2016-2017 we at Boost Turku ran three semesters of Dropout Academy, a peer-to-peer workshop series aimed to teach each other in the community practical skills that are not part of university curriculums.
Similar idea to Missing semester (MIT) but with a very different style and focus. Less curriculum-style and planned, more of “inviting community members to share”.
The first “semester” in spring of 2016 was 100% peer-to-peer and a major challenge was that the expectation management failed. Each session was very different from each other, some lasting a couple of hours while some only 30 minutes or so.
For the 2016 fall “semester”, we invited speakers from the extended community and cleaned up the format so it was more workshop-y and each session felt like part of the program. The initial idea of peer-to-peer workshopping suffered a bit though in my opinion.
The last “semester” in the spring of 2017 was organised together with Humak and Business Turku.
Programs
Spring 2016
- Programming with APIs
- Creative Coding
- Crowdfunding 101
- Lean Startup
- Privacy Enhancing Tools
- Project Management
- Design
- Basics of Bargaining
Fall 2016
- Building a website
- Digital marketing
- Prototyping
- Project management
- Lean startup
- Pitching
- Tools for startups
- Crowdfunding
Spring 2017
- Personal branding
- Time management
- Service Design
- Facebook and Instagram marketing
- Agile: Building great products
- eCommerce
- Create and Deliver a Killer Product Demo
- Performance Skills
- Funding
- Guerilla marketing