Category: Direct Action

Two New Services to Exchange Things and Improve the World

Two similar services have sent me emails letting me know about their new startups and they both share something in common: they want you to make the world better by engaging with strangers. The way they encourage this is through web services that connect your skills with other people and you can barter, sell, or even give away anything you know.

They are worth looking at if you want to learn some cool new things or share some knowledge that you have!

Uniiverse was started in Toronto and focuses on exchanging everything from ideas to experiences and, to a lesser extent, material goods.

From Vancouver there is the new Troc-Exchange:

Vancouver has a large community of environmentally conscious people that take pride in their city. 50% of Troc-Exchange’s profits go to the Surfrider Foundation: an outreach program focused on reducing single use plastics to prevent themfrom entering our oceans. Surfrider Foundation also developed the Blue Water Task Force. This volunteer-run water testing program tests water samples from swimming beaches in the Vancouver area in hopes to create a safer place to play and live for future generations to come.

Get Fourth Wall on Tour and Online

Dave Meslin is a Toronto based awesome dude that wants to make Toronto a better place, and now he and the Fourth Wall team want to bring something cool to your town. The Fourth Wall exhibit was a project that looked at ways to get people more engaged in their local civic life. It was really great and puts on display some easy low-resistance ways that cities can get people better involved in improving the city.

Here’s a TEDx talk that Meslin gave that explores his inspiration for Fourth Wall:

For three months in 2011, “The Fourth Wall” exhibit explored 36 ideas about how to make city politics more accessible, inviting, relevant & participatory.

The response to the show was overwhelming.  Now the the exhibit is on tour, and we need funds for transportation and installations!  The exhibit also needs an online home complete with downloadable PDFs, videos, tour schedule, media links, scorecard, photo gallery etc,

Contribute at RocketHub

Daily Social Well-Being Challenges

MeYou Health is an online community that is trying to get people to make small changes everyday that add up to big change. They have a suite of apps for Facebook and iPhones that remind you to drink water or partake in a daily challenge.

When you think about it, your life is the sum of little day-to-day choices – what you have for lunch, how to spend a few minutes of free time. For most of us, those little choices are made without much thought, driven by habit or a moment’s pleasure. That’s just how we’re made.

Now imagine the difference over the course of your life if you were to make enough of those little choices just a little bit better every day. It would be huge, and there are libraries of research that proves it. This is where MeYou Health comes in.

As part of the MeYou Health community, you get reminders from us and encouragement from friends to spark moments of mindfulness that wake you from routine. So instead of living on autopilot, you stop a second to think “what if?” And we make it fun! There are games, engaging Web and mobile experiences, fascinating bits of knowledge, and supportive social networks of people just like you. And all of it backed by scientific research.

Read more at their site.

Board Game Jam 2012

Board Game Jam is happening in Toronto February 25-26! If you’ve ever wanted to make a game then this is a place to start!

Here’s a special challenge to Things Are Good readers: make a game that is designed to educate or empower people to make the world a better place. If you do, find me at the event and I’ll post all the good games later on!

Board Game Jam
Board Game Jam

At the same time, even while videogames seem to occupy the headlines, the world of board gaming is seeing a resurgence in some smaller part of our collective consciousness. All the hipsters know how to play Settlers of Catan, and Snakes & Lattes seems to be packed every single day. If you ask me, it’s part of some broader reconnection to real social interaction in so-called “meatspace,” but I’ll spare you the philosophizin’.

The point is that board games are both wonderfully accessible and quite deep. Everyone can intuitively understand the basics of what goes into making a board game. On a mechanical level, it’s simple arts and crafts. For people looking to be creative, that can be a great change from making a film or any kind of digital media, which require significant technical knowledge and a team of specialists. But making a board game can be lead you down a rabbit-hole into a world of rich creative exploration and sophisticated design. Like the best games of any sort, making a board game is both easy to learn, and tough to master.

Board Game Jam is a low-barrier way to enter the world of gamemaking, and have fun doing it.

Check out Board Game Jam!