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We are all experts

This time I will be writing about a story that really caught my attention during a session at OuiShare Fest in Paris (the biggest global event about the collaborative economy). The speaker, Jordi Llonch Esteve, came to talk about how from a very early age in school we are taught to compete among us, always trying to be ahead of each other and be among the top in class. Consequently he always used to see other classmates as rivals, and so he didn’t use to share his knowledge with them. But nevertheless what he was doing was fine, what it was meant to be: study hard to try and overcome the rest and to get the best grades possible.

Jordi had a dream since he was a kid: to become an airline pilot. He studied hard and entered one of the best aviation schools in Europe, so his dream was getting closer and closer by the day. However, he and his classmates continued competing among each other and acting in the same way, without sharing much knowledge. “Do you know that feeling when you think you’re doing something right, you’re trying to be the best, to achieve the most, but you still feel bad somehow?” – he mentioned during the session.

Jordi became a pilot and his dream came true, but during a long break offered by his company he decided to go back to university to study something more creative. This time with a different approach: from day 1 he started sharing all his knowledge with all his classmates and the result was amazing. The more he shared, the more others were willing to share and now it was not only about him, it was about all of them – a community as a whole. In 4 years they shared more than 500 notes, created a group of blogs and became an “alliance of experts” before finishing university. Every single one of them had something to share with others and this became their vision.

Some time after having this experience, Jordi decided to leave his dream job as a pilot to dedicate full time expanding his vision of how “each and every one of us are experts to someone” – which is true, the fact is that each and every one of us have skills that we can share with others. This idea shaped into a project called sharingacademy.com – a p2p platform for private tuitions among students. “We believe that university is the best place for collaboration and knowledge transfer.” – he stated.

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It’s a useful tool to expand your skills and expertise, which at the same time serves a current need in the present global landscape: “Students often think that they just have to be present at university 4 years, get good grades and get their degree in order to secure a job. But it doesn’t work this way, 4 or 5 years at university does not assure you a job.” – mentioned Jordi. Perhaps in the future we could see the sharingacademy platform expanding beyond: “We want that, starting from university, all of us share everything we know with another person. Think about what you’re good at: are you a good cook? do you play the guitar? – share your knowledge with other people, we are all experts.”

This post was originally published on July 21st 2015 in Spanish language for El Faro de Ceuta newspaper (printed and digital), at the author’s weekly section.

You can also see Jordi Llonch’s session below.

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3 thoughts on “We are all experts

  1. Thanks a lot for that wonderful explanation of how Sharing Academy was created. Keep up the work on the Sharing Economy, it’s a pretty rewarding area and it will allow you to meet amazing people 🙂

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