Trust and Communal Projects

I tend to come up with ideas every now and then that are predicated on trust, communication and human kindness. That's pretty much why I tend to abandon them once I realise that. But that's the wrong way to go about it. What I should be doing instead is developing and pitching those ideas under the assumption that there have to be people out there like me and people who would be able to help me (or engage with me to) make those ideas work. So this blog post is a way to put a few of those ideas out there. Bear with me and if something sounds cool, let me know!

The Communal Birthday Card

This one is a strange kind of idea. I'm not sure how I feel about birthday cards, but I know that I like getting things in the mail. Especially from somewhere further away and if it's at least a little personal or actually from a real person and not a business. How cool would it be to get an international birthday card on your birthday?

So the idea is that we get one or more birthday cards or cards of some kind. Someone does this, just a single person. And there's a registry of birthdays and addresses for everyone in the group. So when it's nearing someone's birthday (and keep in mind this doesn't have to be birthday specific, we could just do it for the heck of it) the card is signed by the original person and sent. And then the recipient sends it on to the next birthday boy or girl, having signed it themselves. And on and on it goes, through the mail system. It would be interesting to see how long it lasted and how many little notes and signatures it would get on it.

The Birthday Circle

I promise you not all my ideas are birthday related! This one is more of a gift thing though. The idea is that getting presents is cool. Everybody can agree with that one. This one is all about crowd-sourcing and funding a birthday present for yourself. A group of people, once again, all post their preferences for a gift keeping in mind an upper monetary limit set by the group. They probably wouldn't be very specific, more along the lines of categories and ideas. The rest of the group would, in secret I guess, discuss and figure out what to get the giftee. Then they would communally pay for it and have it delivered in time for their birthday. So the advantage is that you could recruit a group of cool people (which sounds self serving but it isn't if everybody does the same thing) and they're all out there plotting what to get you for your birthday and when it's other people's turn you get to brainstorm cool things to get people. It's the best of both worlds! And with an upper limit on the price, the individual contributions wouldn't be too great especially with a larger group.

The Book Swap

This one is pretty self explanatory but essentially let's swap books we like. Everybody puts their names in, it gets randomised, and you get a cool book from someone somewhere else! Send whatever you like, fiction non-fiction poetry cookbooks it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that you want to share it with someone else.