Applications for the Summer 2024 Cohort are closed.
<< Apply For the Next Cohort >>
This doc draws upon the thoughts and work of @prigoose, @Phil Levin, @jon , @Matai , @grin , @camlindsay , myself, and many more voices in the larger Cabin network. As you read these words, know that they’re sourced from this larger collective, not just me. For additional context on this project of starting Cabin neighborhoods and cohorts, check out the Cabin Labs - Spring 2024 Plan. Let’s dive in!
TL;DR
We’re launching the Cabin Neighborhood Accelerator to support people in building vibrant communities in their local neighborhoods. We’re looking for aligned folks to join our Summer 2024 Cohort. Apply Here.
Deadline: End-of-day Sunday, May 26, 2024. Folks applying after the cutoff will be put on the list for our Fall Cohort.
Outline
- Storytime
- Cabin Neighborhood Accelerator - Summer 2024
- Program Logistics
- Who’s a good fit for this program?
- Our Progress So Far
- Let’s Do This
Storytime
The easiest way to explain what we’re building is to tell you a story…
A Neighborhood of Friends
Imagine you invite all your neighbors to a block party. You invite some friends that you want to move into your neighborhood too. Something special starts to happen. People start becoming friends, they start building things together. Some love throwing Open Mic Nights, 1 hosts a book club on that book you keep meaning to read, 2 friends who previously didn’t know each other start a weekly potluck that becomes the drumbeat of your community. You decide to go for a walk, ping the group, and 4 people spontaneously join you. A few friends decide to improve the neighborhood by hosting trash cleanup events. As all this energy builds, you help your friends move into your neighborhood. You’re surrounded by people who love you and who you get to love.
You all realize that you can build really cool things together if you pool your resources. You start small and share a Costco membership, then you build a lending library for power tools, then a big pizza oven in so-and-so’s backyard. A few folks decide to build an app together after meeting each other in your neighborhood. Later, you all decide to rent the house down the street and 3 of your friends move in. The rest of the community decides to collectively pay a quarter of the rent to turn the house into your community’s clubhouse + co-working space. You plant a community garden in the backyard. You slowly notice your body is more relaxed. There’s a deep sense of belonging. You’re home.
This is what we want to help people build at Cabin.
Here’s another scenario…
A Neighborhood of Families
Say you’re a parent. Imagine you live within a 5 min walk of 7 other families + a bunch of friends who don’t have kids but love them. Your kids have their pick of wonderful places to play after school and you trust the other adults to look out for them. You can easily ask the group for help when you need it and they show up for you. Maybe the weekends have scheduled times where childcare is shared among a few adults so the other parents have some free time to themselves. Maybe 1 family organizes bulk food buying for the group so that you can all save time and money.
Maybe some of you decide to buy houses next door and kick the fences down so you can build all sorts of things together in your larger shared backyard. All the adults and kids gather regularly for a big family meal. Your kids are laughing with people you admire and you’re glad that your kids are going to be impacted by these genuinely good people. You feel more supported as a parent than you ever have and you get to support the people you care most about.
It does take a village…and you have it. You have the village.
This is what we want to help people build at Cabin.
These two stories are not fantasies. They’re inspired by real neighborhoods that exist already, built by real people who trial-and-errored their way into building beautiful communities of people who care about each other.
In this next chapter at Cabin, we are running a Neighborhood Accelerator for people who want to build vibrant neighborhoods similar to the stories I shared above.
Cabin Neighborhood Accelerator - Summer 2024
A 13 week step-by-step journey of meeting your neighbors, roping your friends to come live close to you, and building a hyper-local community of care, belonging, and co-creation.
During these 13 weeks, you will:
- Create the opportunity for you + your neighbors to have meaningful relationships, share resources and build things together.
- Invite your friends to move into your neighborhood and show them again and again the value of what you’re building.
- Host a regular gathering that builds a sense of belonging and momentum in your neighborhood.
