Continuing our series of reviews of 2014. We invited some of our friends to share with you reflections on their work on P2P and the Commons throughout the year.

Annemarie Naylor

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

Launched the Common Libraries initiative; supported a number of community owned telecommunication network projects and the Carnegie UK Trust’s Enterprising Libraries pilot programme; explored the potential for former Ministry of Defence sites – including infrastructure assets – to be community owned and managed; attended OuiShare Fest 2014 and won a prize of a one-week acceleration program in Paris, France; made first contact with the P2P Foundation (!); presented at the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin and the Off Grid Festival in Somerset; contributed to an Open Coops Deep Dive in Berlin and Meissen; launched the Our Data Coop research project; worked on numerous library service transformation, action learning and research projects for central and local government; contributed to Living on the Edge 4 at the UnMonastery in Matera as well as to the town’s successful EU Capital of Culture Bid; presented at TedxBrum and Locality’s Annual Convention on the subject of knowledge commons development and management; met SO MANY AMAZING new people – my mind is well and truly blown!

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 – 2016

To continue exploring the potential for the common ownership and management of intangible assets

To connect with other people interested in developing initiatives designed to propel common land acquisition, development and management around the world

To identify a (better organised) partner in crime – all interested parties are encouraged to get in touch!

To slow down (yeah – right!) – and, learn to enjoy the journey 😉

Rachel O’Dwyer

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

I organised a second iteration of openhere www.openhere.data.ie, a conference and festival on the digital commons. In 2012, the inaugural openhere festival focused on disruptive telecommunications practices and ways of developing and sustaining commons-core infrastructure in communications networks. In 2014, we focused on where ‘material’ forms of commons and commoning intersected with ‘immaterial’ commons: how might knowledge-sharing and peer-production in online spaces transform material economies and equally, in what ways do we need to pay more consideration to the material, environmental and economic consolidation of digital spaces, ). This included a three-stranded focus on 1. money and developing alternative currencies that support the commons; 2. a focus on distributed manufacturing and open hardware and 3. a focus on open source ecology and the environmental impact of digital networks. You can check out the videos from the conference here https://vimeo.com/user33775574

Directly after I worked with the Robin Hood Cooperative for a week long office in Dublin to develop new proposals for a cooperative hedge fund and investment model.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 – 2016

So far…

I’m hoping to work more with policies and design for alternative currencies. I’m researching where questions around the ownership of core communications infrastructure now intersect with questions about who controls the transfer and flow of value. I’m also going to be working with the Robin Hood Cooperative throughout the next year. This includes long term designs and development for the cooperative as well as short term projects and interventions set for 2015.

I want to work with the p2p foundation in the coming year as much as possible. I’m very excited to find new ways of sharing and applying research in peer-production and the commons 🙂

I do some work with the provisional university here in Dublin, together we organised the contemporary capitalism series in 2013 and last year an event on the right to the city and critiques of the smart city. http://provisionaluniversity.wordpress.com. Provisional university is a research collective headed by Patrick Bresnihan and Mick Byrne and together they do amazing work on the commons and the city. We’re hopefully working together more closely this year to produce material for the blog, but I also hope that p2p would like to work more closely with them – yourselves aside, Paddy and Mick are more invested in and knowledgeable of the commons than anyone I’ve ever encountered.

Eric Hunting

Cultivating Post-Industrial Lifestyle

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

Pursued development of Urban Nomad/Mobilist/Post-Industrial lifestyle exhibitions and development of demonstration furnitecture.

Explored Wikihouse and Tiny House development and sought (unsuccessfully) creation of CNC workshop.

Contributed info to the CHT Hackbase Lanzerote project and the Hackbase Architecture site.

Frankly, a very traumatic year due to the impact on my business by the implosion of the college textbook market, the invasion of mass-produced counterfeit books, and the all-out harassment by the US publishers against everyone else in the industry. (in retaliation for losing a landmark Supreme Court case at the end of the previous year) Expect average price of a college textbook in the US to hit $500 this coming year, a coming political war over on-line book sales, and for students to start getting sued for where they choose to buy books–and still the academic community won’t take notice or action… This could be a key issue for P2P in the coming year. Higher education is on the cusp of a catastrophe. There needs to be a new model for the contemporary textbook and a new P2P publishing model that simply obsolesces the traditional industry outright and altogether. But I personally lack the inside connections to organize any movement in the academic community.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 – 2016

Continue to pursue development of Urban Nomad/Mobilist/Post-Industrial lifestyle exhibitions. Would like to develop a series of mobile furnitecture pods based on crossing roadcase/flightcase construction with traditional Japanese design. Also interested in exploring the potential for repurposed cargo trailers.

