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?

Freelender library now open in Hastings; your books can be in it whilst still at home!

In the wake of the Hastings Pier Fire, I'm moving to Hastings and opening a freelender library to share community resources. The themes of this library on www.freelender.org will be: 

• Mediation
• Management that serves
• Transition 
• Transformation 

The abbreviated name of this community resource is to be the MMTT library. 

PLEASE SUGGEST OTHER CATEGORIES OF BOOK USEFUL TO HASTINGS NOW.
One book I have is called "Dealing with Disaffected Youth"; let's have a category called "Engaging Youth & ending inter-generational apartheid"; the library now becomes the MMETT Library!

If you have any books & DVDs etc which you are pleased to offer to trustworthy people who will come round at a convenient time and borrow, then return the items as requested, or possibly forfeit a deposit, then please add these items to www.freelender.org

Some of the items will also be made available on www.letsallshare.com, which has a higher level of web design than freelender (though without the trust stats). Lets All Share also has the 'Please Collect' function on the site, so that if you add items to lend and then decide you are happy to give them away, you can easily switch them into that category.

In due course I intend to negotiate with ecomodo.com and ecobees.com about arrangements that would engage much more of the Hastings/St Leonards community in lending and renting. This would at the same time raise funds for people's favourite charities, no doubt including the Hastings Pier & White Rock Trust.

Join the Ecomodo Facebook Group please

Please try ecomodo.com -the latest (& fastest growing?) new player in the 'sharing and gift economy' -and please let us know what you make of it as a website/proposition?

Feedback on what you make of ecomodo's pitch is welcome via:

• adding a comment below this blog post
• contacting the Freelending Community Interest Company directors here
• linking to my twitterstream and direct messaging me

Edmund & I met Meriel & Tracey (ecomodo) at UK Aware on Friday and gave them a couple of our new freelender packs, which Freelending CIC will gladly post to people involved in promoting sharing in their communities.

If the bigger agenda is one of finding the best tools to support sharing; ecomodo offers, IMHO, a significant step forward. I particularly like how the money made from renting out my stuff can support my favourite charity.
(By the way, my favourite charity is karuna.org; all money from renting out/selling my stuff goes there.)
If I lived in Brent and wanted to support a charity addressing the most important issues of how we relate to each other, I'd likely choose to support the Centre for Peaceful Solutions, which is led by Maria Arpa and who I interviewed briefly on Friday morning before the UK Aware Ethical Living exhibition:



I've been working to develop the networking all the relevant organisations together so that saving resources and building community can take us towards the holy grail of sustainability in how we live.
To this end, Edmund Johnson and I set up Freelending CIC in 2008. Please subscribe to this blog to stay in touch with the key developments not only for freelender.org but also for the more important wider social movement (generosity) to which we contribute all we can.

I'm so impressed with ecomodo that I've just selected a large number of facebook friends whom I've recommended to join the ecomodo facebook group.