I postponed this update last week for a recap on the Twin Oaks fire, so now we are well over a month behind on what was posted on Facebook.
And things can change significantly in a month. The first post was about the Twin Oaks Communities Conference, what I think of as one of the most important community networking events that happens all year. Of course, when this was posted, no one had any idea that the Conference site would soon be destroyed. Hopefully the Conference is still happening, but we will see. Here’s what we posted:
Usually, I’m bummed when a post gets less than a hundred views, but Facebook has been awful when we post events so this time I was pleased that this post almost got a hundred views. It also got eight likes.
At Acorn, it was a post about a couple of cats, one of which is named Fight Club.
Well, I was wrong that Fight Club was named when cats weren’t allowed in Acorn and a reader wrote to correct me:
This got seven likes, four loves, and a ha ha, not to mention an impressive 226 views. I guess that’s the benefit of showing cute cat pictures.
Twin Oaks has a large dining hall, a busy kitchen, and usually serves dinner on time. Here a picture from the process one day.
This got three likes, two loves, two wows, and a care, as well as over a hundred and sixty views.
The Twin Oaks Conference site also hosts the Queer Gathering (and the Women’s Gathering). The same week that the Communities Conference announced registration, so did the Queer Gathering. They might even be more affected by the fire because the Queer Gathering is held several weeks before the Communities Conference.
Maybe because of the way I worded the Facebook intro, FB didn’t recognize it as an event. Or maybe some other reason, but this post did the best we’ve done for an event, with well over a hundred views, as well as five likes and two loves.
Of course, as I’ve said many times, if you really want high viewer numbers, post a provocative question on Facebook from time to time. This time it was about families, and children, and communities.
Of course, there were a bunch of comments–but not that many (six) considering. Here’s what folks thought.
But, in spite of the small number of comments, and only seven likes and a love, we certainly got views. Over four hundred of them. I guess maybe people are more interested in the question than the answers.
I’m postponing my usual month late update on Facebook posts to highlight four very recent posts, all dealing with how the fire on their property impacted the Twin Oaks Community. Jules at Twin Oaks asked me to feature this link which leads to the general fire recovery fund donation site.
The first I knew about this was when I saw Paxus’ post which I then posted to Facebook as well as reposting here.
Here is how I set that post up on Facebook, with an introduction of Kelpie’s comments (Kelpie is a Twin Oaks member):
Unfortunately, bad news and disasters do very well on Facebook. We had very high numbers (at least for us) and they are still growing. All statistics here are as of Monday morning (3/25/24) when I am writing and posting this. The numbers are still growing and will especially be much too low for the most recent ones (like the one at the end of this article that we published today).
For this first post, we got 23 responses: Facebook informs me that we got nine sads, eight cares, three likes, two wows, and a love, plus two comments and two shares. As of now we got 319 views (and as I said, the number keeps growing).
That was as of Friday. On Saturday, I posted info from the Twin Oaks Conference site folks. That site was devastated.
This was the post about the fire that did least well–but for anything regarding the conferences it did very well. It’s too bad it took a fire for the Community Conference to get some views. There were five cares, three sads, and two likes–and almost two hundred views. (And as I said, I expect that number to grow over the next few days.)
On the Twin Oaks Facebook page, they published an update, which I reposted on Sunday.
I added the picture, from Paxus’ article. This had very high statistics on Facebook, with seven cares, four sads, two wows, and a like, as well as a comment, eleven shares, and well over five hundred views. (And, again, I expect this number to rise.)
Finally, Twin Oaks also posted these dramatic photos of how close the fire came to Tupelo, their outermost residence and the one most endangered by the fire.
As of Monday night (9pm) there were eight cares, five likes, two sads, and a love, as over two hundred and twenty views.
Having taken the month of December off, we are far behind on catching up with our posts on Facebook. These posts are from early November.
At Glomus Commune/East Brook Community Farm, they had a Fall Overhaul.
This post did fairly well on Facebook, with three likes and 186 views.
Twin Oaks posted a picture of some folks enjoying a summer event at their conference site.
This did very, very well (posts from Twin Oaks often do) with twelve likes (including some from Twin Oaks and the Foundation for Intentional Community) and three loves and 249 views.
SESE (Acorn’s business) pointed out the benefits of Austrian Winter Peas.
There are lots of different strategies for taking over the world. Keenan’s is to keep building larger and more elaborate play spaces until we finally accept that we should take ourselves less seriously and unite the kids we love with the kids inside us.
Keenan is the manager of the Twin Oaks Conference site, which will be busy for 4 different events this summer.
