While thinking of ways I can enrich my local community, I figured I should host cookouts/potlucks as a venue to share some useful stuff with the world. I want to cover things like degoogling, basic computer skills, etc. as that’s where my skill set is primarily, but I plan to host guest “host’s” to cover a wider breadth of knowledge.
If you were one of my neighbors, what would you like to see covered or cover yourself?
Local foraging: edible and medicinal flora native to the area, along with which plants to avoid. And perhaps less practical, but I’m partial to local wildlife identification because it’s fun :D
Someone else already mentioned comms, and I just want to add that this is a very valuable thing. Building a network of trustworthy people in your community and teaching them how to program and use radios would be absolutely life saving in emergency/disastrous situations. Maybe it’s the prepper in me, but it’s good to prepare for the worst and hope for the best with the current climate.
I’d say a series of basic survival courses that could be broken down by topic:
- First aid/CPR
- How to start a fire without a lighter
- Building shelter
- Wilderness survival
- Methods for obtaining potable water
What a great question! And neat suggestions. I am saving this thread for inspiration to do something similar :) I might teach some mindfulness, and I think some basic yoga could be really interesting too.
Start with a potluck to get to know people
Urban gardening seems like a winner. Even if it’s just for something like fresh kitchen herbs.
Excellent idea! There’s a ton of community gardens near me as well, so this is perfect for my community.
Home maintenance and minor fixes. I’m sure the new homeowners will appreciate that.
There is so much you can just not know about home maintenance. Contacts for honest contractors (that are not cousins or old roommates) can be useful.
Definitely adding this to the list :)
MLM sales pitches.
MLM
marshmallows
Limes and
Mojitos
? That’s an interesting thing to sell
Brilliant. I’ll set up some devil corp calls today!
Food preservation! Canning, fermenting, dehydrating.
Canning is a bit daunting at first, and you need some space in your kitchen. But fermenting is literally salt + water in a jar, uses no energy (unlike freezing or boiling), and you can do just one small jar with the half-onion that would otherwise die a slow death in your fridge, or three gallons with the squash that was on sale.to see: urban beekeeping
to share: composting
I like both of these! Probably worth adding that I’m in a heavy urban area like Chicago
Me too! West Side proud, baby!
Financial literacy, primarily how to live within or below your means.
Fantastic idea. I’m always blown away when I see someone learn about a HYSA for the first time!
Thank you for your thoughts. Hope it helps.
Offer what you can offer as an expert, and try to find others in the community with their own skills in a conspicuous way
Be eager to learn and eager to share. I think that’s the best way…I think you need to be both upfront that you’re going to be doing a lesson, but you can’t come off as condescending
Everything I could a absorb around (cellular) telecommunications or railways (not necessarily just the trains themselves).
Tons of public transport in my city, could be fun!
Transit & infrastructure projects with focus on cycling and micro mobility.
Hell yeah! Great idea :)
How to improvise a variety of explosive devices with household materials so I can DIY a Fourth of July party.
Hmmm… might have to put this one on the back burner D:
I’m going to caution you to be subtle about this. Appointing yourself teacher is never a great look.
I disagree. Being subtle would make it worse. I would run it more an open ended workshop and clearly label what im teaching. Then people can opt in or out
Yeah…I think the problem is condescension. People hate that
I think being upfront and inviting them to teach on their topics as well is the play
Absolutely, this is the goal. I’m going to run the first few with things ranging from simple “need a new phone? here’s what to look for” to “here’s how to install Graphene on a pixel and linux on a desktop” to break the ice and build the group. I have no idea how to garden, but judging by all the community gardens in my area I’m sure someone does.
“here’s how to install Graphene on a pixel and linux on a desktop” to break the ice and build the group.
I think the “what to look for in a phone” is great, but most people don’t even really grasp the concept of an operating system as something different than the hardware, and will respond to the idea of changing it by freaking out.
You have to introduce them to Linux by giving them a machine already running it, which seems difficult in this context
It’s also very difficult to get people to understand why they should care about privacy, let alone inconveniencing themselves to achieve it.
You could maybe show them how to use pcpartpicker? You might be able to find one or two people interested in building a new computer, and it kind of demystifies computers a bit.
You could encourage them to change their wifi password and make sure they don’t use one password. Maybe talk about scams, things like short links in texts and such
But IDK, I’m in the comic too
Good points. Maybe I’ll offer it as an advanced side meeting or something, for those particularly interested. The goal is to help the community and not just a subset, of course :)
I’ve warned OP now, but this is the kind of thing that will make them seem like they’re condescending as hell. Most people don’t care about computers, and might sit through a basic security lesson if work forces them to. You’re now implying they’re stupid and you’re so great they should spend time just listening to you, and then the thing you’re selling isn’t even something they want or even respect.
I don’t think that’s true… People like learning, but you have to make it fun. It’s not condescending at all to give a talk on something you know about, you just have to put in the effort to make it interesting for your audience. A lot of that is prep, and the rest is reading the room
Scams are easy to make people care about, because everyone gets a billion spam calls a day now. There’s a fear there, and sharing a few tips to look for is the kind of wives tale factoids that sticks with people
Lots of people are curious about how computers work, but in an idle sort of way. Kind of like space, they like hearing “there’s a planet here that rains diamonds”, but there’s a very limited amount of interest they have in how we discovered it
Security… Well you get to sprinkle in one or two tips before they lose interest
Privacy… Tell them the NSA looks at their dick picks, and we have proof of them sharing them around. That’s about the only thing people seem to remotely care about
That’s so not my experience. People kind of like a fun fact, and people who actually like learning extensively exist, but most have very different priorities from that. One of the most common ones is ego, which OP might be threatening, and another one is identity, which might be a problem too depending on what OP’s neighbors are like.
Fear can work, but it takes a knack for it.
Alright, hopefully I’m wrong and it’s great. Are you at least older?
Am i older than what?
Whoops, thought you were OP.
