Sarah Bradley and Alan Webb are the co-founders and core facilitators at OpenMasters.org - a platform for community-powered and self-declared master degrees. It's an unconventional education you design for yourself around a vision of the person you want to become. 
On this episode, we discuss community approaches to learning, liberation, the knowledge of self, offloading the mind of a teacher, the value of unmeasurable learning and we play the future of education through the eyes of 2 imaginary progressive policymakers.

Christer windeløv-Lidzélius was a former student and now the director at Kaospilot in Denmark - a hybrid design and business school, shaking the higher education landscape in Europe and across the oceans. Kaospilot was launched in 1991 as a project management school for the cultural sector. Created during deep cultural and political changes in Europe, the school had a rebellious view of how leadership and changes should take place within a newly shaped world. The school evolved into a holistic change agency that sits at a forefront of education and youth entrepreneurship, inspiring new pedagogy initiatives and questioning what an elite education should be.

Thomas Heide, a full-time philosopher based in Aarhus, Denmark. He invented the change experience equation and his vision of “A home for lost Geniuses” put the foundation for Kaospilot Denmark, in early days. After withdrawing himself from the Kaospilot school in the early 90s, Thomas dedicated his life’s work to understand how we can generate world-changing ideas, by completely rethinking our understanding of the universe. His equation of change experience is an easy but insightful tool to use in designing sustainable solutions in work environments, but most importantly in building high impact learning situations.

Stefan Leitner-Sidl is the co-founder of Markhof - a community space in Vienna with a holistic approach to learning and working, across generations, in order to master the challenges of the future together.

In this episode we discuss the concept of co-learning, engineering serendipity, dealing with social realities, and teaching for wisdom and personal enlightenment.

Chiara Carlino, project manager at Cineca - the biggest University consortium in Italy and communication manager at Bestr - the Italian open badge platform. In this episode we discuss the current state of micro-certification, getting a degree by combining learnings from multiple organizations, democratizing the training market, and building trust for digital degree providers.

César Marques, a physics and chemistry teacher, turned innovator at Almada Professional School in Portugal. We discovered Cesar via the HundrED.org ambassadorship program and he inspired us to shed some light on the vocational schools and the innovators from within the system. A student of a vocational school himself, and later on a physics and chemistry teacher, Cesar got tired of classical lecturing and social stereotypes towards professional school.

Show guest - Carlos Moreno-Romero - a Colombia-born passionate educator and researcher with an interest in social sciences, culture, history, and anthropology. After a visit to El Arbol de Ayelen, we seat down in Charlie's apartment to discuss the state of alternative education in Spain and at the global level, but also look at education through the context of culture and history. 

Episode guest - Tomas Diez - Venezuela-born Urbanist specialized in digital fabrication and its implications in the future of cities. He is the director of Fab Lab Barcelona at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, the Fab Academy global coordinator, and the European project manager of the Fab Foundation. In this episode we focused on a the state of learning within fablabs, the future of cities and designing one's own life experiences.

Show guest - Lucian Cosinschi - the regional director at Minerva Schools Europe. In this episode we focused on a recent book published by Minerva Schools which is called “Building the Intentional University” - the story and the philosophy behind the initiative to completely rethink elite higher education. 

Show notes: bit.ly/eq-09
Music credit: My-Sleeping-Karma

Show guest - Abhijit Sinha - a young innovator, and the founder of Project DEFY.  This episode was recorded inside a nook - meaning a self-organized community learning space, hosted at Protovillage, 100 km away from Bangalore, in India. We dive into the story of project Defy, take a critical stand on the schooling system and imagine the future of education in India.

Vaibhav Chhabra is the co-founder of Maker’s Asylum and STEAM school in India. A mechanical engineer by profession (Boston University), Vaibhav shares a passion for woodwork, building machines, flying, diving and winning at ping pong.
In this episode we focus on the story of STEAM School - a 10-day multidisciplinary program, where 100 people from all ages and walks of life, come together, in a maker space, to solve grand social challenges.

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu is a researcher, teacher, non-fiction and fiction writer, and a public intellectual. Chika holds a Ph.D. in African Development and Policy Studies from Howard University in Washington D.C. In this episode, we discuss stories leading to a career as indigenous knowledge expert, the current state of curriculum on the continent and a vision for the future of Africa, when it comes to education, dignity, and progress. 

Nergis El Berria is a founding staff member at Ecole Dynamique Paris - a democratic School based on Sudbury Valley School model. After graduating from a business school in France and venturing into corporate HR, Nergis turned her attention towards education, first as a teacher in the public sector and later on the democratic school network.  

Over the last twelve years, François Taddei served as the co-founder and director of CRI Paris (Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity) which experiments and spreads new ways of learning, teaching, conducting research and mobilizing collective intelligence in life, learning and digital sciences. We cover a wide range of subjects, from the story of CRI to collective intelligence, the future of work and the needs to question our society. 

When like-minded people join their passion and resources there is serendipity. Thanks to my old friend Dirk van Haag, I was introduced to Kai Thierhoff of Thierhoff Consulting and Cologne Headquarters who in turn told me the story of Aktive Schule Köln, the alternative school his wife, Corinna Thierhoff, co-founded. I was extremely interested in how two business people and parents approach the challenges within our current education system, so I immediately showed my interest in recording an interview with them.

I met Greg while being a student at CRI Paris, at a conference led by Francois Taddei with the aim to start a dialog around ways we can build a "learning planet". Greg and his team at codesign-ithelped facilitate the ideation process  for few dozen educators, policy makers, entrepreneurs and researcher equally passionate about the future of education and the vision of building highly autonomous but interconnected learning societies.

On a rainy summer day in Amsterdam, Tudor Tarlev of experimentQ, interviewed a long time friend and education visionary - Floris Koot - the man of 80+ job titles. Below you can find more about Floris and browse through the show notes.