The April launch of the Digital Public Library of America brings the knowledge-sharing we love about local libraries to the internet. 

This article originally appeared at Shareable.

 

Harnessing the power of collaborative learning and DIY science, California’s Maker Faire aims to combat throwaway culture by giving young people the tools and inspiration to invent.   

This article originally appeared at Shareable.  

Since 2006, Maker Faire has provided a space for inventors, tinkerers, builders, crafters, and wannabe-scientists to showcase their creations with the intent of encouraging others to dabble in inventing something themselves. With large-scale kinetic sculptures racing and roaming the grounds, science experiments with electronics and activities like clothing and apparel re-purposing stations on site, participants are encouraged to touch, ask questions, and take what they learn into their own workshops for some fun experimentation outside of the Maker Faires' big top.

Sherry Huss, vice president of Maker Media, doesn't look the role of a lab-coat wearing mad scientist that one might expect to be a Maker Faire organizer. There are no beakers popping up and bubbling over in her office. She wears no tool belt as she navigates the work spaces of Maker Media's headquarters in Sonoma County, California. Yet, as anyone who has attended a Maker Faire may believe, Huss has the stuff that genius is made of. Every year, she meets with her small planning team and formulates the clever uses of time and space for what is referred to in their tag line as “The Greatest Show and Tell on Earth.”

“We do it the old fashioned way, with post-it notes and lay them out. And it somehow always magically works out,” says Huss. “You have to get your head into it because everything that is happening on site is intentional. There are very few things that just come together,” she added.

And what comes together for roughly 100,000 visitors after months of tireless planning is quite brilliant.

In addition to seeing a nearly 40 percent increase in new exhibitors each year, the contagious spirit of Maker Faire continues to spread from the Maker's Bay Area headquarters to the rest of the world. With annual events in San Mateo and New York, and over 100 mini-Faires or satellite events internationally (including Rome, UK and a rotating country Maker Faire Africa, among others), Maker Faire has an accessible, inclusive vibe that leads many to start tinkering with or concocting projects of their own.

“Making is all over. It’s not just the Bay Area,” says Huss. “We don't own the license on it...there are tinkerers everywhere.”

Space is free for makers, and event organizers only charge a small fee if an exhibitor plans to offer items for sale. Maker is also careful with the selection process, focusing on non-commercial exhibitors and ensuring that all of Maker Faire's inventive action is family-friendly and safe. Especially with so much up-close-and-personal, hands-on DIY participation.

“People are there showing their projects and sharing how they made them,” says Huss. “Our goal is to make Makers. People who come to the Faire get the confidence to become a Maker.””

Based on feedback from previous years' attendees, demos and hands-on craft projects and exchanging ideas have been the biggest draw. Naturally, organizers continue to foster the collaborative learning that happens at the annual events that span two days. This year's theme is Maker Spaces, which is sure to be a huge hit among DIY enthusiasts. Similar to model homes and the nifty kitchen design displays at big box stores, Maker Faire will showcase these Maker Spaces to plant seeds of empowerment in the minds of aspiring makers from all walks of life. What defines these spaces, however, is not simply the presence of tools and a simple tool bench, but the act of making itself.

“Just look at Mister Jalopy, chronicling the decline of the work bench in the garage,” says Huss. “Garages now are mostly just storage places. They used to have a work bench. The toaster broke, you didn't get a new one; you took it out and fixed it. I am hoping that this movement will swing it back that way.”

Although the days of dad tinkering with old radios and small appliances on his work bench in the garage were often solitary escapes, the makers and fixers of today tend to have a more collaborative focus. In addition to crews of several hundred helping hands, sponsors and organizations collaborate to ensure that the festivities go on without a hitch. In Detroit, they collaborated with The Henry Ford Museum and Research Center. In Kansas City, they had help from the Kauffman Foundation. Portland partnered with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Huss isn't directly involved in programming for all of the Faires outside of New York and the Bay Area, but she provides training opportunities for those interested in setting up their own events, ensuring that the infectious Maker spirit spreads to the garages and minds of the aspiring tinkerer in all of us. After all, Maker is not just a one-time event. More than anything, Maker is a way of life that brings together communities in a too-often competitive culture, and encourages--above all else--collaboration, innovation, and fun.

“I think there is a lot of (interest) with continuing education and the Maker Space community,” says Huss. “Like the old grange where people came together; usually around food. It is so cool for people to come together to make things,” she concludes.

Image by Bridgette Vanderlaan, Maker Faire.   

 

Following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, an OWS offshoot called Occupy Sandy quickly made headlines through its rapid response relief efforts, often beating out official relief agencies, like FEMA. Organizers Leah Feder and Devin Balkind discuss how open-source technology can help organize communities, solve problems collectively, and build democratic movements.

This post originally appeared at Waging Nonviolence.

There have been a lot of exhausting debates in recent years about the role of online social media in resistance movements, about whether these technologies really help or hurt, and how. Some commentators have even gone so far as to hand credit for home-grown uprisings around the world to the wonder-kids of Silicon Valley, and it can be tempting to believe them. Once there was Gandhi and King; now there is Facebook and Twitter. 

