research-l Mailing List: Re: Introducing Myself

[Qian Sun (qian.sun]

Thank you for you message. I will be on AL and will reply your email upon my return.

On 9 Jul 2022, at 23:37, Sharon Villines via research-l <research-l [at] cohousingresearchnetwork.org> wrote:

> I recently wrote the description below of my interests in developing a cohousing software. The last time I introduced myself to some of you I was doing research on affordable cohousing. After 2-3 years I concluded that affordable cohousing was not a problem of construction, there are many construction solutions to building a $100,000 house of reasonable size. The problem is primarily zoning and zoning solutions are very local. And each locality has very different rules. So unless there is a local group committed to building $100,000 housing units, there isn’t much I could help with. So the website is still there but renamed “Strong Neighborhoods” so I can address the successes of cohousing in the context of neighborhoods everywhere.
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> Now I’m looking at software.
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> My experience and interests are heavily weighted toward information access and organization. I worked in university research fellow in graduate school and spent 25 years teaching adult students in independent study. Unlike first-year college students, professional adults enter with already developed expertise. The first task was to translate these into classroom equivalencies for college credit. Some had journals and notebooks, but many had no evidence of "college-level" experience. How could a student document their ability to speak a now obsolete Irish dialect that they spoke with their grandfather who died 20 years ago? Or advanced level knowledge of top secret Israeli espionage techniques?
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> As I guided them in researching college equivalencies, talking with possible evaluators at universities, and writing essays to reconstruct their knowledge, I learned a lot about a lot of things — it was a Wikipedia of life experience. I was also active in many protest movements, non-profit and cooperative ventures, and upstart alternative institutions that created strategies for getting things done based on anti-discriminatory values. I've participated in the failed starts of 3 cohousing communities and in the founding a successful community where I’ve lived for 22 years. Many of the founding members have now died and others have gone in search of the sea. 
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> In all of this, I've watched how history slipped away because no one recorded the details or kept mementos. 
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> And I've seen how many communities have not kept good records and thus been unable to plan or budget well. Or to demonstrate to the outside world that their operations were disciplined and business-quality, not just pot luck dinners. After 30+ years of demonstrating that people can build and manage their own communities, there is no tool designed to actually help them manage the diverse activities of cohousing communities: accounting, email, discussion forums, meal planning and reservations, and the multiple calendars needed to schedule meeting rooms, parking spaces, guestrooms, events, reminders, travel notices, and birthday celebrations.
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> A major undone task is a comprehensive tool for organizing information so it contributes to all the facets of cohousing. So my current interest is in developing that software. Something cooperative so everyone records information and preserves history as they do the other work. And something financially detailed enough to manage the affairs of a multimillion dollar multi-household housing and recreation complex.
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> I’m currently look at wiki software as a key tool that can be used to store many kinds of information and is designed for cooperative data entry. I’m also working with Sean Davey who developed Mosaic and the new organization that is forming around Gather, the software Tom Smyth developed. Both of these programs are missing elements I think are key.
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> Nothing is perfect but the idea is a comprehensive set of software modules that people can use within a cohesive dashboard on a pick and choose basis. I don’t know where this will go but I expect to develop guides to creating scrapbooks as well as financial records and task lists that is adaptable to the variety of styles of communities.
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> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
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