A different take on coworking
jeffarch
Excuse the brain dump, but I'm going to repost some info from other
sites and discussions I've had recently. My goals are very similar to
what I've read about coworking, but with a few added dimensions. All
this is mostly just brainstorming on my part, but is indeed an option
for the facilities I have available.
---
This is a post I made a couple years ago on my fossilized
http://www.openideaproject.org/ site:
Organic farming meets Free & Open Source Software? Learn organic
farming during a "guerilla coding" retreat. Learn programming,
networking and other home-grown computer skills while building an
organic garden.
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) IS the computer world's organic
gardening. They would be like whole grain bread and thermal
grease...perhaps not. Both tend to favor non-commercial, royalty/
patent/IP safe, collaborative methods.
Combine these ideas to get geeks eating organic produce and organic
farmers building wifi mesh networks.
World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF - http://www.wwoof.org/)
is an organization that provides volunteers to work and learn on
organic farms in exchange for room and board. Programmers and other
technologists who believe in FOSS often work to fund their
contributions. Given the opportunity to "code for food", would many
geeks go for it? Free broadband!
Host sites would provide room and board as well as equipment,
materials, and transportation. Some WWOOF hosts are open to volunteers
even during the winter months. Volunteers, for example, could
contribute 5 6-hour days with one day a week doing "something else".
This could help foster a spirit of "knowledge sharing". This could be
putting up a tower for wifi antennas or deer-resistant fencing to help
protect crops, teaching a class, firewood fetching, facility
construction, or other community needs.
Other volunteer opportunities could exist such as camp staff, tour
guiding, or custodial work at community sites.
----
>From an IRC discussion on freenode's #esp last night:
"One of the things that came to mind regarding http://wiki.espians.com/Day_Riva
and coworking, wrt WWOOF, is the aspect of building a location from
scratch in the "typical" coworking situation as well as harvesting
trees, making lumber, building structures, and more... really
bootstrapping, and dealing with the same processes elsewhere."
----
So the general idea is coworking to build a rural coworking space in
rural upstate NY. It would share the "traditional" coworking day-use
venue facilities with lodging, facilities for small seminars,
conferences, and retreats. There would also be facilities for
artists, writers, and the like. The http://wiki.espians.com/Day_Riva_Setup
page is a list-in-progress of many of the aspects involved in the
planning and development of the project.
Comments, suggestions, and more brainstorming is appreciated.
Jeff Archambeault
jjarchambeault at gmail dot com
Tara Hunt
LOVE the idea. So, when are you shooting for?
Tara
tara 'miss rogue' hunt
co-founder & CMO
Citizen Agency (www.citizenagency.com)
blog: www.horsepigcow.com
phone: 415-694-1951
fax: 415-727-5335
Chris Messina
If you could add this to the coworking wiki... under CoworkingNewYork
-- and then perhaps under a new page... "OrganicCoworking" that'd be
great.
This idea also fits well with our hope to spread the concept of Green Coworking:
http://www.worldchanging.com/local/sanfrancisco/archives/006980.html
Great idea!
Chris
--
Chris Messina
Citizen Provocateur &
Open Source Advocate-at-Large
Work: http://citizenagency.com
Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog
Cell: 412 225-1051
Skype: factoryjoe
This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private
jeffarch
Work is progressing on base infrastructure, such as storage and
improving the milling facility. My next project is to build the first
of my solar microhome prototypes.
The facilities will all be in palce by the time affordable broadband
becomes available. One idea was to have spaces for artists and a
virtual studio to present products at, but uploading photos and other
media to the wever would be no fun over the substandard dialup
currently available. That's part of why I mention wifi in my post of
a couple years ago. This issue precludes building a day-use facility
to support further expansion.
There is no stress involved in any of this, things will happen as they
do, and the experience will be fun :)
Jeff
On Jul 1, 7:15 pm, "Tara Hunt" <t...@citizenagency.com> wrote:
> Gosh, Jeff, that is a very cool suggestion! Sounds a bit like what we were
> trying to do with Winecamp...although it was more generally about
> non-profits.
>
> LOVE the idea. So, when are you shooting for?
>
> Tara
>
> --