No, I have not run off with the donated money. Nice try Steven<http://twitter.com/foxbane/status/11343846302> .
And you're all *very lucky* that I didn't get around to execute my planned April Fools joke of redirecting http://coworking.com to http://www.regus.com/ for the day, just for kicks. But after the last Regus-related stunt I pulled<http://www.indyhall.org/blog/2008/04/01/a-perfect-partnership/>, I thought better :) But, now, 2 months later, the dust has settled around one of the more chaotic discussions in the coworking group. Chaos isn't a bad thing, mind you. One of the most important things I ever learned from Tara Hunt was about the importance of embracing chaos, since most things aren't in your control anyway. I think we all came out stronger from that discussion, learning a lot about this group, and ourselves. Where we last left off: In the span of 30 some hours, nearly $10,000 was raised by around 30 contributors<http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2010/02/coworking-com-the-next-generation/>from around the world to go towards the purchase of the coworking.com domain. The move was abrupt, mostly because it had to be, and in the heat of the discussion one of the issues that we agreed to sort out was a better way of distributing the visible contributorship so that it didn't look like the domain was purchased by the fastest 5% of the community. Furthermore, the old way left out the opportunity for more people to gain access to the same benefits. Bottom line, we needed to rethink, and make things simpler. All of the confusion was rooted an unnecessary complication. I put out a request for proposals on how we could re-collect the money in a more democratic way, and then redistribute the originally paid funds back to the entities that contributed. It looks like there are some common themes in the suggestions about how to redistribute the funds gathered to buy the coworking.com domain. With the help of Jacob Sayles from Office Nomads, I have compiled them into a plan and are ready to move forward. *Here we go:* 1. We'll have an open enrollment period for two weeks where we'll be taking pledges from everyone who would like to contribute. 2. At the end of that time, we'll find the lowest amount commonly pledged that meets the goal. (simple arithmetic, yay!) 3. Everyone who pledged under that amount will be contacted and given an opportunity to *adjust* the amount they would like to give, or *withdraw*from the process. 4. When that is settled people who haven't sent in money will be prompted to (we'll use paypal) and those who have already donated will be refunded any amount over the final amount determined by this exercise. 5. We'll write up a page documenting the event and thanking all the contributors. *Reminders*: - Pledging money does not indicate any legal ownership of the domain. It provides you an opportunity to be a *part of something big*, the community acquisition of coworking.com. - Until an ownership structure makes sense for everybody, the domain remains in my Godaddy account, which I will bestow authorization to one other person (unrelated to the contributions, and to be named) to relieve the concerns of "what happens if Alex gets hit by a bus". Which, by the way, I hope does not happen. - There will be more opportunities to associate with and utilize the domain in the future, this is to handle a single snapshot event in history. There isn't any gate closing. This isn't the end of time. That comes in 2012, according to a recent John Cusack movie. So we have plenty of time. - Not pledging money in NO WAY indicates that you are not a member of this community. Conversely, pledging money ALSO in NO WAY indicates that you are a member of this community. *The only measure of membership in this amazing global community is** participation**.* I'm going to set up the form to collect pledges on Monday, April 19th. Any discussion between now and then will happily be factored into the plan, but after the 19th, we're pressing forward! Thanks everyone, I look forward to the sealing of this chapter so that we can move on to even bigger and better things! Cheers, Alex /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia -- 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.
