In 2 months, Skillshare raises over $20,000 for Raise Cache and hackNY

If you work in New York City’s thriving tech scene and you haven’t yet heard about Raise Cache, you’ve either been working too hard or not talking to the right people. We first covered the event last month in detail and interviewed Rebecca Zhou, the woman who’s raising all the cache–in 6″ heels.

In short, Raise Cache is a one-night celebration of New York City’s tech scene, which aims to raise $100,000 for hackNY, a non-profit that nurtures the next generation of New York’s hackers. In true New York style, the event is a night-long mixer, fashion show and after party to be held at the NY State Armory this Thursday, November 17th, 2011. The event is open bar, 21+ to drink, or perhaps more aptly referred to as a Liquid Cache Affair.

In the two months leading up to the event, Raise Cache teamed up with local education startup Skillshare to host an Education Series with classes such as “How to Communicate with Investors” with David Tisch of Techstars to “Making Something People Love” with Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, Hipmunk, and Breadpig. Raise Cache has blown past its goal of raising $10K with every teacher donating 100% of class proceeds to hackNY through Raise Cache. Today, that number has passed $20,000 in total donations.

It’s amazing how many people were so open to teaching classes to give back to the New York tech scene. At Skillshare, we’re all about community, so it’s exciting to see everybody coming together in one night to celebrate New York City startups. When talking about the vision of Skillshare, we believe that there’s a difference between education and learning.

Education is what someone else does for you, whereas learning is what you do for yourself. Education is about following a linear path, whereas learning is about following your passions.

More and more people are realizing this and taking action to create their own personal learning plan to pursue what they’re passionate about, so we believe that the time is ripe for traditional education to be disrupted. We can combine the power of individual learning with the power of communities to achieve this.

-Stephen Yang, Founder Apprentice at Skillshare Company

Tomorrow night, I’m teaching a Skillshare class called The Art of the Pitch with Mashable’s Sarah Kessler. Sign up if you want to learn the tips/tricks of pitching to the media.

I’ll also be one of a slew of high-heeled enthusiasts walking the runway, including the AVC Fred Wilson, TechStars’ David Tisch, Rachel Sklar of Change The Ratio, Reece Pacheco of ShelbyTV, Brooke Moreland of Fashism, Christina Cacioppo of Union Sq Ventures, Nikhil Kalghatgi of Softbank Capital, Katia Beauchamp of BirchBox and many, many more. There will be a battle of epic Turntable DJs including Billy Chasen, the music site’s founder, Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, Bntr’s Lauren Leto, Onswipe’ Mark Bao, Fred Wilson and yours truly. See the full lineup below:

The official Raise Cache site is up and tickets are still on sale via Eventbrite. The tickets are selling out fast (only 2 VIP tickets left at the time of publishing) and just to remind you, all proceeds are going straight to hackNY. Tickets range in price from $30 for student tickets to $1,000 for champion tickets. Sponsors include NASDAQ, SecondMarket, SquareSpace, Watchittoo, Thre.ad, Lot18, Sailthru, KPMG LLP, Silicon Valley Bank, Square 1 Bank, Greycroft Ventures, IA Ventures, RRE Ventures, Softbank Capital, Raptor Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Workbridge Associates and Serve from American Express.