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Scratchwerk ^EDU
"Scratchwerk ^Edu," hosted by Ronnie King, CEO of Scratchwerk Tech and founder of the MyVillage Project, is a dynamic podcast at the nexus of Black communities, technology, business, education, and current events. Each episode dives deep into the role of emerging technologies in promoting equity, enhancing workforce development, and reshaping education.
Join Ronnie as he explores how technology can be leveraged to uplift and empower marginalized communities through insightful discussions with experts, activists, and innovators. From the practicalities of tech entrepreneurship to the impact of community-led initiatives, "Scratchwerk Edu" is an essential resource for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and social change.
Learn about the success of tech incubators such as "Coding in Color", which has trained over 2,000 students in emerging skills and secured over $800k in funding to support young Black tech entrepreneurs, and discover how initiatives like the MyVillage Project Community Fund has united organizations and disbursed over $4M to support 220+ Black-led nonprofits across the country. Tune in to be informed, inspired, and involved in reshaping a more equitable tech future.
Scratchwerk ^EDU
Everyday Stress Conversation : How Silly Talk Sparks Innovation
What if we brought the same playful energy, the same permission to imagine without judgment, to discussions about AI replacing jobs or the changing nature of education? What if these conversations didn't have to feel like doom and gloom?When we remove the pressure of solving global problems and instead approach them with genuine curiosity, something remarkable happens – creativity flourishes.
The most innovative solutions often emerge not from stressed thinking, but from allowing our minds to wander through possibilities without immediate demands for feasibility. That business idea or community program you've been seeking might be waiting at the end of what initially seems like an impractical thought experiment.
Join us in breaking down these artificial conversation barriers.
I don't think we're having enough fun. I think that we need to have more silly conversations, conversations that don't make any other. When we get with our family around the dinner table, when we're talking with friends and we're out and about, I don't think we're being silly enough. I don't think we are having enough fun around our conversations. I like to be educated but I'm so frustrated. Hello to my loneliness. I guess the endurance is bliss. Take me back to before the noon.
Speaker 1:So I typically go to the gym in the mornings. I try to get there around about 6.45 am to try to get a quick little workout in. I won't brag on it because I'm one of those people. If I feel like you know, if I can just get inside of the gym, like physically, I'm counting that as a win. And then everything else that comes along with that is just icing on the cake. But that is my, my normal routine and I get a quick kind of weightlifting session in and then I normally finish it off on the treadmill, just really kind of 25 minutes or so of walking.
Speaker 1:Don't, don't judge me. They say walking is one of the best exercises, but last week I saw this really a gym regular but, but this guy coming walking in from the parking lot, so from the treadmill you can kind of see him walking in from the parking lot. He comes here all the time around the same time and he walks into the gym and he gets on the stationary bike which is literally directly in front of me, props his cell phone on the stand, opens up his TikTok on his phone and immediately gets to pedaling and pedaling and scrolling on his TikTok. And I'm not trying to be nosy, I really don't care, most of the time I have my headphones on, but I mean it's like right in front of me. I can't help but look at it, it's like my line of sight, so I can literally see every post and video that he's watching as he's scrolling on his on his phone and you know it was like 30 minutes of adults doing dance routines, either a dancing or slipping and falling on something. And he is, I mean, giggling and cracking himself up the entire time. I mean scroll after scroll. I mean he's on this bike. You know, one hand on the handle, the other hand scrolling, he's on a stationary bike and he's cracking himself up. Just reel after reel. Folks falling and dancing, adults.
Speaker 1:And I guess you know, we all need a little laughter sometimes, for sure. So I'm not knocking that at all. So we definitely need laughter, especially around the things that just don't matter, right? I mean, you know, who am I to judge? We should be very much able to just smile, laugh, imagine around these things that really does not matter, I mean, who cares? Right?
Speaker 1:I mean, if you ask somebody the question, who's going to win the NBA championship this year? Or you know, shoot, where should I travel for my birthday? Would you rather have? You know the social media viral question would you rather have $500,000 or dinner with Jay-Z? Is Drake going to come back from this Kendrick Lamar beef?
Speaker 1:What might happen if the US dollar loses its value across the globe? What if this is our last normal general election for president? What if we're not going to have school or work anymore within the next 10 years? I mean, we should just be thinking about these random questions that really don't matter, right? Let's talk about these random things, and I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1:Some of those questions seem like mindless, fun random things to ask ourselves, like is Drake going to come back from the Kindle with Marbief? But some of those questions don't really go together, ronnie. They seem a little. They seem like serious questions, right? Those last few especially don't seem like mindless questions. Those are stressful questions that you're asking around the US dollar and what if this is our last general election? Those are stressful questions that you're asking.
Speaker 1:My argument really is they're literally asked with the same or at least the same tone, the same mindless activity as the other ones. Right, we should take them the same way, no matter if we're asking about where should we travel for our birthday or what might happen if the US dollar loses its value across the globe. So then the next question you might ask me is okay, well, it doesn't impact me, right? I mean, you're asking me questions. You know it doesn't impact me the way traveling across the globe does. Right, that birthday travel impacts me.
Speaker 1:Or you might say well, I don't want to talk or think about things that I can't control, but I mean you can't control who wins the NBA championship. So why are we talking about that? Well, well, I can't see whatever you're talking about. I can't see that ever happening. I can't see us getting to a point where we don't have any schools or any work. I don't want to talk about that because I don't want to talk about things that probably will never happen. I mean, I don't think it'll ever happen that somebody's going to offer you $500,000 or dinner with Jay-Z either. But you ask yourself the question over dinner with some folks, over drinks. Y'all talked about that, right? Well, that stuff you're talking about, ronnie, is it's gloom and doom stuff. That's. That's too stressful. I don't want to. I don't want to stress about that today.
