The re-launch of our website “local food systems.org” marks the transition from a start-up to a build-up phase in our local food systems project. In our start-up phase, we organized, promoted new relationships, set goals, found funding, and supported communication with an active website. In this second phase, funded in large part by the USDA-SCRI grant, we focus on business development related to local and regional foods using web-based tools and our growing experience with them as a key set of levers.  As we launch this project and as Casey Hoy states on the website’s home page, we intend “to move as quickly as possible from a new means of communicating to collaborating, particularly on establishing the businesses that will provide strong local and regional economies and ecosystems, starting with food.”  So our primary reason for developing relationships is to strengthen individual businesses and personal relationships so as to position the collective set of businesses as an economic force.  Steve Bosserman’s recent posts make this case convincingly and thoroughly. 

How we support the development of these enterprises will be signaled by how we describe them.  To that end, other web-based collaborations have used metaphors of “virtual village” or “virtual commons” to represent the interconnectedness and interdependence of “residents” and to suggest a shared responsibility for the quality of their environment.  While I think our local food system effort would share the community qualities suggested by the village or commons metaphor, our focus is business and economic development.

Therefore, I think of our local food systems website and the activities it is intended to engender as a “Local Food Systems Virtual Business Park.”  As opposed to the more usual virtual “village” or “commons”metaphors, I think there are several advantages to the business park notion.  Just like entrepreneurs in a built business park, we believe we can be advantaged by: co-locating; forming interest groups; providing infrastructure of funding, networking, meeting, and training; finding and supporting the use of the latest tools, strategies, and information; maintaining opportunities for new “tenants;” and communicating openly and transparently. 

I would leave it to the more than 250 members of our site and the 25 or more interest groups to establish their spaces within the business park.  But somewhere in this business park and located centrally is an administration and information center which provides the infrastructure and support the businesses need to work collaboratively towards the goal of a strong local and regional food systems.  We envision a system strongly enough positioned to ensure locally beneficial economic development and to remove the opportunity for big box business to co-opt the local/regional concept.  How we collaborate and how we support that collaboration are therefore critical to our success.

My role in our Local Foods Business Park is contributing to the infrastructure by providing experience-sharing/training/coaching/learning opportunities for the use of the website and related social networking tools.  The fact that these tools are typically labeled as social networking signals my other rationale for labeling our group effort a business park.  The term “social” connotes casual conversation -- even unfocused chatting -- on personal topics, and this is clearly not our main focus.  Our communication and relationship-building efforts are directed to business development; it just happens that the tools we use are sometimes referred to as social networking.

In my next post, I would like to share more about how we will ensure that training is organized to respond to your challenges and possibilities and how we will customize it to suit the various purposes of various groups.

I look forward to working with you on this and related projects.  Meanwhile, I‘m always interested in your feedback.