Welcome to the newest iteration of commons-based events and happenings in Chicago.  We’ve recently rethought our work to-date and decided on a new path forward that matches what we’ve heard and experienced about the state of the commons in Chicago.  We’re pretty excited about our new direction and wanted to share it with you.

Recent Happenings

In April and May Steve Ediger, Sally Duros and other colleagues at ChiHackNight developed a map of Chicago shareable entities for Shareable‘s MapJam 3.0 project. We started with the previous Shareable Chicago map and added many entries, including, community gardens, housing cooperatives, farmers markets, food cooperatives, worker collectives, co-working spaces, makerspaces, and many others.  We identified over 400 shareable entities in Chicago and the list is growing.  Here is the Shareable Chicago map for your review.

Then, in June, 2016 almost a dozen of us met at the ICA Greenrise to review our progress, reframe our work and analyze data from the map.

We acknowledged that process in establishing a Chamber of Commons in Chicago was making somewhat lackluster progress.  In reviewing our work to-date, we realized that the concept of a working Chamber of Commons requires too many precursors that are simply not in place.  Despite the existence of so many sharing entities in Chicago, a commons-based economy has yet to coalesce.

So we decided to pull our efforts towards a Chamber of Commons back and refocus our efforts on more productive work that recognizes our current situation in Chicago.  As a result, we’re pleased to announce Commons Transition Chicago, a new path forward towards exploring the role commons can play in Chicago, finding examples, connecting networks and encouraging the idea and expression of Commons throughout the region.

Our Current Resources

We have

• A small group of people that have agreed to meet on a monthly basis to explore, research, analyze, network and connect commons-based resources in Chicagoland.
• A starter map of commons-oriented entities.
• A rich base of theory and practice from around the world
• Many friends and colleagues around the world that support our efforts with encouragement and experience

Our Plan

• Get together monthly
• Begin by studying a single system in a small area of Chicago
  • Food Systems
  • Uptown, Edgewater, and Rogers Park
• Analyze the system for agents, their needs, resources, networks and commons potential.
• Imagine ways to develop a new commons-based economy in the target study
• Connect those that can make it happen

If you would like to join us, we’re meeting this Sunday afternoon at 4:30pm in the ICA Greenrise. Click here to register with EventBrite.

The post Commons Transition Chicago July Meeting appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A special event held by our friends at the Chicago Chamber of Commons. Click here to register for the event.

Our commons are critical to our sustainability as a world and the basis for both existing and new economies. We want to educate ourselves and each other about them. At our Dec. 3  discussion on the Commons Transition Plan from CommonsTransition.org, we discussed some ideas that would deepen our  understanding of the Commons.

We agreed that it  would be beneficial to integrate Commons-think into our analysis of opportunities and challenges to create a more just and equal society here in Chicago. This analysis would help ripen and expand the landscape fo activism here.

One idea was to research  how work around the Commons is under way in the networks and organizations we are already involved in. Part of this would be outlining an issue in a before and after way, outlining it the way we currently view it vs. a Commons-think perspective.

Join us as we bring our field study and continue our discussion of the Commons Transition here in Chicago.

The post Commons Transition Plan Discussion appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Join our friends from the Chicago Chamber of the Commons to discuss our Commons Transition plans. See below for event details or click here.

When

Thursday, December 3, 2015 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM (CST) – Add to Calendar

Where

Sulzer Regional Library, Chicago Public Library – 4455 North Lincoln Avenue Chicago, IL 60625 – View Map

The post Commons Transition Plan Discussion appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Here’s an updated from our friends at the Chicago Chamber of Commons submitted by Steve Ediger.

Chicago Chamber of Commons

On October 10, 20 participants assembled at the ICA-USA Greenrise in Uptown Chicago for two workshops to a) discuss what we mean when we talk about commons and b) create an action plan for assembling key Chicagoans by May 1, 2016 to form Chicago’s Chamber of Commons.

During the day it became clear that the many perspectives in the room meant that defining a Chamber of Commons was a complex task. Steve Ediger and Michelle Halle Stern co-facilitated the workshops. Participants engaged in deep conversation, and, based on feedback received, everybody felt that it was a productive use of their time. This report documents the outcomes of the proceedings and maps a path to the founding of Chicago’s first Chamber of Commons in May of 2016.

Consensus Workshop

In our consensus workshop, we asked and answered the question, “What do we mean when we talk about Commons?” To set the context, we discussed The Commons Short and Sweet, an article by David Bollier. With this article, participants gained an orientation of traditional and modern frames of the term commons, how commons can only be defined in conjunction with commoners, a community that has come together to manage a commons, how enclosure of commons results in dispossession, and that new structures and law is needed to promote commons and their preservation. The discussion was lively, and the participants welcomed this preamble to set the stage for our discussion on commons.

