This is a CTP of initiative: Shareable‐ShareMelbourne (Australia)
This CTP (CTP1) consists of two interrelated events, namely the appointing of Darren Sharp as the Australian editor of Shareable and his holding of a launch event for ShareMelbourne. All this happened in November 2012, in which the launch event on 14th of November coincided with Global Sharing Day, organized by Shareable, OuiShare and ‘The People Who Share’ in the UK.
The ShareMelbourne launch event took place at Hub Melbourne, which is part of the Impact Hub Network and was attended by about 80 to 100 people from diverse backgrounds, such as members of sharing start-ups, from local government, community organizers, social entrepreneurs, and others. Many of them were contacts of Darren, which he acquired through his consulting practice Social Surplus founded in 2010.
The program was prepared and moderated by Darren. It started with Darren’s short speech introducing the increasing focus on sharing in Australia through its connection to the Shareable network, followed by the announcement that he is the Australian editor of Shareable. Five panellists working in the sharing economy field in Melbourne presented different perspectives of the topic and discussions took place between them and the attendants. More details of the launch event can be found under this link: http://www.shareable.net/blog/shareable-australia-launch-wrap-up.
This was perhaps one of the first events in Australia, where social innovation and social enterprise communities were brought together around the notion of the sharing economy and community based sharing, which Shareable is a supporter of, promoter of and advocate for. The event basically included Darren’s numerous already established contacts and networks in the city, and introduced them to this emerging story about sharing, which was very new at the time. In these aspects it was a key turning-point in the sharing culture and Shareable network of Melbourne.
“It was only after this big launch event that it all really started to take shape, around the story of community-based sharing and Shareable's vision and the potential of the commons to be a new kind of founding story for this emerging movement, within a very active group of change agents within my city.” (Darren Interview).
The CTP was mainly produced by Darren Sharp himself, who initiated becoming the editor of Australia after writing for Shareable for nearly two years and being in virtual contact with Neal Gorenflo, Shareable’s founder, since 2010.
As Darren describes “I reached out to Neal towards the second half of 2010, when I became increasingly interested in the work that Shareable was doing and then started writing some articles for them. And then everything just started happening from there on basically.” After various conversations between Neal Gorenflo, the founder, and Darren, it seemed logical for Darren to focus more on what was happening in Australia, given that there is so much activity in the sharing economy domain. So it was in November 2012 when Darren was appointed as the Australian editor only with the support of Neal and Shareable.
The launch event wouldn’t have been possible without Hub Melbourne, who sponsored it through providing their co-working space as the venue and facilitating for Darren to plan for the event. At that time, Darren was a member of Hub Melbourne, which certainly enabled and accredited the conditions for the event to happen. Darren states it was a good business development opportunity for them, as they were trying to upscale their business and the event would bring them more memberships. He states “So, it was a good opportunity for them to have a whole lot of their target market coming through their doors and engaging around really important issues, of relevance to their community. So they were happy to accommodate the event and to have their name as the event sponsor.” To Darren acquiring a venue was a very important factor, since it is often challenging for change agents and social innovators in cities to be able to convene community groups together around these hubs of initiatives, because there are cost constraints and space in many cities is very scarce and not very available.
Moreover, Shareable writers, including Kelly McCartney and Cat Johnson, played an important role in this CTP; they helped publicize for the launch event through writing blogs on the Shareable website. They promoted the event before it took place, by announcing that it will take place and they covered the event afterwards by reporting the event proceedings and highlighting its meaning for Shareable and the Australian sharing context. These are links to two articles about the Shareable launch event in Melbourne: http://www.shareable.net/blog/shareable-to-kickoff-australian-channel-with-a-global-sharing-day-event http://www.shareable.net/blog/a-recap-of-global-sharing-day-2012.
In addition, Darren posted a post-event wrap-up on the Shareable website: http://www.shareable.net/blog/shareable-australia-launch-wrap-up. Through his post he commented on the turnout of the event aiming to inspire readers and increase momentum. He also requested contributions from others, thanked the sponsors and attached his presentation at the event. All this media coverage not only promoted the newly emerging Shareable initiative in Melbourne, but also contributed to the storytelling within the Shareable network community and other sharing communities in Australia.
