The future of lending & borrowing schemes relies on a healthy combination of on & off-line systems

The League Table for lending!; At Southwater Centre, Hastings we want to be top

With enough interaction of on-line and off-line technologies in a particular area, a 'critical mass' for community regeneration may be achievable. That's what I'm trying for in Hastings.

Why Hastings; the economic crunch is greater there than many other place, and there is also some impetus towards regeneration/community building after the community shock at someone setting the pier alight last October, but that's another story and another blog: www.sussexcommunity.blogspot.com

For now, lending starts with Anita's request and offer. Anita doesn't use the web much; only occasionally at the internet cafe, so I'm generating a surrogate account for her on www.streetbank.com and will run it by talking to her as she passes by the community centre -soon to be the Southwater Centre Streetbank

To all directors etc of sharing websites

-Invitation to dinner on March 26th -near UK Aware 2011 conference:

Dear Sam from Streetbank & fellow key campaigners generating a more sharing future,

I'm prompted by Cat Fletcher of Freegle to invite you all to a 2nd annual dinner out (co-inciding with the UK Aware Ethical Living event) in London on Saturday 26th March; my second preference being Friday 25th March.(What's your preference?)

Cat writes:

I take days off to get to various conferences and events but all in all it is relentless, I am working the weekend of UKAware but I guess I could come up to London after work and have a meal, it would be great to see you and talk...maybe you can rope in some others to join us (if you'll be at UKAware during the day)...food for thought! cat x

  Videos about building-trust in communities through freelending, freecycling, peer-to-peer renting etc:

facebook app idea -I offer and I want

Like "6 degrees of separation", a test of Facebook might be how many possessions does someone need to offer on average before a want is met. Perhaps it's 5, for example. Are you willing to offer 5 things to your facebook friends for every want you have?
Instead of just clicking on Amazon or ebay, why not build with your friends the inventory of what you are wanting, and preface this with an inventory of what you are offering.
By building the inventory of a database of what you are offering & making requests for what you want, I'm  confident that you and your friends will save money and get more connected.

Just as Ecomodo had their biggest publicity breakthrough after they offered an iPad on-line, when making your offers, try stretching yourself in terms of offering things that are valuable and likely to be wanted. Choose popular items that you could do without for a few days or more eg:

• a car
• a beachhut
• an Amazon kindle
• an iphone
• best-selling DVDs or books 
• a range of tools and sporting/camping goods.

All of the above are available on freelender.org by the way; out of the car, beachhut, kindle, and iphone list, it's amazing to me that only the iphone -bought by Freelending CIC benefactors- has been borrowed so far!

If friends on facebook were aware of this perhaps this would change!

Until the facebook app is built by you or someone else, why not just use ecomodo.com for listing your wanted items and streetbank.com for posting your offers oin facebook and available to the other 6000 members of streetbank?

Collaborative Consumption in Action: Building Trust Between Strangers

Will things move forward between the various many small players in sharing websites at the 7th & 8th February collaborative consumption events in London?
Register here

Now that I've joined Streetbank, I've posted my aspirations on that site as follows:

A co-director of Freelending CIC, keen to engage with people who link lending up to a bigger vision for society and want to plan what comes beyond the current incarnations of lending sites such as the .coms: streetbank, ecomodo, ecobees, letsallshare and the .orgs: freelender, justfortheloveofit etc