Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources Through Collaborative Consumption (25 page)

Monthly events (usually, with food involved!) facilitate learning and sharing among members.

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Where is it offered?
Seattle.

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Who can use it?
Anyone who has food, skills, or tools to share with other local food producers.

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Cost to join?
None.

If you like the idea of eating locally grown food but don’t have a yard and don’t want to get your hands dirty, consider joining a CSA or purchasing your food from a farmer’s market. Doing so helps support local farmers and food artisans, and generates money for the local economy. LocalHarvest.org maintains a massive directory that can help you find farmers markets, CSAs, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area.

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Meal Sharing

Meal-sharing services make it easy to share the produce of your

garden, a meal, or recipes with those in your community. Maybe

your garden delivered a bumper crop of zucchini this year, or maybe you’re new to the area and would really love to meet new friends over a delicious meal. The following services and networks are great ways to expand your social network, as well as your cooking knowledge, all while enjoying scrumptious food with delightful people.

Grubwithus.com
— A social dining network that’s perfect for people who are new in town or those that want to expand their social or culinary horizons. Operating very much like an online dinner party, you simply browse the site for a meal you’d like to attend at a local restaurant, and then reserve your seat.

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Where is it offered?
International. Most groups are currently located in the United States, Canada, and the UK.

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Who can use it?
Any adult interested in eating good food and meeting new people.

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Cost to join?
Sign-up is free using Facebook or an email address.

Once you find a meal that whets your appetite, grab a seat and pay an all-inclusive price (including food, tax, and gratuity). Then, just show up and mingle! You can also create your own meal (helpful,

if you live in a city where Grubwithus has not officially launched yet) that takes place in any location.

MealShare.org
— A free website geared around making it ridicu-lously easy for existing groups of friends (called “MealShare circles”) to eat together.

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Where is it offered?
Anywhere.

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Who can use it?
A MealShare circle can take on a variety of shapes and sizes depending on whether the network consists of members

of a church or local club, neighbors, or perhaps friends and families.

Invitations to join a circle can only come from members of the circle.

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MealShare is about tapping into your existing circles of friends.

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Cost to join?
None.

EatWithMe.net
— A social networking site where you can plan cool food events, post them online, and invite other foodies to join in. It’s a creative space for fashioning your own pop-up kitchen, cooking class, or restaurant adventure.

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Where is it offered?
Internationally.

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Who can use it?
Anyone over the age of 18.

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Cost to join?
None. However, some EatWithMe event hosts may ask for a donation to cover the costs of the meal. Such information will be displayed on the event profile.

EatFeastly.com
— An online marketplace connecting passionate cooks with hungry eaters to offer homemade meals prepared and

served in a cook’s home.

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Where is it offered?
Washington, DC, and New York City.

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Who can use it?
Anyone who loves to cook or eat good food.

Feastly is still in private Beta. To join, just request an invitation.

Once you join, you will start to receive access to meals in your city.

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Cost to join?
None. However, chefs/hosts determine the price for each meal to cover the cost of ingredients and their time.

MamaBake.com
— A movement of big-batch baking mothers.

Mothers come together regularly in their local neighborhoods and

cook one big batch meal each. At the end of the session, the big-

batch meal is divided up amongst the cooks, who then go home with a range of freshly cooked meals for the week.

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Where is it offered?
There are over 100 MamaBake communities spread all over the world.

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Who can use it?
Any mother who loves time off from making dinner every night, deep friendships that last, a sense of kinship and community, and a place to share kitchen wisdom and recipes.

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Cost to join?
None.

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NeighborhoodFruit.com
— An online service and mobile app that helps people find and share the fruits, nuts, and vegetables growing within their communities. The site features interactive maps of backyard bounty and abundance growing on public land.

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Where is it offered?
Neighborhood Fruit currently operates only in the United States.

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Who can use it?
Anyone interested in making use of the abun-dant fruit growing in urban neighborhoods.

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Cost to join?
None.

Foodshare.co.uk
— A national not-for-profit, 100% volunteer-powered charity that connects growers with local charities. Why

should surplus harvest go to waste when there are so many people in need of healthy, local food?

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Where is it offered?
Based in the UK, but available worldwide.

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Who can use it?
Food growers, schools, and charitable organizations.

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Cost to join?
None.

COlunching.com
— Forget eating lunch by yourself in a lonely break room. What if there were a way to share meals with new and

exciting people every day? COlunching makes it possible to share

meals and good conversation with others. And don’t be fooled by the name, any meal, including cocktail hours or brunch, is up for grabs.

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Where is it offered?
Internationally.

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Who can use it?
Anyone who likes meeting new people while sharing a meal.

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Cost to join?
COlunches take place in restaurants; you only pay for your share of the meal. There is no fee to participate in a COlunch.

Space

Sharing space is a beautiful example of how we can enrich the community and reduce our collective impact on the environment without swapping a single thing.

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Studies have shown that proximity, that is,
literally
how close we are to one another, is proportional to our productivity, satisfaction, profitability, and even the likelihood that we will collaborate with one another. The problem is that traditional work spaces are designed to keep us separate. Think about the stereotypical corner office, the hierarchical corporate office building, or the cubical mazes in which many of us have worked. It’s all segregated, with walls and doors meant to keep out distractions (and indicate standing). We’re conditioned to believe that this is how it has to be in order to be taken seriously as a business or to make it as a professional, but the sharing economy disrupts all these assumptions.

