(This started as an interesting discussion with @hazem and @yosser over here. It’s early stage, so don’t take it seriously until it is 
The main implication for the Edgeryders organization would be that we do not aspire to found own, “The Reef” branded spaces outside of the Schengen area, but network with those established by locals.)
Let’s try to imagine the eventual network of OpenVillage houses – forming together the worldwide distributed OpenVillage. How could that be organized, and what benefits would each participating communal space get out of it? Here’s an opinion.
Content
1. Basic vision and organization of the network
2. Benefits of joining the network
3. Other requirements to join the network
1. Basic vision and organization of the network
Why this is essential under late-stage “development”. It may sound cliché, but I’m persuaded that the current urbanization drive worldwide is both unsustainable and unhealthy, and is unjustified when looking at the potential of already widespread technologies. In low-infrastructure regions (“developing areas”), city life is seen as desirable due to a prejudice for being “developed” – until people realize the collective hell they created for each other by coming all to one place. (In my mind there’s Kathmandu right now, with all its pollution and noise.) It is much simpler, cheaper and more successful to take the tools of globalization and make small city life and rural life attractive again. (Keywords: Internet connectivity, virtual reality (for fun and to connect spaces over the Net), budget airlines, tourist visa system, international driving licence, remote work over Internet, worldwide product shipment etc.). In the age of Internet, physical concentration of people and resources is grossly overvalued 
What makes a place interesting over the long term is basically stimulation and opportunities. Big cities offer lots of that, the countryside does not. However, we can bring change there, for example by having regular international visitors. For them, the new place is a change as well, so a few weeks or months there will be refreshing, not boring. Win-win.
The reason why this option has not yet been realized is, in my view, because it requires collective action. One person alone can’t make a small city attractive, but one person alone can go to a big city to see if that is an attractive place. However, a collective, like a worldwide network of communal houses, can make any place attractive.
A federation, not a franchise. True to the freedom loving spirit of people attracted to Edgeryders, and because everyone loves to found and have an own project, it seems better to organize the OpenVillage network of houses as a loose federation, not as a franchise with a lot of strict rules. Eac house chooses its own name, and manages its own finances so it can sustain itself. This also relieves the network hub (Edgeryders if you want) of a lot of day-to-day coordination work. If we have one or two spaces to run, it will be enough.
Local founders and core teams. A communal space project is necessarily local, so it is much better to let those people start a new OpenVillage house whose commitment to the place can be trusted: locals. It is ok that many in the Edgeryders network are rather nomads, they also have an important role to play (see below).
There seems to be a kind of world-wide revival of communal living and working projects, so it is a good time to look around for spaces who might want to join the network, esp. early-stage ones. It is definitely much simpler for Edgeryders than to found multiple spaces on our own, including one in the MENA region: if run by local citizen, outsiders do not have any issues with residence permits etc. as they’d stay for visits only. A typical tourist visa is three months, which is fine for a visit. Edgeryders on the other hand can run a 1-3 spaces in the Schengen area, which will be attractive for visitors from MENA region countries and further abroad.
Self-defined way of funding and running the space. Each OpenVillage house is independent, so can and should find its own, suitable style of social organization and of financial sustainability. The OpenVillage network may collect and document best practices, but cannot decide anything. Funding may come from sources as diverse as rent from individuals, rent from companies, “Erasmus for Entrepreneurs” and “Erasmus International” grants, normal crowdinvesting campaigns in exchange for access to the space, a cryptocoin ICO etc…
2. Benefits of joining the network
Being part of the OpenVillage network and fulfilling the requirements and obligations that come with that will only work when it has benefits for the space joining. Which makes it important that we only launch the network once it can offer something, or it would be rather ridiculous. (An initial offer might be a booking system and documented traveler knowledge that enables visitor flow between spaces.)
A list of benefits of the fully developed OpenVillage network might rather look like this:
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A common online platform. Edgeryders would offer to utilize this edgeryders.eu platform as an international online meeting place for all members in the network. It would be used for the exchange of ideas, invitations for online and local events, developing business ideas and giving feedback about them from an international perspective, organizing business partnerships etc… (So good we have our new, shiny Discourse platform … I would have been ashamed to offer our old Drupal platform for this purpose
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Visitor access to all spaces. Every space must provide at least one guest room (but usually has many more), and it’s free to stay there for members of the network. Booking for all spaces has to be possible with a central web-based booking software.
There could be a rule to allow guest rooms to be rented out for money on AirBnB etc. aside, namely that the guest room has to be booked more than two weeks or less than two days in advance, leaving a window where “instant booking” from AirBnB is possible. Software that syncs to and from the AirBnB calendar would be part of the network’s infrastructure. -
Office space for companies from abroad. A major attraction, also for Edgeryders, of the OpenVillage houses model is that it enables a company to establish a presence abroad with a minimum of resources: just rent a desk in a shared office, and rent it out to temporary users when you do not need it.
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Project teams coming for a visit. This will be an attractive option for both sides: project teams can work from a new, inspiring place for some weeks or months; and local members of a space come in touch with “foreigners” and their ideas and social networks. Projects can be both cultural, technological (say, open source software / hardware) and entrepreneurial. There would be guidelines making sure that visitors are accessible to locals, so that there will be a good amount of engagement and inspiration as a non-monetary return for the option to visit. There will not even be a need for project teams to come from other spaces in the network if they are really interesting and valuable to have – actively looking them up and extending an invitation should do the job.
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Visiting for informal job training. With the visitor program in place, and co-working spaces with companies in the network, visiting companies in other OpenVillage houses in order to learn there seems a natural opportunity. Basically a self-organized internship program for people who are not eligible for a EU-funded “Erasmus for Entrepreneurs” exchange. (And internship would not be the nonsensical “unpaid employee” thing it is in Europe, but rather about learning a trade in 3-4 months.)
