Share Price: Sharing the connected economy
I was really looking forward to the February Bloggers Meet Up about the Sharing Economy and Social Media, as I looked through the 100+ people who had RSVP’d I recalled Andy asked me to blog!!!
And suddenly I was sharing.
How did the sharing economy happen for me?
At first it seemed all fluffy and I ran off to find a tree to hug and to blow the dust off my parents Bob Dylan records.
The revolution was further endorsed by event invites and skype calls with people from San Francisco, then Le Web (an event FAR too cool for people like me) started ranting about the Sharing Economy and digital hippies.
I am totally in, in fact I was in ages ago, I was in when I discovered Meet Up and used to send people crap messages asking them to come to my bland business meet up, tempting them with istock pictures of “business” people with white teeth and the offer that their business could change the world.
Then I came to my senses after wondering into London bloggers meet up and as I write this I am at a KindredHQ coworking meet up, all these things are connected, shared and been made real by people like you and me.
I am learning about the sharing economy by reading A LOT, what I read is produced by bloggers, filmed by video bloggers and recorded by podcasters. I am a very tiny spec in the whole thing and I am connecting with “people like me” in Buenos Aries, Krakow, San Francisco, Paris, Barcelona. Not watching TV or reading some “designed” article in a newspaper that tells me what to do and does not return my calls.
In our podcast with Neal from Shareable.net we asked him about the line of “preaching” and “informing” about the sharing economy, he replied “we tell stories” – which is what we all do to a greater or lesser extent when we blog.
These stories agree with our world view and don’t necessarily teach us anything new, they strike a chord. The chord they struck with me is that I don’t want to be a radical, my commitment level is not of the tempo to camp out in Parliament Square, tie myself to the rudder of a whaling ship or even hand out flyers.
I just don’t like “stuff” and “waste”.
I don’t like it when people order two for one and only eat the other half, I don’t like it that businesses pour time, energy and resource into huge shiny office buildings and make everyone come to work when they’d do more in a shared space on a laptop near their family.
Not liking it is not going to help anyone. What does help people is connecting them, when I ask people about Airbnb they say that staying in someones house was so much more fun than the Holiday Inn, they talk of discovery and always seem to mention food!
At our coworking meet ups people always bring home made cakes and we make cups of tea for each other. We share food, drink, ideas, skills and sometimes a taxi home! One of the best ways to share the world has to be going to coworking groups in new cities, stay in other peoples homes and blogging it all on-line?
The web is the coolest thing ever, it would be a shame to waste it all on advertising or hyping something like the Sharing Economy. Email was a great invention and then people ruined it, lecturing people that they MUST share, that the sharing economy is worth 1000,0000,000 gazillion dollars this week and rattling of countless examples people being “saved’ through sharing is not inspirational.
It is much more exciting than that. I have long been a subscriber of The Cluetrian Manifesto and lines like “all markets are conversations” and that “the internet has given humans back their own voice”. The sharing economy is the a chance for the end of mass and more connections with each other. The idea of “the city as a platform” means that things like blogs spread the word and tools like Meet Up help us meet and share.
We may well discover through sharing that we are all weird.
- The Sharing Economy & Social Media | LondonBloggers.net
Hi There would love to attend one of your meetups to get a better idea of blogging and meet some bloggers