The Learning Collective

Choose what you do next. Together.

For experienced tech people who know something needs to change, but aren't sure what yet.

  • Work out what to keep and what to hand off to AI
  • Trade skills, learn from each other, build in public
  • Small groups, async-friendly, cameras optional

Pull up a chair. Or bring a table.

Try this

What would you keep?

Sort a few familiar parts of the work. There are no wrong answers.

Press a task to move it: first to Keep, then to Hand off to AI, then back. You can also drag tasks into a zone.

Keep

Press a task, or drag it here.

Hand off to AI

Press a task twice, or drag it here.

In short

Who it's for, and what it's about

Who it's for

People in tech who know something needs to change, but aren't sure what yet. Any role: engineers, designers, researchers, product people, managers. Employed, between jobs, or rethinking all of it.

What it's about

Learning from each other and sharing what you've learned. Building new skills, trading the ones you already have, and working on public projects with people who get it. Members also get early access to guest sessions where people building new things walk through their work.

Why now

Work is changing fast, and it's normal to feel that as a loss, including a loss of say over where your career goes. But people will always be needed, and adapting to a changing world is what humans do best. It's our oldest strength. Let's reclaim it, and decide together what the next adaptation looks like.

How it works

  1. Join.Join an active community, most likely on Slack, which you probably already use. Bring an idea, a skill to share or barter, or just curiosity.
  2. Pitch or pick.Live or async, members pitch ideas and gather collaborators, or join a project that pulls them in.
  3. Build in the open, together.Community led. Members host as soon as they want to.

What projects? Anything that lets you keep doing the work you love: tools, writing, research, teaching, a small business. Built in public, a project becomes your living resume: proof of how you think, not just a list of what you've done.

You leave with something you made, not a channel you muted.

The bigger picture

What we'll explore

What good work looks like after AI, a few open questions, and the first working group.

Nobody has settled what good work looks like after AI. The people doing the work should help decide. Along the way we want to get better at what we do, and become better humans while we're at it: more generous with what we know, more honest about what we don't.

Open questions about the future of work

These are explorations, not answers. Each of us has to find our own, and it is easier with people asking the same questions.

  • What work should you keep, and what should you give away?
  • What do you want to learn, what suits you best, and how do you want to evolve so you own where your career goes next?
  • Can you make yourself easy to find, so the job comes to you?Will that even work? I don't know yet. It is how I found people when I was hiring as a CPO, so we'll test it together, in public.

Working groups on what's new

Hands-on groups for learning the new hard skills together, proposed and run by members.

First idea on the tableA DSPy and Jev learning and working group.

Have a topic? Pitch it in the first open session.

The founding drive, in the open

$1,000 is the floor, not the ceiling. Pledges stay open until Nov 13, and every dollar past the goal is stronger proof when we ask authors, educators and toolmakers for group deals.

Pledge by the deadline and you help pick the first projects and get first choice of cohort.

What your pledge proves

Your pledge is proof, not a purchase.

  • That this is worth buildingEnough people willing to put a little money behind it.
  • That there is a real community hereAuthors, educators and toolmakers offer more to a group that has shown up. One deal we would love to land: a group discount on an upcoming book about AI evals for engineers, and on the work of others teaching how to use AI well. The more we raise, the better the deals we can ask for.

Founding members, everyone who pledges by the deadline, help pick the first projects and get first choice of cohort.

If we reach the goal, the money goes to exactly that: group deals on books and courses, workshop presenters, and software discounts for members.

The way we work is being reshaped this year, mostly without us in the room.

Who is "I"? A short note from Mark

What to expect

  • Your email is never shared, never sold.
  • Leave with one click.
  • No sponsors buying access to you, and no recruiters mining the list.
  • Some sessions may include coaching, like finding your why or defining your next role. Always opt-in, clearly labelled, and offered because members asked for it.
  • Small groups notice when you go quiet, with a quiet check-in, never a spotlight.
  • No icebreakers, no forced networking. Write first, talk when you want to.
  • A place to be honest about how hard this change is, with our attention on what's next.

Nobody pays to reach you here. If that ever changes, members hear about it first, in writing, and anything paid is labelled as paid.

A note from Mark

Who is starting this, and why it should belong to the people in it.

I'm Mark. I've spent my working life in software, and like a lot of you I'm working out what comes next. I don't have the answer, and I don't think anyone does on their own.

I'm kicking this off and will facilitate the first sessions myself for a month or two, but I want it to belong to the people in it, and I'd love co-hosts from day one.

This is a test: if it doesn't reach the goal, there is nothing to pay.

Mark

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