What if Free Ride were to re-organize as an independent members only co-op?

(there's nothing to get all excited about here... just some idle speculation that might one day turn into something)

Will says:

From time to time we talk about problems with Free Ride, such as:

1) How open shop can be a real pain, particularly when it gets too busy. The experience can be draining and unfair to the staffers, not too cool for people who get turned away, and generally not always a very effective way of educating and empowering people to work on their bicycles.

2) It seems like a core group of committed volunteers pour tons of time and energy into the project, lots of less involved people make contributions here and there, and the community at large gets a super great deal. This situation is out of balance in a couple main ways. For the committed volunteers, there is a ton of work to do, and it can be very difficult to not get burned out. For some reason, it seems like we do a bad job of bringing new people into the core group. We get a lot of people to help out sorting, cleaning, etc around the shop, but that's a lot different from the organizational work that is required to keep things running.

3) We have a limited amount of control over our space, and it doesn't really meet our needs (for example, where's the kitchen?). As a result, it's difficult to plan for the future, and it's not very practical to make investments and improvements (such as heat!).

4) A lot of the work done by core volunteers is stressful, unpaid, or both.

What if we did things differently?

Here's a little daydream about how things could be:

To start with, imagine we had a building of our own, nothing too huge or fancy... room to store bikes, room to hold donations, a working area with stands, a separate spot for metal work, a slop sink, a little office, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a kinda clean and comfy spot to hang out or have meetings.

Suppose we were a co-op and there were different levels of membership:

1) Casual: For this, you would start by filling out some paperwork (liability release!) and then pay a fee or do some volunteer work. After earning a temporary membership, you could do whatever it was that you joined up for. How much somebody has to do to join and how long their membership is active for would be related to what they wanted to do with the co-op's resources (for example, build a bike, work on their own bike, get some used parts, etc). Temporary members would not have any co-op keys, and they would need to come during regularly scheduled open hours (staffed by co-op members who did have keys). Generally this would be kind of like our current open shop except people couldn't just walk in (members only, but it's easy to join).

2) Not-so-casual: This level of membership can only be earned with volunteer hours (a certain amount per month or season), and there would also need to be some sort of "can we trust this person" screening. The big thing for this type of membership would be getting keys (or maybe an electronic access token) for limited access to the building (bathroom, stands, basic tools, shop supplies) any time you want (minus some scheduled times for classes, women/trans, etc). This would be aimed at people who know how to work on their own bikes. It would be a significantly new way for people to interact with Free Ride, somewhere between open shop and being on the council.

3) The co-op is half my life: This could only be earned with lots of volunteer hours, a track record of responsible behavior, and a commitment to doing behind the scenes organizational work. It would be a lot like being on the council is now. This level of membership would get you keys to everything (including the expensive tools, metal shop, kitchen, etc.), access to wholesale purchasing, maybe wireless Internet, the privilege of scheduling events at our space, and warm fuzzy feelings from hanging out at the super awsome heated shop so much.

So... Anybody have anything to say about all that stuff?

Jessica says:  (This is somewhat abstract but highly relevant, so bear with me): I had an interesting discussion with Matt Toups (credit where credit is due) about wikipedia and collaboration.  Basically the idea is, wikipedia took something that had traditionally been very individualistic and centrally controlled (web design - one person has a vision, creats it, protects it from outside interfence ever after) and made it totally collaborative.  The way they did this was to pay attention to creating a structure for participation in which the benefits of collaboration are very easy to realize, and the harm from violation of trust very easy to fix.  Some examples:

• anyone CAN edit and write anything, but there is a set of conventions that guide what makes "better" content - ie, well-researched, balanced, citations, etc..  Thus people's efforts have been guided towards creating an encyclopedia that studies have shown is often more factually accurate than the print books, rather than a random agglomeration of babble (contrast public messageboards or blogs).

• "soft security" - instead of rigidly controlling entry, and thereby creating a hostile environment and a sharp division between those "inside" and those "outside", anyone can get in and write stuff.  But, the "security" comes in a step later - a system for reviewing stuff once it's been contributed.  And it's built into the system that it is very easy to remove inappropriate or damaging work, and hard to do anything that would really screw stuff up.  And, there is a set of collaboratively developed standards for editing other peoples' work (or, put another way, for when and how it is appropriate for "security" to kick in) that is publicly accessible.  For  more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_security

I like this way of thinking about collaboration -  I'm now asking myself, how can this be applied to many other areas of collaboration, such as having meetings, or potentially structuring a co-op ish Free Ride?

Some initial thoughts: it seems very relevant to the question of keys and access to the space.  Give lots of people access, make the consequences of violation of trust minimal.  Like, remove cash frequently.  Or structure membership fees such that they would pay the costs of expensive tool replacement should that ever become necessary, and then don't worry about vetting people for trustworthyness before giving them a key to the expensive tool cabinet. 

Scott Sez:

I have the sense that the way most people utilize the shop is pretty normal and to be expected.  They come in and get their bikes fixed up or get a new one, get it on the road and we don't see them until a year later when it is in need of repair if at all.  I have some doubts that a coop structure is right when it seems to me that more than a majority of the folks that come through aren't seen again once they have a working bike.

Would that be a turn off for all of the non-commiting type folk who don't come around much?  I kinda care about that a bit because it seems like that makes up a large portion of the people who use free ride.  But maybe a structural change could increase involvement.  I am not sure.

Will says (upon further reflection):

I agree with Scott that it would be a bad thing to restructure in a way that excludes people who just want to do something quick and go pedaling off along their merry way.

Of the stuff I wrote above, I guess there are a few key ideas that really appeal to me:

- Having recently acquired a key to the shop, I realized how astonishingly more convenient it is to just come over and do whatever it is that I need to do rather than waiting for one of three weekly open shop time slots (when the shop is typically crowded and crazy). That said, I still often come to open shop too. We might have less trouble filling shifts if we had some sort of a "staff at open shop in exchange for keys" deal.

- It would be nice to have a kitchen and a somewhat less grungy and cold (or hot) space that would be suitable for hanging out and having meetings.

- It would be nice to have a little office space with a desk and computer (or at least wireless) for things like making signs, printing forms, keeping an inventory of tools and supplies, checking email, and working on personal stuff when we're in the neighborhood.