These just-so stories, of course, leave out the in-person, on-the-ground organizing that is still at the heart and center of movements everywhere. But they also cause us to miss what may be the most important questions to ask about movements and new technology: Who made the technology, who controls it, and how? 

Facebook and Twitter are only the most visible ways that technology is transforming how ordinary people build power — a visibility aided by a media culture eager to promote all things corporate. But perhaps even more important in the long run is how free and open-source software can help create transformative institutions. Such software — which much of the back-end of the Internet already relies on, including Waging Nonviolence — is produced through self-organized communities of developers working in collaboration, rather than competition. These communities rely on values like transparency, consensus-seeking, decentralization and broad participation. Yet they’re hardly utopian; they do this because it works. 

For Occupy Sandy, Occupy Wall Street’s relief and recovery effort after Hurricane Sandy last fall, open-source software tools like WordPress, Sahana and CiviCRM helped to mobilize thousands of volunteers in affected areas throughout New York City, and to do so faster and more efficiently than official agencies could. Leah Feder and Devin Balkind were among the organizers of this effort, and they have been working to make open-source tools available to the Occupy movement ever since the initial occupation of Zuccotti Park. They are also directors of Sarapis, a non-profit that promotes free and open technologies for the public good. 

For Feder and Balkind, these tools are proof that a more collaborative and sustainable world is possible; I spoke with them recently about why. 

—

How did you become interested in open-source software? 

LF: When Occupy Wall Street first started, I was going down to the park but not finding a way to get involved or seeing the revolutionary potential in what was happening. I thought it was exciting, and fun, but beyond that I didn’t see where it could go. It was through being exposed to open source there that I was finally moved to engage on a much deeper level in Occupy, because I saw that there was a theory of change. I saw how continuing on a specific path could take us into a fundamentally different paradigm. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that? I was in grad school in media, culture and communication at New York University at the time, but thinking through ideas is fun only insofar as you can’t do anything. Once I saw that there was a possibility of doing something, I dropped out.

DB: I started on that path in college. Some friends and I put together a proposal to create a crowdfunding platform called Beex for charity walks and things like that.

Did you have a software background beforehand? 

DB: I was a history and film major; we definitely botched the development of the thing. But it brought me into contact with large nonprofits, and I realized that the non-profit sector was a disaster, primarily because organizations weren’t collaborating with each other. They basically mirrored the corporate model. That made me curious about good models for collaborative problem-solving. At the same time, I was dealing with a software project that was proprietary, and I was finding that it was a terrible, terrible way to go. So I was learning about the open-source software movement while I was recognizing the need for it in the non-profit sector. That led me down the path of developing a generalized understanding of open-source software for community organizing.

LF: I’m not a techie, either, and as a non-techie one can only get so deep into open-source software. I can’t really contribute to open source projects, for instance. I can use open source tools, though, and that increases my capacity as an individual tremendously. I can spin up a WordPress site and make it look pretty nice, really, really quickly. But then, once I learned more about the open-source model and realized that it’s also an organizing model for doing a lot of other things that can increase our capacity collectively, I saw more of an entry-point for myself in the broader peer-to-peer revolution. What it’s really about is changing the way that we organize ourselves, as individuals and as a society. Occupy could be the overtly political manifestation of this phenomenon, whereas open-source software is how the tech world takes on these same principles.

Devin, how did you first make the connection between open source and Occupy? 

DB: By the fall of 2011 I had incorporated Sarapis and was writing a plan to bring open source to community organizations in Brooklyn. I had already done research on constituent-relationship management systems, or CRMs, and on mailing lists. I had written guides for the organizations about how to use open-source technology most effectively. Then I thought I was going to have to raise tens of thousands of dollars to get people excited about the program — until Occupy Wall Street happened. It was basically free enthusiasm for deploying the ideas. Those of us in the Occupy tech group have spent 18 months building infrastructure. And then moments like the Hurricane Sandy relief effort give us the opportunity to see it work.

What in particular has worked especially well? 

DB: The biggest victories are the ones that no one sees. Occupy Wall Street was this huge movement, but no one was collecting email addresses at first — which is insane. But for Occupy Sandy, there was one email-collection system with one form for volunteers. It all went into our CiviCRM system, which had already been configured, and which a lot of people knew how to use. That became the basis for systematized volunteer outreach, where people have been receiving mailings consistently to see when they can come out to do volunteer work. Right now we’re looking at a sustainable volunteer infrastructure that we never had for OWS.

Why does it matter that these tools are free and open source? 

DB: This is part of a revolution in what I call, maybe wrongly, the means of production. That’s what open-source software is. And not just open-source software, but also hardware, and data, and knowledge, and how we collaborate. There are so many differences between open-source and proprietary systems; it’s like how you used to be able to take apart a car engine, and anyone who had basic mechanical skills could replace an air filter. Now, though, there’s plastic sheeting over the whole thing. It has been designed so that people can’t fix their own cars. In open-source systems, the flow of data is of paramount importance. In a proprietary system, the flow of data is something that you lose money on. Go to Facebook, for instance, and try to export your friend network — not easy, because that means you could migrate out.

