new Chicago Co-op website

The Chicago Co-op website is finally up. If simply want to follow along with the news about what’s happening the in Chicago housing cooperative and intentional communities scene or write about such events, then the blog is for you: http://www.chicagocoop.net/blog/. Check out the invitation for the Chicago Cooperatives and Communities Gathering on July 8th at Stone Soup.
If you’d like to help organize information about cooperatives and communities or simply get more information, then the wiki is for you: http://www.chicagocoop.net/wiki

I also welcome general design advice or offers of help. For example, should the blog be on the Chicago Co-op home page, with the wiki somehow linked from there, perhaps with different categories linked seperately? How should we best unify the styles of the two parts of the site? Thanks!

Bike the Drive on Sunday

Michael reminds me:

Enjoy a morning of peaceful, car-free Lake Shore Drive with amazing views of Chicago’s lakefront and skyline. This Sunday is our annual (legal) opportunity to take over the Drive with our bicycles. C’mon out and join us!

And where we gonna meet up, Ted?

I actually haven’t ridden this ride since the very first year, when meeting up with Michael was planned but sadly didn’t happen. Let’s try it again! I have to get myself registered and check ou the logistics. Let’s make a plan by phone and then publish so others can join us.

Principle of Adaptation

From the Principles of Valid Action:

1. The Principle of Adaptation

“To go against the evolution of things is to go against yourself.”

Tonight we had a great Breathing In conference call about this principle. Of the seven people, two were completely new to the calls, one hasn’t been around for about a year and one never used to miss calls at all, but she hasn’t been around since about January.  Everything just all seemed to come together.  We shared expereinces from our lives related to this principle and talked a lot about “Oneness,” how we all are one.  If you’d like to join us for our next call, please let me know so we make sure to have enough phone lines set up.  June 12th 8pm in Chicago.

Silo’s Message – Chicago

My friend Sharon has a new blog: Silo’s Message – Chicago where she’s inviting people to her place on Saturday evenings for ceremonies and socializing.

BARcamp Chicago 2006

http://barcampchicago.com/  They’re looking for a venue now, something for free for the whole weekend, space for 100 during the day and 50 overnight.  BARcamp is for tech people of all stripes, plus anyone else that wants to hang with techies.  http://recentchangescamp.org was in part inspired by the BARcamps happening arround the country.  They’re shooting for May or June, as soon as a venue can be secured.

Omidyar Members Conference

The second annual Chicago version of the Omidyar Members Conference is July 14-16th, 2006 in Oak Park (just outside of Chicago). See our past proceedings and our new invitation. Please join us and pass on the invitation!

co-op gathering 3rd week in April in Little Village

Email I sent to Hub Housing Cooperative members, Mark Fick and Dorian Breuer tonight (crossposted at the Marshall Square blog):

Sarah and Mark Fick spoke at one point about two things:
1. http://chicagocoop.info that Sarah and I are starting (it’s slow-going) and that all will be welcome to contribute to.
2. A one-day gathering of co-op folks in the spring sometime, as a replacement for the Chicago Mutual Housing Network annual meeting that is no longer.
3. Possibly using 1 as a collaborative space to plan 2 and using 2 as a way to get more folks involved in creating 1.

So, tonight I was at the Illinois Green Party fundraiser with Howard and spoke at length with Dorian from the Pilson/Southwest Side Greens about co-ops. He’s been kicking the idea around with some friends about starting a co-op. I said we (Hub in general, and me specifically) have lot to share about our experiences and we’d love to help others.

He’s a do-er, not a talker, so we immediately decided to do a one-evening event the 3rd week in April, hopefully in Unit M1 at the Hub (is that possible, Dan and Laila?). If this isn’t okay, maybe we can use Cafe Catedral. If it is okay, which night of the week would work. We’re just to pick a date and tell Dorian.

And Mark, is that day-long gathering still in the works? How might these two events work together? Share a flyer? Be billed as a “series”? Have the Little Village event be but one topic for the day-long event, but be a different day? I don’t know. I’m just brainstorming here.

We didn’t talk about length or agenda or anything like that. Nothing is set in stone except for our desire to make something happen for information purposes in this part of the city.

