SpaceShare Carpooling & Green Logistics New Years Newsletter
Year in Review: 2007
This was the best year yet for SpaceShare, the original tools getting more use while new
types of carpool and community building approaches are underway.
Also, 2007 was a time of hard choices: continue with wonderful but flaky festivals?
More paid web work or more environmental activism?
I'm writing you from bed, laid up with a broken leg, so it is a good time for reflection.
With amazing
possibilities, limited resources, a few great volunteers, and my own energy finite, which direction do we take SpaceShare? Who else is serious about co-creating? Your thoughts are welcome on the
community website -- start with our
membership survey.
If you have
a vision, let's come together and make it happen.
Blessings & Choices,
Stephen
Choices on New Directions and Possibilities
SpaceShare has always resembled two organizations: a green business working with conferences,
and a team of volunteers and activists helping to green festivals. As we go from general event-carpooling
to a variety of community-building tools,
these divisions will grow. This newsletter has focused on the volunteer and
activist roles, especially greening festivals. As the organization develops, where should
SpaceShare branch?
- Festival carpooling and greening. Focused on carpooling to large music festivals, and bringing
along other green ideas in the process.
- Saralynn has begun
the process of coordinating volunteers, prepping for next festival season.
- Laura's work on the Green Events Guide is well under way, and now she could use a few
volunteers to join her and turn the research into a well polished guide.
- An amazing internship: contact performers and inspire them to ask the festivals they
play at to encourage carpooling and other green efforts. This internship will piggyback
on Laura's Green Events Guide -- we'll try to gather the information to make it very
easy for a performer to hand a festival a good greening guide.
If enough
people get involved, festival greening could really flourish -- the bottleneck is
not technology or money,
it's all about people and community and effort.
- Conference greening and networking. This is the most solid part of SpaceShare
today. Tools are being upgraded, and even without finding a marketing person, word of mouth
allows continued growth.
- Religious services carpooling. The first church carpool system is up and running,
we're learning about what it will take to build ever better systems for churches, synagogues and
mosques. I'd like to find nonprofit-oriented partners to branch this off from the rest
of SpaceShare, and ally with an environmental nonprofit.
- College carpool systems. This has been a "dream project" since the early days of
SpaceShare. I'm talking with some MBA students, considering pursuing a more typical
business development plan, perhaps aiming for venture capital.
In past years I've explored different technologies to see what would work best, aiming for
a people-power business model.
In 2008, SpaceShare is open to different business models to see which will work best.
The above four projects explore people-power,
a personal consulting business, traditional nonprofit grant-funded work, and
a capitalist style venture. You are invited to help live the change you wish to
see in the world.
Growth and Bottlenecks, Ways to Get Involved
SpaceShare has grown a bit in 2007, but the needs and bottlenecks are still the same
as last year, looking for people
to work from Thailand, looking for partners for each of the different pieces of
SpaceShare.
Your Turn to Speak: Basic Membership Survey
We're hoping to hear back from more people on our poll & survey It's part of our new community site --
please create
an account, that website will eventually absorb this newsletter.
Your Turn to Participate
We're starting to move volunteer tasks over to the
community site, where you can explore
the volunteer tab, or search
the ways to participate and jump in.
SpaceShare.com
newsletter@spaceshare.com
6420 Colby St.
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 520-6175 (Stephen)
Replacing Cars with Community
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