LF: When we solve problems with open-source tools, we deliver the solutions back to the global information commons, and we build capacity for anybody who wants to do this in the future. Any such group that wants to arise and start collecting contacts can do the same, and it’s free. We have a whole bunch of tools to use, and we can grow ever more quickly on tools that we own ourselves.

So it’s a matter of self-reliance and independence? 

DB: For the people in the open-source movement who realize where this is going, the next step is to replicate what the government does, but better. How do we out-compete the government using open-source tools? I can tell you that with Occupy Sandy we already did it. We had a better system up within a month — for managing work orders, inventory, requests, workflows. What if we had had that during the occupation? How much easier would life have been for managing the Zuccotti Park experience if there had been people trained in such a system? We’d have had vehicles, warehouses and kitchens all coordinated in a way that was sustainable and easy to plug into. If we can do that, it’ll become competition between us and other systems. Then we’re on the path to the type of changes that people in the open-source world realize is coming.

We’re using the term “open source” now, by the way, but usually I use the term “FLO,” which means “free/libre/open source.” There’s a whole political dimension to these words.

What do you think it will take for more people to recognize this potential? 

DB: Open-source projects, as an organizing endeavor, pose an integration challenge. The question is always how to get one plugin to work with another. When we’ve conditioned ourselves to think more in terms of plugin architecture, our projects will inevitably plug into other projects, and when that happens we’re going to have a whole new set of functionality that’s possible. Once we’re at a certain level of advancement, we get to merge. I think that what’s going to happen is a wave. For instance, when open-source technology merges with open-source ecology in order to produce hardware locally, you’re going to see a tremendous sea-change. You’ll see, say, a new type of open-source tractor that starts selling like hotcakes. That convergence isn’t so far away, and when that happens it’s going to feel different. It is going to feel like a flick of a switch for a lot of folks.

How important is it for people in the Occupy movement to know about this broader process? 

DB: Open-source software itself exists because other models for software production didn’t meet the need. Similarly, I think the Occupy movement’s effectiveness depends on how quickly it recognizes that the best community-organizing practices are rooted in free/libre/open source. In the beginning of Occupy Wall Street, the leaders tended to be people in the Direct Action Working Group, which was organizing the actions and marches. But it was never very effective. Protest loses to production any day of the week. That’s why the Black Panthers had a breakfast program. Give people what they want if you want to be an effective movement. With Occupy Sandy, because there was such a strong demand for relief from the community, we saw the effectiveness of open-source tools. Documentation became more important. A shared Google Docs folder was the center of productivity within Occupy Sandy, and lots of people were realizing, “If I don’t share my docs as widely as possible, and if I don’t orient people to these docs, this falls apart.” That was significant.

But Google Docs isn’t open source. Where are the lines to be drawn? 

DB: I like to say “practically possible.” Use freely-available, open-source solutions whenever practically possible. Google Docs isn’t open source, but sharing data on spreadsheets is about as open-source as you can get. Any absolutes about this stuff aren’t particularly useful. What’s useful is recognizing the purpose of the activity as being new forms of productivity, not merely creating a spectacle. But this takes a lot of practice to do right. It’s hard. By the time of Occupy Sandy, there were a lot more people who understood how to do this kind of thing than during the original occupation, and they started out-performing the people who don’t work this way.

Was your experience with free-software communities in some ways preparatory for knowing how to participate in Occupy Wall Street’s decentralized structure? 

DB: Yes. Philosophically, for sure. The media would say, “They communicate over Facebook and Twitter,” but if you’re involved in organizing, you’re emailing all day. It’s emails, and it’s listservs. I came in knowing how to have intense decision-making conversations on email lists, while the vast majority of people did not. By now, the growth of people’s aptitude for that type of communication has been stunning.

LF: Although we’re still not there!

DB: No. But we’re so much further along.

LF: Whatever the political intentions of the open-source community, it models a different way of working together. Last fall, a lot of people were down with the idea that “shit is fucked up and bullshit.” But people will only go so far if you don’t show them something better. There’s a portion of the population that will really be galvanized by marches and occupations, but if you want many more people to get excited about your political project, you need to provide an alternative — alternatives. That’s what drives the politics forward, because there’s a limit to the horizon of possibility when it’s a politics of protest. But once it’s a politics of solutions and alternatives, you’re playing in a different field, and a lot more is possible.

Does that help you when you’re opposing a system backed up by state violence? 

DB: During the early months of Occupy, I would have experiences where I’d be talking to a cop who didn’t look like he was enjoying being a pawn to suppress protest, and I said to him, “Hey dude, have you ever talked about getting some land and going to a farm? If you ever need some help acquiring land, we’ve got a bunch of acres upstate, we have training, and Occupy Farms can get you up there, and you don’t have to do this anymore.” I’ve had cops say to me, “You show me that, and we can have a conversation.” The existing system is just not that competitive. It’s more competitive than chaos, or anarchy or protest, sure. But how good, really, is our suburban lifestyle, or our urban-ish suburban existence? At some point, the other option is going to look better, and then the air starts coming out of the balloon.

