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James Redenbaugh: This meeting is being recorded. Hi, Matt.

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Matt Jorgensen: What's up, James? How you doing?

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James Redenbaugh: I'm doing well. How are you?

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Matt Jorgensen: I'm doing well, too. Reiko recommended you. How I found you.

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James Redenbaugh: Awesome. Good job finding me.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah.

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James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

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Matt Jorgensen: I don't know how hard it is to find you, but are you.

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James Redenbaugh: Good job.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah. Yeah. He's. He's. He's become a really good friend and collaborator and mentor. I live right down the street from Landwell where he is.

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James Redenbaugh: Oh, awesome. Do you happen to know Spencer Honeyman?

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Matt Jorgensen: I do know Spencer Honeyman.

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James Redenbaugh: Okay. He was my best man in my wedding in September. He's an old friend.

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Matt Jorgensen: No way.

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James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

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Matt Jorgensen: Oh, so. Such a small world. Okay.

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James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah.

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Matt Jorgensen: Spencer's probably my best friend up here.

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James Redenbaugh: Oh, awesome.

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Matt Jorgensen: Since I moved. And I actually got us tickets to go see Martin Shaw this afternoon, so I'm picking him up in a couple hours.

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James Redenbaugh: Oh, wonderful. Well, send him my love. Tell him I say hello.

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Matt Jorgensen: Gosh. Did you do his website?

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James Redenbaugh: Yeah, I helped him a lot with it. He's done. He's done a lot on his own.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Wow. Okay. I heard about the wedding. I might have even seen some pictures.

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James Redenbaugh: Oh, yeah.

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Matt Jorgensen: Congratulations.

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James Redenbaugh: Thank you. Thanks so much.

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Matt Jorgensen: So you're in. You're in Philly now, is that right? Yeah.

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James Redenbaugh: Yeah. But you were now hoping to make it back to California at some point.

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Matt Jorgensen: What brought you to Philadelphia?

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James Redenbaugh: Being closer to family for a while. Yeah. I spent most of my adult life being pretty far from my family, so. Yeah, it's good to be. Be local for a bit again while the parents are getting old and stuff like that.

00:02:13

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah. Yeah. We're working on my dad, actually. I grew up in New England and my dad just sold his 30 acres up in Maine and is kind of migrating out west because my partner and I just had a baby and my sister just had a baby too, so we're kind of like doing the opposite thing, which is kind of like, come on, come out here before you're too old to move. You know, he's getting up there too.

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James Redenbaugh: Awesome. Well, congratulations.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah, thank you. It's. She's six months old this week, so. Yeah. Really? I love. I'm loving being a dad and. Yeah. Yeah, life is good, actually. We live like, as the crow flies like 150 yards from Spencer and Jane in gray and.

00:03:09

James Redenbaugh: And cool. I think I've heard about you guys and you guys are doing the great in town square.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah.

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James Redenbaugh: Stuff. Okay. Yeah, so he's definitely told me about that.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah. Yeah, he's. He's on my on my board too for the RE Village Foundation. So yeah, small world I guess, you know.

00:03:32

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:03:33

Matt Jorgensen: So yeah, I guess curious how you orient to projects. It seems like you do website development but you also do many, many other things, many of which I think I, I am probably interested in longer term, like seeing kind of what, what Reiko has been developing and you know, I, I've done a lot of these kind of like hacking together airtables with Zapier and you know, trying to like create the kind of custom architecture that we want for circle based governance or whatever, whatever we're kind of doing. And right now I'm, I'm in a pretty good spot on all of that with this particular project. So I'm happy to kind of give you the context, the backdrop on that. And, and really at this particular moment I'm like, I kind of just need a website to like show what we're doing in a, a little, a more functional way. Um, but yeah, I guess as a starting point I would just love to, I'm happy to share, but I also just love to orient to what you're kind of up to in the world and, and what you're even interested in working on.

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James Redenbaugh: Yeah. So I actually studied architecture and sculpture, but got disenchanted with the corporate building world.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah.

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James Redenbaugh: And knew that in the future we'd have much better ways to build in alignment with nature and community and, and slowly I see us getting there.

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Matt Jorgensen: Yeah.

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James Redenbaugh: But I went into digital because I, I knew I had so much to, so much else to learn and the people I wanted to learn from needed brands and websites. So I taught myself how to do that and like 15 years of that I've, I've taught myself pretty much everything and, and now have a great team that I work with to do pretty much anything. And now AI really makes everything possible.

