Sustainability in the coworking community

One aspect of coworking should be our ability to be more decentralized and thus more efficient with our time, our energy and our attention.

The same should be true for our environmental effects.

On this page, we should collect resources, suppliers and best practices for sustainable coworking initiatives.

OpenValueNetwork model

SustainableCoworking might benefit from an OpenValueNetwork model.

(quote):

Wikipedia:Value_Network

Value networks (value webs), are complex sets of social and technical resources that work together via relationships to create value in the form of knowledge, intelligence, products, services or social good. Included in a company’s value networks are research, development, design, production, marketing, sales, and distribution - working interdependently to add to the overall worth of products and services. Companies also have external facing value networks where value is created from the relationships and interactions between organizations, its customers or recipients, intermediaries, stakeholders, complementors and suppliers. Value network principles apply equally well to public agencies, civil society organizations and other purposeful networks focused on creating economic or social good.

OpenValueNetwork(s) expand on Value Networks, by incorporating the possibility to open different processes and exchanges up to a broader base of volunteer, but reciprocated participants. The Value Network approach seeks to add value to all exchanges in a Wikipedia:Value_Chain. Including voluntary or traditionally non-compensated participants in OpenDevelop(ed) projects related to business webs.

The OpenValueNetwork approach also seeks to create effective ways for many independent-actor and small group business ventures to create and use OpenValueNetwork models.

Open Value Metrics

As illustrated with many examples, such as ReputationBudget, and Karma:Homepage, there are methods for creating metrics of tangible exchanges and resources (money, time, supplies, goods) and intangible exchanges and resources (knowledge, trust, relationships, information).

For knowledge, trust, and relationships, an emerging model is copupling an IdentityCommons (eg OpenID] with flexible and open SocialNetworkSoftware (eg FOAF), and embedding work in wikis, blogs, and other network-medium-enabled content with OpenValueMetrics.

Microformats are one possible platform for building OpenValueNetworkMetrics.

OpenValueNetworkMetrics can expand into many different indexes, such as network environmental sustainability, netowork social equity (from the Wikipedia:Triple_bottom_line model).

OpenValueNetworkMetrics can also measure tangible and intangible local conditions, like LocalAssets.

The point of OpenValueNetworkMetrics (and OpenValueNetwork models in general) is to create systems for "managing value creation through nodes by favoring accumulation and multiplication and reducing dissipation (see: Communiting).

Think of OpenValueNetworks as an Open Business "pull" model (ref Aspen Institute-When Push comes to Pull PDF).

Suppliers

• TheGreenOffice (suggested by IvanStorck)