Cohousing-L Mailing List: Process in far flung membership group

[Eileen McCourt (emccourt]

I think living far apart has provided it's challenges, but its not all
bad that it forced us to be more formal about developing process skills,
since we did not have all of the opportunities for informal interaction
that are described below.  Now that 8 families live in Paso Robles, and
three more in proximity, it does change things in terms of making
communication flow more smoothly.  

I don't think I will want to give up the bridge line until I can just
walk over to the common house, though.  The bridge line has saved our
lives in terms of managing the project.  We use it for about 20 hours a
month of meetings.  We share it with a non-profit that uses it for
another 8-10 hours a month.  We have at least one and sometimes two 4-5
hour meetings a month face-to-face in Paso Robles, as well as lots of
social activities that double as marketing in locales where the members
live, like San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as Paso Robles.

--eileen

Eileen McCourt
Oak Creek Commons Cohousing
Paso Robles, CA
www.oakcreekcommons.org



-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org] On Behalf Of Diane Simpson
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 6:06 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Working with Process Consultants


To me, this seems like  the biggest problem. Our group lives in close 
enough proximity that we can all get together in person for committee 
meetings. But it's not only that--we live close enough together for 
other community-building activities such as occasionally babysitting 
for one another, borrowing a car from each other, lending a vacuum 
cleaner to another member, helping each other move, arranging for a 
community children's birthday party...the list goes on and on. I think 
if you don't have time for all of these spontaneous community-building 
activities you've got an uphill battle and you're going to have to put 
a lot more money in your membership budget to help people learn how to 
live together and understand one another.

--Diane(:^]
JP COHOUSING  617-524-6614
P.O. BOX 420 BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
HTTP://WWW.JPCOHOUSING.ORG

P.S. By the way, we are 83.3% presold, and would be even more presold 
if we didn't have the issue of the "affordable units" to deal with. 
We're not certain at this time if we can sell them or if the Boston 
Redevelopment Authority gets to sell them. Stay tuned....
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =


On Thursday, January 2, 2003, at 03:17 PM, Eileen McCourt wrote:

>
> <snip> [All of our committee
> work is done on a bridge teleconference line, since we are very spread
> out; most people still live 200-250 miles from the area where we are
> building our community.] <snip>
> --eileen
>
> Eileen McCourt
> Oak Creek Commons Cohousing
> Paso Robles, CA
> www.oakcreekcommons.org
>
>

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L