Let’s go back to the very beginning…
One year ago today Open Shed was conceived. That’s right on Boxing Day 2010 I “pitched” the idea of us developing a Australian peer to peer rental site to Duncan.
It was only a couple of weeks beforehand that I first heard of the term “collaborative consumption”. While catching up on filing at work I was listening to TED talks and heard Rachel Botsman’s Sydney TEDx Talk on Collaborative Consumption (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you haven’t seen it watch it NOW!)
I then read What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption and became completely hooked on the idea - it just made so much SENSE!
While reading I was also checking out all the different sites mentioned in the book. At first I was disappointed not to be able to find many Australian examples. But very quickly this feeling of disappointment started turning into a sense of opportunity - we could build something ourselves! I also just happened to catch Rachel Botsman on ABC Radio on Christmas Eve 2010 explaining that Australia was 3-4 years behind the US and the UK in this space and this of course meant there were some real opportunities here.
For some reason on Boxing Day 2010 I woke early and in my diary started writing about this peer to peer rental site called “Share Communities” that I thought would be cool for Duncan and I to create. Looking back through my diary today I can see that morning I jotted down all the basics of what Open Shed is now and ended that entry with this paragraph:
This is going to be very exciting - I can feel it! Now I just need to convince Duncan that it is a great idea
A couple of hours later Duncan woke to my “pitch”:
- I played him Rachel’s TED talk,
- showed him my favourite examples of P2P rental sites in the US and the UK
- talked about the features that I thought were important for “our site”, and
- then rounded it out with the ABC interview where only 2 days previously Rachel had spoken about the opportunities in Australia.
AND to my absolute surprise he said lets do it!!
