Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Launching June 15: CohousingMap.net

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

A whois lookup on the domain CohousingMap.net found (excerpt) :

Registrant/Admin Name: Carles Garcia
Tech Name: Javier Bernal Cabezas
both of Barcelona, ES   (Spain)

Mary Baker wrote:

>A little more information from their Facebook page (thanks to Raines Cohen):
>
>"CohousingMap is a non-commercial project . I am a software developer
>interested in Cohousing of Spain . CohousingMap social network will be
>available in Spanish and English. I am convinced that the main challenge of
>Cohousing is the difficulty of contacting people to form communities , which is
>very difficult without a common meeting place .
>In CohousingMap there are spaces for users, communities (in creation or
>operation) and collaborators. We will campaign to promote them at the time of
>launch.
>Any help is welcome."

Actually the problem is not, IMHO, (in the US) that there is no
"common meeting place" but that there is not *ONE* well known meeting
place where all people with shared (whether they know it or not)
cohousing interests (location primarily) can meet that is used by
enough of the right people to form communities.

Indeed in the US there are a variety of "places" with a variety of features :
ic.org's reachbook (I could not find it today, is it still around? )
   http://reach.ic.org redirects to
   http://www.ic.org/communities-magazine-home/

Coho/US http://www.cohousing.org/
  and in particular http://www.cohousing.org/directory

Cohousing-L Mailing List  ( here) http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

Mary's forum: http://thecohousinglife.proboards.com

Additional "places" may just further divide us so we do not interact
effectively as much.  On the other hand a cohousing social media might
catch on and get lots of users and facilitate interaction -
particularly since is intends to serve "individuals interested in
Cohousing projects anywhere in the world" (in English and Spanish).
Maybe in Spain primarily. We'll see how many users
http://cohousingmap.net gets.

But it seems to me that the big challenge is to reach people who would
be interested in cohousing if they knew enough about it.  These folks seem
unlikely to seek out online venues.  They require a more local and personal
approach.  Of course more "mass media" publicity to raise general
awareness is helpful.

Fred (Cohousing-L list manager) who does not use "social media"

--
I support Bernie Sanders for President but would support Hillary.
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
     Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org