ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 49 Salt Spring Exchange

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

Damian Inwood talks to Leslie Ash and Colin How, the new owners of The Salt Spring Exchange about the challenges of running a community platform and plans for the future.

You're listening to episode 49 of Ask Salt Spring Answered when we talk to Leslie Ash and Colin Howe, the new owners of the Salt Spring Exchange, about what it's like to run the community platform in Salt Spring Island. Okay, this is Damien Inwood. I'm here with Leslie Ash and Colin Howe, who are the new owners of the Salt Spring Exchange and stewards of the exchange, as Leslie said. And we've just been in Ask Salt Spring, and it was a media session with CHIR, the Driftwood, and Colin and Leslie from the Exchange. And pretty interesting conversation, I think, today. One thing I'd like to ask you is, you know, you've been here now running the Exchange for, what, how long is it? Since March of this year.

Since March? Yeah. What have you learned in those uh those few months a lot i'd say one is is i've learned the importance of local media more maybe in a lived way and our part in uh facilitating local media um is is a learning experience and i've learned that it's uh harder than i thought to do this and to do it well and then also more rewarding so it's both more challenging and harder you know those would be the biggest learning lessons about you yeah i think i think one of the things that we

really recognized was just the responsibility and the accountability to the community like what how where are we bringing value and how are we being the gatekeepers of information and and what does that look like for building a community or you know because we don't want to add to divisiveness you know and that's happening fairly regularly just in a global scale with with media and um and communication out there and so we're just we're really learning about what about what that really looks like in a lived way. Right. Well, I think what impressed me most of all was you were talking about how to improve the community through the exchange,

and that's something that I think is a great goal. And obviously it has its challenges. But I think you said, Colin, how inspiring you found it that people support each other on Salt Spring. And, you know, there's a lot of volume there that you have to moderate and it's quite hard when people get insulting with each other. These kind of things are a challenge that lots of people don't even think about when they're looking at the exchange, right? Yeah, I think, yeah, there's such a tremendous amount of care here on Salt Spring from people who live here and care about each other. and the exchange is a place where you can see that in action, where people can be seeking support or help or have needs, and other people are reaching out to try and help or facilitate or support or supply things.

Again, at a very functional level, of course, the exchange serves as a way to enable, as I mentioned, a circular economy where less stuff goes in the landfill and more stuff is being bought sold and traded amongst each other but the other cool part about it is beyond that it's also a place where people are connecting with each other if you think about it to go and exchange things and exchange goods and services and so it's kind of building a fabric of connectedness in the community that's important you. We have a joke about Colin going to buy things from people from the exchange and he'll be gone like two or three hours. And you'll come home with a new buddy of like, yeah, you know, like the drummer in his band.

He met this way and he made a lot of friends. I bought beds off a guy down in Cushion Lake and he ended up being, we're now in a band together. And it came from the exchange right and so you know that that's um that's a cool cool thing that happens that can only kind of happen maybe in a rural community that's separated and on an island but one of the things is is we are kind of in it together you know because we all live on this island together and so there is a connectedness that i didn't experience living elsewhere yeah and i mean you obviously do you know carry a certain amount of news and a lot of

opinions as well and that in itself is also a great exchange of uh of ideas but also has its challenges too right totally it's like of course like we believe that like discourse and debate and is healthy, right? We need to talk about the things that are pressing and urgent. I think where it gets tricky is when people are being too hard on each other or being in, you know, expressing like really divisive behavior and in kind of even hate, you know, is a powerful word. Right. And that stuff we have to really that's one of the reasons you know that salt spring has empowered and made the exchange be a thing that actually works and and and functions it it exists and it functions because salt spring wants it because it isn't big social media it is a place where the messaging is trying to be more thoughtful

and trying to be more encouraging on positive outcomes. It's like, I always say, you know, it's easy to be critical. It's much more difficult to be constructively critical so that we can build and create a better future. That's harder. But the exchange wants to be that. It doesn't just want to be critical. It doesn't want to be a podium for people to just have opinions and feel entitled to express those opinions in large audiences that's not of interest to us what's of interest to us is people contributing to the betterment of our community right because there's other platforms where they can do that's right we don't need to replicate that they can go do it somewhere else if you want to you know pick up a megaphone and go scream into a big room full of people there are places to do that right yeah so now eight months in um how are you feeling about

looking forward what are you planning to do in the future would you say yeah it's a good good question i mean we we have we have like a great number of ideas and thoughts around how to improve the exchange. But we're also very sensitive to the fact that it provides a functional service and trying to change it too much too quickly is actually disruptive. So we're really trying to figure out the pacing of that. We recently added the bus and ferry schedules, for example, which seems probably obvious, but they weren't there before, you know, and that's a functional service that the community really needs. And yes, they could get that information elsewhere. But we also feel like the community platform that the exchanges

