Administrator's blog

The last day for our Early Bird Discount will by May 31st, so if you know you’re coming you should register by then!

Current rates can be found here.  Basic rates for staying Friday and Saturday nights are $75 for camping, $155 for the Sophia House retreat center, and $175 for the Aurora Visitor Cabin.

This is how you may look if you miss the Early Bird Discount.

Rates will increase by $15 on June 1st! That’s $15 more Friday and Saturday nights.  The additional fees for staying additional nights will also go up by $15 each.

Rates will go up again 1 week before the event.

The Eastern Conference on Workplace Democracy is in July!

Held in Philadelphia, July 26 – 28, their theme this year is, “Growing Our Cooperatives, Growing Our Communities” – Democratic Community Economic Development Through Worker Ownership.

“We have a voice in our own communities’ economic development through democratic workplaces!  Democratic workplaces – such as worker-owned cooperatives – are growing in many ways as a viable alternative to a society that lacks meaningful humanizing jobs and democracy in everyday life.”

And one more event, up in Vermont this June!

Connecting Community Visions

June 15th at Wheelock Mountain Farm in Wheelock, Vermont

A gathering to explore politically and socially focused intentional housing communities.  Come join us for a day of workshops and storytelling.  Come share your ideas and skills to make us all stronger. Everyone invited to come early on Friday night June 14th for informal storytelling, potluck dinner, networking and socializing.  There are several indoor places to sleep and lots of space for camping. An additional donation of $10-$15 and a head’s up to wmf@riseup.net is requested of people staying Friday night.

Help us put on an amazing conference!  Got a great idea for a workshop to present?  Send us a proposal.

We are looking for dynamic presenters who can offer interactive and/or engaging workshops.  The focus of the event is on intentional communities, but we also have workshops on other forms of cooperative living and working, as well as other alternative lifestyle topics.  There is of course limited space in our schedule of workshops, so if you’re proposal is not selected you can also present it in our Open Space sessions on Sunday.

Workshop blocks are usually 1.5 or 2 hrs.  The conference site is rustic and mostly outdoors. There is limited electrical access; presentations requiring projectors or other electrical presentation tools can be accommodated if requested in advance.

Presenters are encouraged to participate in the whole weekend.  Camping is the standard accommodation; indoor accommodations are available for a fee.

Please send a one to three paragraph workshop description with title and a little bit about yourself to conference(at)twinoaks(dot)org.

Sky and I went up to the Baltimore Free Farm last week to share our communities slideshow and drum up excitement for the Communities Conference. We left feeling super jazzed and inspired, enough that we gave a strong invitation to the BFF folks to come down and present at the conference.  No final word on that yet but we’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, here’s their story; or hopefully enough of it to get YOU inspired and excited about them too!

We showed up blind on Wednesday evening and right away it was clear that there’s a lot going on here. A little crew of folks hung out in the bikeshop area, and remnants of Free Food day lingered in front of the door. Across the street was a large garden and a cluster of 3 row houses.

We have our first workshop confirmed! Embodied Community Intimacy will be led by Elena   Zubulake and Victor Warring:

“This workshop is about creating strongly embodied relationships in community. Through experiential movement, improvisation, dance, music, body work, conscious communication, play, and contemplative practice, we take a group dive below the thinking mind to experience ourselves as members of an embodied organism.”

For those of you who can’t get enough, or just can’t wait for the Twin Oaks Communities Conference, The Farm in Tennessee is hosting it’s 5th annual Conference on Community and Sustainability.

Held Memorial Day weekend, May 29 – 31, here’s some words from the organizers on the event:

The Farm’s Solar School, a conference workshop location

“In community we depend on each other, and it is clear that each one of us has value and something to give, contributions to the whole, made visible through our work.
Find your passion:

• Green Building
• Green Business
• Organic Food Production
• Alternative Education
• Midwifery
• Environmental Activism
• Peace and Justice Activism
• Music and the Arts
• and more

There is room for everyone in community, and you will have the opportunity to see how this can be expressed in a very real way when you are part of our special gathering.”

This year’s Monday program will be multi-faceted and will focus on introducing concepts and examples of the New Economy.  What the heck is the New Economy?  My comrade Orion Kreigman up in Boston gave me some great leads to pass on to you!  Orion actually came to the Communities Conference something like 10 years ago to talk about urban communities.  Here’s some great info to absorb:

This is an article from the Nation on the New Economy.

Here’s a group in Boston that Orion works with: Jamaica Pain New Economy Transition 

Another great group in Boston, the heARTbeat collective.

A new development, similar to Transition Town groups are Resilience Circles.

A new network for local, living economies and sustainable business network hubs.

The bulk of the Monday program of the Communities Conference will be a symposium on these ideas and a look at the small local groups that are the human-scale, driving force behind these national movements.

Hello again!  We’re starting to get in gear for this years Communities Conference.  We had our best attendance in 15 years last year and we’re aiming to do at least as well this year!

