Something from Nothing

One day, about a year ago, I was digging the street outside my favorite cafe. I quite literally stumbled upon a repurposed newspaper box labeled "The Stranger Exchange."

It looked like this:

I sensed that it was, in some way, important—but I didn't really know why. So, naturally, I blogged about it. I described it as a community dropbox: "a kind of physical, hyperlocal lovechild of Freecycle and PostSecret." The idea was comfy-sexy, and it appealed to people (at least in concept).

A lot has happened since then. I took an interest in "offline" sharing, and wrote a feature on the next generation of Zipcar: peer-to-peer car-sharing. I suggested that my company, a research consultancy that runs open innovation studies, collaborate with Shareable Magazine on The New Sharing Economy study. (We did.) If interested, you can attend The New Sharing Economy panel at SxSW 2011.

The study supported the notion that sharing through online social networks is encouraging people to share offline resources as well. It found that the top 5 opportunity areas for new sharing service concepts are (ahem, startups...): time, household goods, automobiles, money, and living space.

Larger version here. Download the full report here.

A Service Concept is Born: Swaptitude

I thought it was curious—and totally intuitive—that more people were interested in sharing time than money. So I got together with Tom Davis (a developer) and John Baunach (a designer), and we came up with the idea for Swaptitude:

Swaptitude is a new time-banking platform for members of the interactive community. Because time is money, you’ll be able to exchange expertise and professional services without exchanging any of that green stuff. (Traditional currency is so passe.) Additionally, Swaptitude works on a complex algorithm that understands reputation as an important piece of what makes your time so very valuable.

Swaptitude doesn't fully exist yet. But we'd appreciate if you filled out the intake form at http://swaptitude.com to help us as we build it out. Then, follow @swaptitude on Twitter.

Anyways, exciting days.

I used to live right above this coffee shop called 1369. They only take cash, which I rarely carry. The room is yellowish-warm and inviting on winter nights when your breath comes out in puffs. And the baristas make immaculate foam art and silly faces back at you through the windows. They look just the way they feel on any given day, and they'll tell you about it when you do that whole "hey-how-are-you-today" pre-order rigmarole. I like that.

1369 Coffeehouse, Inman Square, Cambridge

Anyways, some of them got together and worked on this local literary magazine called The Inman Review. It's pretty darn good. I just picked up Volume 2 a few days ago. (You can buy it online here.)

Flipping through the pages, I was immediately assailed by this delightful work, "In Webster's," by Aaron Devine. (You can download a PDF with The Inman Review's nicer formatting here.) You'll probably be glad you read it.

Aaron Devine is a freelance writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His most recent work is Wonder/Wander: 522 Days in Latin America, a literary scrapbook combining poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction prose to tell the stories of the people and places he knew as a 23-year-old American living in communities off the tourist trail from Nicaragua to Argentina. You can find Aaron's web site at www.aarondevine.net.

Photo by subliminal, (cc) some rights reserved; PDF shared with permission.

I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar.

—Frank O'Hara, "My Heart"

danah boyd delivered a nicely grounded keynote at this year's SxSW relating to the evolving and intricate notions of privacy and publicity in today's digital culture. Primarily she encouraged thoughtfulness in treatment of personal information, highlighting the all-importance of context across situations.

Many of us have benefited from speaking in public through social media. I certainly have. At this point, I live an extremely privileged life. With privilege, it's easy to take some things for granted. So let me call out some of the things that we take for granted. As a privileged person, I believe that I can challenge authority, that I have the right to be heard and the right to be seen. I believe that my voice matters and that I can tell my story. I believe that I can walk out into public without being afraid of losing my job, losing my partner, losing my rights. I can embrace a "public by default" setting without facing too many consequences. And I can even survive a situation where a technology company reveals things that I didn't want to be publicized. I can also seek publicity without any fear.

The "public by default" environment that we are so proudly creating isn't always the great democratizer; for many, it's exactly the opposite... This is an exciting era of publicity, one in which you have more access to data than ever before, one in which you can see people who were previously invisible. But just because you are able to see people doesn't mean that they want to be seen by you. And just because you think you can interpret what you see doesn't mean you will do so accurately.

[...]

Just because something is publicly accessible doesn't mean people want it to be publicized.

—danah boyd, "Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity"

"Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?"

"Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought.

I recently wrote a feature for Shareable on emergent peer-to-peer car-sharing services. (In this model, vehicles are crowdsourced from car owners and rented to other members at times when owners don't require access to them—as opposed to the more traditional, fleet-based "Zipcar" model). Essentially, owners can monetize idle assets, whilst contributing to a more resource-efficient system.

The article includes commentary from Shelby Clark, founder and CEO of RelayRides (launching soon in Baltimore), Aaron Freed, founder and CEO of Divvy, and Sunil Paul, investor and entrepreneur with Spring Ventures.

“After 8 years, car-sharing has only achieved roughly 10,000 vehicles and fewer than half a million members; that’s really not very many,” says Paul. “In order to make this a much more scalable, ubiquitous phenomenon across the United States, there has to be a better solution than what’s being pursued today—and we believe that car cost-sharing is a big piece of that solution.”

For many people, sharing is about reducing transactional burden—removing costs and unnecessary hassle by accessing just what they need, when and where they need it. As RelayRides and other peer-to-peer services begin to demonstrate material benefits for members of truly open and scalable systems, we can expect to see a new psychology—and allure—to sharing emerge. This has the potential to change how we mobilize, consume, socialize—ultimately, how we live and function together as a society.

