SE Uplift

The Appreciation Project is a four-week class and writing workshop providing an opportunity to bring more gratitude into your life.

We will learn the science and philosophy of gratitude through readings and discussion. Then we will have structured time to get to the core of The Appreciation Project: writing notes of appreciation to people you’re grateful for. Some of those prompts might include showing your appreciation to:

• a family member
• a former teacher or mentor
• someone who gave you good customer service
• someone who has passed away
• someone with whom you have a complicated relationship
• a friend who could use a little moral boost

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.” – William James

Messages matter! By writing these appreciation notes, you will be sharing your gratitude to bring joy, purpose and greater satisfaction to others. As a cohort, you’ll get generative ideas about who and what and how to appreciate others. You’ll get inspired by your classmates’ letters and acts of kindness. Your prose will become more powerful and meaningful. Your gratitude will reverberate and spread into other peoples’ lives and expand your empathy and compassion for others.

Portland Underground Grad School (PUGS) offers courses and workshops that facilitate your becoming who you want to be. Taught by local experts, they are filled with smart, interesting, and motivated Portlanders. We believe that a quality education is key to personal and societal transformation.

This workshop provides an introduction to digital accessibility standards and practices and gives participants hands-on experience with assessing, testing, and implementing accessibility practices in the physical and digital realm.

We’ll start this workshop by talking about what accessibility entails: why it matters, and who is excluded when we don't adapt our online and physical spaces to account for varying ability levels. Then, we'll explore the business case for developing accessible technology. Isn't your business (your art project, your retail store) going to be more successful if everyone, regardless of their ability, can access and enjoy it?

Next, we’ll dive into the technical details with a straightforward overview of the latest accessibility standards (the new 2018 Revised 508 Standards, the first major update since 2001, and the W3 WCAG standards). Then, we’ll work in small groups to practice hands-on accessibility testing. Finally, we’ll reconvene, share our progress and findings, and develop plans for implementing accessible development in our day-to-day work.

Instructor: Amelia Abreu is a design researcher and the founder of UX Night School. She's worked with clients like Nike, Mozilla, Microsoft, and Intel. Before entering the industry, she did graduate research in Human Computer Interaction at the University of Washington.

Capitalism loves automation. Since the beginning of industrialization 250 years ago, businesses have been replacing human labor with machines. For the last 60 years, globalization has shifted American labor to other countries. And now, the advent of artificial intelligence will eliminate even more jobs.

In this course, we will:

• Consider how a jobless future could create unmatched disruption and suffering -- or limitless opportunity for human flourishing.
• Discuss how not to be a replaceable commodity in a gig economy.
• Strategize how to position ourselves as stakeholders in the emerging automated economy.

Instructor: Douglas Tsoi, JD, is the founder of Portland Underground Grad School (PUGS), a school for everyday life. Before PUGS, he managed a $4 million education and training program at the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. Previous careers include teaching high school history and ethics, as well as being a intellectual property lawyer.

Meets March 7, 14, 21, & 28 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.

For more info: https://www.pugspdx.com/march-2018-courses/the-jobless-future