I first met Morna a few months ago when I wrote an article about her for ORGZine. Little did I know then that a short while later I would be giving up practically every weekend over the course of a month, staying at a hostel in Dundee (What do you mean, bunk beds?), and adding the rather fancy title of “Marketing and Media Consultant” to my LinkedIn profile. That last one raised a few eyebrows at my usual place of work. But such is the persuasive power of Morna – she makes things happen.
I may, perhaps, have thought it slightly insane to attempt to start up a business – even a Web 2.0 business – over the course of three weekends with a bunch of strangers one had found on Twitter. Then again, I appear to be physically incapable of saying no to a shiny project, so I thought “What the heck, it’ll be fun!”
FlockEdu is nothing if not shiny. It’s an educational network, aiming to make education for adults accessible and affordable. For a generation for whom a university degree will cost as much as an average house in some parts of the country, FlockEdu may be a game-changer. As someone who is passionate about education I just had to get involved, bunk beds or not!
As it was, even though the small number of shares in the business I got in return for my efforts are highly unlikely to enable me to give up the day job any time soon, I feel I got at least as much out of participating in the FlockEdu “Sweatshops” as I put into it. I got to meet in person some great people I’d only known from Twitter; I made lots of awesome new friends and potential future business contacts; and I learned a huge amount about technology, media, marketing and running a business over the three weekends.
If you want to know more about crowdsourcing a start-up from the person who invented it, Morna is appearing at a couple of events at Social Media Week in Glasgow next week. And if you have a passion for teaching, learning or both, sign up for a beta invite over on FlockEdu. I think it’s got the potential to change the world.