Latitude

Last week, outside my local cafe in Cambridge, MA (Central Square), I quite literally stumbled upon “The Stranger Exchange,” a kind of physical, hyperlocal lovechild of Freecycle and PostSecret (a crowdsourced, “sharing” Craigslist + an anomymous community art project, that is).

Here’s how it works:

The wonderful irony is that the creator of The Stranger Exchange opted to repurpose an abandoned newspaper box for his project, borrowing from a number of themes in new and evolving media–crowdsourcing, a sense of personal narrative, and a renewed interest in hyperlocal surroundings (and physical spaces in general, via the rise of mobile).

Here’s what to put in it:

These are a few of the suggestions for items to leave, as posted on Pandora’s the box’s front window.

Books, movies, old pictures, new pictures, report cards, post cards, love letters, rumors, business cards, questions, answers, origami, keys to nowhere, coupons, dirty looks, self-portraits, surprises, etc.

Brought to you by: new notions of community cohesiveness

Admittedly, I was hesitant to open the box (its window being opaque), but this is what I found:

Not only were there things in the box but, the next day, its things weren’t missing; in fact, they were different.

The social implications surrounding pervasive digital connectivity–the way we form new relations (often moving fluidly from virtual to physical worlds), engender community cohesiveness even across far-distant locales, and feel that we exist independent of our physical selves–suggests a kind of unspoken credo governing theft and equal [stranger] exchange.

“People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark [Craigslist's eponym] says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves.

Interview with Craig Newmark, Wired

In a news-shell: new economics

A new sharing economy seems to be springing up–an understanding that continuous access to non-rival goods (like information) is just as satisfying as owning them, and that we can intelligently manage access needs for rival goods (like physical objects); that is, we needn’t buy DVDs if Netflix serves them up on demand, and we needn’t buy cars if we can find them waiting at a nearby Zipcar lot anytime we need them. In a similar vein, we can crowdsource needs for physical objects via community exchange programs like Freecycle.

The Stranger Exchange isn’t branded as a Freecycle, but its online forum (just begun) gives it potential to develop organically into something like this, with a fixed, hyperlocal drop point.

(One has to wonder what kinds of opportunities emerge when digital access to location-relevant information meets public spaces.)

For the nonce

For now, The Stranger Exchange looks to be a microcosmic example of social & physical discovery through sharing and community-based, [anomymous] storytelling (the latter being a desire to hurl impactful tidbits of one’s personal narrative, unattached–all the more impactful because of their dissociation with a quantifiable, single persona–into the vast expanse of connected space, and to hope that they resonate with others, if not outright echo back).

Are there any other great projects out there in this vein, somewhere along the physical-digital spectrum?

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

First Things First

Boathouse Group is an advertising agency based in Waltham, MA, that also happens to manage a smart, local “microcharity” called SmallCanBeBig.org, which was voted the charitable recipient of this year’s Twestival Local Boston.

“Twestival was born out of the idea that if cities were able to collaborate on an international scale, but work from a local level, it could have a spectacular impact… a Twestival or Twitter-Festival is a global series of events organized by volunteers around the world under short timescales, which bring people offline for a great cause.” (For a list of cities and a history of Twestival, please visit the Twestival home site here).

Please see details at the bottom of the page for how you can contribute and, (if local to the Boston area), connect with some new people for a great cause this Thursday evening, September 10th, in Cambridge, MA.

From Personal Experience to Personalized Giving

Boathouse CEO, John Connors, founded the organization in the midst of Boston’s climbing homelessness rates–but, particularly, after he witnessed a hard-working woman’s difficulties in paying her utility bill (he helped to have the utilities turned back on).

SmallCanBeBig.org works with about a dozen local charities to find families in need, and enhances the donor’s experience so that individuals can donate any amount (as little as $1) to families with specific troubles, and garner a sense of their own positive impact on the people they’re helping–100% of the amount donated goes directly to a landlord, utility company, or medical provider awaiting payment.

A More Giving Giving-Experience

The SmallCanBeBig.org Web site places an emphasis on the personal narratives of the people they help, preserving dignity and confidentiality, while imbuing the stories of potential recipients with liveliness and individuality. The organization has begun crowdsourcing copywriters via Twitter to help make the “facts of the matter” come alive for each family in need.

Living up to its name, SmallCanBeBig.org utilizes a crowdfunding model for each family, setting a goal (ex. “$1000 keeps a family in their home”), whose progress is openly displayed on the donations page.

On the Psychology of Giving

Mark Nikolewski, who designed the site and heads up social media for SmallCanBeBig.org, shared some of the fast-growing organization’s insights and observations about community engagement and the tricky task of incenting charitable donations.

Mark cited three attributes in SmallCanBeBig.org that seem to have proven most important to individuals making donations:

100% - every cent of the donation goes to help the family specified by the donor.

Direct – donations don’t go right to families but, rather, directly to landlords, utility companies, and medical providers awaiting payment from the families.

Local - about 70% of SmallCanBeBig.org’s donations come from the Boston area.

Still, 30% is a good amount which come from non-local sources– some as far away as England, New Zealand, and Australia.

Steeped in the nitty-gritty of SmallCanBeBig.org’s social media, Mark also observed that Boston locals who hear about SmallCanBeBig.org from non-local sources (say, a friend tweeting from California) seem more likely to take an interest in the organization; local organizations that are recommended “remotely” may leave a stronger positive impression on an individual.

Additionally, Mark noted the importance of presenting only a manageable amount of information on SmallCanBeBig.org’s Web site (there are 6 families that one can give to right now), which prevents donors from feeling discouraged regarding their ability to help.

