Utah Phillips

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

…is a folk singin’ sort of storytelling, freight-train-hopping, clown-nose wearing, union organizing anarchist, among other things. we saw him here in chicago last night. he’s one of these amazing folks who challenges more than inspires, simply by being as big as he is, by being so much of who he is. so i walked out of the show, which felt more like a conversation really, thinking that i was sort of doing what he does… but just doing way, way too little of it.

after so many songs and stories of organizers and movements, marvelling at all of us singing along to a number of choruses like “building a boat, might never sail on… gonna build it anyway,” i come away convinced that the giving market needs a folk song dimension to it, a union hall organizing, freight train-hopping, take-it-to-the-streets, power to the people sort of life. it needs a pulse we can all tap out gently with one foot. now that’s a good puzzle for an online marketplace sort of project, but i think TedErnst and i worked out a bit of it today.

Ted helped me talk myself into a simple webpage in which i could offer (and answer!) my four big questions: what do i want to see in the world? what do i have to offer? what do i need? what am i willing to do if i get it? …and then invite others to answer them too, to then post them anywhere, and post the location of their answers on the giving market site.

if you’ve been reading along here, you know i’ve talked myself through structures like MembersWebsite, WeblogDirectory, OneBigBlogRoll and StrategicGivingQuestions (see sidebar links, left). this new idea seems like a swirl of all of them: a blog with my answers, a website inviting attention to the questions, a listing of where the offerings/askings are posted… all i’d want then is a public sort of blogroll that could just keep growing but that would only display a random 50 links each time it was reloaded.

this new form moves away from the google/ebay model, away from the match.com market, toward something more like bookcrossing.com or wheresgeorge.com, which track the movement of books and single US dollar bills, respectively. in this form, the giving market doesn’t need to own the transaction, and doesn’t even need to own the project data. it only needs offer the invitation and some basic market indicators… just enough to surface and encourage what is already out there anyway.

so now it seems that my next best step is to pencil out the GivingMarket as a sort of folk song. something that could be passed around, shared with friends, accessible to all, and adapted and re-adapted to all kinds of people and places. something that would invite community to gather in any number of ways and places.

so i’m gonna take a short break here, give it a think and a rest, and then come back and play some more.

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