On Wednesday, July the 18th, we finally hosted the first Ouishare Drink in Rome. To say the least, it was a huge success. Organized in just over three weeks - thanks to Stefano Borghi’s energy from Cowo360 - the drink in Rome has been highly satisfactory for the community and made a great leap of awareness. Many projects were featured on stage. Right after a couple of brief introductory talks, one by me to introduce hopen.it, and one by Benjamin and Antonin about OuiShare, we left the floor to initiatives from the community. First was Meeting Life the Experience Network, a place where “you meet people who have common interests and can change your life”, says Ernesto. At the moment the guys are working on a new site but there is a blog and a YouTube channel that allowed creators to bootstrap a significant community. The Meeting Life staff launched a video campaign that is going viral called "The Meeting Life Journal": https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C925P2vk-gs A Moleskine is running in several countries, after it reaches a new user she writes her own story ... Want to know where is it going next time? Immediately after MeetingLife another phenomenal project, NewGusto, took the mic. Graziano explained it as a sort of internet chimera halfway between MasterChef and Airbnb: he and his cofounders want to create a worldwide community of "eating well", shared and multicultural. On their website you can register as a cook or as a traveler and you can meet strangers to share a meal. Food has always been among the most interesting cultural experiences possible: don't feel like a foreigner traveling and get to know the locals. The site has been active for six months and the community is already all over the world: they even have a cook in Angola. After the food topic, we tackled the clothes one. SwapClub, by Rodolfo, is a site to exchange items mainly related to fashion and accessories. The community meets online to swap and the exchange becomes a moment of pure fun. Currently Swapclub looks at the international market, maybe we can give it a hand! Another interesting project was CrowdFuture:
...the first crowdfunding convention in Italy, will showcase some of the best examples and the most successful cases in the brief history of crowdfunding. It will highlight issues, solutions and provide insight to the future of crowdfunding.
Certainly an important time to talk about crowdfunding in Italy, trying to give information to those who need to fund their projects with alternatives to banks and savings. Throughout the evening we saw 4 Way Spot (which brings together people who share the same passion for outdoor sports), Scambi di stagione (a genuine Roman community which organizes a great swap party twice a year), Guerrilla PlayGround (a project to regain spaces of play in the streets with many affinities with social parking), Progetto Innesto (non-profit that aims to create a real connection between startups and managers expelled from big companies as they want to come back to work), and Cocoon Project (which is trying to draw a new way of innovating and creating a consulting company that is actually an open, enabling platform for anyone wishing to make business). https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GhFo63s9OeI After wrapping up the evening - the video filmed by the guys from MeetingLife will describe the atmosphere better - I want to dwell a little on some fundamental aspects: there is a great involvement and a great participation and for sure a great opportunity to organize many more moments of sharing possible. On the one hand there is the passion of you all, and that's why we created Ouishare Italy, the other OuiShare must become a platform for your initiatives, ideas and projects. The motto of Hopen, which is the first Ouishare supporter, fits perfectly: as we say "Hopen is You" we might say:
OuiShare is You
It's up to you, nobody prevents you from participating, we are here to support you, to include you, to make you participate to the sharing revolution, the one through which we will create a new economy that works for everybody. As the Roma OuiShare Connector, I’m very pleased with the great participation we're seeing: the group has existed for less than a week and already two events, one in Terni and one in Turin are in the making. These events will only be the beginning of a way to learn, network and connect. We are waiting for you all, your ideas and your willingness to participate. OuiShare is You!