Looking for: skill sharing. Will teach: napkin folding

June 7, 2007 8:39 PM

Does any online equivalent of a skill sharing facilitation thing exist? Bear with me while I describe

I'm not talking about a message board or anything like that. A hippie-ish acquaintance once told me she was going to some kind of skill sharing session where basically you say what skills you are willing to teach and then you teach them to whoever is interested and in turn you learn from other people who are teaching things. I am envisioning an online equivalent and I'm curious to know if something like this exists. Say in my profile I have that I am an excellent snowboarder and I would like to learn weight lifting. So someone contacts me saying they know weight lifting and want to learn snowboarding. So we then kind of tutor each other either online or in person. Ultimately this harnesses the knowledge that everyday people have so we don't all have to go and pay instructors $40 /hr to learn something one on one. This is more than just asking 'what kind of snowboard should i get' in a message board, right? So does anything like this exist?

posted by GleepGlop to education (11 comments total)

I am currently working on it.... So if you were thinking of creating such a thing don't waste your time competing with me!

(please... pretty please?)
posted by crewshell at 8:53 PM on June 7, 2007

Compete? What about joining forces? What, are you in it for the money? j/k

One thing I can think of is 43 things, which is a similar thing except for people who are both trying to learn the same thing.
posted by GleepGlop at 9:14 PM on June 7, 2007

In my search I was unable to find something like this... maybe I missed the page, with bad googlefu but yea, I came up short.
posted by crewshell at 9:45 PM on June 7, 2007

crewshell: I hope you're planning on posting this to projects when it's complete, I for one, would love to participate!
posted by nerdcore at 10:19 PM on June 7, 2007

This sounds a lot like Time Banks.
posted by vacapinta at 11:41 PM on June 7, 2007

And I first heard about them via this Barcelona Time Bank.
posted by vacapinta at 11:44 PM on June 7, 2007

Time banks, neato. Somehow not exactly what I need, but interesting nonetheless.
posted by GleepGlop at 9:51 AM on June 8, 2007

Craigslist is another related site. I actually was just looking there in the barter section and someone was advertising a sailing lesson in exchange for some photography work. The only problem is there is nothing in craigslist that specifically facilitates this thing with rating systems and whatnot. Not to mention you have to beg with them to open up a craigslist in your area. Ah, craigslist 2.0 where are you.
posted by GleepGlop at 4:18 PM on June 8, 2007

There's swapaskill.
posted by healthytext at 6:09 PM on June 8, 2007

Dammit! Why can't they let people in Canada register...
posted by GleepGlop at 7:15 PM on June 8, 2007

Hey guys

Just to let you know that Swapaskill is now available in Canada.

Its a site where you can do exactly what you're asking Gleep Glop. Its been in London for a few months now and you can see how its working over there. Go to "search for a skill you need" at the top, add a skill and click Unithed Kingdom and Greater London. Swapaskill is new to Canada so needs to build yet but its all there ready for you Canadians to start registering. Please tell your friends over there about it so everyone can benefit!!
posted by Popycat at 7:31 AM on July 29, 2007