“When we first started working on this idea, a lot of people thought we were nuts,” says Clark, “‘Nobody is going to rent out their car!’ And we’ve proven them wrong. It’s a major shift—it’s moving from a ‘mine’ to an ‘ours’ mentality. There are lots of skeptics, but if we can find ways to come together and use resources efficiently, then everybody wins.”

is not really the title of a movie
but if it was I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn
in the dark of a neighborhood theater.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.

I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?

—Billy Collins

I wonder who decided that fizzy flavored water is such a different beast from regular bottled water that it should be housed 5 aisles away.  Why are protein / energy bars considered “pharmaceutical” and not “grocery” items?  Why must Kashi products only exist in the special natural foods aisles?  Could they not be tagged generally as “cereal” too?  God forbid some common Fruit Loops catch on the branches of my Kashi GoLean crunchy fiber twigs. In the vast expanse of deli-region, I was so sure that somewhere near 20 varieties of pita and a plethora of spreadable toppings, hummus must be around too, but it was lurking on some inconspicuous end-cap clear across the store.  And about a week prior to Thanksgiving, a 5′3″ vegetarian could be seen standing on the refrigerator case ledge, looming over a trough of turkey carcasses, to reach the meat substitute products stocked on the shelves above.

—Some ridiculous, latently relevant account of The Store Layout Experience I wrote, circa December 2008

Work recently launched an innovation study around food and digital connectivity. We're working with the lovely boys—Jeremy and Neal—who head up Shareable.net. (My post is here on Shareable.)

Shareable.net and the consultancy Latitude are co-launching a study to understand how new connectivity—improved accessibility, transparency, organization, and socialization of information—alters our desires and decisions around food and food-purchasing. The study will remain open for participation for 1-2 weeks, and results will be posted to Shareable and life-connected.com by mid-March. And when the study reaches 50 participants, Latitude will donate $500 to The Hunger Project, a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger.

—Cory Doctorow @ Boing Boing

It's a delightfully short and simple questionnaire (~10 minutes), utilizing the power of personal narrative. If you have a few moments, consider sharing your thoughts. Direct survey link here; full study background here; Latitude's privacy policy here (everything kosher).

"It reminds me of a natural wonder, like the Grand Canyon—awesome, vast, unchanging."

Wired letters to the Editor, on Craigslist.

"May I ask to what these questions tend?"
"Merely to the illustration of your character," said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out."
"And what is your success?"
She shook her head. "I do not get on at all."

Validation [SIGH]

If you know me, you probably know I'm a "vibe" person. I favor intuition (for better or worse) when assessing an individual's character, situational reactions, and general openness.

So I was pretty excited when I encountered this article in last month's Harvard Business Review: "We Can Measure the Power of Charisma."

Truth be told, I'm not really interested in quantifying charisma or learning which social cues have ROI. But I like the notion that the seemingly substanceless vibes I can't help but prefer (over more "concrete" cues) have empirical potential. (That's not to say that my char-dar is reading signs correctly, but merely that the signs exist.)

The Experiment

Researchers conducted a study, outfitting executives at a party with devices that recorded "social" data—that is, tone of voice, JAZZ HANDS (gesticulation), proximity to others, and more. Less than a week later, these executives presented business plans to a panel of judges in a contest; without being privy to their pitches, the researchers were able to predict correctly the outcome.

Qualification: "The signals indicate who will win but say nothing about the quality of their ideas... like the Nixon-Kennedy debate: Those who saw it rated Kennedy higher. Those who heard it rated Nixon higher."

"Honest signals is a biological term. They're the nonverbal cues that social species use to coordinate themselves—gestures, expressions, tone. Humans use many types of signals, but honest signals are unusual in that they cause changes in the receiver of the signal [...]. If I'm happy, it almost literally rubs off on you.

The more successful people talk more, but they also listen more. They spend more face-to-face time with others. They pick up cues from others, draw people out, and get them to be more outgoing. It's not what they project that makes them charismatic; it's what they elicit."

Let’s say you get an idea – or, as Pooh would more accurately say – it gets you. Where did it come from? If you are able to trace it all the way back to its source, you will discover that it came from Nothing. And chances are, the greater the idea, the more directly it came from there.

The wise are children who know their minds have been emptied of the countless minute somethings of small learning, and filled with the wisdom of the Great Nothing.

Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

I'm excited to mention that Latitude recently partnered with ReadWriteWeb on one of its Latitude 42 innovation studies. I've followed RWW for some time, and consider them distinct for transposing a more sophisticated analytical overlay onto traditional reporting. (So, like, much respect.)

The study consists of a structured idea generation exercise for kids (ages 12 and under); it asks them to conceive of (to draw) things they'd like to do on computers or the Web, but can't yet.

The notion is that children have a unique approach to technology, and exhibit their thinking ability with much greater freedom than adults, not being confined to imagine within the bounds of what is seemingly practical or possible. (How children think is more valuable than the end-solutions they propose, in many cases.)

RWW's founder, Mr. MacManus, was kind enough to write our kick-off post, and I'll be working with RWW to deliver the results (cross-posted to life-connected.com) in the next few weeks.

(If you know someone with a child that's age 12 or under who'd like to participate, you can find a link to the study here.)