Question: if someone said "I'll knit you a hat if you pay for the yarn", would that still feel ok?

That means a bit of money exchanged, which feels odd and potentially dangerous to this idea.

I am a scrapbooker, with blue ribbon scrapbooks. Now, while scrapbooks are very personal, I put my books together without photos or bits and pieces, and add them as I get or print them. If I put them together so that they were ready for photos, and scraps, needing only placement and a small amount of glue, would it be okay to do something like that?

I'm excited to see you're actually doing this, John. I remember, years and years ago, you floated the idea of doing something called AnHourOfMe that sounds just like this. I'm guessing this is the evolved version?

How about this as an idea for rewarding efficiency?

Three levels of skill, as somebody mentioned above: hobbyist, experienced, master craftsman. (Or beginner, intermediate, expert. Whatever you want to call them.) For a hobbyist, one hour is worth one point. For experienced, one hour is worth two points. For master, one hour is worth three points. That might actually reflect time taken to reach that skill level more accurately. That would also reward efficiency (because the more experience someone has at doing something, the faster they tend to get at it).

In order to make this fair, the moocher and the giver both have to agree which "level" the giver is in this particular skill. They might have, on their profile, an average ranking for each skill (so that the prospective moocher understands what this person's skill is usually valued at).

This could be put in the initial mooch request. (I want you to use ____ skill at ______ level to do this project: ________. Preferred time range: ____ hour(s) to _____ hour(s).) I think something like that would work nicely, and be aboveboard and reasonably easy to tweak for all people concerned.

If shipping costs are involved, that could be factored in in the mooch request, as well:

I understand that you would have to pay for shipping in order to send this to me. Therefore, I will also factor in a bonus of ____ to reimburse you for your expense in shipping it.

Or there could be a pull-down tab for a giver to put on their profile, something like this:

For items that must be shipped physically to the recipient, I would like shipping costs to be covered by:

NA (if they're just sending digital, or the moocher will pick it up in person, or the giver is willing to send things for free)
Money
Points
Either money or points
Other

I think this would be important, because what if a person's hobby is woodworking? You can't send a chair through the mail without significant postage expense, or even a small whistle (especially if sending internationally).

I also think it would be important to have some kind of system in place for what to do if the giver runs way over the amount of hours agreed upon. Because that is *going* to happen sometimes, especially if the giver is trying something new for the fun of it, and doesn't yet know how long it will take.

One thing that might help would be for the mooch request to have an agreed-upon hour range. (1-2 hours, for instance, or 30-40 hours, or even "however long it takes," for a case where neither person knows how long it will take, but the giver is willing to pay whatever it takes.)

In your "inventory," perhaps we could have a space after each thing for the giver to talk about their experience in doing it? For instance, "I started crocheting last year, and I have crocheted 10 things now," or "I took a class in school about this," or "My mother taught me this recipe," or "I've been drawing comics for eight years now."

I think the most important thing is to create a community that encourages all three levels of skills to be present (beginner, intermediate, and expert). This will make for a healthy variety, and encourage everybody to keep getting better in their respective things!

Hi John

I have been involved in quite a few alternative things. There are sites that have been giving away things - for example couchsurfing.com, hospitality.org and bewelcome.org - have all given away accommodation for free. Care and Share Wien is for people to share tips and also give away anything they no longer want or for others to get (like a furniture bank, but people have also offered massage etc.) SADLY Jerk Tech is turning these via commodification into the kind of economy that is money based instead of favor or friendship- solidarity based. FOR example Uber (turning sites like freewheelers.com) and Air BnB (so people do not offer rooms for free anymore) are 2 that have monetarized things that were there for free sharing.

Having said that there are a bunch of sites where people have been looking at alternative currencies and economics. One is called Value For People
http://valueforpeople.co.uk/

and is run by John Rogers - he is a consultant that has worked on helping people to set up time banks (which is essentially what you are proposing - though you want to avoid the commodification aspect that stops people only doing it for money). I know John personally and ontop of a great first name :P he also is a very apporachable person.

Another is Reconomy where Kevin Parcell is trying to build a global level time bank. http://reconomyglobaltimebank.net/

I can give you these guys´ contacts and more if you want?

I have more thoughts, but to keep the post manageble I want to give some quick feedback on the points you ask about specifically:

1. this is a new idea, never (to my knowledge) tried,

It has been tried on a local level - it is a form of cooperative, whereby everyone agrees the value of a task. Also some ecovillages do this with rewards (kind of like stars) for nice things done - but without obligation. BUT for sure I never came accross this at a successful international level. PERHAPS on sharewiki http://sharewiki.org/en/Main_Page (but it is a hard site to navigate)

but there are related ideas, such as Time Banking, and local currencies.

YES

However, none of those have focussed on the hobbies people are good at, that they love doing, but that they don't want to do professionally.

