Our longtime friend John Abrams has gotten off the island of Martha's Vineyard to talk to a full house at Providence & Beyond, our ongoing inquiry into Providence and the region. (For the record, we currently define the greater Providence region as extending from Provincetown, MA to Northampton or so.)

John is a founder of the South Mountain Company , a design/build firm on Martha's Vineyard that, as far as we knew this morning, didn't take any work off the island. He also wrote the book The Company We Keep about Somoco's employee-owned, cooperative structure.

Robert Leaver of New Commons asks the questions.

An old question raised a long time ago that shaped the way a career unfolded: How do you serve the world?

What I've actually done is to make a work environment that brings more meaning, esprit d'corp and excitement to people's lives.

More after the jump --->

About Somoco - Is it true that "you feed off the island and the island feeds off you"?

Integrated might be a better term, and we are about integration. Somoco is integrated design build. If we build it, then we designed it, and if we designed it, then we built it.

Integrating "the island" is a real challenge. MV has massive seasonal shift of a factor of 4 or 5. Diverse full time population: native Amer tribe, large black year round, past 20 years - Brazilians - who changed everything. Food, work ethic, nightlife, religion.

Somoco work is 1/3 affordable, 1/3 market and 1/3 in between/other. Now lots of energy work now, "deep energy retrofits".

We had to create non-profits to manage affordable housing and now energy, but Somoco has to keep a distance. Potential for / perception of conflict of interest limits how integrated a company can get with a community.

Simple question: What is your personal challenge?

For years, there was always too much work. Then economic collapse dried that all up. Suddenly, there were many new challenges we never had faced. One of them was the possibility of not having enough work for everybody. Were layoffs a possibility? Not really. Many, many other options before actually getting to a layoff. Bottom line - it's changed our thinking about what work we would accept.

In 2007, Woods Hole Research Center - a world class climate change think tank asked us deep energy retrofit. Our reply was, "thanks, but Somoco doesn't work off the island".  This year we got together to explore the possibilities, and now we're doing the job. People are on the ferry in the cold, dark early morning.

So now we've broken off this island. If we were a design firm, we could go a lot farther, but the build part limits that. We're not sure how we're moving forward.

Somoco is 'employee owned ' but it's not an ESOP. What's the difference between a worker coop vs. an ESOP?

Worker coop, each owner has one vote. An ESOP is broader than traditional ownership, but it doesn't bring any policy changes or democracy. Many ESOPs are less democratic than 'traditional' companies. Some are great. But in an ESOP, the structure does not confer power. In a worker coop, the structure confers power to the worker / owners.

Our model was the Mondragon Coops , a 50 year old coop of coops that's now a multinational corporation. Employee / owners have direct, voting input on policy.

One of their current projects involves a buying or starting US manufacturing companies to do 'good things' like make wind turbines. It's a partnership with the US steelworkers union. That in itself is an emerging trend, and very exciting. Unions and coops have stayed away from each other. Recently, steel workers "got trashed" by Wall St., and are forming worker coops based on work in Spain with Mondragon.

What are the downsides of this structure?

The only real drawback is that once you're successful and have a substantial block of cash equity, they tend to get conservative and risk-averse. Also, people don't leave, so we've had to actively develop a 'next generation' plan to find and develop the new backbone of the company.

What about being the founder and now really letting go?

Fortunately, I didn't know what I was doing. We started as close friends but it was a benevolent dictatorship. The shared ownership didn't replicate the past. The ownership made people much more involved. It took time for people to grow into the role. My fear was that those decisions make this thing I love into something I don't love anymore. And now that's a real possibility.

Another part of this is the generational transfer. Two 6-month sabbaticals I took served as a kind of test to see how people would act in my absence. 1st one was a disaster, but we learned and adjusted. The 2nd one was successful and that approach has 'stuck' with the company.

What's driving the renewed interest in coops?

Baby boomer own a few million small businesses, and over the next few decades, they'll all have to deal with succession. Some think about the legacy, and the options aren't great. Give it to kids who may not care? Shut it down? Sell it to whoever wants it? Not much of a legacy. Forming an employee coop gives them a good option.

How have you gotten into the energy business?

We always did energy work, but it only as part of our own design / build work. Now we do energy-only projects, and that part of the business is active.

You've hired Marc Rosenbaum full time. How is that?

A pain in the ass. (laughter) Marc and Energysmiths have been a consultant to almost every project we've done since almost the beginning. Interestingly, even though Marc's now one of the top salaries, the vestiture process at Somoco is very long on average - 5 years. Because he brings so much experience and has been our ally, the owners - in consensus - abbreviated it for him. To 4 years.

MV economy is 50% hospitality and retail. What effort are affecting the goal of diversification?

My aspirations for the 50 year plan were much higher than what's actually happened. But the Island Plan has created a real awareness about what the local economy is and how it works. So in the current downturn, there is a desire and awareness to make for ourselves. It's really food, craft and energy, and the energy part is crucial.

Our idea is Vineyard Power, and energy coop. Producer coops, consumer coops, and workers coops. VP is a combination of a producer coop and a consumer coop. Offshore wind is going to be a part of it. Cape Wind and its problems are mostly associated with the fact that they did not work in partnership with the Cape and Islands.

Our plan came right from the communities themselves. We fully expect these turbines to be sited and soon.

What emerging conditions do you see for the local economy?

The food part is very exciting, both agriculture and aquaculture. We now have a mobile poultry processing unit, and people have started raising poultry. I expect us to have a permanent poultry processing facility and maybe a fish processing facility.

Also, the island has a very strong land conservation program, and there's nothing to preclude some of this land being used for agriculture.

About the 50 Year Plan planning process, so much of the effort was NOT about the built environment. How did that integration play out in reality?

Much of my disappointment is about my own failing. The plan required us to work full time, and we couldn't. But this was a great effort in the network building, and it could play a guiding role in the future.

Audience Question: What is co-housing ?

It's a Danish housing model that houses about 30 people or so. Enough so there's some level of anonymity / independence, but not so many that you can't know everybody. Parking is on the periphery so it's a pedestrian environment, there are shared amenities, so individual houses are smaller. It's not a social structure or planned-community structure, but it has a lot of community-promoting features.

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