 So, as Lauren said, I'm Donia, I'm the Skillshare community manager, and I went to college. So, you know, for those of you out there who may have heard that our founder dropped out of college, he has a master's, I loved my experience, but I majored in anthropology and Spanish, and I learned a lot of theory, I wrote lots of papers, and I memorized a ton of vocabulary, but where I really learned was by doing, and I want to explain what I mean. So, when I studied abroad in Santiago, Chile, and my host family did not speak a word of English, they spoke a little bit of French, which was not helpful for me, because I don't speak French, that's when I became fluent. And when I graduated from college, and I joined Teach for America, it was my job to travel around the country and recruit the top college students from the United States to teach in our lowest income, highest-need classrooms. And that's when I really learned how to apply what I learned in my anthropology major about understanding people's differences, understanding people's perspectives, appealing to their desires and needs to get them to do what I wanted them to do. And then I actually joined recently the board of a nonprofit called Global Circle, which is a grant-making organization, and the board that I'm on is of the kind of 25 to 40 young leadership group, and we started from scratch. And that's where I learned about, again, kind of applying the skills I had touched upon in academics to raise money and to understand global issues as they related to people who are very far away from them, but to motivate people to support those in distant places. And then finally, I came upon Skillshare, and that's where I've learned how to build a business from the ground up. I joined about a year and a half ago when I was the fourth person on the team, and at the time, I had considered going to business school, but I'm glad that I took the path that I did because I've learned more in the past 12, 13 months than I think I ever could have in a classroom. So I'm learning by doing. Skillshare's mission is to transform education as we know it today and to really empower people to share what they know with each other because the skills that you have out here, like Ben referred to, are often much more kind of timely than those that are available in more traditional settings. But we also believe in bringing back curiosity and passion to learning. So you learn the things that you want to learn, not the things somebody tells you you have to know. So what I wish somebody told me when I was in school was that my bachelor's in anthropology was actually a bachelor's in understanding humanity and that I was going to become an expert in building community because I understood people's perspectives, where they were coming from, and how to bring them together. The problem right now in education is that education is actually separate from learning. So education is what others do for you, but learning is what you do for yourself. You guys have probably heard this TED talk, seen this TED talk. If not, I encourage you to go look it up like ASAP, not right at this moment, but after my talk, not during Vinay's talk either. So Ken Robinson, who is a big idol of ours at Skillshare, talked about the magic that can happen when you actually bring technology together with people who know things, who have skills, and that's when we're actually going to start changing things. And we took that charge very, very seriously to create Skillshare and to build a world of learning that's not dictated by institutions, but rather by the things that we're passionate about. So we ask ourselves this question every single day at work, sometimes to the point where the horse is already dead. If we could rebuild education from the ground up, what would it look like? Literally from the ground up, not building on a broken system, not just putting videos of lectures online, but really rebuilding the system. So instead of rote formulas and memorization, why not teach a class on how to talk to strangers by giving your students balloons and putting them on a subway in New York City? That happened. Every single place is a classroom. So if you can teach a skill that doesn't require a PowerPoint, which I would encourage you to consider, you can teach it in a coffee shop. And if there's something that you're passionate about, that you read tons of blogs about that you've been doing for six months more than someone else, you have something to share with other people. And at the very least, you can tell them what mistakes not to make because you've already made them. But that's not to say that learning ever stops or starts just because the bell rings. Everyone here is here because I'm guessing there's something you want to learn today and tomorrow to apply to what you're already doing, to improve what you're already doing. Every single person in here has something that they want to learn. And the fact is, not everything you want to learn or maybe not everything, the people on the street who don't have access to the things that we're talking about in here. There isn't a way for everyone to access the information that they want to learn, especially the more current kind of niche information that we're talking about today. And so part of our mission is to make that information that sits in every single one of your heads accessible and affordable for people who want to know it. So they don't have to necessarily spend thousands and thousands of dollars in university. They can just talk to you or come to your class. But we're also focused on applicable skills. So I loved college. There were lots of benefits, many of them social. But what I did not learn was applicable skills. I learned theory that I later applied myself. But I didn't learn by doing in college. I read a lot. I wrote a lot. I didn't actually get to build organizations in school through my classes. Maybe I did so extracurricularly, but that was optional. So we're talking about applicable skills here that are really hands-on and tangible. No exams. Again, learn by doing. Less lecturing. We're all about collaboration. So it's one thing to kind of sit and focus. Like you are all just focusing on me right now. I'm lecturing, too. But if you were sitting in between sessions talking to each other about all this stuff, guaranteed you'd be way more productive than you are just listening to me right now, because you'd come up with ideas, give each other feedback, and you'd teach each other. So one of the best ways to learn, and I've done this in my own experience in the past year, I'd never taught before until I started teaching on Skillshare when we launched and didn't have any other teachers. You learn by teaching, because your students tell you things you didn't already know, they course correct you, and if you're humble, you'll take that feedback and you'll just spit it right back out so that it's better the next time. And you learn by doing, because that's when you make mistakes. So that's how I learn best. When I make mistakes and I get embarrassed, I don't wanna make those