SwapYourShop Archive

SwapYourShop offers a pretty interesting proposal: you move to a new city potentially in a new country and another person moves into your home for the same time period. You work for your current employer in the other person’s office and vice-versa.

Some of the reasons listed why swapping is a good idea include:

• You’ll be immersed in a new lifestyle or culture without the worry of finding another job when you return.
• You’ll have the opportunity to travel beyond your swap city on weekends and/or before and after your swap.
• You’ll make friends from around the world.
• You’ll be creatively influenced by new experiences and observations.

SwapYourShop has created an overview for employers which should help overcome the objections on this new type of work arangement.

It seems like the service focuses mainly on larger companies but this type of arrangement could work well for startup founders as well. I’d love a chance to “test” out a few other cities as I decide where I want to call home for my startup. And I am sure other startup founders might like to test out NYC as well.

From what I can tell, the site is built in Drupal. I think for a site like this, Drupal could become a bit limiting as they will want to expand on the types of content and depth of content across the site. Swappers should be required to create blogs and/or media (e.g. photos, videos, etc.) while they are on their swaps.

SwapYourShop is an interesting concept and I look forward to watching their progress. They will need to get a large database of willing swappers to make the program work. It would also be smart for SwapYourShop to add a notification system so I can receive alerts when potential swappers signup that meet my criteria.