Encouraging Entrepreneurship

An entrepreneur is an individual that chooses to pursue the one idea that he is passionate about. It is a mindset I have been told often is one that you either have or don't. As I taught Alternative Media in Advertising, I decided to give students a chance to try it. The class had mostly undergrads, most about to graduate. The project was to create a crowd sourcing video for a new project/ idea. The challenge was to develop the idea for 5 weeks and then develop a prototype for the product and the video for the next 5 weeks. Students met with Mark Weinberg of uruut.com at the Atlanta Tech Village to talk about his journey as an entrepreneur. The students explored various concepts from market need, audience profile (demographic, psycho graphic and techno graphic). They also realized through the process the skill set needed for an entrepreneur and whether or not their team possessed it. Overall, the project was very successful. Jeff Hillimire of Dragon Army and Jed Simmons from Youtube attended the presentation.

The result was 2 original ideas:

1. Sterlings: An alcoholic frozen beverage. See the video here: http://youtu.b/6bcmDuj2QfE
2. Kanvas: A system and service that makes it easy to bring art in your home with digital frames and a database of art from all over the world. See the video here: http://youtu.be/aDNy73YfUg8

Being foreign and being an educator...

I always expect students to read, not just material related to their subject of choice but so much more. Growing your technical know-how is key but understanding the place you hope to occupy in the bigger community/ profession is primarily key. During my early days of teaching, I'd ask students if they heard this bit in the news and I would get vague sparse responses. The few interested/ hungry and eager ones would share random stories. The others didn't read or didn't think their opinion mattered. Now, I make it a class requirement.
I make it a point to ask students to share what they read in the news. And encourage it to be off the subject we are studying. This usually brings everyone into the present. They share their discoveries and form a stronger idea of their personal world and relationships with their peers. Avenues like the TED talks give us plenty of such opportunities. Just because it is a typography class, it doesn't hold us back from discussing the Ebola virus and its spread and the work being done to prevent it in our neighbourhood at the CDC. We go on to talk on about education of aid workers in countries where poverty prevents literacy and how a possibility could be visual aids for crossing the language barrier. We easily slide right into our subject matter of visual communication and the key role of typography. It helps that I did not grow up in the same country as most of my class. It keeps me open to learning from them about the subtle cultural nuggets that only a native can pass on. And they learn to keep an open mind that often gets told recipes for a homemade herbal tea to keep them from getting sick as the weather changes. It is this exchange that brings us to common ground and then the learning actually begins.
I enjoy teaching for this reason. I get to learn. From the current music styles to the way the younger market communicates with their peers — I hear about it all. I don't always agree with it and there is often a debate where we go back and forth on the merits of hand-drawn sketches but that's what keeps the class alert and involved. We respect each others' opinions and hopefully somewhere in there, they learn about the basics of typography, how you always let a grid guide you and why kerning matters.