Clubs -> Neighborhoods

[savkruger]

Super excited about what’s being shared here and would love to discuss with others too.

@jon

What type of support would you like to see from Cabin to turn your current neighborhood into a Cabin neighborhood?

Here are some rough starting thoughts that come to mind to answer your question as someone who is building a fractal-type neighborhood here in Boulder and would love to explore how Cabin could play a role:

Send Aligned People
Cabin could serve as the “bat call”/start of the funnel for values-aligned people to join neighborhoods. I’m hosting a supper club soon and 5 people that I don’t know at all have signed up on the Luma. It’s so cool to me that Cabin’s digital marketing and community-building efforts are funneling potentially values-aligned folks into a dinner party at my apartment that kicks off the 7-step process you’ve outlined. If a prospect came to an event at a neighborhood and got to meet the people they could live next to, it feels like a lot warmer of a sell to me.

Peer-Learning Neighborhood Guild
Given there’s already a budding group of people like me who want to organize neighborhoods in the Cabin Universe, I would love to create a guild/learning group that meets regularly to share approaches + learnings as well as workshop challenges together. I have so much respect for everyone here so being able to experiment and build alongside each other sounds really supportive and momentum-building. I’m taking my own notes on what’s working and what’s not with the neighborhood I’m building and would love to share with folks.

As time goes on I could see more and more people wanting to start neighborhoods and Cabin could position itself as a network that supports neighborhood building of this sort. Having a guild someone could join, learning from others’ case studies, the ability to go check out other existing neighborhoods and get inspired, could be really valuable to prospective citizens.

Financial Support
Similarly to how supper clubs are subsidized by Cabin, there could be a way to financially support the work of building these neighborhoods. I wonder about the different points in time when money needed to flow for something like Fractal to exist.

(Edit: I’ve removed an assumption I made about Phil’s financial involvement w Fractal. He didn’t have any financial involvement in Fractal — they were self-funded in that the paid their own rent and grew organically. Thanks for the clarification @prigoose!)

Additionally, we could create a proposal that feels economically viable for Cabin wherein neighborhood builders are paid to run their local experiment and are rewarded when new Cabin citizens join as a result of their efforts (many different ways to shape this, want to see what works best).

I also like Matai’s idea of Cabin financially supporting clubs in proportion to the number of cabin members involved in said club. I could see a similar dynamic w citizens in a Cabin Neighborhood. X members = $Y to support the neighborhood. Money could be spent on various things:

• food for events
• the rental of a third space
• the rental of a room in one of the units to serve as a guest room. Prospects interested in joining the neighborhood and becoming Cabin citizens have a place to stay to experience it for a week+ without the friction of having to sublet their current apartment and stay in the room for a month (something Fractal did/does). Perhaps Cabin could charge an affordable Airbnb-style daily fee to cover these rentals?

I think there’s a lot to be experimented with and figured out here (and I’m really looking forward to all of it).

Questions I Want to Explore Together

1. How can this be a mutually beneficial endeavor? I want to explore what sort of symbiotic relationships between Cabin and these neighborhoods could exist. Something where there’s enough freedom for the neighborhood and their existence supports Cabin’s financial goals and deeper mission. I think starting to gather the neighborhood guild could support answering this question and meeting regularly could help us experiment and shift when needed.

2. How might the Cabin Membership Offering shift with the advent of neighborhoods? I don’t know the answer to this question without a fair bit of speculation. This feels like something that can only be figured out by running experiments and talking to people. I’d love to run a customer listening campaign to engage and hear from a few different groups:

• Current Cabin members
• People at Supper Clubs who are into Cabin but aren’t Cabin members
• People who follow Cabin on socials, the blog, the discord (what would get the lurkers to dive in?)
• People who are in the neighborhoods I and others are building who don’t know anything about Cabin

What is valuable to the people in these different groups? What will they actually say yes to and become citizens if offered? That will inform what shifts might occur to align membership with this budding direction for our larger community.

3. Are neighborhoods exclusive to Cabin citizens? I’m not sure on this one and would love to discuss it with others.

Thanks for reading and excited to hear y’all’s thoughts!
Savannah

PS: This presentation by Pryia and Phil provides some great distinctions between the different shapes that could come together to create these Cabin neighborhoods we’re imagining. Super valuable resource for anyone interested in learning more if you’re not familiar.