Cabin Labs - Spring 2024

📠 Memos
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This doc is the first draft of the seasonal roadmap for what contributors to Cabin Labs & Meeting Cabin’s Technical Needs will be focused on for Spring 2024. Please provide feedback and/or questions in the comments before we finalize the plan.

Outline

  1. North Star
  2. Strategy
  3. Levels of activation
  4. Spring 2024 Objectives
  5. Start / Stop / Pause / Continue

North Star

Vision: A network city of intergenerational neighborhoods

Mission: Create neighborhoods you’d want to grow up in

Values: Three Obvious Truths

  • Live near friends
  • Create together
  • Touch grass

Strategy

TL;DR:

Rural coliving for nomads (2023) → Neighborhoods for friends & families (2024)

What we’re building:

Neighborhoods

  1. MVP: recurring (monthly or weekly) gathering for a city or area
  2. Long term goal: 15 minute walking radius where multiple community members live

Who we are building for:

  1. Neighborhood Stewards: people who want to build the Radish/Fractal for their area
  2. Neighborhood Residents: people who want to live in community with friends and family
  3. Neighborhood Visitors: people who want to visit and participate in neighborhoods

What they want:

  1. To connect with their neighbors and build deep local relationships
  2. To feel empowered and supported in building their dream neighborhood
  3. To be a part of a larger mission, vision, values, and community
  4. To support and share resources with others nearby

Our core offerings:

  1. Accelerator for Neighborhoods - a cohort-based program for neighborhood stewards
  2. Neighborhood App (cabin.city) - a platform for local community building (profiles, events, etc)
  3. Social Content - videos, images, words from neighborhood stewards as growth flywheel

Levels of activation

  1. Online member
    1. Create an account and complete your profile
    2. Join a neighborhood or signal interest in one if there isn’t one nearby
  2. IRL member
    1. Attend gatherings in your local area
    2. Host a gathering in your local area
  3. Neighborhood Steward
    1. Join a neighborhood stewards cohort to start and grow a neighborhood
    2. Host a recurring gathering
    3. Create a third place
    4. Get people to move within a 15 minute walk of you

Spring 2024 Objectives

Objective 1 - Activate 10+ Neighborhood Stewards

  1. Facilitate weekly meetings & async chats with 1 urban and 1 rural cohort of stewards to co-create and implement local neighborhood development and Cohort program [Savannah & Matai]
  2. Tell the story of neighborhood building by creating and sharing content produced by Neighborhood Stewards [Matai]
    1. Social channels (X, Farcaster, Instagram)
    2. Newsletter
    3. Online events

Objective 2 - Build pipeline of neighborhoods

  1. Build pipeline of 20+ community members who have hosted an event and are ready to join a future cohort [Savannah]
  2. Develop an app experience that supports people activating down the funnel [Grin]
    1. App goal: Show and grow neighborhoods
    2. To do
      1. Update landing page to orient around neighborhood pipeline
      2. Update onboarding flow to get people into locations
        1. mandatory first steps: email, name, location, profile picture, bio
        2. get people matched into a neighborhood
      3. Neighborhoods page
        1. Events
        2. See other neighborhood members
        3. Activate neighborhood / become steward
        4. Contact steward
  3. Plan The Network State Camp, a 300-400 person gathering to maintain Cabin’s brand as the leading network city & recruit new Neighborhood Stewards [Jon]

Start / Stop / Pause / Continue

This is a list of where Cabin Labs will be spending and not spending time in Spring 2024.

Start

  1. Neighborhood Steward Cohorts
    1. Run cohorts - rural and urban
    2. Whatever we can do to accelerate neighborhood stewards’ efforts
    3. Work towards clear sustainable financial model
  2. App flow built around neighborhood pipeline & user activation

Stop

  1. Operating rural coliving for nomads
    1. Cabin Labs is not directly operating coliving experiences for nomads. Our network of properties are still accessible to citizens directly.
  2. Conference side events & housing
    1. Fun and can be valuable for brand, but takes too much time & effort for Cabin Labs members to justify spending time on unless we are hosting the full event ourselves (like TNS Camp) or can clearly justify how it will build the pipeline of neighborhood stewards

Pause

  1. Citizenship
    1. We will continue to offer Citizenship, but shipping new features for Citizenship is not the primary focus right now
  2. City Directory
    1. We plan to migrate the current City Directory listings to outposts - friendly global places to visit & connect with the community
    2. Cabin community members can continue to list outposts and use the network
  3. Crypto features
    1. Keep features we have for now
    2. Remove crypto from onboarding

Continue

  1. Vision & Values
    1. Our vision and values have not changed

If you’re interested in getting involved with our neighborhood program, please fill out this form! Discover Typeform, where forms = fun

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I really like the shift in focus and I am going to lean into how I can support from here in Milwaukee, WI. I will also be sharing this in a community that I am where we are having conversations about the idea of “community living” I think this is a more actionable “STEP” in the right direction for so many more people.

