@ChrisM @els @Sarah
First try of the survey available here : 4. 2nd Survey outline.docx Login – Nextcloud
As agreed, it is quite an extensive survey, could use some trimming down/rephrasing/verifying if all indicators for which we need info are there.
I have also sent you a mock-up of the survey - so that you can decide whether we do it via forms of via an uploaded document.
Lucia
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Thanks Lucia 
Will try and have a look at it soon (maybe even tonight, depending on how I go about the other things)
@joannes - this is the thread for the helping circle if you want to share something
(joannes will be joining us next sunday to help us with thinking about the faciliation of the workshop)
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Just to let everybody now, I’ve moved our folder to Team Building/common spaces/Helping circle 24(internal link). I’ve left the original survey in the proposal folder of team reef though (and left a copy in our folder).
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Sorry but I ran out of time with the coordination meeting.
But Chris will have a look, I trust he will do the next step well!
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I’ve also run out of time today :-/ And I’m also wondering about simplifying what we’re doing in light of Alberto’s recent post on ‘How buildings learn’. I’m going to get back into it tomorrow. I don’t think it matters if we don’t get the survey out and results back by our next meeting, as we can discuss how to facilitate the workshop regardless. As long as it’s done before the workshop itself…
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Good morning.
I actually do not see an incompatibility with our current approach and Alberto’s remark.
Quite the contrary, we are discussing functions and not rooms/spaces.
My take is that even if we are going to have an empty space to start with, we should still
- thoroughly talk about how we want to use the space and
- pass that one to the architects (whom we are paying quite heftily) with the mention that this is the functions we have settled at this moment in time, but
- that we would like that their plans take into account that we want to test how these functions work for the first 3-5 years, so that the internal structures should be low cost as to avoid investing too much at this point in time.
I have watched through some of the episodes and while in general I agree with the position of the author, there still are some practical consideration that keep me from adhering fully to his method, and I feel that our circumstances are different : we are not a normal real estate development project, but we are actually doing something that is very tailored to our needs. While we need to stay humble about our capacity to do it right from the first try, I feel that it would be a missed opportunity to not approach this exercice trying to make the most out of it.
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Hi @LuciaM !
Agree with that
I’ve finally gotten round to looking at your preparation for the second survey. It’s an impressive amount of work and detail! There’s not much I would want to change dramatically, but I would like to simplify it a bit, by combining a couple of things and narrowing the options in some places. A few questions first:
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Am I right in thinking that the Nextcloud doc is where you gathered everything you could think of, before turning some of that info into the Google doc survey that you shared with us?
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Were all of the sections informed by something in the first survey? I see ‘children’s play area’ in the outline doc and ‘health/fitness’ in the survey doc, but I don’t see them mentioned as spaces or functions in the initial survey…
(Sidenote: we’re going to have to address the lack of parents in the discussion so far at some point)
- When you talks about ‘the Reef ASBL’ in Sections 10 and 11, are you just meaning the community who is living there?
I have the Full Members meeting tonight, but will turn my attention back to this tomorrow morning…
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Hello
=> yes, the doc contains all the info. The Google doc is for you to gauge if the questioning structure is feasible in a Google survey (since I have put quite a lot of questions/questions, but they are repetitive)
Most of the things I paraphrased from what was mentioned in the first survey (health and fitness are the quiet spaces and yoga which were mentionned in the survey for instance), some I took from the blueprint (childrens space notably).
This only function was never mentionned anywhere and I thought of as related to the future/possible continuation of the Reef asbl, for community projects. It could be interesting for the asbl to receive income and lease the spaces from the The Reef condominium for instance.
As we have agreed
Ok, please bear into account that I have tried to keep the level of granularity of the function as precise as possible (ex : for the atelier i divided from storage of tool/ small crafts/ big project) so that we can clearly identify what aspect of the functions which were clustered into theses spaces in the first survey are the most important.
Keeping the questions as standard as possible (multiple choice, list, etc) and with little options for personalize answers can help the persons go through the survey, and for us to analyse the answers, rather quickly.
Once you have a more advanced draft, I should have time to put the questions into Google survey format, just let me know.
i had a look and added comments.
but it’s really well done i find, my remarks are mainly details.
One thing i would leave out though is the last section ‘adjusting private spaces for communal use’.
