Cohousing-L Mailing List: Gather Now Available

[Tom Smyth (tom]

Hi folks!

Gather, the cohousing management system I introduced a few months ago, is
now ready for folks to try in a limited beta!

As a reminder, Gather is a web application for managing cohousing
communities. It has been in use at three Ann Arbor communities since the
fall of 2015. You can read more about it here <http://info.gather.coop/>.

If your community would like to give it a try, let me know. I'll just need
your Google ID (usually a Gmail address) and the name of your community.
I'll add your community and fill it with sample data so you can see how the
system works.

I'll also add you to a low-traffic email list so you can receive
announcements about the software. If you'd like to be on the list but
you're not ready to try out the software, also let me know.

If you like what you see and want to move forward, we'll clear out all the
fake data and you'll create accounts for all your residents and invite them
to sign in.

For now, the software will be free of charge. Once we move it out of beta,
there will be a monthly subscription fee. We are thinking this will be a
sliding scale fee in the neighborhood of $3-7 per household per month.

We like the idea of a sliding scale because some communities have expressed
an interest to pay more to sustain development of the software, while
others might be on a tighter budget.

What you'll get for that fee is use of the software and email support, and
you'll be supporting continued development of new features. There are lots
of great features yet to come, and the more people sign up, the faster they
will get built!

Subscribers will also have input into the choice of what gets built next.
This software project will be rather different than a typical Silicon
Valley startup. We want users to have real ownership of the project. In the
longer term, we are interested in exploring the multi-stakeholder and
platform co-op models. But setting up that structure will take time and
experimentation, so for now the setup will be less formal. We'll report
regularly on progress and offer opportunities for input.

Yours in cooperation,

Tom for the Sassafras Team

-- 
Tom Smyth

Worker-Owner, Sassafras Tech Collective
Specializing in innovative, usable tech for social change
sassafras.coop · @sassafrastech