Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Forthcoming Book: The Art Of Community

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Apr 25, 2009, at 7:59 PM, Fred H Olson wrote:

> It turns out that this book is related to a significantly different
> perspective on "community building", namely amongst people involved  
> with
> the cooperative development of software

There is a method of "agile" software development whose practitioners  
emphasize teams, collaboration, and change -- all unusual in software  
design. I was connected to them because the basis of sociocratic  
organization is systems thinking, particularly self-organization.  
Their language and feelings about their work become very mystical,  
though I'm not sure they are familiar with mysticism.

Not only do they speak of community, they speak in terms of the more  
elevating and spiritual dimensions of community. For those of use who  
do not find programming to be a transcendent experience this can be  
jarring, like an alternate reality.

This is a rather straightforward description from Wikipedia, but you  
can see how the attitude is related to developing a strong sense of  
community:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org