Dearest Swappers,

We’re a little more than three months from Epic Skill Swap 2014, and we most happily announce that the workshops submission tool is live! We’re so looking forward to all the things we’ll teach and learn together this May 23-26th. This is the part where we all enter the workshops that we’d like to teach or see taught, and provide feedback on the options other people have suggested.

So, friends, tell us: what skill(s) would you like to swap? 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?

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 ideas 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. Past skill swaps have included everything from making herbal medicine to autobody repair to improv comedy to basic backhoe operation.

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 voting on the poll for 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.

Here’s how it works:

• Go to http://bilherron.com/ess_poll/
• If you have a workshop you’d like to teach, enter it by clicking on the “Add/Request a Skill” button near the bottom. Take 1-5 sentences to describe the workshop so that potential participants know what they should expect.
• If you have a workshop that you’d like to participate in, even if you can’t teach it, enter it using the “Request a Skill” button near the top. Add a bit of a description about what you’d like to learn, and don’t forget to note that you’re hoping for someone else to teach it!
• Check out the workshops that others have added, and let us know which offerings you like by clicking the buttons that say “I would probably go to this” and “I probably wouldn’t go to this”.
• If you see a workshop that you could teach or facilitate, click the little button that says, “I can teach this!” This is especially for those workshops that have been requested but don’t have a facilitator yet, (but feel free to note that you could teach other workshops as well. Sharing/co-facilitating is good!)
• Come back to the site frequently to see and vote on the new additions.

We’ll leave the workshop submission and voting process open until mid-March, at which point we’ll close it in order to make the weekend’s schedule.

Getting oh-so-excited,

Meghan, Charis, Jamie, Alison, and Jay