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Matt Jorgensen: Totally.

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James Redenbaugh: And my main focus is basically creating tools for collaboration and connection and community building using the emergent technologies that we have to get back to, you know, the village that we all know is possible on this planet. Temple buildings, really important to me too also playground building, you know, and those things together. And I'm very much a generalist. I love just teaching myself new skills and seeing what's cutting edge and learning new things all the time and then helping people kind of connect the dots to what's possible, whether it's a technical solution or a design solution or a relational practice solution or psychological breakthrough, you know, whatever it is.

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Matt Jorgensen: Totally.

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James Redenbaugh: I'm, I'm for kind of being in between and so yeah, websites are kind of our bread and butter these days. They're. I've done hundreds of them and they're super easy and brands are really fun too. I love getting deep into vision and inspiration and art making and. And then there's different developers and designers that we can bring in depending on what the project needs and what styles called for and what technology is needed. And yeah, now we're building full on apps. You know, we're building crazy login, complicated platforms, viewing things on a globe, you know, 3D AI matchmaking, N8N automations and you know, we make simple websites and get people online. So yeah, yeah, yeah, we. I focus on who I like to serve, you know, is the focus and then cast a wide net on what I can do for them.

00:07:55

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah, Hell yeah. So, so, so, so cool. I, I love that you started in art and sculpture. Architecture and sculpture. I mean sculpture. It's my, my arc has been kind of like in a way the opposite of, of kind of like finding myself amidst placemaking and tangible design build for the first time in my life just in the last three years and feeling the ways that so much of what I care about, you know, structurally, culturally, economically, just kind of like new paradigm stuff can ground in a physical, you know, thing like turning a gas station into a town square, you know and like all the ways that draws on. I spent a lot of time both being a tech entrepreneur as well as working in business and organizational structure stuff. So that's why I say kind of the opposite. Starting in the more etheric and now I'm finally getting to pull a lot of those skills into tangible place and it just is like such a relief actually to, to relocalize my scope of focus and, and responsibility and creativity in a way where I can still get to do like you know, post capitalist exploration and cooperative governance and new stewardship structures but have it just be like super tangible, you know and like not have to talk about it that much. So yeah, I think in a parallel life I was an architect first because like my whole, you know, or urban planner, you know, like as I do I think I orient a little bit more towards the, the like sim city layer than the like. The visual arts layer. Yeah, the sims. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I'm just like I'm. I'm having such a, such a deep appreciation and I've actually really enjoyed you know, as I've gotten to know Spencer just. And we just met both when we were being in Greaton and so like I said, you know, closest new friend here and we've just known each other for a few years. But you know, I think he was the first one to turn me on to, you know, pattern language and some of those other Bibles of the integration of the two.

00:11:13

James Redenbaugh: And.

