Open Cafe
URL = http://opencafemain.wikispot.org/Front_Page
Description
"The Open Cafe fuses the age old Western tradition of the potluck with the West coast tradition of Open Source Software to share company, food, drink, and more in a community environment created anew with every day. A wiki page describes each day's menu and schedule of events. You, the participant, can make the menu and schedule any event at any time of day or night as you please. Discover that no one is bringing coffee—the almighty nectar of the Gods—on Sunday? Fill in the blank by listing the type of Coffee and quantity you bring on the day's menu. No events happening? Set a time for a reading of your favorite poetry for others. No furniture good for reading? Bring out that old love seat from storage or invite others to join the cause! It is the web and emerging read/write culture that brings the activity of the Open Cafe to life. The ability to choose and Make life as one may wish is the engine that will soon drive all forms of social organization. The Open Cafe is but a taste of an abundant way of living, one person and one Cafe at a time.
No longer is a Cafe constrained by a set menu, a static event schedule, or a price system that gets in the way of building personal relationships. The Open Cafe is about the experience, whatever it may be. It is up to you and others to decide. Other Cafes have a set menu, events, and encourage quick consumption and discourage any meaningful amount of socializing. There is no 'production' or 'consumption' per se at the Open Cafe, merely participants in the spirit of sharing and voluntary association. This 'way' goes by many names: the creative commons, peer-to-peer, open source, and FREEDOM just to name a few.
The Open Cafe is an Open Franchise, free to duplicate anywhere worldwide. This means you can start an Open Cafe today without stipulation. The enterprise design, events planning, participant suggestions, recipes and more are freely available and usable by anyone, even to our market based competitors. Our proprietary competitors will make us stronger in their futile attempt to emulate us, but they can only go so far. Free cannot be beat as it renders competition null by not putting up a fight. So we give freely and watch as our competitors strain against the competitive forces of the monetary system and ownership monopolies, while attempting not to revel in their subsequent failure to come.
We suggest when at the Open Cafe you charge no fees for food or drink. If money is needed, first attempt not to sell items at all, throw a fundraiser instead by hosting a particularly extravagant art show or motion picture display. If items are to be sold, keep food and drink in the commons, and enclose an area specifically for sales items, like hand made goods or some other personalized item uncharted by mass production. The reason to discourage charging for food and drink is a simple one. Cafes are in the food and drink business. If an Open Cafe were to charge for those items it would be no different than its neighbor, and would suffer the consequences of market competition. Proprietary agency is keen at standardized and consistent consumables. The Open Cafe is a more preferred alternative to this largely exhausted model. To keep the Open Cafe environment alive and spirits high it must remain as free as possible. This success and superiority is well demonstrated in Open Software, like Firefox, Unix, and many others all freely editable and free to distribute. The Open Cafe is determined to follow Open Source principles in anticipation of success in the physical domain, learning what works and what does not as we organize each day.
At the Open Cafe, altruism is in harmony with self interest. What happens is only limited by the imagination. These principles do not end at the Cafe, they will spread to all methods of social organization. In the meantime, we can establish a place and a name where all can be assured to have a place to rest one's heels and mend and refresh the soul." (http://opencafemain.wikispot.org/Front_Page)
More Information
Discuss at groups.google.com/group/open-cafe