I was listening to the Baseball Today podcast from ESPN when Eric Karabell described what he called a stack exchange. The basic idea is that Eric will keep a stack of his favorite articles he uncovers throughout the week. This stack of articles contains mostly interesting takes on player performance and comparisons, with maybe a bold prediction or two thrown in. At the end of the week, he'll send this stack of articles to his buddy, and his buddy will send his own stack of articles back to Eric. They'll both read each others articles and have something to talk about whenever they run into each other on the road. I thought this was very cool, and after expanding on the idea a bit, I'm ready to start my very own stack exchange.
1. The biggest reason pushing me to start a stack exchange is wanting to stay in touch with friends. This is my 6th year in college now, most of my friends have graduated and scattered around the West Coast. I love to hear about all the new adventures everyone is up to these days, but it's a little different not having those shared experiences and inside jokes like we used to. Getting to read some of what everyone else is reading may allow me to feel a little more present in there lives.
2. I don't read Glamour Magazine, but I do enjoy an occasional article demystifying body language of the dating world, or an interesting poll breaking down the most popular places to meet people in my age group. Having a stack exchange might be a convenient way to expose myself to some new and interesting worlds out there without having to do all the exploring on my own.
3. My last reason for wanting to try this is that it's just so simple and so little effort compared to the amount of enjoyment I think I'll get out of it. The only real two steps for doing a stack exchange are:
-Create a mailing list with everyone who is participating in your stack exchange.
-Every week, everyone in the exchange will forward 1-3 articles they find interesting.
Some fun suggestions to try out:
1. Number each stack exchange you make so that you can celebrate mini anniversaries. For example you can have a group video chat on your 100th stack exchange and talk about what your favorite articles have been so far, or maybe have a little gift exchange for the 1000th.
2. Start conversation threads within your exchange. After the first person sends out his articles, everyone else should send their own articles by replying to the first e-mail sent. This keeps all the articles nicely organized by week which makes it easier to send comments and feedback articles.
3. Request articles! Maybe you heard something on the news about the new iPhone 5 but you don't know much about it. You can just request your tech buddy to drop an article describing some cool new features or maybe a timetable for availability.
4. Have a standard format for emails. I'm going to try article title, followed by short description or note, followed by a link to the article.
And that's about it. I'm starting my first stack exchange this weekend. I'll try some of my own suggestions and experiment a little. I'll try to update this post with any success or failure stories along with any tips I find useful.
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