This site is in the best shape i have seen it in for the last 25 years. And one of the big improvements is the space designed for kids.
It was in Europe, traveling with Victoria, Hawina and Sky that i first realized that there is no such thing as a “general playground”. Instead, public playgrounds are designed to accommodate kids of specific ages. There are different pieces of play space equipment based on the expectation of the agility and balance of the kids who are going to use it. The way around this age limitation on equipment is to stock the space with lots of different pieces of equipment designed for different levels of physical strength and kids capacity to operate them.
But well equipped space is only part the first piece of what you need to have a great kids program at an event. You also need great staff and planned activities. And this year’s QuinkFair is lucky to have several pros helping run our kid program. Saman (aka Macaco) has been practicing Capoeira for many years, and teaches the songs and moves of Capoeira to all ages. Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian cultural practice – simultaneously a fight and a dance – that can be interpreted as a tradition, a sport and even an art form.
Saman often teaches Capoeira to kids
Faith Acorn will also be guiding the QuinkFair kid program
(see here with her own kids, Taozen and Rhyzley)
Several parents have been coming to QuinkFair since we started in 2019 and for them this year’s event will offer the most support and focus on kids.
A mixed bag of communal offerings. All sorts of things and one didn’t do very well, two did okay, one did very well, and one did extremely well–and, coincidentally, that was in the order we published them. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from looking at our Facebook stats it’s that events don’t do well and pictures do very well.
The event was the Communities Conference and the post was announcing the keynote speakers.
You can read the whole thing, including what they plan to talk about and bios for both of them. Unfortunately, not a lot of folks looked at this although it got five likes and a love.
What does pollenation have to do with communal living? None of us live in a vacuum. The very air we breathe is brought to us by plants and even urban communes (sigh, which I wish there was still some of) need flowers and fruits and vegetables.
This post did okay, with just over a hundred views and six likes and loves.
I’m really impressed with Glomus Commune’s consistent support of Iridescent Earth, a self-described “Queer, Black & Latinx led farm group from the Bronx”.
Those images are just stills. I’ll encourage you to watch the actual video with lively music and all.
This also did just okay, with a couple less views than that the last post–but it did get eight likes and loves.
East Wind crafts some lovely stuff for their community. Here’s an example.
The image was well appreciated with thirteen likes and loves and a wow–and over two hundred views.
Finally, Twin Oaks posted this about a party they had to celebrate the chamomile harvest.
Like I said, people seem to really like pictures on Facebook. I thought this was a nice post but nothing spectacular, but it got spectacular results. Maybe it was because of the person who shared it (that’s what the one and the curved arrow mean) but twenty-eight likes and loves and over five hundred views. Wow.
John joined Living Energy Farm a couple of years ago and talks about the process of getting there and what it’s like being there and why living this way is important.
The Twin Oaks Communities Conference is looking for presenters for this year’s gathering which will take place Sept 1 through 4th in Louisa Virginia. If you are confident you should be presenting, here is the form to become a presenter. [Deadline Aug 1, 2023]
If you are unsure, the following article introduces the culture of the event and background to help you decide. Please note this is the Call for Presenters of curated workshops on intentional communities. There are also Open Space workshops where anyone can present on any topic without asking in advance.
We are especially looking for workshops on the two current topic threads:
Diversity and Inclusion
How to found or find an intentional community
Should you offer a workshop at the Twin Oaks Communities Conference?
Twin Oaks Communities Conference (TOCC) is looking for some compelling workshop presenters on the topic of intentional community. Perhaps you are asking yourself “Am I a talented workshop presenter?” Here are some ways you can tell:
“Are you on topic?”: Let’s say you are an expert in sustainable building design, every community needs these types of structures, you have done dozens of workshops and seminars on how to design and build sustainable structures of many types. Certainly, it would seem you are an appropriate presenter for this event, but not necessarily.
The focus of this event is Intentional Communities (self-selecting, place-based, residential communities who share material and cultural things). The only way a workshop on sustainable design fits our program is if it demonstrates how this technology serves the needs of ICs specifically. The intentional community focus needs to be baked into the content of the workshop,
“The truth is in the room”: What we’re looking for are interactive workshops that draw from the participants and the collective truth from the room. If your plan is to give a lecture, this is the wrong event for you. We’re hoping for workshops that introduce participants to ideas that they perhaps have never considered before or advance beliefs which are challenging or engage everyone in the space, including the presenter. We’ve found that open-ended questions and role plays are methods that work well with our participants.