We worked very hard to avoid what has been coined ‘the paradox of choice’–the trouble being, when a person is given too many choices, they don’t make any. Theoretically it might be nice to have a lot of families on the site at once for people to choose amongst, but, really, the tendency is to get bummed out and think, ‘Oh, well–what good can I do?’. So we try to address that sense of helplessness or apathy by limiting the number of choices.

Mark Nikolewski, Boathouse Group

Talking About Giving

To get the word out, SmallCanBeBig.org has shown some resourcefulness. The organization has created its own media (all in-house, including the soundtrack by copywriter Josh Kahn), and advertised on Hulu:

SmallCanBeBig.org attracted the attention of springwise.com, an organization that publishes new, noteworthy entrepreneurial ideas. It also procured the support of writer Jay Hathaway in promoting a SmallCanBeBig.org rendition of Matt Jones’ famous “Get Excited and Make Things” shirt. (For images and the full story, click here.)

To find out more, you can visit the SmallCanBeBig.org blog here, stop by their Web site to make a contribution, simply tell a friend, or see details below regarding the Twestival Local Boston.

Twestival Local Boston Details

When:
Thursday, September 10th, 2009 @ 6:30pm

Where:
OM Restaurant
92 Winthrop Street
Cambridge, MA

How much?
$20
(100% of the proceeds go to the local non-profit SmallCanBeBig.)

About SmallCanBeBig.org
SmallCanBeBig.org, a new all volunteer micro-charity dedicated to helping families on the verge of homelessness. The site provides a new way for people to directly help families on the edge by using the Internet to harness the power of small donations. It is unique in that it’s direct and 100% of every donation goes immediately to address a specific expense or urgent bill like rent, utility or medical expenses. Donations provide the help necessary to get families back on track, so donors know exactly how their donations make a difference.

SmallCanBeBig.org is using social media to promote social change. Grassroots in its approach, they are using social media tools such Twitter and Facebook as well as a dedicated street team to help spread the word about the organization.  SmallCanBeBig.org helps connect those with a little extra to families without enough.  And since their launch in mid-January, 946 donors from 45 States have raised over $75,000.  A total of sixty-two families—including 135 children—have been helped.

Header photo courtesy of billselak’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.

The Rise of Polylocal Community Participation

Earlier this year, Latitude Research conducted a study to determine how individual, cognitive notions of “local” and human connectivity are evolving. We found that nearly half of all study participants were interested in locating geographically-specific news and information outside of their own region, and that heavy users of online content were significantly more likely to consider their own community an amalgam of several geographically disparate communities.

From left to right: Kim Gaskins, Cambridge, MA; Jared W. Smith, Charleston, SC; Rafael Torres, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico; Zee Kane, London, UK; Richard MacManus, Petone, New Zealand.

Individuals are becoming increasingly more hyperlocal as they become more polylocal–both of which are concepts tied to the physicality of a location. However, individuals themselves are less grounded to their physical locations, with regard to simple ease of mobility as well as information interests, and so the notion of community has become, for many, almost entirely divorced from that of geography.

Joining local communities not your own

The ubiquity of the web has rendered a once one-way relationship (geography defines a community) an exponentially more complex system of connective possibilities. For example, I may care to follow or participate in several remote local communities because I once resided in them (or made friends passing through); I was introduced (virtually or otherwise) to friends of a friend who reside there; or I take an interest in the culture or current happenings of particular locales because I read about them online, even if, perhaps, I’ve never been to them.

But these are merely reasons that I might remotely “join” a geographically-centered community that’s not my own.

Localizing digital communities

There are communities online, such as Twitter, that weren’t grown from local roots in the way that, say, Facebook was–they’re online communities, centered around the exchange and dissemination of information primarily (not overlooking social networking draws or entertainment content) that attract geographically dispersed audiences.

However, the bottom-up local bug (in the case of Twitter, for example) ensures that tweet-ups are incredibly prevalent–and now drawing larger crowds from increasingly broader radii.

The objective here isn’t to join a geographically defined community–none of the local attributes (i.e. local culture) matter, for the most part; geography only serves as one point of connection for people in these digitally-based communities. These communities are held together, primarily, by common interests, and sustained by a sense of goal-oriented purpose or simple congeniality over time.

However, I can 1) cognitively sub-delineate my information-communities into local communities, 2) expand my own local community (many cities have a Social Media Club; or simply sending a general tweet and some direct messages is the new “telephone,” which often ends in a down-to-earth happy hour at the neighborhood bar), 3) become part of new, remote local communities (via existing contacts in those geographic communities). In my own experience, location-aware social networking platforms with highly visual components, such as Brightkite (which allows users to post photographs based upon their real-time locations), have been integral in texturizing communications from friends in other locales and remotely building out a sense of community in those places.

So, with the space between you and I rapidly dissolving, why care about “local” at all?

1) We’re still people who occupy physical spaces and places.

2) As a means of communication and of experience, storytelling has always been important; the Internet provides individuals with more opportunities to share their narratives. Life narratives about everyday experiences, that is. (Here’s a little urban poetry in Papervision 3D.)

Furthermore, while individual stories form a substantive dimension, most of mainstream media is still ever-so-slowly catching onto the importance of storytelling through non-traditional means as well.

3) The world is getting smaller. I can care about other remote locations, because the Internet makes it so. And I want to, because it’s interesting. Hopefully, that the world is getting smaller means that individuals have the opportunity to get smarter–through connections with new people and experiences with content, media, and perspectives endemic to locales not their own.

Click above images to be redirected to contributors’ sites.