Dearest everybodies,

Now that the 2013 Epic Skill Swap has a home (Camp Wilmot), we want to know what the Skill Swap schedule should contain this year! Because this event is 100% participatory, we need your workshop ideas.

So, friends, tell us: what skill(s) would you like to swap? This is an opportunity to volunteer a skill you’d like to teach, but also an opportunity to request workshops that you’d like to attend.

• What makes you so excited that you razzle-dazzle at the idea of sharing or learning it?
• What sort of knowledge do you have that will help us create the world that we want?

Please submit your ideas and vote on the workshops by March 31! ___________________________________________________________________________

More instructions for proposing workshops:

Please enter your workshop ideas, including a brief description of what you have in mind, and be sure to vote on other people’s suggestions (big hint: if you come back to the page more than once in the next week, there will be more skills to opine on!). If someone else suggests a skill they’d like to learn, and you’d like to teach it, you can indicate your ability to do so on the nifty little button that says “I can teach this!”.

There are no strict guidelines for workshop themes, but keep the following things in mind as you develop your ideas:

• We have access to a commercial kitchen and indoor/outdoor space at Camp Wilmot. Could your skill be shared in this kind of setting?
• Does your workshop need a minimum number of people to be successful? A maximum?
• What are your infrastructure needs?
• How much time do you need? Can your workshop fit into a 1-2 hour session?
• What sorts of materials would you need? Can you procure/crowdsource those things with relative ease? How much would they cost?

Think in terms of what you know how to do or would like to know how to do. Here are just a few broad areas to start you off: fixing something; building something; growing something; performing something; building communities; being a better citizen/consumer/activist/pillowfighter, etc. These workshops can be as diverse as we’d like; the sky is our limit.

And an important note, because lots of folks have asked: you don’t have to teach a workshop in order to attend Skill Swap! However, you can still help with this process by marking on the poll the proposed workshops that would be of interest to you. The more input we get from all of you, the better the weekend will be.

We are shooting to have a schedule put together by mid-April. If your workshop is selected, please make every effort to attend the skill swap. Last-minute cancellations are unfair to participants and other instructors, and not so much fun for the organizers.

As ever, feel free to forward this email along to anyone who might be interested in getting it or participating. And just in case you can’t perceive this automatically over the faceless glow of the interwebs: we’re super excited. And we can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

Again, please submit your workshop ideas and vote on the others by March 31st!

Meghan, Charis, Alison, Jamie, Jay, Hollis, and Jasmine
(Epic Skill Swap Organizational Team 2013)

Epic Skill Swap is an open, participatory skill sharing festival that will be held at Camp Wilmot on the weekend of June 1-3, 2013. If you’d like more info, join our mailing list email, visit our website, and like us on Facebook.