Internet is a tool

Inspiring & beautiful; New Skillshare manifesto “The...

georgehdf — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:53:08 -0500

Inspiring & beautiful; New Skillshare manifesto “The future belongs to the curious”

Although it has been successful for several years already,...

georgehdf — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:41:00 -0500

Although it has been successful for several years already, everybody seems to be extremely excited by Souncloud right now. KBPC just lead a round of $50Mio in the company and some prolific bloggers are claiming that it is the most interesting startup in the world.

Watching CEO Alexander Ljung explaining why he believes sound will be bigger than video will probably help you to understand the current buzz. His vision, based on the fact that sound is everywhere and such a key element of our everyday life, is simple yet powerful and inspiring. His talk ends after 15min.

NeighborGoods’ founder (Micki Krimmel) explaining her...

matthieuvaxelaire — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:42:46 -0400

NeighborGoods’ founder (Micki Krimmel) explaining her story and giving insight on the collaborative consumption trend.

Great take aways:

Sharing with neighbors has demonstrated an improvement of life in local communities, spreading into the overall economy

Exchanging visible goods creates trust in local neighborhoods because of the social value of lending

More connected, engaged citizenry comes from sharing and engaging with each other

With more risk and less guarantee, a real trusting relationship is built

(Via PSFK)

when technology breaches the law, it's time for the law to change.

matthieuvaxelaire — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:11:46 -0400

#Collcons Vs #law

Are they opposite? Are they friends? Are they enemies?

We don’t know, yet.

Many people raise legal issue about the collaborative consumptions trends.

As the leader of this movement, Airbnb also faced (and is facing) legal issues as renting a room for less than 30 days means you have to comply with many rules in most the USA. But did it stop Airbnb from growing at a stratospheric speed: No.

For most of collcons startups there are many legal issues:

Getaround: can you legally rent a car from your anyone? What if there is an accident?
Peer to peer food marketplace: Don’t you have to comply with hygiene norms?
Uber: Don’t you need a Taxi license to transport someone?
We could go on and on,
To be continued…

Hopefully, it looks like all those great companies find ways not to breach the law and to continue to offer their service.

when technology breaches the law, it’s time for the law to change.

To conclude, people are right to raise legal issue about the collaborative consumption trend but this should not impact innovation and companies from growing.

But for sure some lobbyist won’t agree with this and as soon as this trend will get bigger we will see effortless actions from the “old” industries to stop the Collcons that already started.

The bright future of car sharing

georgehdf — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:30:35 -0400

Mobility is one of the biggest challenges we will need to solve in the coming years. When we know that the average car is used only one hour per day, we can easily understand that car sharing will likely represent an important part of the solution. By shifting our perspective on cars from ownership to access, we will use this resource much more efficiently.

The Collaborative Fund team shows by the number that the future of car sharing is bright. Check their amazing infographic here

Another collcons startup from YC raised fundings.

matthieuvaxelaire — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:36:51 -0400

Hyperink announced that it raised $1.2 million from Andreessen Horowitz.

It’s a truly disruptive company, turning the book publishing upside down as it will allow anyone to become a author by writing, designing, publishing, marketing & selling his/her book without any upfront fees. This will create more micro-entrepreneurs and another possible way to make extra money from your passion, interest,…

It’s simply great to see so many great startups allowing people to make a living from their passion.

The revolution is on in the publishing industry.

Week in CollCons

georgehdf — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:31:48 -0400

Great week in the #collcons space. Two of the most buzzed about startups disrupting traditional businesses made big announcements.

- Zaarly: the local peer-to-peer marketplace that allows anyone to buy and sell products and services announced a new $14M financing round led Kleiner Perkins. They also welcomed Meg Whitman to their board (Zaarly being dubbed by many as the next eBay, this appointment makes sense…)

- Skillshare; the new darling of NYC tech scene that helps you “to learn anything from anyone”, announced yesterday that they were now open and available in every major US city. This is clearly a big step forward in their journey to transform every city in a campus, every street in a classroom and every neighbor in a teacher.

La revolution est en marche…

Collcons, everywhere.

georgehdf — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 01:40:15 -0400

Big news, Skillshare is going global today.

For many, Collcons is still a local initiative limited just to hippie towns.

Skillshare is proving that is potential is not limited to NYC & Co.

Local initiative are about to disrupt global business model.

Education, be ready. Skillshare is about to turn you up-side down (for the better).

P.S. How long will it take to before old companies buy Collcons company? (Please read: When Hilton is f**king going to buy Airbnb?)

Be prepared for the Collaborative Revolution

georgehdf — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:19:00 -0400

If you want to understand the current state of the collaborative consumption movement; you should watch Rachel Botsman’s talk at Wired 2011.

The video will also likely get you very excited about the possibilities that the movement offers.

Rachel Botsman, who is leading the movement, makes a bold prediction:

“We are at the beginning of a collaborative revolution that will be as big as the industrial revolution”.

Wow! Is that true? Nobody knows for sure. But we strongly believe it and looking at the current economic situation, this is one of the safest bet we can make.

The most exciting part of the movement is not the amount of VC funding that #collcons startups are receiving. (even if this is great news because it will help the movement go mainstream). No, the most exciting part is that it bring us back to old values and old ways of living: collaboration, sharing, trust, efficiency, trading, lending, swapping,… These are all keywords of the collaborative consumption movement.

As Rachel says in her talk: “In the world of collaborative consumption, people are investing in meaning, they are investing in industries becoming human again”.

Indeed, just look at the occupy movement. People are literally living in streets to protest against a industry that has become disconnected from real world’s problems. New ways of collaboration are emerging from this movement.

With technology and innovation thriving, collaboration is reaching unprecedented scale.

So get prepared to host a traveller in your spare bedroom; get ready to share your car*, lend real money to real people, rent your unused items and learn a new skill from a neighbour.

Really, get prepared for the Collaborative Revolution. And if you don’t, your kids will.

Watch the video here

*On average a car remains unused 22hours per day. This is called “idling capacity”. We will detail this in a later post.

When is #collcons going too far? Who knows? Seriously. It...

georgehdf — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 05:32:10 -0400

When is #collcons going too far?

Who knows? Seriously.

It makes a lot of sense that developed countries are in front of a massive structural change in our economic model and technology will allow us to create a new kind of economic system based on sharing, re-using and trusting.

The latter being certainly the biggest personal asset we can build and already monetize. Transparency will be omnipresent, and that’s great news for collaborative consumption’s trends. It will be its best partner.

But can we trust the Cloo app? That’s the real question ;)

Amazing. On the website “Inspire by Iceland”,...

georgehdf — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:08:00 -0400

Amazing. On the website “Inspire by Iceland”, Iceland natives are opening their doors and inviting travelers for authentic and unique activities. Activities include a workshop to properly photograph the aurore borealis or 2 young kids inviting other kids of the same age to swim in the warm water.

Best of all, watch their president’s invitation to eat pancakes prepared by his wife at his home.

Via Collaborative Consumption Hub

georgehdf — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:02:03 -0400

Via Collaborative Consumption Hub

Beginner's guide

georgehdf — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:58:28 -0400

The objective of this blog is to highlight great initiatives that use the internet to impact our real offline life. Technology is never as great as when it transforms the way we meet, exchange, interact, collaborate,…in real!

If you want to start somewhere: you should read the book “What’s mine is yours”. Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers did an amazing job at conceptualizing the “collaborative consumption” movement.

“Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through network technologies on a scale and in ways never possible before”

Examples include: eBay, Airbnb, Zipcar, etc

You can buy the book here