Yesterday we had the first meeting with Reef Network partners, signatories of our Memorandum of Understanding and future partners!
Here are the notes and action points until the next meeting (probably summer). It will be announced on edgeryders.eu.
Intros:
Noemi, @Alberto, @andreja: members of EarthOS unit in Edgeryders which is tackling climate change. The Reef is one of the projects in EarthOS.
@Hugi, Edgeryders board member and Blivande (Stockholm) co-founder: a co-working space, makerspace and participatory art space. It is everything but a co-living.
Learn about Blivande here: Blivande: Growing a sustainable ecosystem
@xaver from IG Langhuus: a cultural centre in Cham, a small town in Switzerland. ‘At the moment we use trello and stuff to coordinate, it would be great to use open source’.
Xaver wants to think about prototyping and doing actual things in the space, figure out things like: What is the minimum space you need to live? How much storage space?
In Switzerland, there is a standard - an industrial hall and individual spaces are 3x3 sq metres and you move them around; In a big event, you place all the rooms in one corner; it’s interesting, because it enables new ways to experiment with ways to live together.
‘We are trust building outside luxury apartments, that can’t be the future.’
I want to build something of a new model, to show how other things also can be fun.
Limitation is not a bad thing, but it’s the thing that makes us creative.
Interesting event to check out: Communities for Future Online Summit - Global Ecovillage Network
Nenad & Robert from Ecolise and other spaces, lots of experience with co-living, permaculture communities and also policy
@Nenad is a network weaver, and the person to thank for connecting Edgeryders to Ecolise! 
Robert used to live in this intentional community in Gotland (Sweden): suderbyn.se
‘I am currently involved with established actors in Belgium to create a national eco-communities network we are calling BelgEco (belgeco.net). It is hoped that this network will be able to link up eco-communities all over Belgium and thus connect these communities with like-minded projects in Europe and further afield. We have a list of 44 such eco-communities in Belgium that needs to be refined in the future. Maybe the Reef Brussels would be interested in this embryonic network?
Just as a side story, I am currently in a working group organising an eco-community in Brussels. The interest has been overwhelming and there are some 25-30 persons in the project. A series of meetings and many interviews have been held. We are hoping to be physically set up in our community by 1 August.’
www.ecolise.eu Ecolise has 13 part time employees, relatively strong organisation - can do things in policy and research. Of 43 members, there are 1000 communities connected in our network. Living and working. They are doing interesting things and would like to share the ideas with each other.
Concerted effort is the initiative Communities for Future to reach out to others and show that there are a lot of inspiring things going on. But: poor IT infrastructure to talk to everyone.
@Val.Muresan and @Bogdan are from Faber, in Timisoara, Romania: a reconverted industrial space with a co-work, a fablab and a bistro in house. Have a future garden space of 2000 sq metres. A private space, therefore less dependent on city plans.
Learn about Faber here: New Reef partner? Faber community space in Timisoara
Interest in Edgeryders: How to work/ co-work together.
It is not important for us that we are not alone in this - we are part of a network of experience.
Spaces with different functionalities to bring people together.
Pragmatically: they are looking for partners for some calls; They need to be in: Norway, Ireland, Liechtenstein
@Alessandro is an Italian living in Armenia: is looking to set up a private co-living space. Wondering how to start and if it’s needed to have a legal framework. The answers from others were that you make a legal entity when you need it ex: when you need a bank account. The space where Robert used to live in Sweden is stewarded by a foundation, which makes it less liable to be lost in case of financial problems of members.
Moving forward, it would be important to learn:
- What members in the network are doing and where they need help from the Reef - invitation to blog about your initiatives in this open platform
- Edgeryders can steward the online sharing and exchanges, while looking for funding opportunities
- Learning and feeling accompanied by others in the network is an important goal for all of us.
Actionables:
- Meeting in Brussels with Alberto, Robert and others who are around
- Alberto will post about the energy Horizon 2020 call (a concept note and possible project led by Edgeryders) on the platform
- Faber team to keep us posted about funding calls they are looking at; and to sign the MOU!
- Xaver: thinking about collaborative tools and ways to implement the knowledge in wikis such as The Future of Ecological Urban Living