Please let me know how you (each of you) see this and what you might like to do to make it happen. Thanks!

similar conferences on top of each other

In my last post, I talked about the birth of Planetwork in Chicago. What I didn’t talk about there was what Planetwork is. From their website:

• Convenes a unique forum exploring the most critical issues affecting civil society in the context of the strategic use of the Web and information technologies.
• Attracts a multidisciplinary community of highly skilled social change agents to envision, implement and share solutions to the most pressing interrelated crises on the planet.
• Incubates projects that demonstrate the role information technologies play in accelerating implementation of pragmatic solutions to local and global issues.
• Disseminates ideas, examples and case studies of digital solutions designed to bring about ecological sustainability and social justice worldwide.
• Galvanizes a new community; providing a rare opportunity to experience a renewed sense of hope, inspiration and empowerment.

So what if we took that, and wrote an invitation that included these points as Planetwork, and the omidyar.net member’s conference stuff we’ve already written and proposes, why not have these two event right on top of one another. Same location, same circle, same agenda wall, everything.

So it’s not co-located and it’s not co-branded, but it is literally two conferences at the same time and same place. And both invitations on the same page. Crazy? Hmm.

Chicago Planetwork

I’ve been reading Kaliya Hamlin‘s blog for a while now and met her face to face in Portland at RecentChangesCamp. She suggested that we start a Planetwork chapter in Chicago. Planetwork hosts some conferences, but more importantly, monthly gatherings. Some of us had a lunch last week to talk about this and brainstormed co-branding the omidyar.net members conference we’re hosting in Chicago on July 14-16 with Planetwork. It was just a fun idea to play with, more than a concrete plan. Someone who’s been to both sent me a message afterwards contrasting the Omidyar Network and Planetwork. Besides both ending in “work”, I sent this response:

We believe every individual
has the power to make a difference.

We exist for one single purpose:
So that more and more people discover their own
power to make good things happen.

We are actively building a network of participants,
because we know we can’t do this alone.

We invite you to learn more about us
and some of the people we’re working with.

And your experience of both the o/net conference and o/net itself it totally different from mine. Yes, I totally agree wtih you that there is a ton of “just talk” on the network, but Christina and Life in Africa, Lars and Peace Tiles, Mark and all of his various initiatives with the food chain, Evonne with Ammoration, there are tons and tons of real-world collaborations happening as a result of o/net, or greatly strengthened becasue of o/net and even more so beacuse of face to face gatherings. The Chiacgo conf was one of these. About 20 people got together in San Diego last fall from the food chain. There were at least 20 o/net people at RecentChangesCamp that Brandon and I initiated and helped organized in Portland, OR.
why am I interested in planetwork? because I’ve been reading Kaliya’s blog for a long time and swapping emails (met her at o/net, incidently) and finally met her at RecentChangesCamp. she suggested Micheal Herman and I get hooked up with you (didn’t tell us your name at the time) so start in Chicago, can’t remember what the context was, but it seemed another network that was very similar to what we’re (the big we of people I’m connected with in some way) already doing that would benefit by being further connected.

anyway – forget about the conference for a bit – that was really just a crazy brainstorm and not at all the focus of our lunch conversation last week – the focus was on getting the chicago planetwork website up so that we’d have the tools necessary to have chicago planetwork gatherings – the group of us that drove the chicago o/net conference into being are the sorts that are interested in getting the most done with the least amount of work – hence the way we organize chicago lunches – anyone issues an invitation at any time – if there are 2 or more other people that respond positively, then it happens – we can do the same thing for chicago planetwork, with a higher number of responses, perhaps, though even that might not be necesary

anyway, however we organize gatherings, havnig the web presence will be a way to get further connected with people that find planetwork a good way to connect – that’s my interest

Does this interest you?

BreathingIn invitation

Julie (Evans) Caldwell and I have been experimenting with different ways of connecting to do personal work in the 19 months since the Giving Conference. We started with open “Inviting Friends and Partners” calls, attempted to add more structure and committment with “Breathing In” calls and are now moving to a new phase, open-ended and open-invitation, with no on-going committment necessary, just the committment to be present during the call should you so desire. We have calls scheduled the 13th and 27th of March. All are welcome. Details at:
BreathingIn