<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Brandon Wiley</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brandon@blanu.net">brandon@blanu.net</a>></span><br>Date: Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 12:04 AM<br>
Subject: [austin-hacker-space] Hackershare Time Exchange<br>To: <a href="mailto:austin-hacker-space@googlegroups.com">austin-hacker-space@googlegroups.com</a><br><br><br>I was at the space last Friday and somehow Marshall and I got to talking about complimentary currencies and the <a href="http://www.austintimeexchange.org/" target="_blank">Austin Time Exchange</a> (ATEN). It's what is sometimes called a community skillshare or timebank. Basically it's a way to trade your time and skills for the time and skills of other people in the community. The exchange gives people a place to post services which are available or needed and it keeps track of time spent on projects through a simple ledger. So if I help you out with something for an hour, you can transfer to me "1 hour" as payment and now I have +1 and you have -1. All transactions are public, which gives you a way to show off that you're awesome and helpful. It's not really about accumulating hours since the overall balance will always be zero. It's just a way to keep track of your community give and take and it's a fun way to thank people for helping you out.<br>
<br>Both ATEN and the Bay Area exchange (BACE) use a Rails app called <a href="http://opensourcecurrency.org/" target="_blank">OpenSourceCurrency</a>. It has some cool features like OpenID for login and the OpenTransact API so you can write apps that talk to it. I have actually used this API in the past to make an app that let's you withdraw hours from your account like at an ATM machine and it prints QR code stamped dollars which you can trade offline. When you scan the QR codes it deposits those hours in your account.<br>
<br>Well, OpenSourceCurrency runs on Heroku, so I went ahead and started an instance for the hacker space called <a href="http://hackershare.heroku.com/" target="_blank">Hackershare</a>. The first purpose of this exchange is to help people find people to help them on projects. You can fill out a profile with your skills, make requests for help, post offers of assistance, and of course keep track of the hours of help you give and receive.<br>
<br>The second purpose is to have another thing to hack on. All the source is on github and it has open APIs. I had a bunch of ideas today for cool features and I asked the lead developer Tom Brown about it and they're already working on some of them. For instance, you can now start groups, which are basically micro-currencies you can launch for a small group or single project. This could be used by committees to keep track of how much time people volunteer on committee projects, if anyone ever wanted to track such a thing. I also had an idea about setting up a prepaid dollar-denominated micropayment currency for consumables. I never have cash on me, but I like to drink sodas when I'm at the space. I'd like to pay upfront to establish a soda fund and then withdraw from the fund each time I drink a soda. That way there will be minimal transaction fees and I don't have to remember to go to the ATM and get change and all that hassle. Maybe there could be a QR code on the fridge I could scan to debit my account. The same thing could go for solder, etc.. So I when I think of ideas like that I sometimes try to implement them on top of OpenSourceCurrency because 99% of the functionality you want is the same for any currency such as ledgers, accounts, transaction logs, etc..<br>
<br>It's up and running now at <a href="http://hackershare.heroku.com" target="_blank">hackershare.heroku.com</a>, so check it out if you want. This is a totally unofficial, just-for-fun, but fully functional demo we could use for stuff or not. I had a lot of fun setting it up. I only had to type 4 lines, but that was kind of why it was so fun. Yay cloud!<br>
<br>
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</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>- Bryan<br><a href="http://heybryan.org/">http://heybryan.org/</a><br>1 512 203 0507<br>