mistakes again. And again, you learn by collaborating. So two is better than one, right? And if you're workshopping and sitting in a class talking about how to give a really great public talk or how to pitch, you're not gonna learn that much just by pitching yourself. Like that's what you can do in the mirror, but to actually get that honest, tough feedback, you might need to pitch to someone else and kind of hash out those skills that you just learned together. And learning by failing is incredibly important. So not being afraid to make mistakes, which is what ties in with creativity. The things that we focus on at Skillshare are creative skills that are not normally accessible and those who create have to be willing to fail. It's an iterative process. And when you have a community to support you in that, you'll be willing and that's what we've seen happen. So people who teach on Skillshare most likely have not taught before and I have direct contact with, you know, the majority of our teachers as they come in, list their classes and there's a lot for them to learn about what it means to be a good teacher, how to present your information in a really interesting collaborative way. But not only do they have me, they have the support of other teachers who've faced the same challenges just months before and are already turning right back around and sharing what they've learned to help those new teachers improve and succeed at higher levels the first time they get out there. So I'm gonna tell you a quick story about kind of like why Skillshare. This is Avi Flambam and he did go to college but he did not complete college. He was learning about engineering and he didn't like the way that he was being taught to code. And so he dropped out, he did start his own business, he was quite successful, but he decided when Skillshare launched that he wanted to kind of turn things around and rather than be bitter about the experience he had had just fix it and teach the way he wished he had been taught. So he started teaching classes about Ruby on Rails and he now is truly doing what he loves. So he started coding because he was curious about it. His curiosity was like totally killed when he went to school and was taught through lecture and theory and didn't get to build things. And so now he's doing what he loves, he's teaching Ruby on Rails, he actually just started his own school and he's surviving off of it. And there are others too. So Jeff Ramos is teaching classes on branding, social media and PR. He has totally kind of commandeered that space on Skillshare, is such an expert on it, but in his daytime life he's a community manager at a video game related non-profit, but he just paid his rent with Skillshare checks and so that allows him to spend more time emotionally and tangibly building out his own consultancy which he wants to launch someday. And Judy Huck went on vacation, so maybe she's not supporting herself from day to day with her Skillshare classes, but she's living a better life than she could have before because of what she's getting by doing what she loves. So there's this community piece that Lauren talked about. Eric was Avi's student. Eric had a similar experience to Avi where he actually is in college right now or college age right now, could not take the classes that he wanted to take about programming because he was just literally like not the right age. He was a sophomore, not a junior. And his school did not allow him to jump the gun even though he already had the prerequisites and the skills to do so. So his parents actually supported his decision to leave school, gave him kind of the remainder of the tuition that they would have spent and told him to create his own learning plan. Eric became Avi's TA after being a student in his class and now actually has a full-time job as a junior developer because of the skills that he learned in Avi's five-week eight-session course. But the piece here is that it wasn't just about attending Avi's class. Eric found a mentor in Avi. And there are other students like Eric who have been able to learn the thing that they wanted to learn, be successful and still maintain relationships with the people who could support him through that really unorthodox path that we don't want to be kind of path C anymore. It should just be an option. So we've recently re-asked ourselves this question, what would education look like if we had to rebuild it from the ground up for the next century? And to the point about access, we realized like, all right, local classes can be incredibly powerful, right? Tap into the knowledge of the people in your own community, learn what you need and want to learn. But what if there aren't people in your community who are on Skillshare? Or what if someone in your community needs to learn something that just isn't around in someone else's brain in your community? They need to learn from someone two countries away. So we created hybrid classes, which are a combination of online and offline learning. So there's lots of online instruction and resource sharing, but the offline piece happens through student collaboration in in-person workshops that are student-led. And this is all about recognizing that the world's most abundant resources, our skills and people, and to allow someone in Sweden to learn from someone in New York is really powerful. So we just launched this new product a couple of weeks ago with classes like Fred Wilson's class here. So who's read Fred Wilson's blog? Is anyone familiar with him? We got a couple of hands in the room. He is a principal at Union Square Ventures, a really big VC firm in New York, and he's teaching a class all about business development and how to get your startup off the ground. He's the one who funds the startups that you've heard of, and he's got 10,000 plus people signed up. We have the former community director from Airbnb teaching a class on building cult-like brand loyalty. Who better to do that than she? And these are things that thousands of people can enroll into. So AXIS has just been blown open to these skills. I just wanna get a quick pulse here. How many people in the room have a DSLR camera that they use? Okay, how many people got a DSLR camera for Christmas and haven't taken it out of the bag? Me, so that's one. I could learn from you. How many people in this room are developers, designers, you know how to wireframe, you know how to code? Okay, how many people are starting their own company, are co-founders, regularly communicate with developers but don't know how to code? You could learn a little bit of something from the first people who raised their hands to help you do your jobs better. So I just want you guys to realize that the skills we're talking about are not skills that other people have that you can learn. There are skills in this room that other people deserve and need access to. And I urge you to consider how you might share those skills to improve your own communities and kind of start that learning revolution today. So thank you very much. And I hope to see your classes up on Skillshare soon.