I think the approach you’re talking about here is sensible and would be a good way to start things if you’re wanting to move relatively soon.
The reasons I’m mostly thinking about this approach instead is partly that I don’t expect to be in a position to move in the near future (minimum six months, probably somewhat more), meaning planning does not delay my direct involvement, partly because I suspect it’s more likely to hit critical mass and start attracting more people rather than staying small/dissipating if an initial group go over together to set things up and provide a seed community/safe&known arrival point, and partly that picking a better location seems high-value and it’s easier to gather the initial info online than send people to different countries.
That makes sense, you’re not preventing your own moving by doing the analysis as you have other reasons for not moving yet.
Can I suggest an amalgamation of our approaches then:
Phase 1: Exploration. In this phase, those that can move in the next 4 months move to a location that would be good for them and try to join together with other EAs in doing this. They also try to explore more than one location and report back their findings to the whole group. Those that can’t move that soon but are interested in the idea can contribute through online research. Everyone can help those who are interested in moving with location choice.
Phase 2: Clumping. In this phase, we take the findings from phase 1 and choose one (or a few) standout locations to concentrate on. We encourage more people to move there, including EAs that have gone to other locations.
Phase 3: Community-building. Once we’ve got a group of > 15 people we can start to invest in community-building projects such as coliving and coworking spaces and outreach to the local community.
Each of these phases is useful even if it doesn’t progress to the next phase.
This approach gets the early adopters moving and gathering useful information whilst also creating the seed group effect that could attract more people in the future.
hm, depending on how many locations are explored in the next few months we may or may not be confident we’re in one of the top few locations (imagine a world where, three or four places are looked at, one of them stands out but based on other research we suspect that there are other countries which would be significantly better to establish a hub for administrative reasons. In that case I’d be in favor of trying to visit the other countries before moving to stage 2.), but in general that plan makes sense. I like the idea of collecting info on the ground if you’re keen to get started soon, do you know of others who are ready in that timeframe.
I also think that >15 would be the number of people who would be there on average in expectation (so, a significantly higher number expressing strong interest/commitment), rather than people willing to do initial setup work before a co-living location is ready. The founding group could plausibly be somewhat smaller (~4-10?).
If this ends up not hitting critical mass naturally (but there is still strong interest), then we can likely give it a boost by moving a founding group willing to work on setup of the co-living space in one go.
I think the approach you’re talking about here is sensible and would be a good way to start things if you’re wanting to move relatively soon.
The reasons I’m mostly thinking about this approach instead is partly that I don’t expect to be in a position to move in the near future (minimum six months, probably somewhat more), meaning planning does not delay my direct involvement, partly because I suspect it’s more likely to hit critical mass and start attracting more people rather than staying small/dissipating if an initial group go over together to set things up and provide a seed community/safe&known arrival point, and partly that picking a better location seems high-value and it’s easier to gather the initial info online than send people to different countries.
That makes sense, you’re not preventing your own moving by doing the analysis as you have other reasons for not moving yet.
Can I suggest an amalgamation of our approaches then:
Phase 1: Exploration. In this phase, those that can move in the next 4 months move to a location that would be good for them and try to join together with other EAs in doing this. They also try to explore more than one location and report back their findings to the whole group. Those that can’t move that soon but are interested in the idea can contribute through online research. Everyone can help those who are interested in moving with location choice.
Phase 2: Clumping. In this phase, we take the findings from phase 1 and choose one (or a few) standout locations to concentrate on. We encourage more people to move there, including EAs that have gone to other locations.
Phase 3: Community-building. Once we’ve got a group of > 15 people we can start to invest in community-building projects such as coliving and coworking spaces and outreach to the local community.
Each of these phases is useful even if it doesn’t progress to the next phase.
This approach gets the early adopters moving and gathering useful information whilst also creating the seed group effect that could attract more people in the future.
hm, depending on how many locations are explored in the next few months we may or may not be confident we’re in one of the top few locations (imagine a world where, three or four places are looked at, one of them stands out but based on other research we suspect that there are other countries which would be significantly better to establish a hub for administrative reasons. In that case I’d be in favor of trying to visit the other countries before moving to stage 2.), but in general that plan makes sense. I like the idea of collecting info on the ground if you’re keen to get started soon, do you know of others who are ready in that timeframe.
I also think that >15 would be the number of people who would be there on average in expectation (so, a significantly higher number expressing strong interest/commitment), rather than people willing to do initial setup work before a co-living location is ready. The founding group could plausibly be somewhat smaller (~4-10?).
If this ends up not hitting critical mass naturally (but there is still strong interest), then we can likely give it a boost by moving a founding group willing to work on setup of the co-living space in one go.