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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      5/ In this world btw, the zillions of hours of great YouTube instructional videos are like K-12. It’s great and free since you mostly can’t charge for it.

      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      6/ But anyway, though I’ve done a bunch of teaching/online course experiments, I’ve realized something: I really don’t like teaching the equivalent of “undergrad service courses”. I’m not good at it, and don’t care to learn the skills (logistics, scale, packaging) it teaches.

      1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      7/ But the opportunity to design/teach grad school type things that would advance your own research/writing projects is severely supply limited. People who could use it are mostly already at real grad schools, taking seminars from Real Tenured Faculty ™

      1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      8/ So the interesting challenge for the free-agent world is to develop the equivalent of grad school run by Fake, Untenured, Nonfaculty ™ I jokingly call this the “Not Even a Diploma Mill” problem.

      2 replies 2 retweets 36 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      9/ If we leave out “new economy” service/101 type courses, what’s left? Two kinds of educational material. 1. Things that compete directly with graduate school on cost (1/10th) but don’t offer “extras” 2. “Weird” topics that would never get taught in universities at all

      1 reply 3 retweets 23 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      10/ Many of us could teach the equivalent of an MBA level marketing or org psych course at 1/10th the cost. Maybe with some boutique idiosyncrasies. But then you take such courses for the Stanford/MIT networks, not the material). The material is pretty DIY+experience tbh.

      2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      11/ That leaves Weird Topics as the ideal market for a free agent grad-school type world of courses. @sarahdoingthing and I tried one such, an idiosyncratic ribbonfarm writing course that was neither Writing 101, nor Blogging 101, nor graduate creative writing at a univ.

      2 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      12/ It was great and I think we learned far more than any of the participants, which I how it should be for grad-seminar type teaching. I have many lazy ideas, based on my writing, for other Weird Topics grad-level courses (thinking with 2x2s, OODA loopology, fat thinking...)

      2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      13/ The challenge is working out a systematic business model for delivering Weird Topics learning material from the Long Tail of the Great Weirding. My experiments so far have been Random Acts of Mildly Profitable or Break-Even Teaching, and I don’t trust that to be sustainable

      1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      14/ What’s missing is a clean conceptualization of how Weird Topics teaching directly links to research/writing/making/kickstartering end of things. Just like there’s Aman R&D/PhD/grad-coursework nexus in academia. Once I figure that out I’ll be more enthusiastic about teaching

      2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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      15/ This thread is a reflection of my own ambivalence towards the online courses game. I have had a Ribbonfarm School set up on teachable for a year now with some bare minimum stuff available, and I’m both attracted to/put off by the idea of doing more.

      9:28 AM - 20 Apr 2018
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      • Raghav Agrawal Zacharia ben "mediocrity on an 18mo timescale" mosior Timothy #masks4all Roy Rahul Ramchandani Edwin Rager Dan Egan 🤓 Pamela J. Hobart
      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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          16/ What would make me get serious is if I could figure out a good model, with many teachers, of Ribbonfarm School as a Weird Topics grad school. I have no interest in the undergrad-equivalent stuff (though I need that to exist) or things that univs do well already at grad level

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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          17/ Btw if any of you are interested in this stuff and looking to “disrupt” regular grad school or even undergrad, note that that’s likely a bad idea. They’re disrupting themselves pretty well with their free/cheap catalog-openings in partnership with the Courseras of the world

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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          18/ What we’re talking about here is really an indie teaching scene by analogy to indie music. The big univs are like the big record labels. No point competing where they have a deep back catalog of material ready to go. Either teach New Economy UG or Weird Topics grad school

          2 replies 1 retweet 28 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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          19/ If you want to teach New Economy UG, you have to think like a consumer business and design for scale, efficiency, packaging, mass marketing, intake funnels, and probably a sub $300 price range

          2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 20 Apr 2018
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          20/ If you want to teach Weird Topics grad school, you need to figure out a link/cross-subsidy with research/writing/making/indie-creating, focus on bespoke teaching relationships, and a price < $100, unless you can figure out a scholarship model and make it free (my preference)

          3 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
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        7. End of conversation

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