Andrew and ainsley, myself and sopo are into it. Andrew, I spoke with sara about an international incubator program. I'm currently on vaca, but ill be home soon and we can go from there. Glad there is lots of positive energy around this issue. tito
On Aug 22, 2010 2:13 PM, thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org wrote:
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Today's Topics:
- Community Bike Shops and academic research. (andrew bushaw)
- Re: Bike!Bike! 2010 Notes (Angel York)
- Re: Bike!Bike! 2010 Notes (Geoffrey B)
- Re: Community Bike Shops and academic research. (Ainsley Naylor)
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:15:53 -0500 From: andrew bushaw andrew@fmbikeworkshop.org To: The Think Tank thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Subject: [TheThinkTank] Community Bike Shops and academic research. Message-ID: AANLkTim-s=uFDzPMRXW_8=0pEzfm=rUr2zLGk7tLaEg8@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Community Bike folk, I'm trying to settle on a topic for a masters thesis and I'm interested in doing research into the organizational, legal and funding structures of community bike shops. I know that at bikebike minneapolis there was a session called "Plan Voltron" about creating a "cooperative of cooperatives" and some of the folks from our bike shop that made it to toronto mentioned this was also a topic of conversation this year. My first thought is that a qualitative and quantitative overview or survey of community bike shops would give a solid base for further work on this idea by identifying needs, wants, strengths, characteristics, etc. that would be useful to organizing linkages between shops. My main focus of study so far has been the "worker centers" movement, which seem to parallel community bike shops in some interesting ways, such as being relatively new, decentralized, and fast growing. I think this ( http://smlr.rutgers.edu/Unions/FineWorker.pdf) study that was done of workercenters would serve as a good model for one of community bike shops since it's central aim is to be useful for further movement building. So, now to the questions:
- Does anyone know of any research done on community bike shops, academic
or otherwise? 2. Would you see this as potentially useful information? Useful enough to participate in a survey of your shop? 3. If so, what kinds of things would you like to see research on?
I would be doing this using both traditional research methods as well as more "strategic investigation" techniques, meaning that perspective would be from within the movement as a participant and their would be a specific strategic "usefulness" for the end result.
Wish I could have been at bikebike to pitch this idea personally, but I know sara talked to a few folks about it.
Thanks, Andrew FM Community Bicycle Workshop