This year’s theme:  Community Vs. Uncertainty

What role do intentional communities have in the uncertain times we live in?  How can we leverage cooperation and resource sharing to deal with the challenges we face?  How are people coming together to create a society that might able to weather the coming storms and end up being satisfying and sustainable?

Stay tuned as this years organizing begins to take shape!

Hey everyone! Thank you for helping to make the 2012 Communities Conference a great success. We had 185 people in attendance, not including Twin Oakers and Acorners, which is the highest attendance record in recent years. Thanks for being there to share your energy, talents and ideas!
If you attended and did not get a chance to fill out an evaluation, please click here to fill one out now. It will help us put on an even better conference next year.

Also, if you have any great photos from the event this year that you’d like to share, feel free to email them to us at conference at twin oaks dot org so we can put them on our website or use them for promotional materials in the future.
Thanks again, y’all, and we hope to see you next year!

Friends – just an FYI that we are about to go into hiding because the 2012 conference starts tomorrow (!!!), so if you have any last-minute questions that you can’t find the answers to on our website, please call the Twin Oaks operator between 9am and 5pm tomorrow and from 9am to noon on Saturday. The phone number is (540) 894-5126.
 
Please encourage your spontaneous friends to show up at the Conference and register there if they want to join in on the fun! We have 135 people pre-registered and we are expecting several last-minute arrivals. This year’s conference is sure to be the best in recent years. The more, the merrier!
 
Good luck getting here and we can’t wait to see y’all tomorrow…

Hey, y’all-
 
We are so excited for the Conference in two days! Don’t forget to bring your camping gear, flashlight, raincoat (just in case), mosquito repellant, potluck meal item (or between $25 and $40 to cover the cost of food if you cannot contribute to the potluck meals or bring produce/snacks/tea/juice), FIC benefit auction item, kids if you got ‘em, your wallet, perhaps something for the “grabs table” or Shrine, instruments, and literature about your community/organization/project.
 

View Larger Map
 
A lot of people have been emailing asking where the conference site is, exactly, since it’s not near the entrance of our community. So, we finally made a page called How to Get Here to explain exactly what you need to know. Better late than never, right?
 
We can’t wait to meet you. See you oh-so-soon!
 
-Janel, conference organizer

Drum roll please…
 
Here is the finalized workshop schedule for next weekend! Thank you so much to all our fabulous 2012 workshop leaders for helping us to offer such exciting content.
 
Please see our workshops page for full workshop descriptions.
 
See y’all soon!

Janel, conference organizer
 

WHERE & WHEN
Pavilion
Lady Slipper
Crossroads
“The Yurt”
Oasis

Saturday 1:30 – 3:00pm
Sharing a Cooperative Business
Service-Focused Communities
Community Gardening
Economic Leveraging: Income-Sharing
Radical Parenting in Community

Saturday 3:30 – 5:00pm
Conscious Connection
Resource-Sharing panel
Introduction to Sociocracy
Spiritual and Secular Communities
 FEC: Mutual Aid (TBD)

Sunday 9:00 – 10:30am
Transition Towns
Value-Based Consensus
Permaculture in Community
Heart of Now
Join or Start a Community

We’re excited that WIlliam Underbaggage of the Lakota Nation will be joining us at the Communities Conference again this year to lead sweatlodges for the Conference participants.

William, a member of the Indigenous Nations Network, is a cultural ambassador, consultant and language teacher for the Lakota (a Sioux tribe). He teaches about Native American cultures throughout the US, Canada and Mexico and will offer a workshop during the Open Space section of our conference on indigenous spirituality and the effects of the appropriation and exploitation of indigenous life-ways.

Here is William’s description of what he will bring to the Conference:

“I am offering, once again, the process of cleansing and healing through sweatlodge – a purification of mind, body and soul. We, as caring humans of Mother Earth, can work together to reconcile our differences and move forward to create a better, sustainable world for the coming generations. We can confront racism and prejudice by becoming better relatives and friends and through educating each other about our differences. I will do a talking circle, an Open Space workshop, and offer an initipi (sweatlodge) ceremony at least once a day.”

William does not charge for his ceremonies or services but will be accepting donations of diapers and clothing for his twins, a boy and a girl, and 5-year-old daughter. Monetary offerings would be appreciated as one of his twins is a special needs child.

To all our attendees-
 
Here’s a reminder about the most important things to bring to the conference (besides the obvious camping/travel supplies and kids, if you got ‘em):
 
1. A covered dish large enough to feed 10 hungry people, plus juice/tea/ground coffee and a snack item such as fruit, salsa & tortilla chips, etc. Vegan and vegetarian items are encouraged, as is “groovy” meat and dairy from organic, sustainable or local farmers/sources. Please label your item with an ingredients list and be sure to mark “groovy” when applicable for the “locavores” in attendance (this is a norm at Twin Oaks and Acorn Community meals). A Twin Oaks cook will heat/prepare most meals for us using your contributions.

