Go Local in Sonoma County, California is planning to launch the Share Exchange in Santa Rosa later this year.
What is the Share Exchange? It's not easy to describe because I've never seen anything quite like it. A Share Exchange is a community center for sharing and a lot more. It combines the following:
- An exchange for sharing tools, toys, bikes, vehicles, and more
- An incubator for neighborhood-scale micro enterprises
- And space for citizens to hold classes, celebrations, and meetings
- A cultural center
- A market featuring local food and products
- A shop for fixing & fabricating with a focus on materials reuse
- A jobs and lifestyle training center
- A home for local economy tools such as time banking, community currency, and community investment
The goal of the Share Exchange is to aggregate sharing tools in a central, persistent place in the community to catalyze a green local economy. If the successes of coworking and The Hub social enterprise community centers are any guide, the Share Exchange may be onto to something. The lesson of The Hub is that grounding a movement in a shared physical place adds tremendous value.
Could this work? While the Share Exchange offers an ambitious array of services, the broad scope could be an advantage. Multiple programs could translate into multiple sources of support.
Coworking hints at why the Share Exchange might work. I've noticed that the most vibrant coworking spaces do more than just rent desk space. Parisoma, for instance, rents desks and event space, takes sponsorships, offers consulting services, and chronicles events on their site. In fact, the space is set up like a TV studio, with permanently affixed stage lighting and cameras, so they can livestream their events, another source of revenue.
This demonstrates the wisdom of going for scope when scale isn't possible. I believe the key to the scope strategy, however, is offering the right combination of services. In Parisoma's case, all their activities complement each other instead of competing.
I'll be keeping an eye on the Share Exchange. If successful, it could be an important catalyst for the sharing movement like the The Hub is for social enterprise. Learn more about the Share Exchange at their Facebook page here.
Comments
michael dobbie wrote on 04.27.10, 12:26am:
...a conversation space, something cafe-like where people might share initial interests, share their stories, from these stories and with a little facilitation and coaching help, motivation can be revealed and ideas then further developed on up the scale of commitment and action into prototyping and further goal setting....a sort of personal development and social innovation incubator and lab...
Neal Gorenflo wrote on 04.27.10, 5:50am:
Michael, cool idea. I can see a sort of small group curriculum where people self-organize into groups according to interests, then a guidebook with coaching is offered to help groups move from idea to impact.
Chris Cook wrote on 04.29.10, 2:58am:
Rather than taking a lease I would suggest a 'co-ownership' or sharing approach involving a new take on fractional ownership.
For a property 'owner' it gives interesting new choices:
(a) an 'evergreen lease' within an LLC framework agreement;
(b) a sale to buyers financed by LLC 'Unit' equity which gives a better financial outcome than any sale to a buyer who is debt-financed (as most are).
See
http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/link-alt-finance-19-11-09
With the right partnership-based architecture, Units redeemable in the right to occupy space in the Hub will become a currency, while the community's equity in the Hub would become a source of community investment and credit.
Wolfgang Hoeschele wrote on 04.30.10, 7:29am:
I think this is an excellent venture!
Another kind of item that might be shareable in this kind of space is art works. Art works are expensive, but once we buy them, do we want to display the same art works in our rooms forever? Not necessarily. So some kind of community exchange for art works, or an art library, might be a possibility.
There are art libraries by the way; a website in Germany that provides information on all "Artotheken" in the country is here:
http://artothek.kulturimnetz.de/.
You can click on the map for the artotheken in each state, and then on the locality for a listing for that place.
Wolfgang
Neal Gorenflo wrote on 04.30.10, 10:23am:
Wolfgang, I love the art library idea. That's so cool. Think about it from the artists perspective. An artist can get a steady, long-term income.
At first not a lot, but then it can build up once you have a lot of items in circulation. And think of all the work artist have that's just sitting in studios. I mean most if it is just sitting there not doing anyone any good.
madison wrote on 05.01.10, 10:50am:
I'm curious about something. I live in Vancouver BC. We have community centers in every neighbourhood. Many of the things in your share exchange are covered by community or cultural centers. Do you not have such things in the US?
Neal Gorenflo wrote on 05.01.10, 12:10pm:
Madison, I don't know the extent of community centers in the US actually, but they're definitely not as prevalent as in Vancouver. At least in the places where I've lived.
I don't know of any where I live currently either. However, sometimes libraries serve similar functions, but seems to happen by default rather than design.
I once lived in Vienna, Virginia, USA. There was a large community center there. It seemed mostly for sports and group meetings. It seemed pretty limited. And was not an especially inspiring or vibrant place.
Some planned communities like apartment complexes and senior communities will have a center, but they're for group parties mostly and might have a pool. They typically do not get used like the Share Exchange.
Questions for you Madison. How are the Vancouver centers run and funded? Are they self-supporting? Are there membership fees? Are they mandated by the government or required in zoning regs?
And would you like to write a story about them for Shareable? ;)
Anonymous wrote on 10.07.10, 6:12pm:
Sounds like a junk mall to me
Megan Coatley wrote on 09.28.11, 7:59am:
Hi Neal -
I just posted something about this on the Shareable Facebook page, and I think it applies here as well...
Inc.com posted an article on employees at one company sourcing mentors from a different organization to help them succeed in their careers and in specific business projects. I think that Share Exchange could be a great forum for mentors and mentees to come together and share their expertise and questions. There could be mentors for business owners, volunteers, travelers, parents - anyone could come here to share their advice. If you chose featured mentors who know a bit about 'shareable solutions' they could pass on this info to the mentees.
Here's the link to the Inc.com article:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201110/the-new-world-of-open-source-mentorin...
The Share Exchange includes so many things. My questions are:
-What other services would you include?
-What synergies do you see between services?