I’ve come across recently to a website that a friend of mine has signalled to me only a couple of weeks ago (if that!) and since I thought it to be an interesting idea, I kept an eye on it — only to see if it was one of those great ideas that never got past step one or in fact someone is looking after it constantly. As it turns out, the site is actually updated regularly, so whoever came up with the idea hasn’t given up just yet. Have a look at http://icantalk.me — the interesting idea behind it is that it encourages London commuters to stop stairing at the ceiling or the floor during rush hour and instead start talking to each other. Obviously one can do that anyway, but the logistics of doing so unprompted can be a pain sometimes — what if you start a conversation with the guy who sits next to you and it turns out he’s trying to finish some last minute ammendments to a report on the way in? How can you tell if the other person is interested in conversation or just wants a bit of piece and quiet? And with everyone stairing at the floor there’s no eye contact which can give you an indication of whether there is a chance or not you might get a conversation going with someone.

That’s why I thought these guys had such a simple yet brilliant idea about this: if you want to engage in a conversation on the way to (or from) work, simply advertise yourself! “Wear one of our badges and talk to anyone else who wears it” is the core of their idea. There’s no fancy device/bluetooth/wifi about it — just wear a badge; there’s no costs it seems about it either (they talk about selling some badges but I’m guessing that’s part of their future plans as you cannot buy any at the moment) — they provide their badges free of charge to download and print. Even more interesting, they came up with the idea of icantalk me “hotspots” — which are simply places were you can turn up in the knowledge of other icantalk’ers being around and as such you are guaranteed to get a conversation going. And I could have done with some of those pubs and coffee shops sometimes, when I really fancied a pint and a bit of moaning about Liverpool FC’s latest near-miss but most of my mates were either at the other side of London or too knackered — or not into football! 🙂 And if you live in London you know that there aren’t too many pubs you can walk into and start talking to “the locals” just like that — instead you are supposed to go through a few weeks of proving yourself to be a local first and then you might get the occasional “aw’right” from the regulars…

I wouldn’t normally go nuts about such a little thing, but I just thought it to be a wonderful idea — my only problem is that I don’t dare just yet wearing one of their badges as I haven’t seen anyone else wearing one (though like I said, my friend claims he has — that’s how we heard of the site) — so, if there’s anyone out there thinking of wearing it or wearing it already, get in touch — maybe we can synchronize our route to work 😉