BCBusiness

8 BCBusiness AUGUST 2015 PorTrAiT: AdAm blASberG My first experience with the "sharing" economy—or collaborative economy, or whatever you want to call the ride-hailing, house-letting, goods-moving universe we now all live in—came about seven years ago. I was moving apartments and had to get rid of a ve-year-old foam mattress from Ikea. In the old days, disposing of such an unde- sirable item would have meant either putting it (illegally) in the alley and hoping somebody would pick it up—or driving to the dump and paying to get rid of it. But seven years ago, the way to go was to list it for free on Craigslist— and then somebody somewhere, through the power of the Internet, would nd your mattress and come take it o• your hands. In my case, it was an artist who wanted the foam for an installation she was working on. She was at my doorstep within hours. Since 2008, the world of sharing services has exploded—mostly in tandem with the rise of the smartphone and app-based enterprises. 2008 is the year that Airbnb launched; a year later, it was Uber. Combined, these house- letting and ride-hailing services (and the many others that followed) have upended entrenched industries—and upset a lot of people (hoteliers, taxi drivers and politicians, to name a few) in the process. But they've also helped to create opportunities for consum- ers that previously didn't exist. With the advent of Airbnb and Uber, I've had the chance to stay in a cute apartment in San Francisco's Mission District—something that was here- tofore impossible with the dearth of hotels in the area—and ride in the lap of luxury in Palm Springs (and avoid the rather scary cabs there). Those are the positives of the sharing economy. The negatives— if you listen to the Voices of No on Vancouver city council and elsewhere—is that services like Uber present a whole raft of safety and accessibility issues. B.C.'s transportation minister, Todd Stone, has even threatened to send plainclothes enforcement agents—posing as potential customers—into ride-hailing cars should Uber ever try to set up shop here again. As Frances Bula explains in her investigation into B.C.'s sharing economy ("Divide and Conquer," p.22), the inevitability of progress may be clear—but the road ahead is full of potholes. "Both the traditional businesses and the new ones are ghting hard to prove to regula- tors that: (a) the new sharing-economy busi- nesses are dangerous and a threat to the city's economy; or (b) the new sharing-economy businesses are a godsend for cities and their strapped citizens," she writes. "And it's all so new that there's not a lot of data to prove one way or another what's really happening." C O N T R I B U T O R S Matt O'Grady, Editor-in-Chief mogrady@canadawide.com / @bCbusiness Langley-based self-taught illustrator Victoria Park (cover, DIY Management, p.18, and "Divide and Conquer, " p.22) describes herself as "pretty much a jack of all trades trying to do whatever is sent my way." In addition to branding and infographics, a big chunk of her business is whiteboard animation for marketing agencies and businesses around the world who find her through YouTube. "It's probably the weirdest thing I do, " she says. Serial entrepreneur and Vancouver Weekly editor-in-chief Ricardo Khayatte spoke to Traction on Demand founder Greg Malpass (The Conversation, p.16) about what it's like to grow a highly successful business, without an ounce of investment, in just a few short years. "The great reward that comes from interviewing young entrepreneurs is learning from their wonderfully illuminating successes and failures, " he says. Learning to Share editor's desk IN SEPTEMBER Our annual Small Business issue. Plus: What Norway can teach us about LNG.

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