Date archives "June 2019"

End of the open source agriculture workshop

The local activities of the P2P Lab in the context of the Distributed Design Market Platform Creative Europe project (Year 2) have come to an end. On Sunday 9th of June, four selected makers presented their agricultural solutions at Tzoumakers, our rural makerspace in Kalentzi (Ioannina, Greece). The workshop has enabled participants to explore a… Continue reading

Leading Italy into the future of work; mondora creates benefit for all

John Gieryn: What if the purpose of companies was “to create benefit for the world and try to make it a better place”? Or if they had “employee happiness” as a key performance indicator? While it may seem far-fetched at first, we at Loomio have the privilege of serving one such company that is leading… Continue reading

Spanish municipal elections: what happened with the new municipalist projects?

Sol Trumbo Vila: With the results still playing out, the survival of parties like Barcelona en Comú will depend on their ability to bring together the ‘three souls’ of the movement. As the European Elections unfolded last week, many activists and progressive forces around the world paid particular attention to the municipal elections taking place… Continue reading

International Conference: “Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Contributions to the Deepening of Democracy”

Note: the updated submission deadline is June 20, 2019. Venue: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal Date: 6 – 8th November 2019 Organiser: Centre for International Studies (CEI-IUL) The second international conference “Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons” will be a meeting point for researchers, activists, public officials and social entrepreneurs involved in social… Continue reading

The Art of Maintaining “Good Vibes:” lessons on practices and skills from two egalitarian communities

Katarzyna Gajewska: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Egalitarian communes create an alternative to capitalist individualist lifestyle and values. The add communal organization of life and sharing living space to the self-managed enterprises that they operate to generate income. Living in such setting means agreeing to be challenged and confronted… Continue reading

Looks Like New: How Can We Self-Organize at Scale?

https://objects-us-east-1.dream.io/kgnu-news/2019/02/2-28-19_ITE.mp3

This month’s guest is Nathalia Scherer of DAOstack who asks How Can We Self-Organize at Scale? Can we create big, ambitious projects without corporations, governments, and bosses? Nathalia Scherer wants to try. Her organization, DAOstack, is using Bitcoin-like blockchain technology to make tools for self-organizing. Last year DAOstack raised $30 million in a 60-second token… Continue reading

Book of the Day: Mid-Course Correction Revisited

The Story and Legacy of a Radical Industrialist and his Quest for Authentic Change By Ray Anderson and John A. Lanier: The original Mid-Course Correction, published 20 years ago, became a classic in the sustainability field. It put forth a new vision for what its author, Ray C. Anderson, called the “prototypical company of the 21st… Continue reading

The Future of Work – Jobs and Automation in Estonia

“In the rest of the developed world, people rely on digitized services in the private sector. In Estonia, this is also true for the government.” A new VICE Special Report: The Future of Work premieres April 19 on HBO. This video has been reposted from the HBO youtube channel.

OSCEdays Call For Local Organizers

The Open Source Circular Economy Days (OSCEdays) is a global community, project and event about the use and creation of open source resources for the invention and implementation of a Sustainable circular economy on our planet. We invite you set up a local event in your city, develop and use open circularity solutions and connect to people world wide…. Continue reading

If life wins there will be no losers

How can we create a worldwide, permanent shift to regenerative culture in every sphere of life? “You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”- Buckminster Fuller Ruth Gordon: In recent years there’s been a global awakening to the momentous choice… Continue reading

What would a climate emergency plan look like?

Across the world, national and local governments are declaring a climate emergency on the back of dire warnings from UN scientists about the need for urgent and far-reaching action that have triggered a wave of protests from school children and given rise to the Extinction Rebellion movement. Within just three months, 42 councils have signed the pledge –… Continue reading

Digital Ultra-Decentralization and the End of Data Centers

The spatial and energy impact of data centers on the territories. Synthesis of the ENERNUM project. By Cécile Diguet, Fanny Lopez, 2019 Description The spatial and energy impact of data centers is becoming more and more impacting for territories, given the unprecedented and massive growth of data creation and exchanges, leading to large storage needs…. Continue reading

New Book Out Now: Political Ideas for a New Europe

Our Commons: Political Ideas for a New Europe is a collection of essays, case studies and interviews about the commons, published right before the European Elections of May 2019. The book showcases the wealth of transformative ideas that the international commons movement has to offer. With contributions by Kate Raworth, David Bollier, George Monbiot and many… Continue reading

Uniting charities for a common cause

Madina Knight: Charities are built to support communities but they are rarely offered support, themselves. That’s exactly what James Carlin set out to do when he co-founded the Bath and Northeast Somerset’s 3rd Sector Group (3SG for short). Around four years ago, after Bath lost it’s charity support agency, the founders of 3SG stepped in to quickly… Continue reading

Helping UK cooperatives thrive

By Madina Knight, John Gieryn How do you role-model a democratic workplace? This was the question on Austen Cordasco’s mind as he set out to integrate new technology to improve decision-making within Co-operative Assistance Network Limited (CAN). Purpose and community For more than 30 years, CAN, a workers’ co-op, has catalysed the movement of cooperatives… Continue reading