LETS marketplace from a feature ‘phone

This post follows on from a previous post: Alternative currencies – Simbi and the Flying Brick. Thinking about how alternative currencies can be designed to suit the particular circumstances they are intended to improve, I suddenly realised that it should now be possible to implement LETS in any part of the world where people generally have access to feature ‘phones – which nowadays includes many places where access to hard cash is extremely difficult.

LETS Stands for Local Exchange and Trading Scheme. LETS systems exists to enable groups of people who for any reason at all find trading with traditional ‘hard’ currencies difficult.

For instance: people without enough money, people denied access to markets, people who want to be sure that the results of their efforts benefit their community as much as possible.

LETS systems must be able to do four simple things:

Continue reading “LETS marketplace from a feature ‘phone” →

Alternative currencies – Simbi and the Flying Brick

The Flying Brick was the printed directory of the Brixton LETS Scheme (this isn’t the image we used – the original is lost in the mists of time – or a cardboard box in the attic).

LETS stood for Local Exchange and Trading Scheme. Brixton LETS was started in the second wave of alternative, local currency schemes in 1992 in Brixton, South London, and I’m proud to say I was one of the founding group, and one of the team that ran the scheme in its heyday over the following few years.

The idea was that members would trade together using our own local currency – the Brick (what else?) – which was a ‘virtual’ currency – a number in a database, with no physical existence. And that this currency would have different rules to ‘normal’ money, specifically: Continue reading “Alternative currencies – Simbi and the Flying Brick” →

PitchMark: full disclosure pitching without fear?

This post from Newspodge brought PitchMark to my attention – a service that attempts to offer confidence to content creators and inventors by acting as a time-stamped repository of record, and backup legal support. The service isn’t free, but although it doesn’t look expensive, in the age of freemium everything it perhaps looks so at first. Close investigation of exactly what it offers will be important – the devil is in the detail with this sort of thing.

This is perhaps something that could be built-in, or partnered with, the Co-Founder Jamming idea.