Working Group: What is The Commons now and in the future? [Members]

​What is The Commons? Is it a third space and neighborhood living room, or something else? How do we currently engage with The Commons, and is that what we’re looking for? What is the broader context of community and friendship in the SF Bay Area, and how does The Commons operate within that context?  

​These questions and others will guide this working group, which will be focused on understanding and shaping the community experience at The Commons. The Commons is a relatively new space that aims to provide ways for people to engage in open, playful, self-reflexive practices. As a new community, there are still many open questions about how to facilitate these interactions and community building, and what The Commons means for the people participating in it. This group will aim to explore our own experiences and potentially set some groundwork for future discussions about how to shape this community’s path forward.

​We’ll come together and use a variety of methods to allow the group to explore these questions in a productive and satisfying way. The group is being facilitated by Michelle, who has an expertise in ethnographic methods, but we are open to other forms of qualitative exploration and dialogue. 

​Our goal will be to produce some kind of collective deliverable; a collection of stories that help capture this moment in time at The Commons, a summary of findings that members of The Commons can use to improve the overall community experience, or something else that the group comes up with. Along the way we will also be able to engage self-reflexively in our own participation in the community and think about our expectations and hopes in helping craft a third space.

​Example Timeline

​Note: this is just a sample to show how we can structure this working group. This is subject to shifting, especially based on group interest. 

​Part 1 / First Group Session: Purpose of the working group

​In the first session, we’ll get to know each other and take some time to discuss the nature of this working group and what we hope to get out of it. We may take some time to read short excerpts on third spaces and community building that we can discuss in relation to The Commons, and that can help inform our path forward. We can also use this discussion as a jumping off point, thinking about the broader context of community in the SF Bay Area. This session will help us align on a project that we feel collectively inspired to participate in. 

​Part 2 / Second Group Session: reflections and guiding questions

​In the second session, we’ll do an auto-ethnographic exercise to reflect on some of our own experiences at The Commons, and then discuss. We’ll use this as a jumping off point to come up with some open questions that will guide the next stage of our collective project. 

​We’ll also discuss interview and notetaking techniques that will support the next phase of this working group. 

​Part 3 / Exploration Phase 

​In this phase, we’ll disperse. Over the course of three (?) weeks, working group members will keep a journal of their activities at The Commons. They will also conduct at least one conversational interview with another member of The Commons, using our guiding question as a jumping off point.

​Part 4 / Reflect and Summarize

​This phase is open-ended in terms of how we’ll bring together all these pieces. Having completed our research, we’ll find ways to come together to discuss, summarize, reflect, and move towards a final artifact. We may come together as a larger group to share and discuss, as well as meet in smaller groups, 1:1, or asynchronously to compile collective notes. In all this, we’ll start building towards some sort of output.