- Post regular build-in-public updates to social media to share your progress and entice your friends to move.
- Feel a rich sense of camaraderie as you build your neighborhood alongside fellow neighborhood stewards from around the world.
- Be accountable every week to taking specific, time-tested actions to build your neighborhood and build in public.
Program Logistics
- The Summer Cohort runs for 3 months from Monday, June 3rd to Wednesday, September 4th.
- It’s free. (We’ll likely charge for it in the future, but for now want to keep it free as we prototype this shape.)
- Weekly Time Commitment = ~4 hours a week on average, most of which is spent doing on-the-ground neighborhood building activities.
- Calls: There will be a recorded group call roughly 1x per week during first half of the cohort. The timing of the calls will depend on people’s availability.
- Weekly Program: Each week there will be specific steps each neighborhood steward will take to build their neighborhood.
- Tracks: There are two sub-tracks within the program:
- Neighbors + Friends Track: for those who want to knock on doors and build community with their neighbors + invite their friends to come live in their neighborhood.
- Friends Track: for those who are excited to get their friends to come live in their neighborhood and build community with them.
- Group Size: Cohort groups will consist of 6 people or fewer so each group can go deep. There’s no cap on the total number of participants in the program.
- Mentors: Phil Levin from the Radish and Priya Rose from Fractal are on the mentor team, plus some other amazing neighborhood builders. Participants will hear the full story of how each mentor built their neighborhood, get to ask questions live + throughout the program.
- Future Cohorts: We plan to run the Fall Cohort in October, 2024 so if you can’t make the Summer Cohort, still apply and we’ll put you on the list for the future.
Who’s a good fit for this program?
We’re looking for people who:
- Have a clear, long-term vision for what they want to build in their neighborhood, yet have the humility to know that community building is an emergent, organic process that can’t be controlled
- Are living in the neighborhood that they want to build their community and are ready to start taking action today
- Have enough space in their life to dedicate time each week (~4 hrs / week) to building their neighborhood now (running weekly gatherings, meeting with people, coming to cohort calls, that sort of thing).
- Be willing to try different things, run experiments, be wrong, try something new, and keep going even when it’s hard.
- Deeply intrinsically motivated to build community that they would be building their neighborhood on their own outside of this program
- Are excited to support others building similar things in other locations
- Share Cabin’s larger vision of building a network city of decentralized villages around the world
Our Progress So Far
As of this writing, we’re about 2 months into running a soft start version of our program with some amazing community builders. The following Cabin folks have been participating:
- Cam Lindsay and Shirah Wagner are focused on creating local resilience and emergency preparedness with their neighbors on Piedmont Ave in Oakland, CA
- Jon Hillis and Lauren Alexander are building a family-centric neighborhood in Larkspur, CA in the North Bay
- Jackson Steger, Dawn Musil and their friends are building a neighborhood for creatives in Venice Beach, CA
- Grin and Diana are building a neighborhood of families in Sky Pond, outside of Boston
- My partner, Jon, and I are building community in our neighborhood in Boulder, CO
You’ll notice that everyone on the Cabin team is building a neighborhood in their city — which I love. Each of us is actively building community where we live and live-experimenting on this shape together.
We’re moving and grooving! Now we’ve finalized our curriculum for the program, brought on some great mentors, and we’re ready to launch our official Neighborhood Accelerator Summer Cohort. 
Let’s Do This
If you feel deeply inspired by this vision and want to join us in building neighborhoods, I’d love to talk with you! If you know someone who feels aligned with this work, please share this doc with them so we can connect.
Here are the next steps:
- Please fill out this application form by Sunday, May 26, 2024 to be considered for the Summer Cohort starting June 3, 2024. (Folks applying after the cutoff will be put on the list for our Fall Cohort.)
- If your application sends the right signals, we’ll schedule a call to explore if joining a cohort is a mutual good fit.
If you have questions, thoughts, feedback, etc. please share em in the replies below.