Speaker 1:But who determined that it has to be all doom and gloom to talk about fun, random things such as is this our last election election, right?
Speaker 1:What if the US dollar loses its value, right? What if there is no such thing as education or school or work anymore? Why does that have to be all doom and gloom? I don't think it has to be doom and gloom at all. Actually, I think sometimes the only reason it might feel like that is because, you know, maybe we don't feel like we actually have the answer to the question. If we are asking ourselves things like well, you know what happens if there's no more work or no more school, right? We feel like we don't have the answer to those questions. But even to that extent, I'm not even sure if that's the real reason why we feel like it's doom and gloom. I mean, we don't have the exact answer to what's going to happen between Drake and Kendrick, right? We don't have the exact answer to that. So why is it so doom and gloom to think about some of these extreme type of questions? It might be because there's a possibility that these extreme things literally just scare us. That said, we should absolutely be looking at these questions exactly the same.
Speaker 1:Take the pressure off of everything that we are even talking about and just examine the question, just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it. You don't have to. We don't have to know or exactly have the solution. As it relates to the US dollar losing its value globally. That's not even really up to you. It's not up to us, right? You don't have to solve that, so you don't even have to be stressed out about it. You don't actually have to solve the Kendrick, lamar and Drake beef, so you don't have to even be stressed out about it. Right? The problem of AI taking over jobs and education you don't actually have to be the one to solve that issue, so why not talk about it? Why not talk about it in the same effortless, mindless, silliness, imaginary way that we talk about any of these other things, such as $500,000 versus dinner with Jay-Z. Right, we are not responsible for figuring out the Drake and Lamar beef.
Speaker 1:It's highly unlikely we would ever be given the scenario of five hundred thousand dollars or a dinner with Jay-Z, and we don't have to solve the issue of AI taking over all these jobs. You know, you don't believe, maybe, that it's going to be possible to not have schools and work. Maybe you don't have to even believe that. But why not talk about it, right? Why not talk about? Let's just, let's just not even dream, because some again, some of this stuff might not be what we want. But let's just imagine. Let's just imagine what if? What if this was our last election? What would we do? What would we do again, not in a stressful way, but what if this is our last election? Let's just brainstorm it out. Let's let's mind map that out. What would we do? What would that look like? How might that impact us? Could we be doing something right now, if that was the case, that would maybe help us in that scenario or hurt us, rather.
Speaker 1:These are some of the things that are worth just exploring. Just exploring and bringing those things into the conversation. Again, there's nothing wrong with talking about all the things, about all the possible scenarios. There's nothing wrong with even laughing about a TikTok dance over and over again for 30 minutes In scenarios. There's nothing wrong with even laughing about a TikTok dance over and over again for 30 minutes. In theory, there's nothing wrong with that. But we absolutely should be exploring other different conversations, other different silly I guess you can say scenarios, and not allowing those discussions to stress us out, not allowing it to stress us out.
Speaker 1:One of the statements that I've told this to a few people recently. So Van Jones I'm not going to say I'm not a fan necessarily, but I don't listen to him a lot on television but what I will say is that recently he made a statement at a conference and I thought it just resonated with me. I've been sharing it almost with everybody, so I got to give him credit for it. But he was simply saying that 99.999% of Black people in America, or across the world for that matter, don't know a doggone thing about AI. They know nothing about artificial intelligence. Not only do they not know about how to develop AI tools and machine learning models, not only do they not know about that? But 99.9% of black folks don't even know how to use AI, can't talk intelligently about AI, and that's a very, very sad thing. That's a very sad thing. However, however, ninety nine, point nine nine nine percent of white people don't know anything about AI, can't develop it, can't create machine learning models, can't, can't talk intelligently about it, don't know anything about it. Don't know anything about it. Don't know anything about it.
Speaker 1:Now is actually the time to have some curious, silly, imaginary conversations around what is possible in the future, and it doesn't even have to be true, right, it doesn't even need to really matter or be feasible. Even need to really matter or be feasible. But why not think about it? Why not go off on a five minute mindless journey around? What if AI actually replaced all the jobs that we are working on right now? What if there is no real reason for students to be following the same curriculum that we've had in place over the last 80 years in education? What if we have to completely reimagine that? What if we're being forced to do that?
Speaker 1:Let's have a simple conversation around that, right, why not include the impossible, uncontrollable, unrealistic ideas into a discussion with our friends and our family, you know, at least sometime this week, some time today, and my suggestion is that maybe, maybe, from all of that silly conversation around what may or may not happen, what's realistic, what's unrealistic, around five hundred thousand dollars versus a dinner with Jay-Z, drake versus Kendrick maybe, maybe, out of these silly conversations around AI, the future of the dollar, the future of America, the future of these elections, without it stressing us out, something meaningful comes out of that a business idea, an idea for a community program.
Speaker 1:We can't solve it all, but maybe we come up with an idea for a program, an idea for a new product, a new business venture. Right, maybe there is something out of all that fantastical imagineering exercise, discussion that we have that is actually tangible for our community. Take the stress off of it and let's have a silly conversation amongst one another about what may or may not happen in the future. This is the Scratchwork Podcast, where we don't fear the future. We create it. One thought, one idea, one dream at a time. Peace.