Back after a couple of years wanting to explore standards

Hi everyone.

I was active on Edgeryders for a while starting about 3 years ago, but dropped off due to pressure of life :slight_smile: We joined a co-housing project, http://lancastercohousing.org.uk/ and that has taken up limitless time and energy, all to the good cause of much deeper experience of a consensus-governed living environment.

But having settled there (a bit!) I’d like to reach out in a few ways, and one thing I’d like to explore offering is a perspective on open commons standardization. It relates, I think, to the “Open Source Circular Economy” ideas, but is intimately involved in deepening our collective understanding of what practices and standards it is useful to have in common, to take forward our shared values, and where we believe it is more appropriate to have free experimentation. The age-old questions of freedom and order, chaos and rigidity. There is, I believe, a serious creative “edge” here that I would like to ride, if there are other “ryders” are interested!

Simon

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Welcome back, then!

No worries @asimong, we’re still here and I’m up for giving you an overview of latest activities in Edgeryders anytime. In fact, we run Monday community calls every week at 4:30PM (see Events) and you can also set one up to invite community members interested in co-housing. There are several who I think could be interested: @Paul_Free  @Yannick in Brussels who announced his project last week and friends at Open Oca in Puglia, Italy (soon to join), @Thom_Stewart in Galway, Ireland, @Darren and many others.

Also, I took the liberty to assign your post to the Agora group as well so that more people see it.

hey @asimong welcome back to the edge :-).

It’s a quiet interesting thought. I’ve would be interested in hearing more about. I’ve could imagine that something like open standards could help a lot of co-housing projects with defining.

There’s just one point I would question. And it’s about, what if the process of finding the comons, proeceses etc. are usefull to find by your own. It creates higher diversity and tho more new ideas, same as the prosess can bring groups quiet strong together.

On the other hand, a wheel don’t need to be invented over and over again. :slight_smile:

So I’m defently intersted, but not shure how much time I can invest in.

One reson why it’s sometimes quite hard to find desicions in bigger groups is a lack of colaborative communication. Something often needed but nealry never thought.

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Great stuff

Me and @Nadia are also living in our own pocket-sized (and urban) co-housing – this is us here. I checked out the Lancaster Co-Housing website, and many things they say obviously resonate… what I don’t get is, where is work? Where do people go to make their money? From the images it looks like you are out in the countryside.

Explanation about Lancaster Cohousing

I should explain to @alberto and all that Lancaster Cohousing wasn’t set up to provide any employment or income. People are either working outside, or retired. But we do have a great managed workspace, Halton Mill, where various people from inside and outside the community have their offices or working spaces, and there is potential here for members to build businesses.

It’s an interesting challenge to get people to collaborate on starting co-operative ventures here. I haven’t succeeded so far…

Any movement on this line of inquiry?

Hi @asimong, I just came across your post in the course of gathering potential contributions to a theme for the first day of the Open Village festival this October. This is my original post. I’d be interested in learning where you are in relation to this line of inquiry and whether there might be some connection to the theme of how we create the condtions for greater care and the respective roles of policy and culture in dong so.

I’m also interested in the interplay between order and chaos and how we might get more skillful in working proactively within the field this tension creates. How we make decisions together is also an area of curiosity and one that I believe makes a contribution to creating the conditions for care. In the organisation I co-founded, GalGael, we have been learning and using Sociocracy for the past 2-3 years which uses consent rather than consensus. So far it achieves a useful balance between order and chaos of working collaboratively and collectively.

Gehan

Many dead ends with commons standards

Thanks for the enquiry, @gehan. I shall try to respond to you on your own thread. Enough to say, here, that unfortunately people in the technical sector seem too skeptical about standards and ontologies, so that they are not motivated to collaborate on making progress. I’m still keen, though!

Simon