World 2.0

Stephen Rapoport - 03.10.2011

A while ago I decided to pin my colours to the collaborative mast, and stop drawing a salary from Crashpadder.com. It was a pretty easy decision at the time; I have faith in the business model, and I wanted to demonstrate that one could make ends meet purely by hosting through the site. In addition, I am at a stage in my life where my costs are pretty low, so there was little excuse not to. What I didn't anticipate, however, was how great an impact this immersion in the collaborative economy

To give a little background, I am an advocate and an active member of the collaborative economy. I run Crashpadder.com, a community that replaces hotels with local peoples' spare bedrooms in over 90 countries around the globe. I am also an active member of Landshare, Whipcar & ParkAtMyHouse. I have loved the opportunities each community has offered to meet and help new like-minded people from all over the world and keep myself fed and watered at the same time. I would be lying if I said it didn't give me a little kick to bypass the likes of Enterprise, Hilton and NCP in the process.

One of the most enjoyable things, however, has been the chance to demonstrate to cynics a fact that I have believed my whole life, but which too few of my peers seem to agree with: People are bloody lovely. OK, not all people, but most people. The vast majority. Almost all. And by mistrusting the 99.9% of people because of the actions of the other 0.1%, one misses out on a whole spectrum of wonderful, enriching and exciting experiences that are well worth the perceived risk.

One of the moments when this cynicism is most apparent is in the 'What if' scenarios that are posed by friends, family, journalists and peers. "What if they're an axe murderer?" is surprisingly common. "What if they burn your house down?" was a recent gem.

My experience of hosting has been very different. From the young couple who left New York for the first time to see the Royal Wedding, to the 72-year-old professor who summarised the philosophies of Sartre and De Beauvoir over a bottle of wine (then another), to the look on a Jordanian student's face when we arrived at London Pride, I have met some truly wonderful people this year and hope that I have been able to make their trips to London affordable, and all the more memorable too.

The riots in London earlier this year made me question my faith in the decency of strangers. It was hard to stay optimistic about people as I watched the army of rioters setting fires and looting my neighborhood (the Clapham Junction riots stopped 100m short of my front door). But the following morning something amazing started happening. Our communities started pulling together and, out of the collage of disheartening stories, pictures and soundbites, shone examples of people pulling together and helping each other. The Lavender Hill Cleanup has perhaps become the image that best sums this up, with 300+ local residents meeting the following morning to clear their area - something that could have taken the council weeks to do at great expense to the taxpayers. One resident was even quoted as saying the streets were "cleaner than usual" following a similar effort in Lewisham.

Web 2.0 can be summarised in many ways, but I think that 'collaboration' lies at its core. Collaboration of ideas, of information, platforms and communities are all characteristics of Web 2.0. At risk of sounding cheesy (and causing lots of eye-rolling from our CTO, Dan) I am looking forward to World 2.0, where the people trust each other enough to collaborate as much in the real world. The crux of that challenge is trust, and how we can use these new technologies to engender it. As we, the collaborative community, continue to share resources and connect with each other in ways that matter, we will affect a sea-change in people's behavior. If we can achieve this I believe we can make the world a better place. We can reduce the amount we produce without limiting supply, we can make and maintain meaningful connections and we can encourage the development of innovative businesses in every industry.

What's more, I will never be asked: "What if they poison your toothbrush?" ever again.