How close are we to that point, do you think? 

DB: A lot of the software, for instance, is still a disaster in terms of usability and other capacities. That’s just where we are as a society. We’re using it at just about 5 percent capacity. But what’s fun about this stuff — and I think this is really how good software gets made — is that you cobble together solutions, and everything kind of sucks, and you evaluate how each piece works, and then you roll it all into one. If our movement worked like a big open-source software project, there would be an extensive wiki and forums and trainings to on-board people. There would be an issue-tracker and requests for help, for what you can do at various different engagement levels. An assembly could be happening in some place like Trenton, N.J., and someone there might say, “I work in case-tracking for a homeless shelter, and it would be better if x happened,” and then bam, it would be tagged in the minutes of the meeting, and the developers somewhere else would have a filter for whatever code was used to keep the minutes, and they’d implement the suggestion in the next update. That’s the type of performance we’re going to be able to achieve.

We’re not that far away from being able to allow people to unplug from the proprietary information ecosystem. And once we get there, we’re talking about real political change. The best part of the whole open-source thing is recognizing that we can see into the future and recognizing that it’s not all crazy. It’s just going to require a lot of people to work. And that makes it a lot easier to be an activist.

Image of Occupy Sandy volunteers by Erin O'Brien (Occupy Sandy Facebook page).  

 

  
That's me and my OpenROV co-founder Eric Stackpole working on a prototype underwater robot. 

This post originally appeared at Shareable. 

Don't get me wrong, I like collaborative consumption. I think Airbnb makes the world a more interesting place, allowing people have more authentic travel experiences. I love TaskRabbit. I use it all the time for errands. I've written about tool libraries for MAKE Magazine. I get it. Access is certainly more appealing that ownership. For my lifestyle, at least.

But I still think collaborative consumption is overrated compared to the other side of the sharing economy coin: collaborative creation. The true potential of a networked, peer-to-peer economy is just starting to show with the maker movement. And it's not just about what we can consume together, it's about what we can create together.

Sure, collaborative consumption can help you earn some side money, subsidize car ownership, or have a more human-centered vacation, but rarely can it help you learn new skills, build a small business, or drive a new industry. Collaborative creation is about building new forms of wealth, not just sharing it. Collaborative consumption isn’t designed to create high-skilled, meaningful livelihoods for users. From personal experience, I believe that the skill-building, job-creating potential of the maker movement is more important than a new way to consume. It can address one of society’s biggest problems -- high unemployment, especially among young adults like myself.
   
As Chris Anderson eloquently described in his new book, Makers, the Internet is the prototype, the model for how to create with wide participation. And now we're seeing the same surge of creativity with stuff, and it's changing the way we experience the objects in our lives. From 3D printing to makerspace communities, Etsy to Kickstarter, the maker infrastructure is maturing to a stage where literally anyone can make significant contributions.

I've had a front row seat to this emerging trend. I've been writing the Zero to Maker column for MAKE, chronicling my journey from total beginner to improving amateur. After losing my job in 2011, I felt I didn't have much of a choice. I knew I wanted to get out from behind the computer, but I also had zero technical experience. Luckily, I found the maker community to be friendly and empowering.

I started an open-source underwater robot project with my friend (and hero) Eric Stackpole. In the last year, OpenROV has grown from a conversation between me and Eric into an award winning open-source project as well as a fledgeling business. We're not making much money, but we're fine with that. We've found something much more valuable: a global community of collaborators who are working hand-in-hand to democratize ocean exploration. The experience is rich in community as well as what Eric and I refer to as "Return on Adventure."

 
 The OpenROV underwater robot in action. 

My Zero to Maker experience at TechShop has been a shining example of the true potential of the sharing economy - both collaborative creation and consumption. The tool-access afforded by the makerspace was critical in my development, because without the shared-resource model my plight would’ve been impossible. But the real value - the meat on the bones - was the way members and staff supported our project. OpenROV simply wouldn't exist without the communities that have supported us: TechShop, Kickstarter, and the larger maker community.

It’s the process of creation that instills meaning into the products we use. Consuming together can’t inject meaning in the products around us. Moving away from a culture of rampant over-consumption will take much more than changing our eating, driving, and buying habits.  It’s going to take a whole suite of new values, technologies, and experiences. The maker movement is an opportunity to build that re-imagined future.

Perhaps the most encouraging news is that it's more accessible than ever to get involved. It seems that every maker I meet had a similarly warm welcome. Each feel a duty to pay it forward, which builds a culture of inclusion and possibility. The tools that seemed so intimidating when I got started, like 3D printers and CNC machines, each came with someone, either local or online, who did a great job teaching. Even something as crazy as an open-source underwater robot project was able to find a supportive home.

The experience has opened my eyes to the potential of collaborative creation. Lucky for you, anyone fluent in collaborative consumption already has many of the skills needed to thrive in the maker world. After all, they’re just two sides of the same movement.

David Lang is the co-founder of OpenROV as well as the author of the book-in-progress, Zero to Maker. 