Would like to further contribute to Hackbase development. See potential convergence with other Post-Industrial lifestyle exhibitions/demonstrations.

Still struggling with workshop/workspace issues but anticipate acquiring desktop laser cutter as prototyping aid. See potential in emerging market of standardized laser cutter and CNC components from China as basis of open source designs and value networked business opportunities. There’s potential here to do for laser cutters and CNCs what the generic PC did for computing.

Considering development of Makers’ Guide To Modular Building and Furnitecture books but still searching for collaborative illustrator.

Ann Marie Utratel, Guerrilla Translation

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

– Invested considerable sweat equity in building Guerrilla Translation with my partner Stacco Troncoso and our team. We also helped represent the P2P Foundation at the Open Everything Convergence in Cloughjourdan, Ireland; attended OuiShare Fest 2014 and won a prize of a one-week acceleration program in Paris, France; collaborated in the development and growth of FairCoop; built the CommonsTransition website, wiki and e-book; and, along the way, met a number of other people involved in the p2p/commons movement in person. In all, it was a truly action-packed year full of surprises, lessons and connections.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 – 2016

– Re-launch Guerrilla Translation in January 2015 as language-specific websites (Spanish and English) redesigned and upgraded; further the CommonsTransition efforts through awareness-building media and events; collaborate on the new CopyFair license projects; develop a collective dedicated to P2P Media and make as many new friends in-person as time and resources will allow.

David Week

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

a. Together with my colleague Lucinda Hartley, we expanded on certain raw materials of “citizen participation” in the adaptive/tactical urbanism movement and reframed as follows: tactical urban can be re-interpreted and improved by thinking of it as P2P codesign by citizens. But in order to be sustainable, these processes have to be augmented by the reintroduction of the commons into urban property types, and by newer more agile forms of governance (inspired by liquid democracy) to fill the huge gap between public and private. We presented these ideas at the national Urban Design conference in Adelaide, at the global Adaptive Urbanism conference in Christchurch NZ, and at Melbourne Knowledge Week.

b. Began advising Scatter Grounds, a collective of African diaspora built environment professionals, on how to use the above three-part model (P2P codesign, commons, adaptive democracy) to developing stronger African migrant communities in Melbourne.

c. Began the task of restructuring Assai on collegiate lines (more like a university with income) including intellectual commons, adhocracy, cooperativism and P2P mentorship.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 – 2016

a. See if we can extend the work of the Codesign Studio from pure tactical urbanism, to P2P codesign + commons + adaptive democracy, within the demands of the social enterprise model.

b. Document and publish the three-part urban model.

c. (At long last) blog-to-book on rethinking the home as centre of the economy, including concepts of the home as a consciously-managed commons, and defence of the home from intrusion of capitalist industry into the home through industrial use of the home as source of unpaid labour, as site of endless material consumption, and as dumping ground for industrially-produced stress.

d. Continue to transfer Assai from corporation to college, and shift Assai client base from bureaucracies to communities. Expand to include not just professionals, but also artists, building new life-business models through that interaction.”

Zoe Romano

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

– I opened a makerspace in Milan called Wemake focused on open design and fashion and how these fields can be developed around p2p and commons (especially hardware) and most of my activities were developed within this environment, here’s some of them:

Maker in Residency with Gerard Rubio and his project OpenKnit: opensource knitting machine

Workshop with Reshalaser project based in Egypt for an opensource portable lasercutter

Workshop Making things open – How to develop open source design

Community nights on Arduino and 3dprinting – the idea of growing local communities is at the core of our idea of makerspace, that’s why we started once a month on Tuesday (third and fourth) with two topics and soon a third is coming around hacking and knitting.

– Launched Open Pod Bay – a project for hackerspaces, makerspaces or fablabs to manage and control accesses to the space and to the machines. It allows registered members to access the space, book and activate machines, keep logs of the accesses and see it in real time online

Taking part in the project Reprogrammed Art – focused on interactive art and open source

Being in a context like Milan means dealing with traditional approaches to design (especially fashion and furniture). Interest in new perspectives is growing but there’s a lot still to do especially in order to foster substantial changes.

– I published a chapter of a book on Empowering users through design – The title of the chapter is – Open Sourcing Wearables: the Impact of Open Technologies and User Engagement in the Design of Body-Borne Interactive Products.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 – 2016

– keep working on building Milan’s local community around open design and digital fabrication.

– develop open source projects for the fostering of a p2p economy and self organizing around design.