Tools & Technologies
The following pages and articles on this website are also tagged "Tools & Technologies":
Neighbors out for a stroll at Harmony Village in Golden, CO (Photo by Julia Rainer)In addition to the other sections of this website, especially the monthly issues of our online magazine, the following pages offer a wide range of worthwhile resources to further address questions about cohousing:
Professional directory
These professionals have demonstrated experience with cohousing. They have worked on at least one completed cohousing project and are capable of improving the chances of a forming group actually building and becoming an established community - or to improve the function of a living community.
Regional groups
The Cohousing Website at Cohousing.org has links to hundreds of other Cohousing-related websites. This includes links to most of the Cohousing communities in the Cohousing Directory, Cohousing books, related Community Networks, Cohousing Professionals, our Advertisers - and a wide variety of other Cohousing-related resources.
Please help others discover us by adding links to the Cohousing Website from your website! Its really simple - here's how:
To show this
on your site:Copy and paste this html code into your web page: cohousing.org <a href="http://www.cohousing.org">cohousing.org</a> Catya Belfer-Shevett
Building a great website starts with asking three questions: Who will be using this website? What do they want and need? What’s the easiest and most attractive way to help them find it? In this session we’ll start with the basics of identifying your users, go over categorization (aka information architecture) and how that plays into building site navigation, and talk about content, tools, and bells and whistles. Other website builders are more than welcome to attend and share your expertise!
Catya Belfer-Shevett is a cohousing 'burning soul'. My cohousing community, Mosaic Commons, is completing construction in Berlin MA and we will be moving in this fall after 8 years of work. I create websites for cohousing communities and others, including www.cohousing.org On the non-technical side, I am fascinated by how we build community through ritual, tradition, and song.
by Catya Belfer-ShevettKnow your audience, Choose your audience
My conference session description says: "Building a great website starts with asking three questions: Who will be using this website? What do they want and need? What’s the easiest and most attractive way to help them find it? In this session we’ll start with the basics of identifying your users, go over categorization (aka information architecture) and how that plays into building site navigation, and talk about content, tools, and bells and whistles. Other website builders are more than welcome to attend and share your expertise!"
That first question is harder than you think. In order to choose how you are going to serve your audiences, you need to know who they are. Here's who I think hits the Mosaic Commons website (leaving off search engines and crawlers for the moment):
by Catya Belfer-ShevettA group wrote me recently asking about the Mosaic Commons Decision Log, which is a custom tool one of our folks put together. It has some features I like - it's searchable, you can mark decisions as important/not or obsolete/not, it identifies the relevant team, etc.
For Sawyer Hill (the umbrella entity for Mosaic Commons and Camelot Cohousing), we're using a simple google document with a dated list. For its purpose, that's totally fine.
What do you use? What features about it do you like, or do you wish you had that you don't have?
On Copyright
The contents of this website are copyrighted by the Cohousing Association of the United States, all rights reserved. You do not have the right to copy contents from this website and use it in your own work without explicit permission. There are some exceptions where specific content is pre-approved and available for re-use, but this is always specifically noted on any particular page containing available content.
On Reproduction Rights
Raines & CatWelcome to the Technology blog!
This blog will be authored by Raines and Catya. If you have any requests for blog posts, let us know!
by Catya Belfer-ShevettWhenever I hear something three times, I take it seriously.
At this conference, the request I heard three times was for a basic website template for a new group just starting off.
I'm giving some thought to how best to do this. (Disclaimer: I'm not sure which hat I'm wearing here, my own personal website building hat, or my cohousing.org webmaster hat)
I think a basic cohousing website for a new group might include:
- What is cohousing
- Vision statement
- Information about land or land search area and status
- Upcoming events
- Contact information, email list signup.What else would you want to see included? What do you think would be appropriate for a new group to pay for such a thing?
This is the Cohousing Website, version 8.5 Beta Release. It was released on June 12, 2008 at the 2008 National Cohousing Conference in Boston. Just wait until you see what we release at the 2009 National Cohousing Conference in Seattle!
Beta Releases are used to identify problems and gather useful information before the Full Release. Our Beta period is expected to end when the next 9.0 Beta Release Goes Live - probably in early 2009.
There are many ways you can help us improve this website. One easy way is to report bugs or issues that you encounter. You can report this in different ways - but the only one that really matters to us is by going to the New Members Area and reporting issues in the Members Forum. Once there, you can also navigate to the most appropriate Forum Topic, then press the "Post a Comment" link under the page title,
Thanks!
