My three favorite things about being a mentor for Real Ideas Studio are as follows:

1. The students I get to meet, work with, and learn from.
2. My fellow RIS mentors who teach me almost as much.
3. Helping a global community of creative people.

As it turns out, I'm doing a lot of #3 lately. During my term off from heading up the Digital Design program at Vancouver Film School I've been working with friends at a new media company here in Vancouver called Zeros 2 Heroes. Their big focus in life? You guessed it - creating online communities.My role involves working with the product team on new content creation tools so that as wide a group of people as possible can put their creativity to use and be content-creators rather than just content-consumers.

With all different types of organizations looking to develop more opportunities for people to collaborate online, I think it's safe to say this idea of growing global communities isn't going away anytime soon.