The so far two-year-long communication ongoing between Darren Sharp and Neal Gorenflo, Darren’s collaboration with the Shareable network and his writing for its website were crucial developments for appointing Darren as the Australian Editor of Shareable.
Moreover, the growing interest in social enterprise and social innovation within the Australian and also global context were crucial developments that helped this CTP to happen. As Darren states “There was probably a background atmosphere that was conducive to these ideas in the first place.” On a global basis, people are looking for innovative ideas to address the social, economic and environmental challenges that they are facing as a global society, such as climate change, food security, inequality etc. In Melbourne as well as whole Australia there are different groups that are part of global networks, such as social enterprise incubators, hubs and accelerators, and there are many activities related to and driven by social innovation. For Darren, the sharing notion was another interesting perspective for which the community would be happy to respond to and to engage with.
Moreover, the socio-economic context in Melbourne and Australia generally helped the sharing notions to be welcomed by the community. In fact, Melbourne recently has been experiencing high population growth mainly due to domestic relocation from other cities in Australia. Currently, there are 4.4 million people in the broader metropolitan area of Melbourne and it is expected to reach about 5 million people in the next decade and a half, overtaking Sydney's population by about 2050. This results in an increased demand on services, particularly housing. Moreover, Australia in general has had an extractive economy that highly depends on its very rich natural resources. Australians are becoming increasingly aware that there is a great need in moving towards a new knowledge and innovative social economy that focuses more on services, technology etc. and follow the steps that other advanced and developing economies are trying to excel in, in fields, such as education, healthcare and biotechnology. This socio-economic context has definitely encouraged newly emerging innovative ideas, such as sharing and the commons, to be positively perceived by many members of the community hoping that it could better address current challenges.
After the CTP happened, Darren focused on maintaining the contacts and networks he built through the launch, which were mainly at the grass-roots community level. He conducted informal discussions and conversations within this network, and other contacts, colleagues and associates to strengthen as well as further grow his network. Through the discussions and through writing on the Shareable website, he continued promoting the ideas of ‘commons’, ‘community-based sharing’ and Shareable itself for the following years.
This CTP was the start of engaging the Shareable global network and hub, with the local audience and network. It included a combination of global and local conversations through face-to-face, through the website and through the networks. This also meant that Shareable in Melbourne amplified in parallel to the Shareable global network, which was growing in size, in activities and in ideas. It was the start of several events of Shareable in Melbourne in the following years, including the first ‘Mapjam’ conducted in 2013, which is the next critical turning-point for the initiative.
This CTP hardly involves contestation, due to several reasons, as follows: Darren had a very close alignment of purpose and vision with Neal Gorenflo, the founder, and the Shareable team, which made him in the first place propose to be the editor and start the Shareable network in Melbourne. For Darren, Neal was very supportive throughout the CTP and enabled him to run the launch event. Darren has a lot of autonomy as the local editor, initiator and facilitator of the initiative in Melbourne. As Darren explains “Neal had some suggestions and I had some suggestions, and the beauty of Shareable is, that it is distributed, so local organizers on the ground in various cities are given a lot of autonomy to pick it up and run with it, it is not overly prescribed.”
The sponsor of the event, Hub Melbourne, was less involved, so the chances for contestation are almost non-existent. For them it was only a business development opportunity, a way to reach out to new or potential members, rather than being interested specifically in the topic or in the event arrangements. While Hub Melbourne is mainly a profit-oriented business, its co-working space idea involves sharing ideas to a certain extent, and can be seen as part of the sharing movement. This has probably increased the common ground and understanding between Darren and the Hub team.
