Rough Crowd Academy began life as a thing we used to call the “Rough Crowd Road Trip.” It was lots of fun and covered lots of ground, but it was never quite what I wanted it to be. I took a year off from the Rough Crowd Road Trips, and focused on Rough Crowd and on traveling and teaching at conventions, and slowly, I started to see what this needed to become.

The Rough Crowd Road Trip is no more; I’m re-launching as the Rough Crowd Academy, and it is going to be much more focused, cover more ground, and take each group of students to a level that the Rough Crowd Road Trip never achieved. I’m really excited about it.

There are a million and one details to work out, and no amount of planning is going to tell me what just running one will tell me. So I’m going to Vancouver, where I have good friends and smart people to help me out, and we’re going to give this a test run and see how it flows. We’re going to hold a pilot Academy.

This means several things, several of which benefit you if you’re part of the Vancouver community (or nearby and want to travel there):

• We’re running this about break-even. Everyone is donating their time for this, and what we really need to do is pay expenses (my travel to get there, renting the hall… things like that). As such, tickets for this will be *much* less than they will be for regular Rough Crowd Academies.
• We’re going to hold a focus group at the end. Part of what we’re asking you is to give us the gift of your constructive feedback. What you liked, what didn’t work so well, what could be improved, and even ideas how. Depending on the size of the group, we’ll probably ask you for about 30 minutes of your time at the end of Sunday. When you’re exhausted and your brains are fried and half of you are high on endorphins. 😉
• And yes, there might just be some hiccups along the way. So we ask that you’re patient with us if any get through.

Everything is currently being put together. Even this new web site (I know, it uses the same design as the Rough Crowd site, but that’s for consistency – it’s a whole new web site). So if there’s something you’re looking for that you think, by golly, should be on the web site and what the hell is wrong here… well, that page might just not be written yet. But let us know – we’ll take feedback on any of it!

And I hope to see you at the Rough Crowd Academy pilot program in Vancouver. Here’s the link to the page.

Namaste,

Roughinamorato