should provide that. And so there's those kinds of features and functions. But then there's also sort of this idea that we like we've been approached, for example, by another community about helping them set up an exchange. And so that's interesting. and information and communicate with other people in the community that you're in that isn't owned by a big media company or a big data company or a big 800 pound gorilla that you don't know what's happening with your information or your data like the exchange is locally owned locally built you know and so there's so when we think about anything that we think about doing in the future we hold that really at the center of our thinking, which is how do we continue to make this a community platform that actually serves the community first and foremost.

And I'm loathe to project future ideas or features or functions because it starts a discussion and debate. But suffice it to say, we do have a lot sort of cooking in the kind of what we want to do with the exchange but quite honestly a lot of it is governed by what the community wants right right it's a full-time job and you must be running as fast as you can i mean it's a lot of work it's a lot of work going it's a lot of work you know if you think about it like we we we moderate messages every single message gets read, every single post gets read, and it's operating seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We,

we take the nights off, you know, we're, we're open for business sort of 12 hours a day. So if you're posting after 8pm, you can't be guaranteed that your post is going to go up until the next morning, because we got to find some time to sleep but we we do but that's an important part that separates us from the say anything you want in front of everybody world right and it's not that we're trying to censor people or limit people we're just trying to maintain the integrity of the positivity that it that exists in this community and that we don't need to disrupt it. This is a place, there's so many kind and generous

and thoughtful people living in the community that we live in who are trying to do good work like yourself. You're doing this because you want to build a radio. You might love radio, but you also recognize that there are so many people who will really enjoy what you're doing. And it is not a fortune maker. It is because you're passionate about it and you're contributing. And you're a perfect example.

And those people live all around us in this community. There are a lot of people who are trying to do stuff in this community. And so we want to do our part. I know you said that you do moderate people's comments and that you've had positive responses from people when you've said, look, this is a great piece except for this little bit here where you're saying something about somebody else that yeah that doesn't you know it's okay to challenge issues right it's okay to discuss big things um housing

um water uh food sovereignty um you know um these things are conservation these are things that everybody cares about and everybody can have opinions on and we we don't want to limit that what we want to do is just not have people attack each other honestly there's enough challenge in the world that we don't need to increase the amount of rhetoric and hurtful talk you know like that's not needed. What's needed is good debate discussion so that we can make informed decisions as a community. And I think, yeah, there's been feedback. And what I'd say about the feedback is there are, you know, Salt Spring has like a very high density of well-informed and intelligent people. Right. And a lot of them have a strong conviction around their ideas and beliefs and they want to uh i think what they're ultimately all trying to do is good i think they're all like

well meant even nobody's trying to be hurtful i don't think for the most part we do get occasionally people like that and we deal with them the way we have to but generally speaking this is a community that really wants to see salt spring be lifted up and in their version of that right and right at different ends of the spectrum you can have people saying lifting salt spring up is reducing the population because it's overpopulated for its size and then the other end of the spectrum you can say lifting salt spring up is providing affordable housing for the people that work in entry-level jobs or low-paid jobs on the island because they have nowhere to live you can see how those two groups could end up in quite a vociferous debate but at the end of the day the debate is healthy we need to find the balance

and and uh yeah i think for the most part um our moderation is just volume based for the most part like we're not we're not in a position to really edit and curate and fact check. So if somebody's submitting, we love submissions. We want more submissions. We want Salt Spring to feel like they can post on the exchange. But we want them to be thoughtful. We want them to be not hurtful in what they're saying. And if they do that, we have guidelines on our website.

And if they follow the guidelines uh you know and we stick to it that they can there's a lot of room there to to have opinion and say what you think or to acknowledge somebody or to lift somebody up or to see something good happening and call it out so yeah it's a journey you know we're trying we're figuring it out yeah and final question are you having fun yeah i think we i think we we are having fun and and um just all the collaborations like we've been having these really great collaborations and conversations on how to really build healthy community and i think that that part for both of us we're very humanitarian and we just are like this is amazing to have all these conversations and to have the opportunity to really put forth these ideas of how to really create a healthy thriving community and you know there's lots to that but you know that part I

think I can speak for Colin too that's's like a part of our fun is really. To be contributing, you know, and it is good when you're doing good work. If you're trying to do good work, there's fun in that. Well, thanks for coming in. And you've been listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on CHIR FM, the voice of the Gulf Islands.