“Biking is definitely part of our strategy to attract and retain businesses in order to compete in a mobile world,” says Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak as we glide across the Mississippi river on a bike-and-pedestrian bridge—one of two that connect downtown to the University of Minnesota. “We want young talent to come here and stay. And good biking is one of the least expensive ways to send that message.”

As we turn onto to a riverside bike path to inspect another span the mayor wants to convert to a bike-ped bridge, he recounts a recent conversation. “I was having dinner with a creative director that a local firm was eager to hire for a key post. He was an American living in Europe, and we spent most of the evening talking about the importance of biking and walking to the life of a city,” Rybak says, smiling. “He took the job.”

Minneapolis has invested heavily in biking—creating a network of off-street trails criss-crossing the city, adding 180 miles of bike lanes to city streets with plans to double that, launching one of the country’s first large-scale bikeshare programs, and creating protected lanes to separate people riding bikes from motor traffic—which is why it lands near the top of all lists ranking America’s best bike cities. 

That “ratchets up” the city’s appeal to businesses in many fields, Rybak says.

“We moved from the suburbs to downtown Minneapolis to allow our employees to take advantage of the area’s many trails and to put the office in a more convenient location for commuting by pedal or foot,” explained Christine Fruechte, CEO of large advertising firm Colle + McVoy, in a newspaper op-ed. “Our employees are healthier, happier and more productive. We are attracting some of the best talents in the industry.”

David A. Wilson, who directs 1,600 employees at the Minneapolis office of the Accenture management consulting company, says good biking opportunities are important to the well-educated 25-35 year-olds he seeks to hire. “Five years ago, I don’t think business people were even thinking about bikes as a part of business. Today it’s definitely part of the discussion.” He notes that Accenture recently relocated their Boston and Washington, D.C. offices from suburbs to the city to offer employees better opportunities for biking, walking and transit.

A Creative Generation Loses Its Car Keys
Young people today are driving significantly less than previous generations, according to a flurry of recent reports. Even Motor Trend magazine notes that young professionals flocking to cities today are less inclined to buy cars and “more likely to spend the money on smartphones, tablets, laptops and $2,000-plus bikes.” Annual miles traveled by car among all 16- to 34-year olds dropped 23 percent from 2001 to 2009 according to a study from the "Frontier Group" think tank—and that does not even count the past three years of recession and $4 gallon gas. The Federal Highway Administration found the miles traveled by drivers under 30 dropped from 21 percent to 14 percent of the total between 1995 and 2009.

These young people represent the “creative class” talent pool that many companies covet.  That’s why civic, business and political leaders in cities around the country are paying attention to the next generation’s wishes for lively, livable places to work and play. This means diverse cultural opportunities, plentiful cafes and restaurants, a tolerant social climate, a variety of housing choices and ample transportation options like biking—not only for commuting to work, but also for recreation after work and, in some cases, over the lunch hour.

Richard Florida, the economic forecaster who coined the phrase “creative class,” recently described these sought-after workers in the Wall Street Journal as “less interested in owning cars and big houses. They prefer to live in central locations, where they can rent an apartment and use transit or walk or bike to work.”

Florida sees bicycling as critical for thriving cities, which is why he joined New York City’s heated debate last year about the proliferation of bike lanes across the city. “New York has became a haven for creative-class professionals,” he wrote in the Daily News, which makes good biking facilities important to the city’s future. He added that biking remains important to workers in creative fields even as they grow older. “When they put their kids in child seats or jogging strollers, traffic-free bike paths become especially important to them.”

Thirty-three executives at New York high-tech companies—including Foursquare, Meetup and Tumblr—also weighed in on biking issues, urging Mayor Bloomberg to “support a bikeshare system as a way to attract and retain the investment and talent for New York City to remain competitive in the fast growing digital media and internet-oriented economy.” Bloomberg agreed, and the bikeshare program begins next March with 7,000 bikes for rent. 

The City That Bikes
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was elected last year on an aggressive platform of bringing new tech and creative businesses to the city. When he scored a major coup this summer with Google-Motorola Mobility’s announcement that it was moving more than 2,000 jobs from a suburban campus to the heart of the city, Emanuel explained,” One of the things that employees look [at] today is the quality of life and quality of transportation because of the ease that comes with it. And that ease is having trains as a choice, buses as a choice and bikes as a choice getting to and from work.”

The City of Chicago’s Chief Technology Officer John Tolva says it’s no coincidence that Google-Motorola Mobility’s new home in the Merchandise Mart is right next to Kinzie Street, the city’s first green lane—where bike lanes are physically separated from rushing traffic to make riders feel safer and more comfortable on the road. This idea of creating protected space for people on bikes, borrowed from Northern European countries where bikes account for 10-30 percent of trips, is now spreading throughout the U.S.

Martha Roskowski—director of the Green Lanes Project, which promotes protected bike lanes across the country—explains, “Cities that want to shine are building these kind of better bike facilities as part of a suite of assets that attract business. And they find that bike infrastructure is cheap compared to new sports stadiums and lightrail lines, and can be done much faster.”