PS and as a systems designer, I love the Start, Stop, Pause, Continue framework. I use what’s working, what’s not, what do we change, normally but this is another option. thanks,.

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Thanks for the feedback @KatieFelten! If you’re interested in joining the next cohort of others doing the same thing in their local area, please fill out this form: Get involved in a Cabin local club

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@jon thanks drafting this! Am excited to dive more into the local community building and storytelling efforts.

What do you think about setting up time for a recorded community town hall to offer space for live comment and feedback?

Sharing some thoughts that propose some edits below :point_down:

1/ Clarification on Document Purpose

I think we could clarify that this document is written as a tactical roadmap for what contributors as a part of Cabin Labs & Meeting Cabin’s Technical Needs will be focused on.

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2/ Reframing the Concept of Cohousing > Community Building

I think that “cohousing” is too narrow of a term, and would suggest we rephrase to “Building local community (2024)”. While the sceenshot of the wikepedia definition of cohousing may be more specific of a framing than what the word could represent, I think that establishing cohousing as the goal is to narrow of a scope, and that we could allow for the many forms of sharing space that could emerge from the cohort program as Cabin figures out how to best support our community. For some this may be cohousing, for others coliving, for others co-visiting (more on this follows). I also think that it is important to build on what we’ve established, instead of pivoting away from what we’ve built and who we built it for, recognizing that neighborhood building and nomads visiting can be mutually beneficial.

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3/ Inclusion of Neighborhood Visitors and Pop-up Neighborhoods

a) I think that most neighborhoods would appreciate visitors, and would suggest we add a category that encompass short term “Neighborhood Visitors - people who visit a Cabin neighborhood that we hope to stay connected with.”. Recognizing that a great way to inspire someone to become a Neighborhood Steward is by them first visiting a neighborhood to understand the vibe. I also think that existing neighborhood residents will be interested in visiting other neighborhoods, especially as relationships form through cohorts.

b) I also think we should consider pop-up neighborhoods with temporary residents that are values aligned to be in scope of Cabin’s target to support. Communities like Mars College’s Bombay Beach Neighborhood are ripe with very committed neighborhood stewards who call the town home for ~3 months/year.

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4/ Community > Neighborhood

I would suggest we frame the app as a "Community App (cabin.city) - a platform for connecting people to local neighborhoods and gatherings. What neighborhoods are and how multiple community members will self-organize as a groups is still emergent. I would suggest we enhance the app to still include past functionality around listing outposts and experiences as places people can contact hosts to visit.

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5/ Cohort Program Adjustments

a) I think we are early in the process of the cohort program, and would suggest we consider the potential that having mixed urban and rurual cohort members could work. Would suggest we indent the 2nd bullet under Start and reword to: “Run cohorts, exploring how to best group and support the peer learning groups, building on what @savkruger introduced in Clubs -> Neighborhoods - #5 by savkruger”

b) I would also suggest we explore launching a cohort of young professionals / college age folks to explore how Cabin could support access to coliving experiences, shared college third spaces, and community networks. Although college is a transitory experience, I think we could help establish student led mutual aid groups that share space similar to clubs and fraternities/sororities, and have had great discussion around this with MacKay, Emma, James, Zack, Kyndra, Tyson, and Anish.

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6/ Cabin as a public good

I think Citizenship is still a compelling model, with Cabin acting as a public goods organization, supporting access to shared utility through Citizenship contributions, similar to the Is Cabin a business or a government? taxes ideas that @camlindsay brought up. I think that by publishing video content around testimonials and spotlights of neighborhood activity that showcase Cabin’s role as a support network on our website/socials, that we’ll be able to attract new citizens who want to: move to, visit, and create more neighborhoods. I also think that Cabin community members should be able to use the brand recognition of Cabin to garner funding and support from other sources beyond Citizenship to fund activities, whether that be sponsorships from other brands for Cabin houses, or crowdfund pools for local neighborhood improvement projects. We (the broader Cabin community) have access to the resources we need, we just need to figure out how to share them in a way which supports our sustainable growth. I shared ideas on alternative monetization strategies at the end of my comment here > Clubs -> Neighborhoods - #7 by Matai.

