Mission Impossible: Lily Cole’s wish list spreads across the Atlantic

San Francisco is where I began my week, such an interesting city, alive with energy, dreams, ambition, possibility. I spent time seeing friends and colleagues, and developing our plans for Impossible in 2014. @jimmy took me to a dinner in which seven awards were given to scientists who have made breakthroughs in their field (from cancer blockers to string theorists). Silicon Valley came together under a Nasa research hangar to celebrate science, drawing attention to some of its unsung heroes. I felt very inspired by what had been achieved by the people in this room.

Friday, time with @edward, our product adviser working on the app, before we broke into San Francisco’s art scene and danced in an old Chinese opera theatre. I still managed to find myself in conversations about open source software, crowd-funding and analog gift economies…

In London, film-making app FrameBlast was co-hosting a weekend event with Impossible in Shoreditch, inviting people to come and record their wishes. They collected over 300 wishes, from playing the piano to wishing for a boyfriend from anywhere — as long as it was on earth…

Meanwhile, on impossible.com someone wished to borrow a tent, which @screenprinter offered to lend. Then @kwame offered up his house for Christmas which someone is happily taking, a lot of people sent strangers Christmas cards, gave away tickets, designed logos and gave book recommendations. It’s incredibly inspiring to see our community take ownership of impossible… When @tessam1978 wished to know what Impossible was about, @jubalbarca responded: “Impossible basically is about helping people exchange intangible goods — so people can say “I have skill/time X” and other people can wish for, say, someone to walk their dog, or to borrow a telescope for an evening, or someone to teach them Spanish, and these people will find one another and everyone can thus get access to free, useful services they wouldn’t have otherwise. :)”

On Wednesday we went to Manchester for an Impossible event which @carole hosted, wishing to grow her local community. @newmummyaj wished for gifts for Manchester Children’s Hospital and @lemongrassk gave us a bag of toys to take up. A wish I had fulfilled in LA (to learn graffiti) was filmed and went online yesterday on AOL’s Acting Disruptive, actingdisruptive.com.

In this busy Christmas period, I keep feeling like I should be buying gifts… however, part of me knows the most valuable thing I can give —I believe we all can give — is our time, an experience, something to remember. Which is what Impossible is all about.