The words say it themselves: they are private or open to the commune. We don’t know how relations will evolve (i heard that after the construction has finished, we will lock ourselves up in our private spaces for 6 months…), so i would find it hard to make commitments on that as personal whishes and relationships evolve. I also think it is very healthy to have a private space where you can retreat if you want to, without having to justify, so taking away that makes me a bit anxious
For me it’s sth that probably will come up in the workshop or after, if we realise e.g. that we won’t have a guest room.
But yeah, if you would disagree: np to leave it in
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@Sarah : did i read somewhere that we’re having the workshop at l’echapé?
If that is the case, @joannes can free the room at his place…
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Well, Brand points out that functions change with needs, that change with time, and will change rapidly when we move in. For example, I think I want a coworking space, but then it turns out that, whenever I go there, I get visually overwhelmed by Richard’s habit of sticking post-its everywhere; so I end up setting up my desk in my own living room, and that common space is now wasted.
Brand also points out how many functions are “fantasy”: a jacuzzi, a home gym. They sound great to have, but once you move in you end up never using them. Here is a handy quotations (emphasis mine):
By far the greatest rate of change comes right at the beginning, as it does with everything that lives. It starts before the building is even complete. People building a house—or any building—always complain that “finishing is never finished.” There are several reasons for that. You’re down to detail, and details are endless. Also you’re down to where the building most interfaces with the people who will be living in it, and they discover that some important things were left out, and some ideas that seemed so sensible on the plans aren’t going to work. Last-minute revision—the most important stage of tuning a house—comes just when time and money are shortest. Aggravated compromise is the order of the day.
Finally the work crew goes away and the occupants move in. Inhabitation is a highly dynamic process, little studied. There’s a term floating around the fringes of biology that applies—“ecopoiesis”: the process of a system making a home for itself. The building and its occupants jointly are the new system. The dwelling and the dwellers must shape and reshape themselves to each other until there’s some kind of tolerable fit. It takes time and money that are seldom budgeted for.
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Hi @alberto
The implications of what you are proposing are not yet completely clear to me… Maybe we can discuss further in person
There are several things that bother me around this both process and content wise. For content it might be more efficient to discuss it in person.
For process, I am confused about the articulation between the wok done by the common circle and the initiative you are proposing - is there any? Is it worthwhile for us in the circle to continue working, to launch the survey, for people to complete it, to hold the workshop, etc, if you are only to come with a proposal afterwards that might not take into account the work done?
I am not comfortable with the two initiatives on the same topic going on without an effort of concertation from both sides on who does what and for what purpose so that nobody loses time on attending meetings and doing work that will not be used eventually.
At the Full Members meeting on Wednesday, Alberto reiterated his intention to push for a minimalist approach, in line with what he highlighted in his recent post. He intends to make a proposal related to this at an upcoming plenary. I don’t believe, at this point, that the direction that the helping circle is taking is at odds with this. I do think, however, that the ongoing discussions will present a spectrum of positions, ranging from the ‘ultra minimalist’ to the ‘complete vision installed from day 1’. I suspect, as is often the case with collaborative projects, that the result will be somewhere in between, but that is just one humble opinion of one member
My main point being that I believe that the survey that we are working on, and whatever we all decide to do with the workshop on the 6th, are still worthwhile endeavours that will positively contribute to whatever decision we take collectively. I am now going to shift my attention to working on the survey, with everyone’s comments (above) and edits in mind. I apologise that it’s taken me so long to get to this, but it’s been a fairly busy period Reef-wise, with presentations/events/meetings in 6 of the last 8 days. My aim is to have something for the rest of the helping circle to look at by midday tomorrow, so that we can send it out during this weekend. As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t think that we need the results to have our helping circle meeting on Sunday to think about the workshop. All we need are the results in by about Thursday of next week, so that we can make sense of them leading into Saturday.
Noted
Also noted
As I’ve said above, I don’t think there is any problem with what Alberto is suggesting and what the helping circle has done so far, including the preparation of the survey. Particularly as one key aspect of the survey is ‘spatial configuration’. Understanding how much or little people see various areas or functions being separated or blending in with one another will be essential if we end up needing to settle on a compromise point. However, we may need to connect the two initiatives with regard to the workshop, so that we don’t end up spending our valuable time doing something that ends up being irrelevant. For this reason, I propose two things:
- Connecting with Alberto before the workshop
- Adding a section to the survey to ‘take the temperature’ with regard to where on the spectrum people are concerning minimalism vs ‘defined and decided’.
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Hi @els , @Sarah and @LuciaM !