The room has no walls, but the truth is still in there
Flexible: We’re looking for workshop facilitators that can sense the energy level of the participants. Does it look like a playful group? Perhaps games and simulations will be helpful. Is this a serious (perhaps intense) group or topic? A Q&A or a hotseat format could be more appropriate.. Conversely, perhaps the opposite prescription will work – the serious and intense folks could lighten up with games.
The point is that you as the workshop presenter want to build a good connection with your participants and tailor your presentation to the group you have before you. You could do a go round (if there are less than 20 people) and ask everyone for a single sentence about why they are in the workshop. Their answers will guide you to adjust your presentation for their level of expertise and their areas of excitement.
Flexible is key [Image by Bing/Dalle]
Reflect on Impact: Is it possible that you are going to share an exercise that will engage your participants beliefs or behavior? Is it likely they will be amused and entertained? We’re looking for workshops that will lead participants towards a greater understanding of themselves and how they present in community. How can we have more healthy and transparent relationships with fellow communitarians? How can libraries of shared material goods be created so we are living more sustainably and cooperatively? Can we be in romantic relationships with more than one person, in the same place? What are the details we can learn and share to live together more cooperatively?
Not a fancy event: The conference will provide chairs, rain protection, white boards, and, with advance notice, some sound system, but we’re in quite a rustic environment. Your powerpoint presentation, for example, might dictate which workshop space you need to be in.
It’s important to us to maintain the low cost and low overhead for this conference, so we cannot afford to pay you to present, although we can provide presenters with a free or reduced cost ticket. We can also help coordinate transportation for presenters from many places.
The Communities Conference has two types of workshops, these IC specific curated workshops which are selected in advance and Open Space workshops on any topic. The Open Space technique self selects for each workshop’s audience, so all are welcome to present on Sunday of the event. So if you hate filling out forms, or don’t want to be constrained by having your workshop in part on intentional communities, the Open Space section of workshops is likely best for you.
We are very proud to have Avi Kruley and Sky Blue doing the keynote address: Doing the Impossible: Generating what we need to manifest the potential of Intentional Community
I try to repost things from a variety of communities each week but, as I was preparing this week’s recap of Facebook posts from a couple of weeks ago, I noticed I had three posts from Glomus. I don’t know if it was just a slow week–or maybe I was favoring them because they had published so little over the winter and were putting out so much now.
The first was about a seed swap that they were participating in.
And while it didn’t have any likes or loves, it did well enough in terms of views.
Then, a few days later, we published this cute picture of a crocus that was on the East Brook Instagram page.
This got four likes and one ‘care’ and a respectable number of views.
However, I couldn’t resist publishing the sequel that they had on their Instagram page the next day.
And it also did well. I guess folks like spring flowers.
We also published another repeat from Acorn. They just kept putting stuff out about their Land Day and I couldn’t resist this picture of the stage there with the colorful artwork.
And, in spite of all the stuff we already put out about Land Day, this did very well, with the most likes, loves, and views of stuff we put on Facebook that week.
But what I thought was the most important thing we published during this time period (especially given the saturation of Acorn Land Day stuff and Glomus flower and seed swap pictures) did terrible. Twin Oaks announced that they would once again be having summer events and gave dates and links.
Since the links above are simply from a photo and won’t actually work, here are the real links:
I can’t say I was really surprised at how bad this did. Facebook has always turned out poorly when it comes to these events. Which I think is a shame because, honestly, I think they are more important to publicize than already past events (like Land Day and the seed swap) and pictures of flowers. There were no likes and only 44 views.
How do you find people for a community when there isn’t yet a community?
I’ve been using a scattershot approach or what I’ve heard as “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks”. I’d love to tell you a no-fail method for finding potential communards but I haven’t found one yet. Having a functioning community with interesting folks is a good way to attract people, but you have to start somewhere and since my first step is always finding the people, the question is how do you find folks, and at this point, my answer is “any way that I can”.
It’s actually an approach that makes some sense. Since I don’t know what will attract folks, I think that trying lots of different things means using a variety of ways to reach the people I’m looking for. In particular, I think that this is a better method for times like now when things are less stable and what worked in the past may not be what works now. I’ve heard it phrased as “If at first you don’t succeed, try something else”.
So, what have I tried?
I’ve put ads on ic.org and in Communities magazine. I’ve also written an article about my search (called “Starting from Scratch, Yet Again”) that was just published in Communities magazine (Spring 2023, Issue #198). I’ve talked about it to visitors I met at Glomus, to folks I saw at Acorn, and to people I knew at the Ganas Community. I put something on our regional co-op email list. I went to the Collaborative Living Conference in Maine, and the Queer Gathering and the Communities Conference at Twin Oaks in Virginia. I gave a workshop on Collaborative Community Design at the Communities Conference and later at Ganas.
