Tools & Technologies

Neighbors out for a stroll at Harmony Village in Golden, CO (Photo by Julia Rainer)

In addition to the other sections of this website, especially the monthly issues of our online magazine, the following pages offer a wide range of worthwhile resources to further address questions about cohousing:

Professional directory

Catya Belfer-Shevett

Building a great website starts with asking three questions: Who will be using this website? What do they want and need? What’s the easiest and most attractive way to help them find it? In this session we’ll start with the basics of identifying your users, go over categorization (aka information architecture) and how that plays into building site navigation, and talk about content, tools, and bells and whistles. Other website builders are more than welcome to attend and share your expertise!

Catya Belfer-Shevett is a cohousing 'burning soul'. My cohousing community, Mosaic Commons, is completing construction in Berlin MA and we will be moving in this fall after 8 years of work. I create websites for cohousing communities and others, including www.cohousing.org On the non-technical side, I am fascinated by how we build community through ritual, tradition, and song.

On Copyright

The contents of this website are copyrighted by the Cohousing Association of the United States, all rights reserved. You do not have the right to copy contents from this website and use it in your own work without explicit permission. There are some exceptions where specific content is pre-approved and available for re-use, but this is always specifically noted on any particular page containing available content.

On Reproduction Rights

This is the Cohousing Website, version 8.0 Beta Release. Beta Releases are used to identify problems and gather useful information before the Full Release. Our Beta period will end when the Full Release Goes Live, scheduled for June 12, 2008 at the 2008 National Cohousing Conference.

Craig Ragland, Catya Belfer-Shevett, Donna Freiermuth

Come check out the new www.cohousing.org! Take a tour of the great features of the site, and talk with the web team about how you can best use it to help your community, whether your group is brand new or you've been living together for years. Get a sneak preview of our new Premium Access, with forums, blogs, and more ways to both join the cohousing conversation as well as get your questions answered.

Catya Belfer-Shevett is a cohousing “burning soul.” My cohousing community, Mosaic Commons, is completing construction in Berlin MA and we will be moving in this fall after 8 years of work. I create websites for cohousing communities and others, including www.cohousing.org. On the non-technical side, I am fascinated by how we build community through ritual, tradition, and song.

The easiest way to find the content you're looking for is to use the search tool. It's on every page in the far upper right hand corner.

Site organization

Beyond that, it may be helpful to understand a little about how the site is organized. The website is divided into the top three main sections that are seen in the "main sections" menu in the upper left corner of each page. The popular directory is shown there as a fourth main destination.

Raines Cohen

The classic approach of cohousing groups to the internet—throwing up a simple brochure-like site—just doesn't cut it anymore. Learn how your group can weave every member's social network into an integrated “Web 2.0” marketing and outreach campaign that helps build support and recruit members, either for new groups or for resales in existing neighborhoods. We'll look at a variety of cohousing websites with common structural issues and do some “virtual makeovers,” showing best practices for using your directory entry, YouTube, FaceBook, MeetUp, Craig's List, MySpace, online calendars, regional boards, and newspapers, thereby making your online presence into an engaging conversation.

Cohousing-L

Our email discussion group (Cohousing-L) is received by more than 2,000 email addresses in North America and abroad. Cohousing-L participants live in cohousing, are exploring cohousing, are forming new communities, or offer goods and services to the cohousing market. With hundreds of postings per month, you'll see people's questions, requests for advice, replies with advice and answers, anecdotes, and the priceless collective wisdom of the online cohousing community.

Dave Belfer-Shevett

Communication within a cohousing group is critical, particularly during the organizing and planning stages, when geographic separation, conflicting schedules, and life in general get in the way of 'traditional' organizing processes (such as face to face meetings and telephone calls). With such wide acceptance of the web as a communication tool, cohousing groups are faced with many choices in how information is exchanged, projects are planned, and communication happens. Mailing lists, wikis, websites, chat systems, instant messaging—all of these tools have the promise of being the perfect solution, but like any tool, they'll be successful only if implemented correctly and used wisely. This workshop will discuss the variety of tools available, reviewing the relative merits of each technology.