When I was an academic I worked in Digital Humanities, assisting research and teaching in a variety of disciplines. I noticed people working on ostensibly similar things, without time or incentive to talk to each other or draw strength from each others approaches; technicians who knew “how to enable” working segregated from academics who knew “how/what to teach”. Part of my job was to help translate.
I saw the same as an intellectual historian. And again as a researcher in GSD, with rather larger consequences there tho.
I’m seeing the same now, in online teaching. Not in terms of enabling teaching - because there’s such a big market “for creators” there’s plenty of people talking about what works, at least in the short-term and by financial metrics. And plenty of expertise from the corporate-training world (although I think some of it has limitations applied to personal transformation; something for elsewhere).
But on the content side, we could do so much better. Move beyond co-promotion, to co-production.
Imagine a suite of integrated courses, with each tutor leading an aspect of it. Jonny & Michael. Scott & Me. Elena and Jonny and ?? and
And a personalized AI assistant, guiding students through it at their pace. Helping them choose what’s right for them. And providing a small fraction of the value of access to the tutors (obviously, that’d be premium still). I don’t mean the “clones” that are appearing; I mean tailored advice with individualized history of the student as well, very different thing.
It’d also be more impactful for the students, because of the integration and repetition over time.
We could do that, now. There’s no technical barrier. Additional costs to make this happen are not prohibitive for a group of 5-6 creators.
& it’d likely be fun.
& might even work out economically if creators combine forces; and there are ways to ensure those who bring an audience take a greater share for the first year or five (if they feel they need that).
Why its hard Coherence of aim.
Openness and positivity around disagreement; which comes with humility.
& above all, letting go of ego. The drive to impact a lot of people yourself when you could have a broader and deeper impact together is egoic; don’t see a single example of a mature creator who has stepped off that path.
Hence why I’m not following any of their playbooks, because I don’t want to HAVE an impact; I want to participate in a transformation. Different directions.
Malcolm knows more than me about this; so does Richard,