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Peer reviews of visitors. When allowing members of other spaces to book a guest room, of course there has to be a reputation system to manage trust between people who never met. It will feel a bit like a hospitality platform for organizations (“corporate couchsurfing”).
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Peer reviews of spaces. Instead of a “code of conduct”, public reviews by visitors from other spaces should be able to make sure that socially abusive behavior in running a space is detected early and can be dealt with. If that does not help, there would be a very-last-resort process of shunning a space (removing its affiliation with the network).
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Hands-on help with founding a space. Would include the offer to have ones sustainability plan reviewed by the management teams of an established spaces. And perhaps even that an international team comes together from other spaces to help with renovation and construction – why not, it’s just the first possible visit to a new space!
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Space management support. A knowledge base and support forum for how to manage a space and solve typical problems. Including best practices and recipes for interior design, low-cost DIY furniture, recipes for “creating your own fun” etc…
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Tools repository. A directory with all the OpenVillage tools, in a well-documented, easily replicable format. Tools would be made specifically for larger houses like co-working / co-living spaces, enabling a low-cost, resource-preserving lifestyle.
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Traveler knowledge base. An up-to-date, open content knowledge base to make visitor flow between the spaces effortless. Would contain knowledge about obtaining visas, low-cost travelling between spaces, templates for visa invitation letters.
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Ride sharing and logistics coordination. A small but effective system to let members of different spaces coordinate to share car rides between spaces, to arrive with the same airplane for time-saving pickup, and to ship small and large items between spaces by sending them with trustable people who travel between them. This can include whole pallets of products.
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Doing business “from space to space”. Spaces will probably specialize in different segments of the economy, such as biohacking, IT innovation, agriculture etc… Since spaces will have a frequent exchange online and through visits, an international business network based on personal trust will naturally emerge. For example, one space in Germany may specialize on obtaining used industrial machines (because they are abundant here, and cheap), and then supply them to a business incubator space in Morocco. Or a space specializing in desert agriculture in Morocco can supply nuts and dried fruits to other spaces in Europe through a direct trade scheme, which benefits both sellers and buyers in terms of price compared to buying through the normal multi-tier food market.
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Moneyless settlement network for doing business. PayCoupons, a tool that I co-developed, could serve as a moneyless payment system for this business network, both for business between companies in the same space, in different spaces, between members and the space, and between the space itself and the network (for fees etc.). The benefit is a boost to this local economy, as one does not have to save up or obtain a load before spending – in PayCoupons, spending and earning always happens at the same time.
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Common direct sales marketplace. Selling in Europe will be attractive to manufacturing companies in spaces in the MENA region, due to the higher sales prices. This only works when doing direct sales, shortcutting the intermediate traders. So the network would want top operate a direct sales online marketplace collaboratively, as this minimizes marketing and branding efforts. (Suitable software is either the one used by “our” marketplace Epelia, or the open source, Ruby based Fairmondo software).
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Combined online marketing efforts. Direct sales to a high-wage country makes only sense if the marketing is done in the low-wage country as well, or else a lot from the margin has to pay wages for marketers in the high-wage country. Since marketing is about the network’s common online marketplace, it is a mutually beneficial activity, much more efficient than if every seller markets only their own products. Marketers can use Google Translate to understand foreign language websites, and online translation services to translate marketing texts into European languages.
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Shipment centers in each country. One space per country has to agree to operate a small warehouse for fulfillment logistics. They’s receive 30 kg parcels or whole pallets shipped from companies in other co-working spaces abroad, store the content, and ship orders as they come in on the common online marketplace. This allows to provide the cheaper national shipment prices on orders, and allows customers to order from the whole product range produced in the network while paying for shipment only once. (Note: This system of shipment centers was invented for food items on epelia.com. For storable goods, depending on price and amount, it may be more cost efficient to just use Amazon Fulfillment, which is essentially the same service.)
3. Other requirements to join the network
In addition to collaboratively providing the benefits listed above, participating spaces would have to fulfill a few requirements regarding transparency and reputation in order to take part:
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Provide an honest self-description. This is especially about telling others what organization style, leadership style and lifestyle a space has. For that, the space’s profile page would provide around 10 standardized categories to select from, plus details to describe in text form. This information about spaces is currently mostly unavailable, but will allow people to go where they enjoy being, instead of choosing randomly and then making do with the people who are there. It has the added benefit that sociopaths, greedy, angry and otherwise malevolent people can’t run a space permanently – if they do, participants will simply leave and go to better-run places, because leaving and joining is simple enough.
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Provide a well-defined way of joining and leaving. Namely, on a space’s profile page on the OpenVillage network platform. Ideally, both processes would be web-based and comfortable to do. The OpenVillage network might find or develop a member management software for this, incl. payment management.
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Contribute to run the network. Organizing and extending the network is done at-cost: paying wages, but not profits. The membership fee would depend on purchasing power in each country, and in addition it can be paid partially or completely in PayCoupons for those spaces lacking the money. So there is solidarity between spaces. (Disclosure: I’m a co-founder of PayCoupons.)
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Do not operate the space for a profit. Not too sure about this point yet, but I think spaces that try to maximize profit for their founders have a different character, introduce competition, and do not fit into the network. But of course, being not for profit still means that the founders and space managers can pay themselves a decent salary for their work. Only if there’s something over after paying all salaries and other costs, it will have to be invested back into the space.
We’re not dealing with foodstuff here but only with storable items. So Amazon Fulfillment might be the more economical, more optimized logistics solution here. It’s very similar to the shipment center idea actually, and available as a service independent of the Amazon Marketplace.
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