Space can be shared in all manner of different ways, from entire

buildings to a single room or even just a couch. Most entrepre-

neurs or organizations can’t afford to buy or lease the space that they need, but coworking can provide an alternative. Solo entrepreneurs and freelancers can utilize coworking spaces not only to have a more professional space in which to work and meet with clients, but also to connect and collaborate with their peers in a hyper-local manner.

Organizations and community groups need places to meet, edu-

cate, and plan, but often have extremely limited budgets. Libraries, churches, and large businesses often have empty rooms that they’d love to see used or rented.

Startups, hobbyists, amateur chefs, artists, and hackers need plac-es to dream, brainstorm, tinker, create, and make messes. Garages and basements can only serve that need for so long, but not every weekend warrior has the means to secure the space or equipment

needed to test their ideas in a larger pool. Hackerspaces, makerspaces, shared studios, and communal kitchens can provide the launch

pad where ideas can begin to take shape. An idea should never with-er and die for lack of a big enough plot of land in which to grow. The shared space resources listed below can be greenhouses for entrepreneurship, knowledge, and community.

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Coworking

Coworking is a term used to describe a flexible and community-oriented workspace that welcomes business travelers, independent workers, and entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. Since 2005, coworking has become a global movement, made up of thousands of different groups, spaces, people, and communities in hundreds of countries.

Sometimes coworkers gather informally in homes or public spaces

as part of a jelly (a casual work event that can take place in a person’s home, a coffee shop, or an office) while most of the time they purchase (or barter for) memberships in dedicated spaces. Coworking

spaces range from the massive to the very small, from franchises to member-owned cooperatives. They are located in large cities and

rural towns. Some cater to a specific type of person or business, while others welcome any independent professional looking to escape the coffee shop. You can even cowork when you’re far from home. The

international Coworking Visa program is a way for those who are a member of a participating coworking space to work temporarily in

any coworking space around the world without additional charge.

Use wiki.coworking.com, Liquidspace.com, DesksNear.Me, Co

Loco.com, OpenDesks.com, DeskSurfing.net, or DeskWanted.com

to find a friendly place to work no matter where in the world you live or may be traveling. Likewise, if you have space to share you can list your amenities and prices on these sites as well. For more information about nearly every aspect of the coworking industry, from

how to start a space to the impact it’s having on employment, please see the resources listed at Coworking.com or check out the annual

“Global Coworking Survey” published by Deskmag.com.

Hacker- and Makerspaces

Love tinkering with new technologies, taking things apart, or working on the next revolutionary invention? Hacker- and makerspaces

are community operated physical spaces where people with com-

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Sharing is Good

or electronic art — can meet, access shared equipment, socialize, and/or collaborate on projects.

Hackerspaces.org is a rich resource with information about nearly every aspect of this rising global community, including a comprehensive, user-maintained list of all active hackerspaces throughout the world. Perhaps your particular interests don’t skew technical.

Makerspaces are similar spaces available for those with a wide variety of talents and interests. A growing directory of makerspaces is maintained by Makerspace.com. There is also an extensive listing of hacker and makerspace groups around the world on Meetup.com.

Miscellaneous Space-sharing Opportunities

Some more examples of creative space sharing, just to give you an idea of what’s possible.

laCocinasf.org
— Commercial kitchen space, industry-specific technical assistance and access to market and capital opportunities for low-income, mostly female food entrepreneurs in the San

Francisco area. ChefsKitchens.com in Los Angeles, KitchenCru.biz

in Oregon, CropCircleKitchen.org in Boston, and CookingSpace.

com.au in Australia are all similar concepts meant to support the endeavors of food entrepreneurs. Check out the hundreds of shared space food incubators listed at CulinaryIncubator.com.

ShareMyStorage.com
— A social marketplace that brings together those who have spare space and those who need spare space for storage. StorPod.com provides similar services.

ChezJJ.com
— A community of kindred spirits who believe in paying it forward by helping each other with advice, introductions, and opportunities (e.g., internships, jobs, funding). Chez JJ’s three locations in California act as hostels and coworking spaces for hackers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and future digital innovators.

WrenchSF.com
— A cooperative motorcycle and scooter garage in San Francisco where members can work on their two-wheeled

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machines. The shop has basic tools and equipment, power, security, and storage.

ShareYourOffice.com
— An international service for professionals looking to share their office space. ShareYourOffice matches small teams and startups that are expanding with larger companies with

extra office space available.

Money

Most of us work hard for the money we have, whether it be a little or a lot. The idea of sharing money doesn’t come naturally to us, and some are downright against it. After all, why should you share your liquid assets with someone who didn’t help you earn it? Contrary to popular belief, sharing money doesn’t mean giving it away for nothing. Instead, as with all the other things we’ve discussed sharing, it means distributing it among a community so that mutual benefits

can be obtained. Yes, in some cases it means making a donation to a worthy organization or cause without getting anything back. But the rise of the sharing economy has created lots of diverse ways to use even just $5 extra to make a big difference in the world, and possibly change someone’s life forever.