00:11:16

Matt Jorgensen: So yeah, it's kind of funny timing in a way, just hearing what you were sharing about the hope for more ecologically and you know, nature harmonious ways of building and living. Because I was literally just sitting before this, literally asking and feeling grounding around whether I should make a play on this. Old Christian school in town went up for sale and it's been upzoned to high density or moderate to high density residential because the state of California has basically mandated up zoning all around to get more housing. And it's for sale for like no money. And I think I'm going to make a play at it to see if we can get it. And I was just like really, just really sitting with this, like do I. Do I have in me like a, a seed of hope around playing like a more traditional like developer role and doing some co housing that actually is like in alignment with, with community vision. And there's some cool examples around west county of pretty high integrity co housing projects that have worked. And so it's not, it's not like it would be the first time, but yeah, I think I got a yes on it. So I'm like, okay, what does that look like? You know, and just, and I was just sitting there visualizing it. It was like what, you know, what kind of demonstration site could be possible on a site like this? And just integrating some of that permaculture principle. And it's next to a. It's. It's basically a empty field that's an acre that's been up zoned and then it's a two and a half acre old school and grounds and like random stuff. And so I'm like, okay, this could be a community pool and farm, you know, and some workshops and yeah, I don't, you know, I have no idea if it's going to happen. My first really revillage was born out of the opportunity to get this old gas station site. So I raised grant money to buy it. And we've been really just doing this community rehabilitation project to turn it into the town square. And on top of that I started doing seasonal festivals and monthly work parties and potlucks and it really just like caught, you know, it felt really good and we're all really hungry for it. And I think in retrospect a lot of What I've been doing in my adult life, I spent a long time working on legalizing home cooked food sales. I started a tech platform called Josephine where you could buy food from your neighbors and then turn that into a nonprofit. We passed a few laws in California and a few other states so that you can get these home restaurant permits now Micro enterprise home kitchens they're called. And like the seed of all of that was re villaging essentially. But I think now being in a place where I really feel the village and feel the village potential is kind of lighting it up in a new way. And I also spent the better part of like five or six years after that work working on these newfangled stewardship structures. So trusts, you know, land trusts, perpetual purpose trusts, co ops, different exit to community structures around land and businesses. So sort of like bringing all that stuff in and like looking at how we can get things into public governance. But also these kind of hybrid structures that have sustainability to them. So Revillage set up as a foundation to do the town square and festivals and arts and youth programming. And I also this year started a public benefit company called Revillage Development that's going to have the same shared mission of rebuilding common spaces, shared culture and thriving local economy. But come at it more from the, you know, anchor enterprises and real estate projects that serve the health of the community. And so our first projects on that side are we're renovating the old firehouse which is right across from where the town square is and that has been empty for 15 years. And in there we're building a cafe and food hub called Grayton Station. And so it's basically like this is our little town. Spencer and Jane live right out of the picture up here. This is the post, this is the post office and they, they live literally right here. Yeah, I've been there, I live right over here. So yeah, the old train station firehouse is our first development project. And we're doing this whole community owned cafe in there, community owned public house with a preservatory which is basically all about taking ag surplus and turning it into value added products. So we have like community processing days and we're basically going to be working with people with their gleanings to turn their fruit into fruit ferments and jams and sauces and then also with local farms for our cafe. And yeah, the whole thing is kind of part of this very complicated if you actually look at the details, you know like multi benefit structure but for most people hopefully it's just a coffee shop. You know, where they want to go. And so basically what I want is a very, very simple website that communicates the overall like vision and feel of what we mean by revillage and has at least a starting architecture for building out more depth around some of these pieces that are in development. And there's an example of a development group up in Newfoundland called Shorefast that I, I just like the cleanness of their thing where they basically have, you know, this is it just like little toggles for the, the different projects. And I think for us it would be pretty similar, like pretty concrete. It doesn't have to go into. I think it would be one website for now that would link out to both the development projects and the non profit projects in a very similar way to this. And we, it could even probably be, you know, I can, you can give me some direction on if we do work together, what you would need, but I can outline a very simple architecture. But I think it would be important to have one main page that links out to a couple of pages that we can then manipulate ourselves. Like right, right now our events page is, you'll see is gross looking, but it's like these are our last year's events and this stuff is like kind of constantly getting iterated. And again this is just ugly squarespace stuff. But yeah, pretty, pretty much like every quarter new things are cropping up. And so I think the idea would be how simple and beautiful can we make a main page? And then how kind of possible could we make it have a couple sub pages? First the coffee shop for the nonprofit events that are manipulatable by our team.

00:20:28

James Redenbaugh: Cool. And are you trying to stick with Squarespace for now?

00:20:38

Matt Jorgensen: No. Feels like everyone wants to be in webflow. I'm definitely open to, if we could come up with. I'm like fairly technically savvy too. And so I would be pretty happy to learn something. And I've definitely, I mean I've, I've like spent a few years now building all manner of websites on Squarespace and like trying the code injection stuff, you know, and like just bumping up against the limitations of it. And you know, I mean our, the nonprofit I started, Cook alliance at this point has a million dollar budget and is still a Squarespace website. So it's, you know, I, you, you can make it I think kind of good, but it's not great. So I'm pretty down. I'm pretty down. If we can add a reasonable kind of like development or team learning cost, have something that's manipulatable by us, you know.

00:21:45

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, well it's easier than ever to edit webflow websites as a non technical user.

00:21:53

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah.

00:21:54

James Redenbaugh: And we can even build it in such a way that it's basically like.

00:22:01

Matt Jorgensen: An airtable linked or something.

00:22:03

James Redenbaugh: Well yeah, we can. I love syncing with airtable. That's. Yeah, that's great for CMS posts and things like that. But we can also build modular components so you guys can drag and drop and change settings around without needing to mess with classes and stuff like that if you're spinning up a new page or things like that.

