Is icantalk.me just for Londoners?

No, icantalk.me started as a social experiment in London, but it is not restricted by any means to a specific territory — feel free to print and use our badge wherever you are in the world! In fact, we would love to hear from other icantalk.me communities outside London, so if  there is an icantalk.me community in your area why not drop us a line and let us know!

Can I Still Talk to People without the icantalk.me Badge on?

You can talk to whoever you want to as far as you do not interfere with their need for privacy and quiet. While it’s very likely that other people, who won’t be necessary displaying our badge, might be in a chatty mood, there is no way of telling upfront whether your attempt for a conversation will be met with a smile or a weird look, so it’s down to you to evaluate this “risk”.

However, people with an icantalk.me badge on are displaying it because they like to (and want to!) chat, so you will have more success attempting to talk to one of them.

Do I Have to Chat If I’m Wearing the icantalk.me Badge?

No, you don’t! We don’t like forcing people to do anything, so we’re definitely not enforcing this; however, why would you wear our badge if you’re not in a chatty mood? :O

I Tried to Talk to Another icantalk’er and He/She Blanked Me!

While most of our icantalk.me “badgers” wear the badge because they want to chat, there are cases sometimes when they might not be able to talk (if their phone is just ringing as you might initiate the conversation for instance!) — or maybe they forgot the badge is on. In such cases — very rare, we hope! — we ask you to observe the other’s need for peace and quiet (and we also ask the badge wearer to consider taking it off to prevent others from “harrassing” them with conversation attempts).

Is It Safe to Talk to an icantalk.me Badge Wearer?

There is no guarantee really about the person wearing the badge so usual precautions should be taken. In particular, if you are a d***head, wearing the icantalk.me badge won’t change that As such we assume no liability over the behaviour of our badge wearers.

We do however hope that most of the icantalk.me “badgers” will be sane, normal people who are just up for a chat in their journeys in London.

Where Shall I Display my icantalk.me Badge?

Wherever you want, as long as it’s easy for other icantalk’ers to spot it, as otherwise they won’t be probably come and chat with you. So wear it on your chest, on your arm, or wherever you feel like wearing it. If it doesn’t go with your Gucci sweater, maybe it’s a better idea to attach it to that new Prada handbag you got recently — it might help too with making your mates realise how trendy you are nowadays

How Do I Attach the Badge to My Clothes (or Bag)?

Whichever way you want is the easy answer! Currently we supply just a freely downloadable badge in PDF format which anyone can easily print and wear as they like. We might make stickers and proper badges available to our visitors for a small cost — which should make wearing these easier. We will however also have a downloadable badge that people can print always — so the choice will be down to you. In particular, if you decide to download it and make the badge yourself, you might find this article useful.

How Much Does It Cost?

“How much does it cost … what?” would be our answer to that question. Because if you look again at the website you will not find any mention of any price anywhere! That’s because we don’t charge for anything! If you want to be pedantic about it, then the cost of wearing the icantalk.me badge is a sum of:

• your internet cost for accessing our front page
• your internet cost for downloading the badge in PDF format
• the cost for an A4 blank page
• the cost for the ink necessary to print the badge

(and of course the cost of the time it took you to cut out the badge and stick it on your clothes but that is different to quantify as I’m sure we can all agree.)

Anyway, we’ve estimated the above costs to sum up to about 5 pence (being really generous with the costs involves!).

As and when we might decide to make stickers and badges available for purchase, there will be a cost involved , in order to cover the manufacturing costs — however, there will always be the option of downloading and printing the badge yourself.

What’s with “The Topic of the Day”?

We know conversations are sometimes difficult to start — especially when you only have 10 minutes to spare in between Victoria and King’s Cross, so we thought it would be a good idea to suggest a conversation topic every day. This will be chosen from the news that made the headlines recently, the movies that just came out this week or maybe just a random subject we might think to be interesting. We will be aiming to choose a different topic each day, so it might be worth while checking our site every now and then — and if you like the subject we have chosen, when you see another icantalk‘er simply walk straight to them and jump straight into the conversation about it, and save a few minutes of awkward silences

This doesn’t mean that our icantalk.me “badgers” have to talk about this — feel free to talk about anything that takes your fancy that day; it is just a suggestion: take it or leave it, no one will get upset if you do or don’t talk about it!

I Thought of a Topic for Tomorrow!

Excellent — please let us know using our Contact page — we would gladly recommend it to our “badgers” if it’s a good one!

What’s with “The Site of the Day”?

Just like with the topic of the day, sometimes we might find a site that we think it’s worth sharing with you — and the “Site of the Day” section is simply that: it will present a short synopsis of what the site is all about and give you the link to the site. If the site doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, ignore it, if you click on the link and you like it — hoorrray! we did something right

What’s the Purpose of the Downloadable Posters?

If you have noticed that we also offer not just badges for download but posters as well and you wonder what is that for, the answer is simple: if you’re a cafe, or a pub or any other place that our Londoners might find themselves in throughout their day and want to encourage people in your establishment to talk to each other, simply download one of our posters and display it somewhere where it can be seen: our badge wearers will notice it straight away and know that other icantalk’ers are visiting your premises — so they will probably come back more often to find a chat partner!

And the Leaflets?

Pretty simple: do you like the concept behind icantalk.me? Do you want to make your work colleagues aware of this? Print out one of our leaflets and pin it to your notice board in your work place! More people will notice it and therefore more people will wear the badge — so you will get more chatter friends during your journeys!

Since we are not a corporation, we do not have an advertising budget and as such we will not be spending millions on pushing icantalk.me in people’s faces, as it most likely will actually have the opposite effect! Instead, we think that those who like the idea and are already part of it, will mention it to friends, family, colleagues — by word of mouth, email, leaflets, and any other mean you might consider appropriate. More importantly, you don’t have to do any of these — if you’re happy to just wear your badge and join in the daily chatter on the tube, you can do just that; if however you want to “spread the love”, you got our leaflets (and any other material you can find on our site really) to do so.