social entrepreneurs, we need to support our peers who are doing great work (TS and SOE do an amazing job at connecting people who want to teach and those who want to learn), but to be aware of what could be done differently to better serve our users. And to do it.

At E-180, we don’t believe that democratization rhymes with “rates” and “fees”. How is learning democratized if it is still accessible only to the ones who can afford it? What we will do is to create a new economy, where people can redefine themselves and their “market value”. This value will not be based on where they grew up or where they studied, but on their knowledge, their passion in transmitting it and the learning experience of their students.

That’s our competitive advantage in the market of good.

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