BLOG EVERYTHING

We've had some complaints over the last day or so about suspicious emails from "Dammy Bruce", a suspected scammer using the School of Everything message system. We've suspended the account.

If at any time you think an enquiry might be suspicious, or you're asked for financial details or other sensitive personal information, please do report the user to School of Everything as soon as possible. We will suspend any user until we are confident that their enquiry is genuine.

Last September, School of Everything was a finalist for Seedcamp and applications are now open for this year's competition.

If you've got an idea and you're thinking of putting it into action, all of us would completely recommend you enter. It's a fantastic experience and as Saul mentions on his blog - a great way to validate your idea.

The 2gether08 Festival of Ideas and Action kept Everyone busy last week. Alongside a packed programme of talks and workshops (including one on social entrepreneurship and government that included Paul) the Fringe events took a playful approach to bringing people together.

At the Fringe, School of Everything hosted The Five-Minute Teach, a series of mini-sessions where people taught something you wouldn't expect them to teach. The only rule was: you have to be able to teach it in five minutes.

Mecca Ibrahim taught us how to save a fortune on microwave popcorn by making it in a paper bag.

Here's what was left of the popcorn very soon afterwards.

Tom Taylor taught 8 Ways To Find Out Where You Are (including how to magnetise a needle if you don't have a magnet). (Here's the presentation he made.)

(Photo originally by Aleksi Aaltonen (Thanks, Aleksi!)
Ben Matthews taught Business Card Origami. Click here for an audience video of his session.

Thanks also to Lucy Wills (teaching Open Sauce), Safiya Ahmed and Dom Campbell (teaching The Perfect Cup Of Tea), Jess and everyone at 2gether08 for lettings us do it, and everyone else who joined in the fun.

Videos to follow...

Team Everything has grown again. Hot on the heels of Sangeet, Everything's new designer, we're very happy to welcome Hugo Rumens to Team Everything. When he's not playing the guitar or being a bit of a foodie he's a brilliant developer, and we're delighted to have him on board.

Unlike Sangeet, he was quite happy for me to take a picture of him for the blog. But this business of not taking pictures of the Science Department at work is starting to be a bit of a tradition. So here's a picture of not very much of Hugo, along with that most essential Science Department tool: the double espresso.

Welcome to the team, Hugo!

Last night School of Everything won a New Statesman New Media Award, in the Inform and Educate category.

Here's the Every Thing, posing with our shiny new trophy.

Needless to say, we're delighted. Thanks to the judges, the New Statesman and everyone who nominated us, cheered us on and generally spread the love. And of course, commiserations to other finalists Dad Info and Futurelab's Powerleague too.

Here are a few of Team Everything being dignified and restrained in their celebrations last night.

We want to help people learn what they really really want - when, where and how they want. But up to now, we've been more focussed on supporting teachers than learners. In fact, if you didn't want to teach something, no-one could even find you on the site.

Well, fear not. After much technical huffing and puffing, today we're launching personal profiles for everyone. And we want to know what you really want to learn.

Here's how it works:

1. Log in or sign up for a free account and join the community of learners.
2. Add subjects to your profile to tell the world what you really want to learn.
3. Other teachers and learners on the site can see what you're interested in and offer to teach it, or to learn it with you.

We want to create an education system that's truly focussed on the needs of learners. If you tell us what you want to learn, we'll tell the world, and help you find teachers and learners near you who can make it happen. If you want, we'll even notify you by e-mail when new teachers register for your subjects.

So, what do you really want to learn? I want to learn lots of things. Start building your profile and share what you want to learn too. And why not start your own subject and invite your friends to learn it with you?

We've been nominated for the UK Catalyst Awards, in the Self-Help category. Hurray!

And as if that weren't enough, we're also finalists for the New Statesman New Media Awards, in the Inform and Educate category.

More news as soon as we have it...

We're very pleased to welcome Sangeet Gyawali to Team Everything. He'll be working on design and usability, and has already kicked off with some great ideas.

He tried to hide when we pointed a camera at him, so here's a picture of the very, very large Mac he'll be working at instead.

We've been looking around for inspiration about how to make School of Everything an amazing place to work. One fantastic story is that of Semco in Brazil. When Ricardo Semler inherited the company in the early 1980s he began to wonder why democracy was something that was talked about in relation to government but never to companies.

Early on, he tried things like letting the employees choose the colour of paint in the factories. But as the workers starting taking control of more and more, Semco began to experiment in startling ways. The company started to let employees choose their own salaries. They said there should only be managers where employees deemed they needed them. They did away with secretaries and as many 'menial' jobs as they could. And perhaps most importantly, they did away with the traditional hierarchical pyramid of decision making. Almost no decisions were taken by the company board - they were taken by the employees themselves.

Of course there are some big differences between Semco and School of Everything so it doesn't all apply to us. When Semler took over Semco it was a large, established company with very simple metrics of success. School of Everything is a very small, start-up company. In many ways that gives us an advantage because we don't have to convince anybody that the old ways of doing things need to change. But it also means that at this stage we're really just setting the conditions for future growth. So what are we doing?

Well first of all, we have a policy of having open books. All the company finances are available for anybody in the team to look at. Then anybody can come to our Monday meeting with an idea for spending money. If they can convince the team it's worth a try, we go for it. All our salaries are also open. Everybody knows what everybody else is getting paid. And finally, later in the year when we do a salary review, salaries will be set and agreed by the whole team, not by the management.

There are a few other things we do that help - mainly to improve communication. Perhaps the most successful is that we have lunch together every day. It's amazing how much information you can share just by spending some time together away from the screens.

It's just a start, and we know we will sometimes struggle to blend decisiveness and democracy. But we think it's important to make School of Everything a place where everybody shares responsibility for decision making.

What else do you think we should we be doing? Or are we mad to be trying to put Semler into practice in a start-up?

• Ricardo Semler's book Maverick is available here
• You can download a Demos pamphlet I wrote called Disorganisation for free here
• Read about Pat Kane's Play Ethic (which was a massive influence on Disorganisation) here.
• And you can find out more about workplace democracy in this article by WorldBlu's Traci Fenton.

Everything HQ had a surprise visit this afternoon - all the way from Lithuania.

Darius Damalakas, a programmer and School of Everything teacher, flew over for a tech conference - or so he thought.

"I turned up at the venue," he explained, "but when I sat down in what I thought was the first session I suddenly realised I'd gatecrashed an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting".

It turned out that the conference date had changed - but they hadn't bothered to tell him. So having come all the way from Lithuania, and finding himself at a loose end, he decided to come and say hello to Team Everything.

We've put him up on Dougald's sofa, and he'll be joining us at Minibar tonight. If you're heading to Minibar, come and help us redeem the London tech meetup world by buying him a beer.