Greetings! Excuse the brain dump, but I'm going to repost some info from other sites and discussions I've had recently. My goals are very similar to what I've read about coworking, but with a few added dimensions. All this is mostly just brainstorming on my part, but is indeed an option for the facilities I have available.
--- This is a post I made a couple years ago on my fossilized http://www.openideaproject.org/ site: Organic farming meets Free & Open Source Software? Learn organic farming during a "guerilla coding" retreat. Learn programming, networking and other home-grown computer skills while building an organic garden. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) IS the computer world's organic gardening. They would be like whole grain bread and thermal grease...perhaps not. Both tend to favor non-commercial, royalty/ patent/IP safe, collaborative methods. Combine these ideas to get geeks eating organic produce and organic farmers building wifi mesh networks. World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF - http://www.wwoof.org/) is an organization that provides volunteers to work and learn on organic farms in exchange for room and board. Programmers and other technologists who believe in FOSS often work to fund their contributions. Given the opportunity to "code for food", would many geeks go for it? Free broadband! Host sites would provide room and board as well as equipment, materials, and transportation. Some WWOOF hosts are open to volunteers even during the winter months. Volunteers, for example, could contribute 5 6-hour days with one day a week doing "something else". This could help foster a spirit of "knowledge sharing". This could be putting up a tower for wifi antennas or deer-resistant fencing to help protect crops, teaching a class, firewood fetching, facility construction, or other community needs. Other volunteer opportunities could exist such as camp staff, tour guiding, or custodial work at community sites. ---- >From an IRC discussion on freenode's #esp last night: "One of the things that came to mind regarding http://wiki.espians.com/Day_Riva and coworking, wrt WWOOF, is the aspect of building a location from scratch in the "typical" coworking situation as well as harvesting trees, making lumber, building structures, and more... really bootstrapping, and dealing with the same processes elsewhere." ---- So the general idea is coworking to build a rural coworking space in rural upstate NY. It would share the "traditional" coworking day-use venue facilities with lodging, facilities for small seminars, conferences, and retreats. There would also be facilities for artists, writers, and the like. The http://wiki.espians.com/Day_Riva_Setup page is a list-in-progress of many of the aspects involved in the planning and development of the project. Comments, suggestions, and more brainstorming is appreciated. Jeff Archambeault jjarchambeault at gmail dot com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
