Week 13 here at SolarAcademy.

It’s been almost 3 months since formally launching SolarAcademy. What does that mean? Formally launching SolarAcademy? In reality, SolarAcademy has been in my mind as a concept for over 8 years. My first inspiration for it was seeing KhanAcademy. Then I thought “How great would it be to do the same thing for solar knowledge?”

And then my thoughts evolved to “How great would it be if I could share knowledge as I learn things?” in the context of work, in the context of solar energy, in the context of powering people, buildings, communities, in a more efficient, economic, and equitable way.

And then my thoughts shifted to”How great it would be if we could create systems of power, knowledge & energy where power (knowledge) and energy are harnessed and are shared and circulated to the greater collective as we generate and harness that power (and knowledge)”… So that is how the SolarAcademy cencept evolved in my mind…

And here I am 3 months into this journey and I still do not really have a true MVP (minimum viable product) or a traditional startup team or a traditional acute focus. I am working on a number of things (creating knowledge bases, courses, and development projects) all at the same time and seeing which of those things show a growing edge potential first.

The past week has been about creating our first online course.  “Become a Solar Entrepreneur – A course for Electrical & General Contractors”.

I made some progress yet I am still not where I would like to be. By now, I would have liked to nail down a detailed agenda and an intro video about the course. I am optimistic that that will come together in the next few weeks and shortly thereafter I hope to have the entire content nail down.

One thing that will be unique about this course will be its collaborative nature. As I create the content, unlike most other online courses out there, there will not be a single teacher that just talks to the camera for countless hours. I will incorporate and curate content from numerous other solar experts into the course. This way, students will not only get the best information from the experts of each area but they will also get to make numerous connections to key people in the industry.

So, I picked “Collective Power” as the theme for this week’s post. That is partly influenced by the “collaborative nature of the content creation” that I envision for my first course nd for the SolarAcademy platform. And also it is a reminder. That we might think we are powerful when we have enough resources to be a truly independent individual, but the reality is that, we are connected social beings and we are most powerful, happy, and healthy when are working as a collective.