True - but there has been something like this with the Arts and Crafts movement (1880s England) and nowadays Maker Fayres

These are the things that, for many people, give life meaning. When I explain MoochMe to non-moochers, they invariably (mis)interpret as something that's already been done. How can I explain this idea quicker and more clearly?

I would relate it to the Living Library concept - in the Living Libraries you "borrow a person" who is a book so for example I can borrow a rock star, a wheelchair user or a small girl - and then I can "read" the book as in ask questions of them and they answer them. There is no set time or requirements.

SO I would say that Moochme is "Borrowing a friend" in that way so they are PRACTICAL MANUAL or a service rather than a product - so your service might be portrait photography or pottery - this is distinct from you giving away pictures or pottery or furniture you made. THOSE aspects woudl have a cost just like mooching a book also costs in postage, book purchase cost, packaging (these are externalized in our Bookmooch market) and we trade only on book to book basis.

2 how should the exchange currency work? I dislike the time banking concept of "1 hour spent is 1 hour earned" because, like communism, it doesn't reward improving your efficiency, your quality, and doesn't reward years of effort to get to this point. At the same time, if everyone prices their work with variable "mooch points" this idea could very quickly feel like a marketplace, more like etsy, than a non-professional exchange. Another possibility is for MoochMe to operate without a currency: reputation is all that matters.

Reputation is a hard thing to measure as it is very variable, perhaps my friends like me so they say my crappy art paintings are good, but professional artists won`t let me exhibit with their artistically superior works? It affects their standing to be mixed in with worse stuff - I cannot just go on peer review.

I like the simple idea of different levels - so hobbyist (1): experienced (2): master craftsman (3) - and that each service is rated by the recipient and the offerer. It could be more complicated in that you have to give away some 1 pointers before you can offer 3 pointers (so the community is rating you with a reputation). As it is a service it is not based on a value time-wise nor cost-wise. So it does not become a market place. AGAIN it works on trust - the key thing is how can you see someone´s quality of work? And what if you are not happy? I think that Bookmoochers understand some trades do not go well with books, but here I am not so sure.

3. Many people lack the self-confidence

That can be improved by a standard form to help people and support from the community.

or don't want to make the effort to very clearly describe what they can do.

If they don´t want to make the effort then they are not reliable. AGAIN a simple way of doing this helps - that can grow with some thought on categories. I would say to keep it simple with only a few to start with so Language services, visual arts, cooking - 10 top categories to begin with. And then allow new ones to develop organically when there is a community to support them. Subcategories can be there for people to describe - for example - I come and perform music: could be all kinds of music.

Fiverr.com does a great job of getting around that problem. I like and use Fiverr, but to me that site feels like exploitation, and Fiverr actively discourages the social dimension to the work.

Fiverr seems to be focused on a business model of the world. Some of us want to help people and share our time. I think that we can build the social dimension and perhaps we can do that with some others like Michel Bauwens of the P2P Society - who I also know.

I think we can support the social dimension, but this might work with MoochMe meetups? I would want to support people to have useful hobbies - and not have 90% of people making Xmass cards - that they like doing, yet there is no real market / demand for. So this suggests bigger ideas, such as we see with Gamification that the Kahn Academy does where people learn skills for badges. I am personally not a big fan of that - but it does work and I would like to improve my repertoir - for example I can write poetry in French and English, but have written very little in Latin or Finnish and none in German, so to understand some of those forms could be good. And at the same time I cannot play guitar - so I am happy to share tips in creative writing for help in playing music - THIS kind of social experience and dimension can be encouraged. IT IS SLIGHTLY different as there is an emergent property of building a community and NOT just swapping something.

I did a similar project called Collective Kitchens - it worked very simply like this: A different ethnic food would be decided upon, someone would be Chef de Cuisine and anyone who wanted could take part. The Chef would order the food, share tips and the others would cook, shop and wash-up. Everyone paid the same and everyone got to eat good food and we socialized. As we were a very international group we had French, Italian, English, Swedish, Finnish, Indian and even Australian food cooked on different times. Poor cooks got better, good cooks learnt new techniques, people ate cheaper, less food was used etc. Everyone had a social circle once a week - and no pressure to do what they could not - anyone can carry food from the store or clean a table.

I hope these few thoughts help

m

I might also add a "donate your time" option, where you earn karma for helping others (works better if you're not out of pocket for materials like yarn)

The idea is that someone who wants what you're offering could ask "hey, will you do this for me? does anything I'm offering tempt you? If not, would you consider doing what you do for me as a favor?"

-john

John, have a look at the Community Exchange system Australia website at https://www.communityexchange.net.au/ The Maleny Local Energy Trading system (LETS) has been successfully operating for more or less 20 yrs. See their page at https://www.communityexchange.net.au/docs/join2.asp?xid=MALO The Maleny LETS Admin is Carmel Givens email: malenylets@gmail.com