Cohousing-L Mailing List: Conference Ideas

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Some things which were cool about the FIC conference at Evergreen last 
year and other gatherings.

Bulletin boards for communication. Lots of people put up notices for 
rides to the airport, dinner meetings on topics of interest, community 
notices, personal notices etc.

There was a whole area for communities to display materials and give aways.

Singing is a good transitional method.  When people wanted to gather, 
they began to sing and that clued people in to leave the coffee pot and 
wander back to the meeting space.


Some ideas for the burning souls gathering.

* Creating a durable legacy for those who follow so they don't have to 
recreate the wheel. Creating a cohousing resource kit with practical 
advise, examples, resources and references on how to create cohousing. 
The Cohousing Resource Guide was a small start in this direction. At 
the meeting we could brainstorm what things would be useful to know 
about, and could even set up small groups to focus on gathering 
resources on a particular area (such as legal organizations and 
paperwork, site design, group process, banks and economics, commonhouse 
design, living together, recruiting, construction).  Other pieces of 
this would be compiling all the resources, distribution and  updating. 
I can see regional umbrella groups being logical distribution points 
for this. (Note: Groups could be encouraged to bring site designs, 
legal docs, vision statements, resources listings with them and donate 
them at the gathering)

* A brief report of the kinds of things each umbrella group does. This 
would spread some good ideas around the whole network pretty quickly.

* A survey of resources. Who has what expertise, who is a good contact 
for questions about  X?

* brainstorm barriers to cohousing and solutions and ideas around them.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood