Over in Handmeon Hints, Phil and Gerry asked some good questions. I’m answering here for broader exposure.

The biggest change you’re likely to see in the next few weeks is to remove the “unsolicited” aspect of receiving a Handmeon. That is, it seems better to invite a friend to “join the gift ecology” - if they want - and then share the gift. Be more open about choosing to play in this space. Our term for this is the Robert Burns Supper problem. We’ve done a couple of posts ruminating on the situation. It’s a gap we need to close.

Private and secret objects are indeed one way to do the family legacy thing. Not clear Handmeon is the best place for that though, since a lot of that stuff either doesn’t move, or doesn’t move fast enough to hold even long-term attention.

But Handmeon’s don’t have to be kitschy knickknack – it can be as serious or as playful as you like. We’re after the creation of meaning, and sometimes, “you get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.” If anything, the current object selection and kitschy mental model indicates continued attachment to things that “have value.” Try making a Handmeon of something you really like, really enjoy, and want more people to enjoy. Something that costs a couple of hundred dollars, or more. The experience of the site is completely different when you are using it that way.

There can be such a thing as too much meta-discussion, especially if there’s not much “there” there. Right now, Handmeon has few objects, few posts, and a lot of comments. Not too surprising, because people are used to blogs and that structure. But in order to experience the new emotions that Handmeon can generate, one needs to create new Handmeons, and then give them away. Even people close to us who were involved in the year of discussion, design, and development, were surprised when they actually started doing it. Your perception of what rules are needed will change, probably a lot, under those conditions.

We’re really open to discussing governance, mostly in public too, but the creation of that governance, from a legal point of view, needs to be done by the entity, methinks, synthesizing across the many points of view that multiple communities will represent. At least at this stage of the game. Things do change though….