I’ve just spent 5 hours working on the survey, so my head is a bit fuzzy. I considered leaving this message until tomorrow morning, but here I go anyway…
First up, thanks for everyone’s input, especially Lucia. I think I’m quite good at finetuning and clarifying, but I can’t do what you did to get the process started, with such attention to detail
What I’ve done is work directly on a copy of the Google doc survey, as this seemed the most logical way of getting us close to putting this out there as quickly as possible. I read the Nextcloud doc first, as well as Els’ comments. I’m going to share the link to the doc with you now by email, which is not ticking the transparency box as much as I would like, but I don’t know how to do it any other way.
So what have I done?
At the beginning, I have written the post on Edgeryders for presenting this survey, followed by the opening blurb of the document.
I have made a few small changes for grammatical reasons or consistency of formatting. I have also simplified the opening question relating to each of the five parameters.
The main change is that I have removed the budgetary constraints question from each section, and made it a section of its own at the end, with some explanation of why it’s there. I think we need to leave this part of the discussion to Team Finance, but we can help by ‘taking the temperature’. I also think that if we get people starting to think about these types of questions with regard to specific spaces or functions, we open a whole can of worms that might not even be necessary.
The other significant change is that I’ve added a final section to take the temperature with regard to recent discussions relating to Alberto’s post.
Things to do or issues to address:
- Add the link to the survey to the relevant sentence in the post text.
- Can it be names instead of email addresses at the bottom of Section 1?
- I don’t think that we need sections 10 and 11 re dedicated spaces for the Reef ASBL. Partly because no-one has indicated this as a need previously. Partly because section 10 is more about space than function. And partly because I think all the functions that could be associated with this are included in other sections.
- I do, however, think there should be a section related to children’s play area. This is question 6 of the working doc, but doesn’t appear in the Google doc. As we are all well aware, there hasn’t been a lot of input from parents up to this point in the discussion, comparative to the number of parents/children that are likely to be living in the community in the future. I don’t think it would be pushing the boundaries of our role description to decide to include one or two questions about this function…
- For the multi choice, can they pick more than one? This would be needed for the capacity questions in each section, and the last sections on budget (16) and approach (17).
- I added a brief description to section 15, but not sure if I nailed it, because I’m not entirely sure what low impact fitness entails.
- I’m not sure why some of the questions from the working doc didn’t make it into the draft survey. Specifically, functions 15 to 18 regarding laundry room and DIY/repairs/tools/etc. They could be added in fairly easily, but I would keep the responses as much as possible in line with all the others, in terms of the same five parameters.
- I don’t think, in agreement with most of Els’ comments, that we need to also add in anything from 19 onwards in the working doc. The survey is already a lot, and some things will be more constructively addressed in the workshop or in a plenary.
- When we compile this data, we will need to show frequency and capacity together, for a clear indication of the response.
Let’s keep in mind that we want to get this survey out ASAP, which means we should lean fully into the maxim ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’, and keep any changes or suggestions as simple and doable as possible…
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Thanks Chris!!!
- can it be names instead of emails? I think emails will allow people to modify their answers afterwards. Not sure neither if you can delete this one, maybe add an extra one with name(s)
- I don’t think we need section 10-11. Agree
- children’s space . Agree
- capacity: would leave one answer possible
- budget: multiple answers possible
- approach: one answer
- laundry room/ DIY: need to be added
Totally agree we need to get it out asap…
I won’t be (much) behind my pc today so for me ok with whatever you decide…
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Thanks for this, @reef-building . I wanted to highlight something that is probably obvious: there is an important support function rarely talked about, storage. It’s a support function because it supports the main ones: if children play in the common room they’ll need a place to put the toys, if there is a coworking spaces it needs big drawers to hide the papers and small electronics when the coworkers leave ets. It’s important because I hear a frequent source of conflict in cohousing is that people leave their stuff in the common spaces. I personally have a need for tidiness, so am more vulnerable than others to that source of conflict.
I imagine the architects already know this, but wanted to record it somewhere.
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Hi,
Thank you for the work.
I would rather put the tailor made questions for the workspace and the guest room.
Ok for not having questions on the reef dedicated spaces/function.
Would appreciate if kids space is mentioned.
Is it intentional that we no longer have questions related to the atelier (that one was quite high in the first survey) ?
(Away from my computer for the day).
Storage could be mentioned in the comment section ? (Maybe add something about this in the intro so that you don’t have to redo all questions?)
