When part of the NewCampus team moved to Dubai to start a colearning space, we hadn’t the faintest idea of how it would turn out to be. It was a new untested playground for us, but we were ready for a good game!

We began with a few experimental classes where we had global entrepreneurs hosting dialogues and workshops on various pertinent topics from mind-controlled robots and storytelling to marketing automation and blockchain.

While we built an engaged community of 1500 over the short-span of 6 months in Dubai, we were also gathering a world of insights from our campus hosts we met over our journey. These were not simply business oriented. Based on good sense, they could even be applied to life.

It only proved to us that there is never an end to learning new things.

So, we decided to share the joys this festive season and pass on the five nuggets of wisdom from our campus hosts that we are applying to the new year.

Hitch your wagon to a star

Leesa Soulodre is a pioneer, mentor and educator who has gleaned plenty of experience and wisdom from her 20+ years of experience working on the cusp of innovation. As the Chief Innovation Officer at Inspirit IoT her advise is held dear by more than 400+ multinationals across the world. Leesa hosted a great dialogue on IoT, where we learnt about use cases and benefits of the IoT, how it works and businesses applying IoT.

But that was not all!

Leesa made some interesting observations from her own career journey, one of which greatly impacted us.

She advised us to hitch our wagon to a star.

What does that mean? Our career path is something that is defined by the choices we make over time. If we are people who are goal-oriented and get things done, we need to choose to work for someone who is of a similar temperament.

Why?

When you work for someone who is driven, they appreciate the drive in you and reward it. As simple as that. (Definitely going into our “Life and Career 101.”)

You can read more about what we learnt from Leesa’s class here.

Disconnect, disappear from the online world and allow yourself time to breathe

Marjolaine Savoie is not just a creative coach at Morning Marjolaine, but also a podcast host, yogi, singer and more! Marjolaine hosted a dialogue on “How practising mindfulness can help in pursuing your career goals” for our Dubai community. One thing we kept coming back to during our Q&A with her was “how can we stay stress-free in a connected world”?

Marjolaine had a very simple but effective solution to it: to disconnect and allow yourself time to breathe.

Often, we end up tumbling down rabbit holes while browsing the Internet. One alert leads to another notification to update, and lo and behold, you are miles away from what you intended to do! Marjolaine’s advice is that we be conscious of every action we take. When we stop ourselves from being “click-happy”, we can control what we do and thereby be more aware of our Internet usage. What more, frequent breaks really help in getting some downtime. This helps to refresh our perspectives towards work and how!

You can read more about what we learnt from Marjolaine’s class here

Take the leap you’re not alone

When we first met Daniel Bar, he was delving into Blockchain technology ventures. An immensely talented person, Daniel was involved in research and engineering roles in areas such as Quantum Computation, Nanoelectronics, and Biosensors, apart from holding an MSc degree in Nanotechnology from the Technion — Israeli Institute of Technology.

Basically, Daniel was inspiring in the way he constantly challenged the status quo, and to learn and try new things. So, it was obvious that once he became an entrepreneur with the Tenzorum Project, we wanted him to share his experience and expertise with our NewCampus community as a campus host.

Daniel’s class on Blockchain was eyeopening, but what we took back from it was more than just about cryptocurrency and its sibling industries. We took a bigger nugget of wisdom — to always take the leap.

Daniel’s advise to “those who have curious minds and are really eager to take the leap is that they’re not alone, there many resources to help you get into your new career, particularly in a world where changes are increasingly happening faster.”

Not stopping there, he also egged us on to go to meetups, co-working space events, etc.

“The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll feel you should keep pursuing your existing line of work, but, who knows, you may discover a whole new side of your professional self,” he shares.

You can read more about Daniel here

You are never too young or old to create great things

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At NewCampus, we get inspired by everything around us. So we were super pumped up to bring a 16-year-old high school student to run a workshop on “Becoming Makers: Creating mind-controlled toys and devices” at our Dubai co-learning space. After all, age is just a number and experience and expertise are all that mattered to us. And Rishabh has been a maker since the age of 7! A young entrepreneur, he has worked on projects such as creating a mind controlled drone, a low-cost 3D printed mind/voice controlled prosthetic arm, a virtual presence robot, and a 6-feet tall humanoid robot.

This particular exercise with the NewCampus community was part of Rishabh’s project to help kids who have trouble concentrating, especially those at school who have ADHD to have a fun and simple way to focus on concentration or breathing exercises.

While the ten participants and Rishabh discussed methodologies and welded wires to create the headset, what we observed was that one is never too young or too old to create great things. Here we had a bunch of working professionals, skilled in their own fields eager to learn about a new field. And ably instructing them was a 16-year-old high school student who was the expert of the group.

We realized that age is truly just a number. All that ever matters is that we rekindle and express the curiosity and intrigue within all of us.

You can read more about Rishabh’s workshop here.

Inspiration is everywhere. Creativity is within everyone

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Richie Nainaney, Design Director and Co-founder of Orikami Lab hosted a workshop earlier in 2018 at our Dubai colearning space on “Idea mash-up: generating new ideas through non-linear approaches”.

As 40 colearners collaborated to generate ideas from “elements that are unrelated but can be put together,” we learnt how to get inspired by everything around us – from podcasts to Chef’s Table on Netflix! (See? Netflix is legit “research”!)

The biggest myth that Richie’s workshop broke is that creativity is not just for the artists and designers but it is within everyone. She helped us unblock ourselves and let ourselves think out of the box through a few exercises. More often than not, the simple trick is to have an opportunistic mind and be more aware of our surroundings. This proves to be the gateway to learning new things and fostering inspiration.

You can read more about what we learnt from Richie’s workshop here

With the new year starting, we, at NewCampus, are kicked to bring in more experienced campus hosts and open newer colearning spaces across the globe. After all, there is no end to learning and we are excited to gather more such wisdom from the best minds in 2019.

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