Ne da(vi)mo Beograd (Don’t let Belgrade Drown) was formed in 2014 in protest at the huge urban projects that aimed to turn an area of the capital’s historic city waterfront into luxurious commercial and residential buildings. By objecting in a variety of ways, from institutional engagement to civil disobedience, Ne da(vi)mo Beograd has kept the… Continue reading
As readers may have noticed, I have not been blogging much in recent months. That’s because I’ve been completing a new book with my colleague Silke Helfrich that has been consuming most of my time. (More about that soon.) Fortunately, only a month or so is left before we finish the manuscript! At that point… Continue reading
Cross-posted from Shareable. How do we respond to natural disasters? What comes to mind? Large relief organizations like the American Red Cross? Or perhaps the Federal Emergency and Management Agency? Well, those images are certainly part of the story — but they’re not the whole story. In our new podcast series, The Response, we aim to… Continue reading
Robert Raymond: When Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, Judith Rodriguez was asleep in her home. Or rather, she was trying to sleep, but the sounds of the deadly storm blowing over the island woke her up. “That whistle was the ugliest I’ve heard in my life,” Rodriguez said. “A whistle that… Continue reading
Who we’ve been, who we are becoming If you’re not familiar with Guerrilla Translation (GT), here is what you should know. Founded in Madrid in 2013 and inspired by the 15M and Occupy movements, GT is a P2P and commons-oriented translation collective. It was conceived as a new kind of livelihood vehicle for activist translators… Continue reading
This post by Mozilla was originally published on Medium.com It’s been a rough several months for the world’s dominant social media platforms. The recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal was followed by a bruising congressional testimony for Mark Zuckerberg. And Twitter’s Jack Dorsey admitted earlier this year that abuse and harassment are overwhelming the platform. As a… Continue reading
In this panel session from OPEN 2018 Arthur Brock, Co-founder, HOLO; Matthew Slater, Co-Founder of Community Forge and Emma McGuirk, Co-founder of Dunedin Timebank in New Zealand discuss the potential of a Co-op Coin and global mutual credit systems and consider whether any of the existing trading networks and models could be used to bring… Continue reading
This post by Myriam Bouré was originally published on Medium.com. Pour la version en français, voir ici. Myriam Bouré: As reminded by Nicolas Hulot’s resignation from the French government, it’s difficult to combine liberal capitalism and ecology. Wouldn’t the commons represent the model for the future, post liberal capitalism, combining economic, social and environmental performance? Analysis, based in particular… Continue reading
Peer Work in Australia – A New Future for Mental Health. Ed. by Janet Meagher et al. , 2018 This book is a work of intense dedication, with an imperative and belief that we must document the current situation and focus on developments into the future for peer work in this country. It’s development and… Continue reading
Following on from the introductory session on the Main stage Louis Cousin from Cooperatives Europe leads a working session on mapping the cooperative / solidarity ecosystem. With input from Colm Massey from the Solidarity Economy Association; Laura James Co-founder at Digital Life Collective; Tom Ivey from domains.coop; and the audience – with a view to developing a steering group focused on “Developing taxonomies for describing co-ops and… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens: Mapping is important to the transition towards a more ecologically-balanced and socially-just commons-centric society, as it brings visibility and conscious awareness to the great diversity of initiatives taking place, and can also be a community-building tool. Here is a recent and very professionally undertaken mapping effort for the Italian commons, undertaken by our friends… Continue reading
The internet and near-costless scaling of digital has allowed the concentration of too much power in too few hands. Our systems for accountability can’t or won’t keep up. By building alternatives, the decentralisation of networks, governance and control are a promising antidote. That’s why it’s exciting to see web inventor Tim Berners-Lee announce a commercial venture to… Continue reading
This article, originally published in Platform.Coop, was authored by Lieza Dessein and Chiara Faini, both strategic project managers for SMart.coop headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Stop Chasing Unicorns Lieza Dessein and Chiara Faini: There is a fundamental flaw in the narrative of the startup culture: everyone is chasing Unicorns i.e. private companies valued at one billion dollars… Continue reading
Democratizing Urban Technology Evgeny Morozov and Francesca Bria – January 2018. Republished from Rosa Luxemburg New York. Evgeny Morozov and Francesca Bria: Following the celebration of the “creative city” (as described by Richard Florida), the “smart city” has become the new flavor of the month—and a brand. It makes clever use of resources, and it attracts money,… Continue reading
Wouter Tebbens, Co-Founder and President of the Free Knowledge Institute; Chris Croome from UK co-op Webarchitects; Alexandre Bourlier and Sophie Rocher from happy-dev.fr discuss their work developing a suite of cooperatively owned and managed open source tools to rival Google and Apple; a shared technical infrastructure to enable co-operators to move away from data harvesting monopolies. The co-op cloud project is one… Continue reading
What happened at OPEN 2018? Nathan Schneider kicked things off with an excellent introduction explaining some of the history of cooperative ownership. Nathan also questioned where our movement sits relative to the mainstream, for-profit startup world, and in what way the development of platform co-ops and member owned businesses are disruptive … Lynne Davis, CEO… Continue reading