Craig Ragland, Catya Belfer-Shevett, Donna Freiermuth
Come check out the new www.cohousing.org! Take a tour of the great features of the site, and talk with the web team about how you can best use it to help your community, whether your group is brand new or you've been living together for years. Get a sneak preview of our new Members Area, with forums, blogs, and more ways to both join the cohousing conversation as well as get your questions answered.
Catya Belfer-Shevett is a cohousing “burning soul.” My cohousing community, Mosaic Commons, is completing construction in Berlin MA and we will be moving in this fall after 8 years of work. I create websites for cohousing communities and others, including www.cohousing.org. On the non-technical side, I am fascinated by how we build community through ritual, tradition, and song.
The temptation to use technology to make life more convenient, more practical, or just jazzier – whatever the cost – is always with us.
In our Nevada City cohousing community, we adopted online signups for common dinners. Previously, signups were on paper in the common house. I’d often stop by the common house at around 8 pm, when there would be three or four people hanging around near the signup book. There was considerable dialogue among us all, some of it dinner-related. “Are you coming to dinner tomorrow?” “Oh, I forgot to sign up on time.” “Don’t worry, I’m cooking and I haven’t shopped yet.”
The System
We lost more than 100 people-hours of community and community-building in the common house. When it comes to stitching a viable community together, that’s a huge number.The easiest way to find the content you're looking for is to use the search tool. It's on every page in the far upper right hand corner. (Using an accurate keyword that describes the page you're looking for will make your search more productive.) You can also use the tags at the bottom of each page to help you find similar pages/Your Bookmark No Longer Works
When we launched the latest version of the Cohousing.org site in February 2008, almost all pages were recreated on the new site but their web addresses had to be renamed. Use the menu at the left or the search feature in the upper right corner to find the page, then bookmark its new location.Site Organization
10/1/08: We've been collecting your feedback on our website since our launch in January, and we heard a few things loud and clear that we've tried to address:- The sections don't make sense!
- I can't tell where I am on the site
Raines Cohen
The classic approach of cohousing groups to the internet—throwing up a simple brochure-like site—just doesn't cut it anymore. Learn how your group can weave every member's social network into an integrated “Web 2.0” marketing and outreach campaign that helps build support and recruit members, either for new groups or for resales in existing neighborhoods. We'll look at a variety of cohousing websites with common structural issues and do some “virtual makeovers,” showing best practices for using your directory entry, YouTube, FaceBook, MeetUp, Craig's List, MySpace, online calendars, regional boards, and newspapers, thereby making your online presence into an engaging conversation.
The temptation to use technology to make life more convenient, more practical, or just jazzier – whatever the cost – is always with us.
In our Nevada City cohousing community, we adopted online signups for common dinners. Previously, signups were on paper in the common house. I’d often stop by the common house at around 8 pm, when there would be three or four people hanging around near the signup book. There was considerable dialogue among us all, some of it dinner-related. “Are you coming to dinner tomorrow?” “Oh, I forgot to sign up on time.” “Don’t worry, I’m cooking and I haven’t shopped yet.”
Cohousing-L
Our email discussion group (Cohousing-L) is received by more than 2,000 email addresses in North America and abroad. Cohousing-L participants live in cohousing, are exploring cohousing, are forming new communities, or offer goods and services to the cohousing market. With hundreds of postings per month, you'll see people's questions, requests for advice, replies with advice and answers, anecdotes, and the priceless collective wisdom of the online cohousing community.
Dave Belfer-Shevett
Communication within a cohousing group is critical, particularly during the organizing and planning stages, when geographic separation, conflicting schedules, and life in general get in the way of 'traditional' organizing processes (such as face to face meetings and telephone calls). With such wide acceptance of the web as a communication tool, cohousing groups are faced with many choices in how information is exchanged, projects are planned, and communication happens. Mailing lists, wikis, websites, chat systems, instant messaging—all of these tools have the promise of being the perfect solution, but like any tool, they'll be successful only if implemented correctly and used wisely. This workshop will discuss the variety of tools available, reviewing the relative merits of each technology.
During my session at the conference on Building Great Websites, we talked about wikis and google documents, and the plusses and minuses of each.
My take was that Google Documents were an easier way for most folks to work on a document together, and the wikis were generally more comfortable for more technical folks. (I hear my illustrious husband, who also presented, disagrees with me on this, but it's possible that that only proves my point)
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