George Washington University business professor Christopher Leinberger, a leading authority on real estate who predicted the current urban boom in a series of articles for the Atlantic magazine, points out “Biking is no longer just a niche for the macho guys.  It’s for a lot of people now. Ideally, we should have a 20-25 percent mode shift for bikes in cities. Great urban spaces are all about choices, including in transportation.”

Leinberger marvels at how bicycles are changing Washington, D.C., where he lives.  “Bikes have been a critical part of D.C.’s turnaround. They are putting in protected bike lanes which does a lot more to encourage riding than just a white line of paint between people and a one-ton vehicle.”

Ellen Jones, director of Washington’s Downtown Business Improvement District, says, “It’s just crazy how biking has taken off here, especially the new bikeshare system which a lot of people are using for commuting.” We spoke after she returned from an appointment with managers of a high-tech company wanting to rent an old warehouse downtown. “A lot of their employees bike to work and they were concerned about whether they could easily get their bicycles upstairs. When bicycling is part of the final decision on where a company relocates, then we know its impact.”

The boom in biking is also creating opportunities in the real estate sector. Jair Lynch, founder and CEO of a DC real estate development and construction company, declares, “We don’t work in places that aren’t near bike lanes.” Even in the slow economy, $200 million in new apartments are currently under construction adjacent to the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis, a bike “freeway” cutting through the south side of the city.

Another benefit businesses see for locating in bike-friendly locations is a break on health insurance costs. QBP, a bike parts distributor in the Minneapolis area employing 600, offered a series of incentives for employees to commute by bike and discovered an unexpected bonus—a 4.4 percent reduction in health care costs, totaling $170,000 a year. Tracy Pleschourt—partner at Carmichael Lynch, an ad agency in downtown Minneapolis that promotes biking—is excited about the possibilities of the just-launched Zap program, which electronically documents bike trips using on-bike RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) devices and trail-edge sensors. Right now the program offers only gift certificates and discount gear as prizes for frequent biking, but insurers are looking at it as a way to reward health-conscious companies with lots of employees riding bikes.

Boosting the Business Climate Beyond Big Cities & Bike Meccas
Bikes are improving the business climate even in cities not ranked as bike capitals or large metropolitan regions. Mayor Lee Leffingwell of Austin, Texas, said, “I certainly recognize the environmental, public health and quality of life benefits that more bicycling can bring our city, but I also value the contribution to the economy that comes with the provision of smart transportation options that attract major employers to Austin.”

Austin is ambitiously expanding its bike infrastructure; its first green lane opened last spring, one of 10 planned for the city. Cirrus Logic, a computer chip company that depends on specially trained engineers, moved to downtown Austin last summer from an outlying location “to become more attractive as an employer,” says PR director Bill Schnell. “We can’t just pluck anybody for our jobs. The people we want are mostly younger, and biking is part of the equation for them.” 

CEO Tyson Tuttle relocated Silicon Labs, which designs integrated circuits for computers, to downtown Austin five years ago to be close to the city’s bike trail system. It was one of the first of many tech companies that are now in the area. Tuttle, who himself sometimes rides to work, says it was a smart move. “Biking on the trails is something a lot of employees enjoy, and when people think about joining the company it’s a big draw. It also helps with wellness and fitness.”

You might think that Memphis would be the last place in America to believe bikes can take us down the path to prosperity.

In 2008, with not a single bike lane inside the city limits, Memphis was named one of the three “Worst Cities for Cycling in America” by Bicycling magazine (alongside Dallas and Miami). That prompted the city to stripe a few lines of bike lanes, but it landed on the three worst cities list again in 2010 (this time joined by Birmingham and Jacksonville).  This year Bicycling honored Memphis as the “most improved” city for bicycling. It was also named as one of six cities (along with Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Washington, Chicago and Austin) to receive support from the Bikes Belong Foundation’s Green Lane Project in creating a network of protected bike lanes to serve as best practices for other cities to follow.

What happened?

For one thing Mayor A C Wharton became a champion of biking, announcing, “We believe in the power of bicycle facilities to enhance the health, economy and safety of our community.”  He hired a bike-pedestrian coordinator for the city and put plans into motion that led to more than 60 miles of bike lanes.

Memphis business leaders began talking about the importance of biking to city’s future. Shepherd Tate—an attorney at the large Bass, Berry & Sims law firm—puts it plainly. “There’s no question about it. Biking makes a difference in attracting talent.” Eric Matthews, CEO of Launch Memphis and two other initiatives to nurture and attract new businesses, notes, “Biking correlates with entrepreneurs.”

The city, already home to the world famous St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is positioning itself to become a center for new biomedical firms. “My job is to convince emerging companies that they can get the workers they want to come here,” says Dr. Steven Bares, President of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, an initiative to bring emerging health companies to Memphis. “The bike is part of the overall strategy to compete for talent.”

Jay Walljasper, author of The Great Neighborhood Book and All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons, chronicles urban life for a variety of publications. His website: www.JayWalljasper.com. This article was originally published on GreenLane Project.  

Photo courtesy Spencer Thomas, licensed under Creative Commons.

 

  

This post originally appeared at Shareable.net.

