Why I built Awesomeville

Hi, I'm Brennan.

By day, I'm a manager at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, and I teach there part-time too. I've spent years working with students, entrepreneurs, and educators, and I kept noticing the same thing. Entrepreneurship almost always got taught through business plans and terminology, long before anybody got to feel the creative part that makes it interesting.

So I made Awesomeville to flip that around. You don't start with a business plan, you start with a town. Players poke around, find something worth fixing, and build a solution together. It stops being intimidating and starts being fun.

I'm also a dad to two little girls, one is four and the other is six months. They're a big part of why this matters to me. I want them, and every kid, to grow up believing their ideas are worth building — and that every community is full of problems worth solving.

Awesomeville is a one-person operation. I design it, teach with it, pack it, and ship it from my kitchen table. The cards are printed here in Nova Scotia by a local shop, which costs more than sending it offshore, but I'd rather the money stayed close to home. What I'm hoping is that it helps teachers get the next batch of problem-solvers going.

Welcome to Awesomeville.