For the lasts question : on budget and evolution os spaces, maybe add remarks options.
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Thanks @els, @alberto and @LuciaM !
All comments noted, and I think that I have enough info to complete the survey tonight.
Two questions for Lucia:
I agree… how do you do that?
This was actually my question to you, because I haven’t deleted any questions at all. So I’m guessing that it is just an oversight, and that these questions didn’t make it from the planning doc into the Google Doc already. Is that possible?
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Yes, we are booked in there
On the survey: thanks so much for all the work! And sorry I didn’t find a time window bug enough to properly look into it before today…
My feedback below:
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I would ask a question on are you an AM or a FM, as it will help filtering out the results
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Multiple choice
Actually for capacity I am not sure I see the point (people can just put the biggest number of people they want) but I wonder if it might be good to be able to pick more than one for other questions?
For instance on exclusivity or spatial configuration, some people might be flexible with several options, and instead of forcing them into one category, it would be more interesting to know their range of tolerance.
For the other items I agree with Els
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Section 6 includes board games and movie nights but personnally I see them in very different spaces (movie nights could be for the neighbourhood, board games is rarely for more than 4-5 people at once…). But maybe that doesn’t matter too much and people can say stuff in the comments section?
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For functions that are not a non negotiable, shall we try and get a sense of priority/hierarchy? And/or a sense of what people absolutely don’t want to live without?
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Section 9- collaborative work: is that something that was anywhere in the first survey? I don’t remember it, nor in the blueprint.
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Same remark about 10 and 11, I would agree to taking it out
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Tailor made questions
For the guest room, I think we could simplify it, but I also think I would like to have an idea of the times and duration when people think they would use it: mostly during weekends or for whole weeks?
Same for the workspace: ask if only tool library or also workspace is the preferred options and if workspace how big. And whether it can be an outside space maybe. But I don’t think we need to go into exactly what needs to be in it
And question 17 about small crafts and repair I think we don’t need specific, but maybe include it somewhere in the survey
- Storage: it might not be a bad idea to ask for each space if storage would be needed to give us an idea of the storage capacity we need to have?
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Sarah and I have spent this evening finalising the survey. Every step led to more questions/issues/changes, and I hope that you will accept the revisions in light of how hard it has been to find the balance between: a/ being detailed enough to be useful; b/ being simple enough to be engaged with; and c/ resulting in usable date to move forward.
The following changes have been made:
- The post includes a couple of extra links and a time frame.
- There is a title.
- The blurb at top includes more info, a bit about range of tolerance vs preferences and a plea for compassion towards the helping circle from those faced with answering this survey
- A ‘range of tolerance’ question has be added to those functions considered as being not non-negotiable (the potential value of which, I hope, should be clear).
- Sections deleted or changed (mainly to get the overall size down):
- ENTERTAINMENT has been added to HANGING OUT.
- ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY deleted, because it is actually part of every other function (degree of exclusivity).
- COLLABORATIVE WORK deleted, because no reference to it in Blueprint or first survey.
- WORKSHOPS/LECTURES/DEBATES/PRESENTATIONS deleted, because no reference to it in Blueprint or first survey. But we did add an additional section to social and recreational functions to cover the function of gatherings and workshops, which has been mentioned previously.
- DESIGNATED SPACE FOR THE REEF ASBL deleted, as agreed on Edgeryders.
- LARGE GATHERINGS ACCOMMODATION FOR THE REEF ASBL deleted, as agreed on Edgeryders.
- Sections added
- Children’s play
- DIY, crafts and repairs (combined)
- Tool storage
- General storage
- Additional functions?
- Any other comments
- Changed language of guest room from being space orientated to function orientated
- The phrasing of ‘Spatial configuration’ question has been changed to ‘Should this function be separated or can it be in the main multi-functionnal space?’ from ‘Should this function be separated or can it be in the same space as other functions. This is because otherwise it wasn’t clear if it was to be separated from one or more specific functions, or just from the main space.
- Didn’t change ‘willing’ to ‘able’ with regard to budget constraints, as Lucia suggested, but added responses that incorporated this aspect.
- Changed some questions from multiple choice to checkboxes, so that more than one answer was possible
I’m going to make the post and open the survey early Sunday afternoon, before heading to the site visit. Final comments welcome, but please keep in mind that this has taken almost 12 hours of the last two days, so I’m inclined to think that if it’s close to good, then it’s good to go…
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