• If you are driving here and don’t have time to prepare something ahead of time, you could stop at a grocery store along the way (try Integral Yoga Natural Foods or the Whole Foods in Charlottesville; for something closer/cheaper, try the Food Lion in Louisa) and pick up basic ingredients that will be good at “tying together” a potluck meal–tortillas, bread, cheese, produce, etc. You could also contribute $30-40 extra to cover food costs.

2. Offerings for the shrine, the “grabs” table and the FIC benefit auction.

What happens when you put a Hari Krishna, a Unitarian, a Catholic Worker and a mystic all on the same workshop panel? Actually, the results are quite unpredictable, which is why we are trying it at this year’s Communities Conference.  What we do know is that this panel of representatives from spiritual communities will be presenting to a largely secular audience.  What we have asked the panelists is: how can secular and spiritual communities work together on projects of joint interest? Both sets of people are committed to making the world a better place, often through their own volunteering and other asymmetric exchanges. Where’s the overlap? How can the two groups join forces?

While these types of collaborations are not unheard of, they certainly seem rare.  Yet despite obvious differences, spiritual and secular communities usually have a shared commitment to fairness and justice. This panel is designed to get people thinking differently about these two branches of the Communities Movement. We want to dispel the xenophobic paradigm of “their beliefs are different from my own, so it’s best for me to keep some distance from them” and frame things in a more cooperative light.

This workshop will provide some fascinating food for thought. Come check it out!

By Paxus

There are a very small number of extraordinary people who win Nobel Prizes. These are people who are recognized for having made breakthrough contributions in their field.  With a single award a year for thousands in the field, it is quite and honor and rarity.  Then there are people like Linus Pauling.  Pauling and Madame Currie are the only two people to hold 2 Nobel Prizes in different fields (Pauling’s prizes were in Chemistry and Peace).

CT Butler, with the formulation of the formal consensus model and the founding of Food
Not Bombs, is the Linus Pauling of the progressive movement.  CT did not invent consensus –  its roots go back to the Quakers and before.  But he captured it in his crazily popular booklet On Conflict and Consensus and helped usher its widespread use into various progressive movements in the US.

Food Not Bombs (FNB) is the poster child for effective anarchist structured projects.  Food which is often going to be thrown away is salvaged, prepared by volunteers in a soup kitchen or church (often) and then served to poor people in a public part on an on-going basis. A simple model satisfying a direct, acute need.

On the final day of the 2012 Conference (Monday, September 3rd), we’re excited to offer a full-day workshop on the decision-making model Dynamic Governance (also known as sociocracy) at nearby retreat center Sophia House. This intensive, titled “Organizing How We Live and Work: An Introduction to Sociocracy,” will be hosted by Sheella Mierson and Ron Czecholinski of The Sociocracy Consulting Group and will go from 9:00am until 4:00pm. (Those who attend this event will miss the final conference site events of “Mock-upy”, lunch and our Closing Circle ceremony. A separate lunch will be provided at Sophia House.)
For conference attendees, this workshop is being offered on a sliding scale of $30-$60. For non-conference attendees who are simply interested in learning about DG, we are asking for between $115 and $145. Please pay what you can in this price range for this incredible opportunity to hone the communication and decision-making style of your group. We will accept payment via Paypal or check.

Two exciting developments regarding the 2012 conference:
This just in! Paula James, a transition town founder in Colorado, will be coming to Twin Oaks this Labor Day weekend as a representative of the movement. Click here to learn more about transition towns in the meantime.
Also, Sheella Mierson of the Sociocracy Consulting Group will not only be leading a traditional conference workshop on sociocracy–also known as dynamic governance (DG)–but will also lead a FULL DAY event on Monday, September 3rd during which conference attendees and others can fully delve into D.G. This event will be held in the conference room at nearby Sophia House for an additional fee (TBD).
More updates coming soon…

Hey folks!

Our friendly registration booth from the 2011 Conference

Want to attend the 2012 Communities Conference at rock-bottom prices? You’d better register this week! Our Early Bird registration deals end this Friday!

Sign up now for $85 registration with camping accommodations or $115 registration with indoor accommodations. Come Saturday, prices will be jumping up.

Missing out on Early Bird specials? Sign up ASAP anyway — prices jump again July 21st and August 24th!

See you this Labor Day Weekend!

By Janel
I happened to be at the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. last week, passing through an exhibit on human evolution, when the bold words “sharing resources” caught my eye. I wandered over to the display, where I learned–to my amusement, as the 2012 conference theme is resource-sharing–that humans have been sharing food and tools to build “stronger social bonds” and increase their chances of survival for 2.6 million years.

 
Sure, our ancestors shared resources because their lives depended on it. But why should now be any different? With peak oil and environmental devastation come real threats to the survival of our species. Living communally and sharing stuff such as cars and land are the best gift we can give to our children’s children–not only because of the resource preservation that sharing entails, but also because of the model of cooperation it preserves!