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From the workshop at the Communities Conference
In addition, I joined ICmatch, which is kind of a dating service but instead of trying to match up with a romantic partner, you connect with communities and people looking for communities. I also just joined Community Finders Connect, a Facebook page that tries to connect people with communities. And someone I know who runs a ‘clubhouse’ to talk about communities had me on to talk about income sharing communities.
And, of course, this blog and all that I write here (including this post) are more ways of getting myself out there.
Importantly, I have responded to everyone who has expressed interest to me and talked with them and tried to find out just how interested they were. I met with anyone who was nearby and had multiple emails and sometimes phone calls with folks further away. That included folks that were interested in what seemed to me off-the-wall things and the person who literally talked at me on a phone call for forty-five minutes and gave me little chance to respond. It has been a lot of trial and error for what has not been very many results.
But I intend to keep trying to find other ways to reach out. I’m still trying to think of different ways to attract folks. What avenues haven’t I tried? Who am I really trying to reach and is there a better way to reach them?
As I said at the beginning, I still haven’t found any easy ways to find the folks I’m looking for. If there was, I’d share them. But here’s the only way I know: Be creative.
This year, I offered a workshop at the Communities Conference on Collaborative Community Design. This material is very relevant to the community building work I am doing and, I think, to anyone who is thinking of creating some type of community.
If you go to ic.org, the Foundation for Intentional Community’s website, they have a directory that lists thousands of communities around the world. Many represent legitimate communities but there are a lot of others that seem incredibly detailed, to the extent that you might wonder who lives there.
Similar to my fictional Totally Utopia Community, I have a made up a fairly absurd community I often illustrate this with, I call the Purple Plaid Community. The fictional description of the community is that everyone wears purple plaid, and all meals are vegan except for the steak dinner on Sunday, and they all meditate at 6:42 in the morning, and on and on and on and on. It’s pretty strange but I swear there are communities that strange and detailed (or worse) listed in ic.org’s directory. And, again, who lives there? When I’ve looked it turns out to be one person, or more commonly, a couple, and they’ve created the perfect community for themselves and wonder why no one wants to join them.
I created the Collaborative Community Design workshop as an antidote to this. The process I came up with is not the only way to design a community together (I suspect that there are hundreds of ways a group could do it) but I think it’s a good exercise to get folks thinking about how they can design a community together, rather than just relying on one or two people’s vision.
The format I came up with and presented at the Conference had everyone put out two or three bottom lines (deal breakers, non-negotiables) and then make sure that there aren’t any conflicts between them. (If there are, it may be that you need to start different communities. At the least, this is good to know before you go any further.) Assuming these are all compatible, they would be listed all together as a foundation for the community.
We did this again for deep desires (listing two or three things each person might really want in a community but could give up if necessary) and again, if there weren’t conflicts, added them to the list. And finally we brainstormed a wishlist and anything that two or more folks checked off and no one had problems with got added to the list–thus developing a community description that was generated by the group rather than by a single person.
Combined bottom lines and deep desires for group at my workshop
When I did this at the Communities Conference, I was surprised that the folks who first volunteered to do it were already in an existing community. They said that they were thinking of reorganizing the community. But it seemed to go well and they were happy with the result.
I thought that was the end of it, because we ran out of time on the workshop, but there wasn’t anything in the next slot and a bunch of folks asked me to do it again, this time with a random group of people. So I did.
We generated a long rambling list. I doubt if these folks would actually work together to create a community but one interesting thing came out of this. I had said if two people had conflicting bottom lines, they probably needed to create different communities. I was thinking, one person wants urban and another rural, or one person wants under ten and another person wants over twenty, but in this group, one person wanted ‘nonviolence’ as a bottom line. I asked him what he meant by that, and he wanted a community where no one would even kill mice. I went on until a woman said that one of her bottom lines was livestock. I asked if she meant beef production and she said she did, so I pointed out that the two of them were not likely to create a community together, if he wanted no killing and she wanted killing cattle for meat.
The first group’s wishlist–note every item got two or three checks
As I said, I’m sure this is far from the only process to collectively design a community, but it’s certainly one. Everyone’s bottom lines are included, most people’s deep desires are included, and probably a bunch of stuff on various wishlists are included. Most importantly, a community vision emerges from several folks and thus not just one person’s idea of what a community should be. Among other things, this brings more buy-in to the community vision since everyone’s ideas have been included.
The main lesson here is that one person can’t create a community–you need a lot of folks involved in the process. In essence, it takes a community to create a community.
commune life 