So now that I’ve had a couple of months to use Sharonimo, what do I think? Is it what I envisioned in 2006? (I’m imagining you asking these questions, because I know you’re dying for answers. Both of you.) It’s close. It’s not finished, yet, but the parts that are finished works exactly as I imagined they would, and the application has had the impact on my life that I hope it will have on many others. Sharonimo isn’t the kind of tool most people will use daily, but I’ve been using it weekly, either to make requests or plan projects or respond to requests or invitations, and as I get used to using it, I think I’ll find more opportunities to do so. Like you, I’m not used to having this tool at my disposal, so I’m still learning how to use it, and what it can do for me.

Here are a few of the ways I’ve used Sharonimo since it launched (I haven’t been taking notes, and I can’t remember all of them):

I requested and borrowed a screw gun from my friend Bill when my old one crapped out on me. Now my gut tells me to buy a new one–”because you never know when you’ll need it”–but I’ve only needed a screw gun once or twice over the last two months, so I think I can do without my own. If I continue to borrow screw guns instead of buying a new one, I’ll save $50-$100.

I granted a request to borrow a table saw and circular saw from my friend Andrew. He’d cut through the cord of his own circular saw (sorry to out you, Andrew), and he’ll probably get around to repairing it eventually, but by borrowing my table saw whenever he needs one, he’ll save $350. Not bad.

I accepted an invitation to a brush-clearing project at a friend’s house. Seven of us spent a couple hours working, chatting, and making a difference for a family we care about. I don’t know what the family would have paid to have the work done, but that wasn’t really the point in this case.

I sent invitations to a community-service project at our old Town Hall, which needs some interior painting done. Again, the value created by a project like this could be figured in dollar terms, but that’s not the point.

I sent out a general resource request for a tiger costume (no, not for me), and got a response from Mark, who had one and dropped it by my house a couple hours later, saving me or Lisa either the money or (more likely) the time required to buy or make a costume for our daughter.

I responded to a general request from Mark for some heavy-duty jacks for a house project. I don’t have any, but my father-in-law does, so, since my father-in-law doesn’t have a Sharonimo account, I’ll add the jacks to my resource list and share them, on his behalf, with Mark. I’m not sure what two 20-ton jacks and a 40-ton jack would cost to rent, but whatever the amount is, Mark won’t be spending it.

So just within the last two months, my friends and I have saved $500-$1000 by sharing resources, and have been enriched in equally important (but less measurable) ways by sharing time and working together on service and personal projects.

As Sharonimo grows and improves, I hope it will become more seamlessly integrated with our everyday patterns of behavior–both because we’re more familiar with it and because it’s easier to access and use. Your feedback is very important as we try to accomplish this goal, so please shoot us an e-mail or hit the feedback tab on the main site whenever you have an idea to share.

Now I have to get back to work.

I think Brandon is an unusually strong community, in part because of its size (about 4,000 people) and its location (tucked below the Green Mountains of Vermont), but I think that any kind of community–any group of people uniting around whatever they share (a town or neighborhood, ideas, resources, etc.)–has value, and the more community members share with each other, the stronger and more valuable that community will be. Our community was strengthened when we shared our grief and  gratitude last Thursday, and it’s strengthened in less remarkable, but still important, ways when we share ideas at Town Meeting, or smile with a neighbor, or an event at the town hall. The more we share, the stronger we are as a community, and the stronger we are as a community, the more able we are as individuals to survive life’s tragedies and, in less tragic times, to live our lives to the fullest.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been investing most of these resources in Sharonimo, because I think the returns, in terms of positive impact, will be much greater than the returns I’d get by investing in something else. By helping you maximize your resources and relationships, I hope Sharonimo will reduce the financial pressures you feel, increase your feelings of connectedness and security, and give you more choices about how to invest your own time, money, energy and ideas. If we can do that for 100,000 people, or even 10,000, I’ll consider Sharonimo a huge success.

What does this have to do with Sharonimo? Not a lot, I guess, except that Sharonimo is the thing that usually competes with my girls for my attention (I’m ignoring their cries as I write, for instance), and Sharonimo’s mission is, in part, to help its users be more mindful of their resources and relationships. By helping you maximize your resources, strengthen your bonds with loved ones  and generally enjoy a less wasteful, more connected life, I hope Sharonimo really will help you live better, in every sense of the term.

So Bill and Pete showed up with their flat bars and hammers after lunch, as the rain started to fall, and set to work demolishing our porch. It took the four of us about two hours to rip the porch to pieces, and it was about a million times more fun than it would have been if Lisa and I had been working alone (with the girls tugging at our pant legs).

I’m writing about this in part because I want to publicly thank Bill (and Pete) for their help, but also because it represents the sort of sharing that we at Sharonimo hope to promote. The sharing of resources can lead to, or go along with, other kinds of sharing, like the sharing of work and the sharing of time. Our project and event planning feature is designed to promote the more active and involved sharing that happens when people get together to work or play–on community service projects or at potluck dinners, for example. It’s this kind of sharing that really builds community and makes lives better.

Lisa and I didn’t decide to demolish our porch until the day that we did it, and it seemed a small enough project to do on our own, so we didn’t use Sharonimo to plan it–but if we’d thought ahead a bit (and realized what we were in for), we could have logged in, created a project and invited our friends to hang out and help out. I’m sure Bill would have signed up, along with three or four other friends, because that’s what friends do. So the next time you have a project to do–painting your house, perhaps, or planting a community garden–I hope you use Sharonimo to organize it, and that you have at least one friend like Bill to help.

By letting the sharing symbol exist independently of the Sharonimo brand, and by offering a totally unbranded alternative in the form of the “share” apparel, we hope people will actually buy and wear some of the stuff in the Sharonimo Shop, and that other people will see them wearing it and think about what sharing is, how it works and what it means. The more people think about sharing, the more likely they are to do it, so the Sharonimo Shop can serve our mission (increasing global sharing volume) even if it doesn’t serve our bottom line.

If you’d like to create your own product using the sharing symbol, you can get it for free in the design marketplace at Spreadshirt.com, which hosts the Sharonimo Shop.As long as you don’t violate our trademark rights (by pretending to be us, for instance), you can use the sharing symbol however you wish; just let us know where to find your product so we can check it out.

Mark, Aaron and I built the Sharonimo software because we wanted to use it. We wanted sharing to be easier, safer and more fun for us—and we figured other people would want the same. I hope we were right—not because of the time and money we’ve invested (though I think about that, too), but because I want to live in the world we imagined when we first started work on this project: a world in which people maximize their resources, trust and depend on each other more, and lead healthier, happier lives.

It seems to me that sharing—real sharing, involving real costs and benefits—is an essential human activity, and that the desire to share is hard-wired in all of us. If we share less than we might, it’s because our culture, and the complexity of our modern lives, make it more difficult than it should be. We’re trained by our culture (at least in the U.S.) to be independent, skeptical, and protective of what’s ours. We’re not trained to rely on each other, trust each other, or give before we get. Most of us are continually juggling multiple tasks, objectives and responsibilities, so even when we overcome the cultural obstacles to sharing, we’re foiled by practical ones—by the problems of knowing who has what we need, who needs what we have, and where everything is at any given time, among others. These cultural and practical obstacles prevent us from living as well as we might—from knowing our friends as well as we might, from using our money as well as we might—and they aren’t easy to overcome.

At Sharonimo, our mission is to increase global sharing volume by reducing and removing barriers to sharing. Unfortunately, this won’t solve all the world’s problems—but it will make life better for you and your friends, and their friends and their friends, and that’s something.