There used to be a time when, if you wanted money to create public art, produce your invention, or start a company, you had to appeal to higher authorities. Big banks, wealthy relatives, local governments--they had the green, and we the humble innovators had to prove we were worthy of it. 

Thanks to the internet and the rise of collaborative consumption, however, this bureaucratic bottle neck need no longer stifle our entrepreneurial spirit. Ever heard of a little startup by the name of Kickstarter? This online crowdfunding forum created a place for individuals to showcase their ideas, and appeal to the masses for financial backing. Turns out, there are millions of people willing to chip in a few dollars to help bring fantastic concepts to market. Now Kickstarter is the world's largest funding platform for creative projects, raising a total of $327 million dollars and counting. 

With this kind of success, it's only natural that different iterations of Kickstarter would emerge. There have been many imitators, some successful, some not. What's setting the latest crop of crowdfunding platforms apart from the rest is a passionate focus on local projects. Instead of looking for backers in all four corners of the world, these hyper-local fundraising outlets are helping to connect local entrepreneurs with their neighbors in an attempt to energize local economies, and create lasting relationships between innovators and their supporters.

Lucky Ant
Unlike Kickstarter, which launches hundreds of campaigns a day, Lucky Ant features only one project per week. Also unlike other crowdfunding platforms, the projects chosen are all already established businesses. Members list their neighborhood when signing up, and every week Lucky Ant lets them know about a local business that needs to be funded. The great part is, you get rewards and perks from the business in which you invested, creating a lovely little reciprocal loop designed to keep you coming back for more. Founded last year, Lucky Ant is currently operating in Downtown New York City with plans to expand to more cities this year.

Community Funded
Founded in the sunny little town of Fort Collins, Colo., this crowdfunding platform is focused on finding and spotlighting projects in the community that might otherwise be swept under the carpet. Among other things, CommunityFunded supporters recently prevented a two-screen, downtown movie theater from closing, and helped a local designer realize her dream of having a storefront to showcase her clothes. If you don't see a project that piques your interest, there's also an open fund that helps CF provide a boost to campaigns that need it.

SmallKnot
SmallKnot is a crowdfunding platform designed exclusively for small, independently-owned businesses. No franchises. No big box stores. Smallknot aims to help local businesses connect with fans and gain new customer by offering products or services in return for providing financial support. For instance, making a small investment in the Saucey Sauce Co. (actual name) will earn you a 3 pack of their newly bottled Vietnamese dipping sauces, but a big investment earns you a private dinner for four. "If you desire a neighborhood full of diverse and independent businesses," write the SK founders, "you have the power to step up and ensure your neighborhood stays that way."

Do you know of a hyper-local crowdfunding platform that belongs on this list? Share it in a comment!  

Image by Jorge Barrios, in the public domain. 

This article originally appeared in Hartford Advocate (August 2, 2012), a weekly print publication with articles, reviews, classifieds, personals and happenings in Hartford, Connecticut, and surrounding communities.

 

I don't have a lot of money. It's not uncommon to hear of educated folks in their late 20s and early 30s living paycheck to paycheck because their jobs don't pay well and they have debts (the legal, credit-card and student-loan kind, not the knee-breaky, loan-sharky sort). We live in apartments with "character" in neighborhoods that would make our parents cringe if they had any clue. We eschew cable and the timely watching of our pop culture TV obsessions for Netflix and Hulu, and if we can swing it, we eat real food.

A Laundry Conundrum
Recently I was faced with a laundry conundrum after my roommate moved out and took his mini, apartment-sized washer and dryer with him. The apartment he and I moved into last year had no workable washer and dryer hookups in the basement, and after months of trudging to his mom's house to hang out and do our laundry, he bought the little machines. Yes, laundromats are an option, but not one I'm comfortable with in my neighborhood. Call me entitled, but I believe the option to wash my underwear in the comfort of my own home is part of the American Dream. Plus people keep getting shot outside the laundromats by my house. So, no thanks. With laundromats out of the question and being unable to afford to replace those machines, my search for cheaper alternatives led me to the Mobile Washer, a DIY washing machine you can use in the comfort of your own home.

Having the machines in our kitchen was a super convenience. No lugging uncomfortably balanced collections of unmentionables and jeans carrying three weeks of life around on them down to the basement via narrow stairwells. In the words of Michael Cera's character from Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, "I never wash my pants. I like to keep the night on them." It's gross, but whatever. No searching for quarters or waiting in line behind a houseful of people you're slightly acquainted with. It was great.

The Quest for an Alternative
After realizing I was potentially laundry-less once again, my first move was to start visiting my parents more often. Trips home mean free laundry, even if it's a 40-minute drive up to Old Lyme. Free laundry, free food, and quality time with our dogs, sisters to me, is not a bad tradeoff. But my car is quite old and my gas budget is small. Next I started browsing around the Internet for smaller, cheaper versions of the machines my old roommate had bought. Amazon has a handful of miniature, apartment-appropriate laundry options in addition to the tiny washer and dryer I was already familiar with. Unfortunately, most of it is priced out of my affordability range, or had bad reviews that made me nervous about making the investment: Everything from electric-powered washers and dryers to machines powered by good old elbow grease via a hand crank.