00:22:27

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah.

00:22:28

James Redenbaugh: And the framework we're building on now allows us to build anything we want visually. You know, sky's the limits. We're not limited to anything but still use these modular components so that it's super easy to edit.

00:22:44

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah, yeah, that. I mean I would probably take your lead but I assume you would prefer to build in web flood and squarespace.

00:22:57

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean do you have a budget in mind?

00:23:15

Matt Jorgensen: I'll, I'll give you the, I'll give you the full context. Basically to date the, the nonprofit which is who would be developing this, not the coffee shop, the non profit has basically had zero budget. We like last year it was like $25,000 and we did just get a couple grants and we have like 20k in the bank. And I'm kind of like, I think a good website would be pretty critical to fundraising and at this point we also have a couple years of building real and like you know, having real impact and some stuff to show. So I'm definitely prepared to spend a chunk of it. I mean I would love to spend $5,000 but I let you know and like get a simple, beautiful basically one page website with some link offs. But I really have no idea like what, what we're talking about at this point. I haven't, I haven't worked with a web developer in a while.

00:24:35

James Redenbaugh: And how about brand wise, do you guys have a brand that you like that will stick with or do we want to evolve it or rethink it?

00:24:44

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah, you know I think here's our, our, our logo at this point is very simple. It's up here in the. And I had a friend do it and I'm, I'm happy with it. I think for, for now it feels good and, but we don't have, we don't have um, really brand colors to speak of. I mean I think, I think that we could develop a little bit of that in the process of just making some design choices. For the website and I would probably be down to call it a day at that. But I'm curious if there are other pieces that feel either that you'd suggest as critical or feel prerequisite to making a good website. Also Photography we are. We've got some really good professional photographers in the neighborhood who have been doing photography throughout at our festivals and stuff and one of those is going to do pro bono for a year with our community cafe and so we should be getting. And we also have some. Some professional video that's been shot. So I think. I think we could come up with some pretty good. You know maybe we would want to do a little bit of color matching or something to make consistency across them but I think we could come up with some really high quality photography. Pretty. Pretty well in scope or like existing.

00:26:34

James Redenbaugh: Great. Well I can generate a proposal for you with different options. The baseline would be you know, simple one pager but beautiful And I'd recommend a intelligent easy to update calendar system that we could build using a CMS and that you could manage on Airtable if you want and give other people access to that to make their own events and things like that. Yeah and I can also share information about the. The kinds of automation we could do when people sign up for those events or you know what you want to do where really the sky's the limit. But the pro. The proposal will take you through our basic process give you different options for that and you'll have a clear sense of where you want to get started.

00:27:28

Matt Jorgensen: Cool. Awesome. That sounds good.

00:27:36

James Redenbaugh: Great.

00:27:37

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah it's. It's nice to meet you. We should. Can I take a screenshot of us to spend a sense.

00:27:45

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:27:47

Matt Jorgensen: Show self view how do I remove pin here? Okay okay. You want. Yeah, That's really sweet. I will.

00:28:02

James Redenbaugh: Awesome.

00:28:04

Matt Jorgensen: I'll be picking him up right after I get Mika from daycare.

00:28:09

James Redenbaugh: Oh well I'm jealous You get to live near Spencer.

00:28:13

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah.

00:28:13

James Redenbaugh: And in Grayton. It's. It's a wonderful town.

00:28:17

Matt Jorgensen: There might. There might be. There might be some new co housing ready for you and I'm ready.

00:28:23

James Redenbaugh: My wife and I need to figure out where. Where to move and we don't have a ton of savings but we want to get back to California. Yeah.

00:28:33

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah. It's my next call. Yeah, it's. It's a riddle and that's part of what I'm motivated around.

00:28:44

James Redenbaugh: It was like awesome.

00:28:46

Matt Jorgensen: We can have good people that afford to live here.

00:28:49

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Well I'd love to be involved in that however makes sense so excited to continue the conversation.

00:28:56

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah, me too.

00:28:56

James Redenbaugh: And really great to meet you. Talk to you soon.

00:28:59

Matt Jorgensen: Yeah, thanks.

00:29:00

James Redenbaugh: Ciao.

00:29:00

Matt Jorgensen: Ciao.

00:29:01

James Redenbaugh: Take care.

00:29:02

Matt Jorgensen: You too.