Wokai Blog: Produce, Share and Collaborate: Wokai China Microfinance Blog

Guess how many man hours it took to create wikipedia?

100,000,000.

And guess how many man hours we spend parked in front of the boob-toob watching TV every year ?

200,000,000,000.

Now imagine what we could do if given the motivation and the platform to use those 200 billion hours producing, sharing and collaborating like we have done to create wikipedia.

After spending two weeks in venture capital world, I am not worried about the platform. There are people like Lukas Biewald exploring innovative ways for us to spend our time. Today its Facestat, but tomorrow who knows. Lukas wants to explore how we can use the internet to create a better marketplace for the exchange of ideas and services, while make that bartering process fun and rewarding. I have no doubt that he will find the answer. And we will all be that much happier, more knowledgeable, and more fulfilled because of it.

It is the motivation that I wonder about.

How do we motivate people to produce?  According to fellow blogger and friend Jake DeGrazia, people naturally want to produce and share (just as much as they want to consume.) They naturally want to collaborate because the most rewarding productions are collaborations.

But I thought we naturally act in our own self interest? We think about what is best for ourselves first and what is good for our neighbor second. Could Hobbes be wrong? Man does not act in his own self interest, but instead acts for the good of the whole?

I don't know about man. But I do know about Curtis.

late last night, I got an email from Wokai supporter Curtis Chin. Curtis told me he had read our piece, Does Wokai need a "girl"?,  and decided to produce a Wokai video...for the hell of it.  Check it out.

Curtis is a living, breathing example of Jake's philosophy. And so is Ketty who is lighting up the NPR news lines spreading the word about Wokai. And Ben who is snapping photos of the Beijing Olympics and selling them to raise funds for Wokai. And Alice who is looking under every rock and tree to find more Wokai supporters.

And they are not alone. We have 70+ more Wokai volunteers who are just as active in brainstorming, testing and executing ways to make Wokai surivive.

People do naturally want to produce. And i think they want to collaborate too. They just need the platform and a little motivation to do so.