What makes for a good Communities Conference?

When we design the Communities Conference we try to do a number of things at one event.  We try to bring together content that is exciting for people who are in community, people who want to join a community, and people who want to start a community.

What we generally try to avoid doing is having workshops on groovy current topics which are not especially connected to community.  This year we are breaking this rule.

The reason we normally don’t want the workshop on Permaculture, or DIY renewable energy systems, or polyamory is that there are lots of other conferences and gatherings which are covering these topics.  We want to be spending the precious time we have at the CommConf focusing on things which are especially applicable to people seeking or in communities.

The reason we are breaking our own rule is that the world is changing in this important way and we want to be part of this change.  The change is called Occupy.  What started as a encampment based protest movement last Fall in NYC has morphed and grown into a worldwide, leaderless movement which is demanding fairness on virtually every issue under the sun: from tuition, to housing, to banking, to immigration.

The organizers of this years conference felt like we want to be looking at how we can ally more with the Occupy movement as well.  What lessons from community life translate well into support of this global call for justice? How can we show up in this change that we wish to see as well as help our friends in the streets? We hope to explore these sorts of questions this year at the Communities Conference. Register now to be part of the conversation!