Things are getting really big, really fast.

Pulling from an e-mail I just had to write to someone, especially as I’m not sure the readership here knows all this stuff:

I’m director of Jigsaw Renaissance, a learning and making community based out of Seattle. We’re built on the image of Bucketworks (out of Milwaukee), dubbed “the world’s first health club for the brain.” We’re into transdisciplinary and intergenerational learning. We’re into helping you discover your world, and how to engage with it. Jigsaw (and Bucketworks) is (are) program(s) of the School Factory. That’s a 501(c)3 aimed at changing the way people educate themselves and interact with educational systems.

The School Factory has seen a lot more activity in the past year than in its first 8 years of existence due to a thing called The Space Federation (drawing a diagram yet? and I said corps were bulky..). Fed aims to offer a support network – fiscal sponsorship, basic paperwork, mentorship, etc – to hacker, maker, artistic, coworking, etc spaces across the US. This is a big part of The School Factory because we see these spaces as where people go to continue their educations or to find ways of learning that they didn’t get in our current educational systems.

So, all of that is fo realz. School Factory‘s new site went live last month (though it’s still not fleshed out enough for a big publicity push, so please keep it to yourselves, at least for a bit). Jigsaw got mentioned specifically by The White House.  W.     T.       F.

I talked with Beth Kolko a couple weeks ago about linking up Jigsaw with some of UW’s programs. Ezekiel and I are working on linking his certification system into education outside of academic settings. Jordan and I are working on an OpenDoor Hack-A-Thon to link up membership status with space access, potentially between spaces across the country.

And and and. AND. So that tour I went on? For Geeks Without Bounds? Well. Currently submitting proposals to become the director of GWOB as a program of the School Factory. Which would mean it would be potentially sponsored by Tropo. And other big organizations. Which would mean I would be paid to do the stuff I love doing. Set of my time to GWOB, paid; set of my time to School Factory, eventually paid; and set of my time to Jigsaw, as always. Again, the big proposal is not official yet, but my being paid is. But still. How cool would that be?! Link communities to learn to use their powers for good, which I do anyway, but on a bigger scale, and be able to eat more than ramen? Plan huge events that may or may not involve zombie apocalypse scenarios? ZOMG.

I am bouncing in my seat. And not just because I failed at not drinking coffee.