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7/ Community-Driven Events and Coliving

a) I think that while paid contributors are pausing focus on these events, that Cabin community members should be encouraged to self-organize around these activities to continue to gather IRL. I would suggest we move these to Continue, and re-word as: "Coliving for nomads – Cabin community members can continue to list experiences and outposts, organizing shared conference housing and other gatherings".

b) We could add a section to Stop: "Contributor led coliving - Current contributors will no longer lead coordination for coliving experiences (e.g., Cabin Weeks, outpost recruiting), with responsibility shifting to community members".

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8/ Census and City Directory Enhancements

a) I think it would make sense to frame outposts as “Residences”, allowing anyone Citizen to list a specific residence, and any experience offered there. I would love to list my room for rent on the City Directory in Ojai when I go to visit Elkenmist for a couple weeks this summer as an example. Other stewards getting a chance to visit other neighborhoods would help share learnings and diversify experiences.

b) I would suggest that properties should be able to be associated to a Neighborhood (assuming a recurring gathering exists)

c) I think that the City Directory should include basic filter and sort criteria to help people find destinations to visit.

d) I think it would be worth while to explore what type of profile enhancements beyond location would help people connect, like listing skills/interests/hobbies in a searchable way, uploading a video introduction, or other possible enhancements to help other community members find people online they want to hang out with IRL.

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thanks @Matai, I made a bunch of edits based on your feedback.

  1. added suggested language to clarify the document’s purpose
  2. added neighborhood visitors as a stakeholder we are building for
  3. further clarified that the app will still include outposts
  4. clarified that Cabin Labs is not going to be focused on operating coliving experiences this season, but the community still has these offerings available
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Hello, I’m Emma - President of University of Kansas Blockchain Institute. I’m super excited about the college cohort idea. I would love to help get this program off the ground both in Kansas and other Universities.

Planning to work with Matai and a few other universities to start drafting a proposal for this program!

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Hi there! Bit late to the game to share my thoughts here publically. Excited to share as we build this out right now.

Big thanks to you @jon, @Matai , @camlindsay , @grin, @prigoose, et al., and surely many others who contributed to this new direction for Cabin. I can see how this doc has changed over time with each of our inputs and I love it.

@KatieFelten You’re so cool. I want to know more about your systems design work when we have our call about you being a neighborhood steward. I’m working with some great systems thinkers here in Boulder, CO to map out the various communities in our town and see how we can build a more interconnected network of community in Boulder.

My Notes on Spring 2024 Plan

  1. The framing “neighborhood cohousing for families (2024)” doesn’t include what some neighborhood stewards are trying to do. Some are building neighborhoods of adult friends or college-aged friends and are not designing for families (yet or at all). I’d love to broaden this a bit to welcome more shapes of neighborhood building. I could see a rewrite being: “Rural coliving for nomads (2023) → Neighborhood cohousing for friends + families (2024)”

Again in this section below you’re writing for one user persona (the parents who want neighborhoods of families) on #4

…so I’d suggest a rewrite on #4 to read: “4. To feel supported by one another and share resources (ie parents helping each other with childcare or a group of friends pooling funds to create a shared third space. Many potential shapes here.).”

^ In the Who we are building for Section:

  • I want you to link to Radish + Fractal so folks reading who don’t know them can read up on what these are. I like this practice of not assuming folks know what we’re referring to on key docs like this so they can stay a part of the conversation.

  • On “2. Neighborhood Residents:” I suggest a rewrite to: “Neighborhood Residents: people who want to live in thoughtfully cultivated communities of friends.” The idea of “Cabin” feels very vague to me and would love to be more precise here.

Thanks,
Savannah

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great feedback, thanks. updated the original post.

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I like your comments, and I think that broadening it to → Neighborhood cohousing for friends + families (2024)” feels better to me who is interested in this work, but doesn’t have a family nor want a full time family… but I do want to live and connect with people who live near me… and have them become friends and I like families and kids on a part-time basis. So having friends with kids that I could take occasionally would be fun.

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I’m glad to hear it!

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