Then, lo and behold, I noticed the Breathing Mobile Washer. It looks like a toilet plunger. You use it in a sink, tub or bucket. It costs less than $30. I knew I'd found the one. I also bought a drying rack to use for the time being. I'm hoping to be able to afford an electric-powered centrifugal force dryer, like a salad spinner for clothes.

The Mobile Washer and drying rack arrived sooner than expected, erasing my fears of going a couple weeks without clean underwear. My initial concerns were that all of the glowing reviews were plants and I'd find the washer impossible to use as directed, and that my clothes would eventually dry to be stiff and crinkly because I didn't have any liquid fabric softener at the time. I imagined my attempts to do anything unfamiliar on my own resembling some hellish episode of "I Love Lucy." I braced myself for the possibility of destroying my bathroom and still having piles of dirty underwear.

Taking the Plunge
I purchased three of those orange, all-purpose five-gallon buckets from Home Depot and, after warning my new roommate that I would do all I could to avoid a disaster, I set up shop in my bathtub. I filled each bucket with about six inches of cold water and lined them up so that the one that should end up with the cleanest laundry and water was closest to the faucet. I threw three pairs of underwear and two tank tops into the first bucket, and added about two teaspoons of powder detergent.

The directions that come with the Mobile Washer aren't exactly detailed or specific, so most of what I did was guesswork, trying to emulate the YouTube videos I'd watched as research. To get the Mobile Washer to do its thing, you simply push it down and up under the water, like you'd move a toilet plunger. It moves the water through the fabric of the clothes, instead of just sloshing them around in some soapy water, to get the dirt out. After a couple minutes of this, switching hands and grip positions a few times, I moved the clothes to the middle bucket to begin the rinsing process. Using the same technique and motion, I saw the clear rinse water slowly turning soapy. I've done a few loads of laundry with the Mobile Washer now, and I'm still not sure how long each "cycle" should be. It's guesswork until I get a better feel for it.

Watch Alison use her Mobile Washer

After rinsing, I moved the clothes to another bucket of clean water to ensure all the soap was gone. Having three buckets means I can designate one for soapy, washing water, and rotate the other two for rinsing, enabling me to keep rinsing between the two buckets until that water stays clear.

Now, What About a Dryer?
Wringing the clothes out is the hardest part. No matter how hard you squeeze and twist, it's still not enough. I did another load of a skirt, pair of pajama pants, leggings and another pair of underwear after the first one, and then hung everything up on the drying rack in my room. After a few minutes I realized that everything was dripping onto my floor, even though I'd squeezed and squeezed till my carpal tunnel screamed in protest. I threw a spare bath towel down under the rack and collapsed on my bed to rest. (Having used this method for laundry for a few weeks, I decided it was better to hang up my clean clothes in the kitchen, where the floor is linoleum, and therefore drippy clothes will not rot the floor.) Thankfully, my new roommate does not object.

I'm not gonna lie, washing clothes this way won't be easy. I ended up pretty sweaty, but that's not all the fault of the work required by the Mobile Washer. Third floor apartments are cauldrons this time of year. Still, the entire experience was quite rewarding. A small batch of my clothes were drying peacefully in my room as I admired my handiwork from my bed. I'd say the entire process probably took about 45 minutes, from dirty to drying. Clean-up was simple, as I just dumped the water into the tub, stacked the buckets and stuck the Mobile Washer in the top bucket. Boom, done.

Going Green Accidentally
In terms of the things we do to save money, switching to hand washing isn't the only accidentally green way we try to save some green. A quick poll of friends on Facebook and Twitter revealed that many have taken to walking to work due to the inability to afford a car, or have gotten rid of their cars entirely, or have taken to hanging (presumably machine-washed) laundry out to dry in the yard in the warmer months. All of these things come with some risks, as being carless puts you out and about on foot in New Haven, or wherever you live, more often. Hanging your clothes outside runs the risk of someone making off with your favorite t-shirt.

When I lived in a nicer part of town, I walked to work just because I could, and saved money on gas and car repair while losing a bit of weight in the process. "Going green" doesn't have to mean spending a zillion dollars to add solar panels to your house, or buying an expensive electric car, when those options are clearly out of the question due to lack of financial stability. Opting to wash my clothes this way will certainly lower my electric bill, which did jump up after we started using the mini appliances. Having a little extra money when you're stretched so thin financially is nice, and I may just be able to afford healthy groceries consistently with the money I'll save on electricity. Eating healthier will help me lose weight, which will ultimately help to use less gas when I drive my car, which means less pollution and less money spent at the pump.

Running a washer and dryer for a couple loads of laundry every week can cost a few hundred dollars a year—not to mention the cost of the machines. And the time spent at a laundromat is time you'll never get back. Washing my clothes by hand at home with a DIY washing machine eats into whatever "leisure time" I'd normally have while doing laundry, but the benefits far outweigh the loss of a couple hours of sittin' on my butt. I never thought a few pieces of plastic and a wooden handle could do so much.

Top image courtesy of moonlightbulb, licensed under Creative Commons