Friday, September 30, 2011

Sharing Economy, further notes

Back in May, I posted some brief notes on a SxSWi presentation I attended on the "Sharing Economy." I recently had a chance to go back and listen to the panel discussion again with fresh ears; here are my notes.

URLs

Shift from highly centralized, individual ownership to p2p sharing.

Factors:
  • Economy -- less $$; want quality of life, but need to manage it better
  • Growing world population
  • Sustainability concerns about current levels of consumption
  • Generations growing up sharing, collaborating on internet; the web is a training ground for the sharing economy because of its values of trust, interaction. People are used to creating value together.
  • GPS-enabled devices like smartphones enabling real-time, on the fly, location-aware communication
  • Loss of trust in big institutions, more willingness to self-organize
  • People want community
  • Altruism & self-interest
What are people sharing? vacation homes, parking, cars, rooms, rides, bikes, clothing, planes, meals, gardens, seeds, boats, tools, skills, and more.

The average household has 3,000 items of unused items; think of all the stuff around your house that you only use once a year or so. What if you could make money by renting it out? What if you could barcode them for tracking purposes? What if the sharing platform had safeguards, and trust-assurance tools built in? What if you could pay by waving your phone? What if there were incentives for participation? These days, tech is in the service of the community breaking down the walls.

This isn't familiar to our parents, but your grandparents would have been very comfortable with it.

Challenges
  • sharing takes more time
  • how are the collections purchased? maintained?
  • Manufacturers might feel threatened
  • Need to build more durability into items, and possibly even sharing mechanisms (think of eBooks and how hard they are to lend)
Cited: What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (stories of how entrepreneurs and businesses are innovating in the space of Collaborative Consumption).

So what is their dream Library? A physical community space where people can share things as well as books and information.

More about PhillyHistory.org and the power of open archives

This is a follow on to my post last March about one of the more fascinating panels I heard at SxSWi2011. I recently listened again to the presentation and took more complete notes.

URLs

Libraries, archives, museums, seeing a shift to making info available in different ways, allowing wider usage through a more open database structure."If you free your data, people will come to you."

Examples:
  • Civil War 150
  • Philly History
    • 93,000 photos, 6,700 registered users, 13,000 visits per month
    • Syncs with GoogleEarth & GoogleMaps, and can favorite and share the images
    • Allows mashups! See HistoryPin, EveryBlockPhiladelphia
    • Allow public to submit error reports; vast majority were accurate!
  • National Archives Photo Mashup contest
Why? People WANT this information; it is a new way to engage with your community
Who? Historians, researchers, genealogists, enthusiasts
How? Innovation though collaboration, and through an open database structure.

Smithsonian: Joy's Law states that "No matter what business you're in, the smart people work somewhere else." This is unquestionably true in the digital age. Recognized that innovation needs to come from OUTSIDE the institution, that it is our job to open up and be catalysts. Archives can think of themselves as a platform for developers from outside the institution.

Issues: trust, control of the images, how to control commercial use.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

SxSWi and Tucson

I'm going to try something here, in the spirit of what I learned and observed at SxSWi2011: a series of conversations here in Tucson where the library brings together area nonprofits, small business, residents, futurists, programmers, and other tech types, and we learn and discuss new ideas of benefit to all of us. Initially I had called this "Tucson Talks." but it was recently renamed "Catalyst Café." I plan to have these talks at various Pima County Public Libraries, and to start the series in January of 2012.

Last May I organized a panel of Tucsonans who had attended SxSWi with the idea that we would be reporting back to Tucson about what we learned. The audience was a small but powerful mix of software entrepreneurs, news media, librarians, social media managers, and other tech-type folk. Although the panel ended at 10:00, the room that morning was buzzing for another hour with people excited to hear about each other's projects and make connections they hadn't expected to make. Dare I say it was magical? It was.

So. Could this happen again? I hope so. Please subscribe to either this blog, our Facebook, or our Twitter account for more news about this experiment. And wish us luck please? This could be very cool.