Appointing Darren as the Australian editor of Shareable and holding the launch event of ShareMelbourne was certainly an anticipated critical turning point in the development process of ShareMelbourne. Darren becoming the Australian editor of Shareable indicated the start of the ‘official’ existence of ShareMelbourne - Melbourne as a Sharing City under Shareable. As mentioned earlier, becoming the editor of Shareable, was initiated by Darren himself. For him, getting the ‘approval’ of Shareable co-founder Neal was expected, since he had been writing for Shareable and been in virtual contact with him for almost two years, and also had close alignment of vision and purpose with the organisation. While Darren planned the start of the ShareMelbourne initiative, he didn’t foresee how the initiative would evolve particularly on the longer term. He had the goal to spread the sharing and Sharing Cities notions in Melbourne and to help lead Melbourne towards becoming a Sharing City, but his vision for the development process of the initiative only evolved and became clearer with the time.
As for the launch event, its taking place was also anticipated by Darren beforehand, but its size and impact were not clearly foreseen. By publishing articles and talking about Shareable throughout the preceding months, Darren had already created a buzz about Shareable within his networks before the launch event took place. According to Darren “people knew what was happening and that it was a big deal”. Darren had prepared for a big public event, arranged a large panel and sent invitations to all his networks. But it was only when he started receiving confirmations on the event and started seeing that there were dozens of people signing up, he sensed the large interest in it and started anticipating its large size and impact. He mentions, “I think even more people came than said there were going to come. So there was a lot of interest before the event. So yes, I was expecting it to be successful.” Moreover, he was hopeful and expecting that some positive outcomes would result from this event for ShareMelbourne, such as extending and strengthening his local network and connecting it to the network and activities of Shareable globally. Because then there was a postage of him signing people up to the newsletter, focussing people's attention on what was happening in Shareable on the website. So, there have been 40-50 people, who have signed to the newsletter from the launch event, which was higher than the number of subscribers he expected.
Since the event was new for Darren and the Melbourne community, Darren didn’t know how it would be perceived by the attendants and how the motivation of people would be. He wasn’t sure it would be a key turning-point in the sharing culture and Shareable network of Melbourne. It was only after the launch event that the initiative and the community-based sharing story started to take shape and the high potential and dedication of change agents within Melbourne was sensed by Darren.
This CTP was the foundation for building the ShareMelbourne initiative and for setting the path towards Melbourne becoming a Sharing City. It was the first event under the name of Shareable and ShareMelbourne and the first event in Melbourne that introduces the sharing and Sharing City notions. It certainly was a strong start for the initiative; an event with more than 80 attendants and 40-50 newsletter subscribers.
This CTP has taught Darren to be courageous in taking proactive steps; contributing to Shareable, writing for them and then putting his hands up to become the Australian editor. He states: “It was not something that just happened spontaneously, it did not just arise, it was something that was wilfully enacted. It was not like someone came to me and tapped me on the shoulder and said: Do you want to write for Shareable? Do you want to become the Australian editor? It was all very self-organizing and yes. There was a lot of self-direction that was going on then.” Without his initiation, Darren might have spent several more years writing for Shareable in general, and not representing his city, sharing its stories and connecting it to such a global influential network.
Moreover, Darren became aware, that his initiative’s developments were mainly induced through the conversations and ideas exchanges he had with other activists, entrepreneurs and interested persons, and of course those he had with the Shareable founders. These conversations made him notice a growing trend in sharing activities and interests in Melbourne community and worldwide, which grew his interest to start ShareMelbourne, connect sharing initiatives in Melbourne together and to the global sharing community. He points out: “I saw a need to kind of spread the word lightly and bring the community together in my city”.
In addition, the CTP showed him the strength gained of being part of “such a global tribe” and of being connected to like-minded people internationally, even if they are not in the same city, or the same country, or even the same hemisphere. For Darren: “It does not matter, because you can create community and you can design stories together and bring emerging futures into being through the web and through virtual channels, and then have that interesting relationship between the real and the virtual and the physical and the on-line and the off-line and yes, it is all intertwining and linking up.”
References
Available at: http://www.shareable.net/ [Accessed 2016].
Available at: http://www.shareable.net/cities/melbourne-australia [Accessed 2016].
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