Remote membership = advancing the fee
Ok, I think I got it, but that’s pretty much how I read it initially. Makes complete sense to me.
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Alot depends on the venue itself
E.g. does it have a shopfront or no? Is it on a busy street or a “dead zone”? So it maybe it makes sense to do things in this order for each city under consideration (starting with Brussels):
- Find a number of venues that are available *now*
- Drive a community discussion about possible revenue streams for each one to develop credible proposals
- Design and drive a "pick one" campaign in which people commit resources to the combination ( space + model) in which they believe.
We run this cycle with/through an intense online/offline outreach and engagement campaign in the city for up to 3 months.
What do you guys think?
Longer term planning indeed.
The only problem I see with this idea is having someone on the ball around each of these spaces, also to see when the window of opportunity closes. For example the space at fo.am may not be there indefinitely, but it does make sense to do this thorough modeling as a case study.
We’re on the ball in Brussels
I think we can prototype the whole online-offline process from looking for spaces, to evaluating and finally choosing something in Brussels. Because we are already here and can quickly follow up on things. Plus we have accommodations and coworking space where we can easily host people who come in to do spurts of work on making this happen in the city.
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I have an architect friend
who is no stranger to activism and unconventional living. Currently he is based in Vienna but circumstances are good to have a talk with him. I already nudged him once, but I think it would be better if you fill him in on your vision directly.
He should have enough French to work on the ground in Bxl as well. I’ll pm you his skype - feel free to cold call him (although he’s in a bit of a hot-cold situation, so you may have to schedule eventually).
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Thanks!
I guess Nadia will follow up once we are back in Brussels. 
How could I have missed this? Thanks!
That’s a great suggestion. Might be the first person we contact after our second community call today.
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Good discussion everyone, thanks.
There are two kinds of costs: one-off investments (renovation etc.) and running costs (rent etc.). I suggest to start by focusing on the viability of running costs, not because one-offs are not important but because it makes the problem more tractable.
With a commercial space that we pay rent for, in-kind makes a ton of sense for renovation, but not so much for running costs, as Noemi pointed out.
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BitHouse
maybe it already occured in your discussion, but i’m sharing anyway
https://www.bithouse.io/ looks a lot what @nadia explained to me some months ago about your plans. Looks interesting
Thanks, joined. Interesting and valid for the Irish situation. Irish government have launched a “Help to buy” scheme, which in reality doesn’t appear very helpful. Seems geared more towards helping to get into debt. Another initiative on the way here is rennovation grants for first time buyers in small rural towns.
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Leasing!
Thanks @Yannick , Nadia and I just had an animated discussion on this. It seems a leasing contract with some add-ons. Some are nice and even needed: for example, in our home we already deduct any money we spend for repairs from our share of the rent. We use a shared Google spreadsheets.
We both liked the transparent, data-based approach to housing. “Transparent” is why we use G-sheets instead of LibreOffice files saved on someone’s hard drive. Same thing for Edgeryders asa company: accounting is in the cloud, and we all have full access. I don’t particularly see the benefit of using a blockchain-based system (must be computation-heavy, with significant overhead), but maybe I’m not looking hard enough.
Met great people from Communa a lot of synergies for Reef in BXL
Today i met the people from Communa that are also rehabilitating vacant spaces through their knowledge of juristictions (two of them are actual jurist), they explained their businessmodel and the next big challenges and i think you all need to meet. They have a working system, experimenting with rent systems but want to tackle also if people buy something in group and such on. I’m sure you will find a lot in common to discuss and maybe they will help you find the Reef in BXL
Let me know if you need contacts,
Yannick
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Ok, let’s see
Thanks for the tip. For further reference, I looked them up and they’re probably these guys: http://communaasbl.wixsite.com/asbl
I don’t think buying is in question, but anyway @Alberto and @Nadia are just returning to Bxl and will probably want to meet up! Yay, super thanks again.
Assets as well as activities: Different but complimentary models
I very much liked what @Patrick_Andrews was saying about separating assets from activities. With regards to ownership of the property. Have heard about and seen many promising intitatives being priced out of their communities because of landlords raising prices on them. So a possible way around it could be what Patrick proposes…
Yes!
We do want to meet them. Thanks, @Yannick .
I have to leave again soon, but maybe @Nadia can take it up.
Thank you Yannick, taking you up on the offer 
Email introductions maybe? Or what do you prefer?
DONE
have a great discussion
They have an interesting price regulation btw
They are making a shart with warm it would cost classically if you get the space in the general market. : regular prices, social prices and what the cost are I’m the building divided by the meter square. Still is up to you too give what you think it is worth. They are testing it on the food and it works well.now they will do it on the house rent
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Alternatives to Impact Hub business model
Hi all,
It was nice to catch up with you @Noemi and @Nadia and meet @Maria(hope I tagged the right one) this morning. So exciting that ER is taking the initiative to build this new model of work and life!
Here are some of my reflections coming from my experience in sustainable tourism industry, managing an artist in residency program and a couple of co-working spaces in Yerevan, Armenia:
- Please, check this successful startup in Taghazout, Morocco and the reasons it closed down.
- At Nest AiR that I currently manage in Yerevan we have daily, weekly and monthly fees(the latter ones are the cheapest naturally) but we do accept guests free of charge in return of services(maintaining our website/garden, content writing, fundraising, etc). My suggestion would be to find a way to measure the contribution of the guests timewise(i.e. hours of work contributing to the project equals number of days of free accommodation) which would eliminate the risk of devaluation.
- @Nadia mentioned we need to focus on short term revenues, so in this case the above mentioned suggestion of remote membership when members pay ahead will work best imho. Leasing as suggested by @Alberto also makes sense when people paying monthly rent eventually become owners.
- Some ways of contributions that I could imagine for this space: childcare for the residents who are parents(kind of a homeschool), maintaining the space, administration, fundraising, cooking for the community, etc
I myself not able to contribute financially am ready to offer in kind payment like managing the space, marketing/sales and some of the above-mentioned services.
Anna