Hello from Hyperlink!
We're looking closely at learning communities…in particular, thinking about how they can be better!
You may recall we recently ran some experiments with internet clubs. These were a lot of fun — but hard to be self-sustaining on their own. One reason for this is simple: clubs require activation energy that's a lot easier to harness in existing communal contexts.
Our current hypothesis is that Hyperlink is best, not for one-off projects and cohorts and gatherings, but as a community hub for persistent groups doing a range of different things together.
We have a vision of a learning network where people participate in all kinds of vibrant communities to do meaningful things together. We're working backward to find specific things that'd be useful for specific communities.
A new pitch for learning communities
We want to work with learning communities that would benefit from a better social hub for complex, creative, diverse community activity. We're trying to figure out the best pitch we can make here, and we'd love to hear what you think! Current version is something like:
Hyperlink is a platform for learning communities to make a vibrant virtual campus with flexible structure for members to self-organize diverse social activity — in other words, making it way easier to run a new internet school :)
Here's what we think are key things that make Hyperlink special:
- abundance of spaces — easy to make many persistent spaces for many kinds of meaningful activity, like classes / cohorts, events, peer groups, and projects
- composable campus — link these spaces together in modular ways, as you grow and evolve, co-created by both learners and facilitators
- expressive and customizable — made for doing creative things together, collaborative at its core, and easy to reconfigure for emergent activity
Does this resonate? Curious what you think!
If you're involved in running a community and this sounds interesting, we'd love to chat. We can share more about this vision, learn about your process, and talk about concrete ways we can make Hyperlink better for your community.
Visions of vibrant communities
A related question — a community prompt — a speculative exercise — ✨
Imagine your favorite learning communities — on the internet, in your neighborhood, or both.
What makes these communities so good? If you could wave a magic wand, what would you take from your favorite community and apply to every learning community to make them better?
This could relate to how the space is designed, the tools used, the ways people gather, the things you make and share…whatever! We'd love to hear your dreams and visions.
We made a Hyperlink Space and added a few ideas — share yours here! Or hit reply to send us thoughts privately.
We've got some ideas cooking to make Hyperlink better for the learning community vision, and some communities we'd like to prototype…new Internet Homesteading, anyone? 👀 More soon!
—The Hyperlink Team