Center_for_Adventure_Economics                                               | 20070703181232 | {{cae}}

We coin the term '''adventure economy''' to refer to a ''[[:wikipedia:gift economy|gift economy]]'' that is ''[[pay-forward]]'', ''in-person'', ''global'' and ''among strangers''.  In any economy, there are challenges in allocating resources effectively and avoiding abuse, but these are of special concern in non-market economies among strangers, where we don't have the information mechanisms of [[:wikipedia:Free price system|the price system]] ([http://www.britannica.com/nobel/macro/5001_98_11.html], [http://jim.com/econ/chap15p2.html]) nor of [[:wikipedia:social relations|social relations]], and we are also missing the risk-reduction mechanisms of [[:wikipedia:contracts|contracts]].  In this group we develop the allocation and risk-reduction mechanisms for [[CouchSurfing]], an adventure economy.

== Basics ==
* The Presentation: [[The Future of Work, Fun, and Being Social]]. Slides by [[Joe Edelman]]
* Backgrounder: [[Motivations for a non-market, pay-it-forward global system]] by [[Joe Edelman]]
* Getting involved:
** http://couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=4350 (on couchsurfing)
** http://groups.google.com/group/adventure-economics (on google groups)

== Initiatives ==
* The [[Adventure Economy Portal]]: building a gateway for those who wish to participate in the adventure economy
* [[Trust API]]: providing a standard way for sites featuring trust and references to export those so that a persons trustworthiness can be evaluated in other projects
* [[Opportunity API]]: providing standard search and aggregation mechanisms for (person, place, time, activity) tuples
* [[Adventure econometrics]]: measuring the health of adventure economies
* [[Random Action]]: a proposed companion site to couchsurfing that's all about [[random acts of kindness]], and [[raokserver]], the software that will run the site and provide add'l features for CouchSurfing as well

== CouchSurfing-specific Groups ==
* [[Trust and reputation]]: risk-reduction strategies for CouchSurfing
* [[Efficient allocation of hospitality experiences]] (i.e. ''the CouchRank algorithm'')
* [[Free life]]: extending the systems we develop to other economic activity

== Conferences to attend ==
* http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/index.html
* http://events.ccc.de/camp/2007/Home Chaos Communication Camp 2007, in Germany, August 8th lasting until August 12th 2007

== See also ==
* [[CAE Dream Team]]
* [http://benkler.org/SharingNicely.html "Sharing Nicely": On shareable goods and the emergence of sharing as a modality of economic production] by Yochai Benkler
* [http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History/Paper44/oup44.pdf Why is the Public Sector so Large in Market Societies?] ([http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/fellows/fellow.php?refid=1879 summary])
* [[:wikipedia:Non-market economics|Non-market economics]] (on Wikipedia)
* [[:wikipedia:Commons-based peer production|Commons-based peer production]] (on Wikipedia)
* [[:wikipedia:Social capital|Social capital]] (on Wikipedia)
* [http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/money_and_the_price_system.htm Money and the Price System] By C.H.Douglas
* [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938902.htm Businessweek: The Sharing Economy]
* [http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3623762 The economics of sharing]
* [[:wikipedia:Sharing]]
* [http://bokaap.net/blog/ Sharing Nicely blog]

== Drafts ==
* [[Moving from free software to free life]] by [[Joe Edelman]] and [[Kasper Souren]] | -|