As I’ve been working on the supplemental infographic for the Future of Money project, I noticed that all of the interesting new sites and ideas for value exchange are essentially types of marketplaces. There are peer to peer marketplaces now for gifting, sharing, bartering, trading, renting, lending, and investing. Most are operating on the level of exchange between individuals, but very few at the group level. (spider sense tingling: opportunity?) Continue reading →

Thanks to your support we reached over $3800 in contributions this week! We’re very excited about the possibility of reaching our first fundraising goal of $5000. In the meantime we’ve been too busy conducting video interviews to videoblog ourselves. Rest assured more videoblog updates will be on their way in the coming days. Here’s the list of our second round of interviewees:

Edward Harran is an attention philanthropist and former Palomar5 resident. He helps people spread, seed and share awesomeness. He’s currently experimenting with a micropatronage investment model to enable him to continue exploring a digitally (k)nomadic lifestyle.

Jessica Harris is the founder of Time Interchange New York and Co-Founder of One Blue Dot Share Networks, a platform where users can use their online social networks to to share skills, resources and goods and create their own complimentary currency.

Zaq Mosher is an abundance advocate and member of the MotiveSpace Coalition in Portland, a nonprofit community group researching models for sustainable property development.

Linus Olsson is the co-founder of Flattr, the world’s first social micro-payment system. He is also a web designer, photographer, coder, and a media producer with a dislike for copyright.

Stan Stalnaker is the founder and creative director of Hub Culture Ltd., a social network that merges online and physical world environments which uses Ven, a digital social currency priced in real time against a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures.

Caroline Woolard is co-founder of OurGoods, a barter network for cultural producers to exchange skills, space, labor and art objects. OurGoods manifests itself in Trade School, a non-traditional learning environment where students barter for instruction.

Georg Zoche is a lightweight aircraft diesel engine design engineer. Since 1996 he has explored the topic of “Global Governance”, resulting in a grassroots movement to establish a system of democratic representation within globalisation: The United Transnational Republics. Today, the “First Transnational Republic” has about 5000 citizens from over 100 nations.

October has come quickly, and I will be leaving for Berlin tomorrow to begin production for the Future of Money project together with Gabriel, Patrizia and Jay! The creation of the video will be an evolving process – the narrative and flow will unfold as we conduct interviews and brainstorm visions of the future. We’d like to share some of the themes that have manifested over the course of our research, so you can get an idea of the direction we’re heading and stay up to date on our process. Specific questions will be tailored for each interviewee, but here’s a brief sampling of some overarching themes we plan to cover:

• new forms of peer to peer value exchange
• radical transparency and the networked self
• digital nomadism and the challenge of an aging agile generation
• balance between personal empowerment and collective good
• hyper-efficient resource management and allocation
• rising value of virtual goods and currencies
• contemporary definitions of wealth

Have anything to add? Please post any themes or questions you’d like to see addressed in the film in the comments section below or on Twitter using the hashtag #futureofmoney.

To learn more about the project, or contribute to the cause, click here!

Thanks to everyone for your donations – we’ve raised almost $2,000 to date!

image from the series Macro Economics by Kevin Dooley

Hi all!

In case you hadn’t heard, I’ve been asked to give a keynote address next month at Sibos – “the world’s premier financial services event,” held in Amsterdam. I’m planning to speak about large scale shifts in cultural values and the impact they’re having on our relationship with money, our perceptions about ourselves as humanity, and how we are redefining what ‘true wealth’ means.

The presentation is only 20 minutes long, but I’ve decided to be ambitious and create a 3-5 minute video to accompany the talk. The idea grew out of several conversations I’ve been having with Gabriel Shalom (@gabrielshalom), a video producer out of Berlin that I met via this blog. We’ve been looking for a sweet project to collaborate on, where we can amplify some disruptive memes and get people excited about the emerging trends and opportunities that are surrounding us. “The Future of Money” seemed a worthy project. 🙂

So here’s the deal:

We want to create a compelling overview of what’s going on in the world of currencies, followed by some provocative visions of where things could go. We’re going to be conducting interviews with the movers and shakers out there who are developing new business models, new frameworks, and new ideas about how we can exchange value, innovate, and empower each other. We’re going to ask some tough questions about ethics, morals, and trust. And we’re going to provide some ‘what if’ scenarios of how these things could play out over the next decade.

Help us make it happen!

In the spirit of open innovation we intend to give this video away for free when it is finished. We believe that the research and opinions we’ll collect will be of significant value to anyone concerned about their economic future – and who isn’t these days! That’s why we’re asking you to determine for yourself what degree of support you can muster to help. Even just a small amount will go a long way towards helping us cover our time and expenses on this volunteer effort. And of course it couldn’t hurt to tell your friends 😉

It is our belief that if this production is generously supported by the network it will serve as a perfect example of the kind of courageous new business models that will be increasingly commonplace as the new economy evolves.

I’ll be leaving for Berlin in just a few weeks to begin conducting interviews and putting together the video. I’m really excited to see how this evolves, and we’re open to input for interviewees and scenarios of the future!

Please follow this link to The Future of Money website we’ve created for this initiative, more info about the team, and ways to contribute to the project!

Thanks to all!

– Venessa

In case you missed it, Facebook surpassed Google last week, according to Hitwise Intelligence.

Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week.

So what?

Watch this short video of Thomas Power of Eacademy.com talking about Facebook becoming a bank. He says Facebook should catch Google in terms of traffic by the end of the year. (looks like it’s happening even sooner than expected?) He then lays out a scenario of some powerhouse acquisitions that could take place, and a possible peer-to-peer lending business model that could wipe out the current banking industry as we know it.

Things are about to get very interesting.