Your monthly non-spammy-gif-heavy newsletter from your friends at oio.

🍎 An oio kind of school

Hello oio friends! We hope you packed your lunch (with a u) for this month's issue of oio news, because we’re going back to school, and it just so happens that this school is a villa with a pool in southern Italy. 👀

This month’s newsletter is focused on the school launch (with an a), but you can find the usual collection of cool links at the bottom. We are cooking up something big that we’ll be launching soon, so as always, keep an eye on our Discord and social media. Not on Discord? Join here!

⚠️ A quick note on suspicious links. Many of you reached out to inform us that Gmail is flagging the links in our newsletters as phishing. Rest assured, the links we share are safe—we’re not phishing ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) . We believe this issue is caused by our provider, Buttondown, re-hashing the links. We're considering switching providers to avoid these disruptions, but for the current issue, you may still see a Gmail notification.

🗞 oio News

peek into the oioverse

🟢 oio.school applications are open

A one-week summer workshop, in person, in a large mansion in Puglia (southern Italy). The idea is to live and work together - us from the oio team, and you, the participants. Together we’ll be designing, prototyping, and building working products using AI and emerging technologies. There will be a design brief for the week to follow, just like the ones we’ve been running previously in schools and universities. You can find some examples of similar courses we’ve been running recently here, here and here.

We started it to create a friendly environment to practice your skills and knowledge in the field of interaction design and creative coding while learning from experienced professionals and meeting like-minded people in a beautiful setting.

🤔 Why a school?

It simply felt like the right thing to do at the right time. The idea of piloting something in the education space has been simmering in our heads for quite some time. From a trajectory perspective, it also makes perfect sense, as both our founders, Matteo Loglio and Simone Rebaudengo, have many years of experience teaching classes in design schools around the world, and we’ve always dreamed about doing something of our own. The summer format seemed like the perfect way to kick things off simply.

We see this first edition of the oio school as a pilot, a prototype, an MVP, an experiment to see if people would really like to spend a week with us building products with AI and other technologies while enjoying Italian aperitivos by the seaside.

If this prototype goes well, the vision is to do more events, make them more accessible, and potentially expand our education arm even further. Education is something we’re passionate about, and we believe there’s plenty of space for another kind of school, the oio school!

A quick note on accessibility

For this pilot, we prioritised making the school happen. To do so, we priced the course fairly, barely making a profit. The early bird price for one week in the villa, with two meals and participation in the course, is €1,280, while the course only is €670. Despite this, we understand that money can be a barrier for many of our followers who would like to participate.

For this reason, we launched a scholarship, aka The Golden Ticket. It’s an opportunity for anyone to participate in the workshop without paying the fees. We can only offer one spot for now, but we hope to expand these opportunities in the future as the school grows. Keep reading to find out more.

🎫 Golden Ticket

In the spirit of the scholarship written above, we’re offering a free spot in the school, granting everything that a standard ticket offers, for free. To participate, all you have to do is submit a spreadsheet. What? Yes. A Google Sheet document to unleash your creativity. You can use text, images, formulas, or anything else that comes to mind. Push the boundaries, disrupt the structure, or simply jot down a few lines—or nothing at all. No wrong answers here! We'll be on the lookout for the wildest spreadsheet to award the golden ticket.

The deadline is in just a few days so hurry up! You have to submit it before 00:00 BST on June 3rd.

🦄 Spreadsheet inspiration

Did you really think we didn’t create a massive board of spreadsheet inspiration? Think again! There’s a treasure hidden somewhere on the oio.school website. It might be too well hidden, so we’ve made a hint video to help you find it. 👀

💰 Save some money on the ticket!

We still have a few Early Bird tickets left, but they are selling fast! If you’re thinking of participating, now is the time to get a ticket and save some money.

If you want to save even more, roughly €40 depending on the ticket, please contact us directly at hello@oio.studio. This way, you can pay via bank transfer and avoid credit card processing fees.