After setting the context, participants began individual work by listing their ideas about the meaning of commons. Then they split into pairs and shared ideas, picking out their most well-expressed ideas. Michelle Halle Stern facilitated collection of these and pairing them into linked ideas. Subsequently all of the ideas were brought up and clustered into groups. We ended up with six clusters of ideas, covering all of the unique thoughts that the participants had about the question, “What do we mean when we talk about Commons?”

This was the final work product of the consensus workshop. The table on the next page documents the outcomes in text.

We would invite you to consider this as an early starting point in defining what we mean when we talk about Commons. This was a brainstorm, not a study group, and ideas the participants came up with in one session. We all started at different places and not everyone had done much study about Commons. Additional writing on a definition of Commons can be found in “Commons Transition Plan”. David Bollier has a rich bibliography on his site.

Action Planning Workshop

In the afternoon, we went into action and planned how we might get a (symbolic) 200 key Chicagoland commoners out to an event in May of 2016 at which we will found Chicago’s first Chamber of Commons.

We started with a context, starting with the work that we had done in the morning around defining Commons and asking the following questions:

1. Why do we need a chamber of commons?
2. What does the chamber of commons do?
3. We know that 20 people will not do this by themselves. We need to engage others, that’s what we want to plan. How do we get the 100-200 key people in the the room to plan the opening of Chicago’s first Chamber of Commons?
4. When should we target for that workshop?

We reviewed the background and current events that are taking place globally

1. International Events
   1. Les Temps des Communs, a celebration of the commons in Francophone places
   2. Somero 2015*, a commons gathering in Spain *the site is safe; just ignore the warnings
2. National Groups & Websites
   1. CommonSpark
   2. On the Commons
   3. Shareable
   4. Great Lakes Commons initiative
   5. Commons Transition Plan
   6. p2pFoundation
3. Events leading up to this event

1. Cooperation2015
2. On the Table

After establishing a context, we started considering our plan.First, we imagined a Victory celebration when we’ve gathered the (symbolically) 200 key Chicagoland commoners in the room to found Chicago’s first Chamber of Commons.

Someone commented, “The 20 people in this room will put together a team of 200 and 20,000 will know about it.”

Then we reviewed our Current Reality in relation to that Victory. What strengths, weaknesses, benefits & dangers exist in our current situation that will lead to or inhibit success?

These powerful images grounded our victory in our current situation, both positive and cautious.

We reviewed our imagined victory in light of our current reality and made a Commitment, with consensus as a group. Here is our commitment:

“By May 1st, 2016, we will understand the Commons Transition Plan, clarify the message, define the Chamber of Commons as a model with scope, outcomes and needs, and design a call to action, including process checks that brings our neighbors and co-creators together to found Chicago’s Chamber of Commons.”

With our commitment in hand, we brainstormed and clustered the Key Actions that it will take to accomplish our goal of assembling the (symbolic) 200 key Chicagoland commoners to found Chicago’s first Chamber of Commons by May 1st, 2016. Here is that image.

The clusters represent teams, which broke out into small groups to consider their tasks, add any missing items and come up with a name that represents the work they will do. When there was an imbalance of self-selected membership, two of the teams, Stakeholders and Outreach decided to merge and we ended up with 4 teams, Core, Plan/Execute Commons Kick-off, Civic Engagement, and Educate.

The teams then assigned (loose) dates to their tasks and put them up on a Calendar (below)

Here are the tasks as defined and calendared.

It took a long time for the group to reach consensus on the Commitment and by the time we got to Coordination, looking at the calendar and tasks to identify incongruities among dependent tasks across teams, we were almost out of time. Whether, or not, we had true consensus remains to be seen as we execute tasks. Two items came up that I (Steve) as a facilitator, thought were problematic. 1) One participant thought that we should be going two rounds, a build up to the next meeting in May and then another build-up to the founding of the Chamber of Commons the meeting after that. 2) The education team has a schedule that is too late for civic engagement. Since most of the issues at this event arose around a lack of education before the event, this might pose some problems downstream. [NOTE: Speaking personally, I see the risk and believe that it does not jeopardize the timeline significantly; however we should work closely with the Educate team to ensure no slippage.]

Finally, we Resolved to move ahead with this. In fact, several members from different teams have communicated they are moving already.

The post Chicago Chamber of Commons Event Report appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The coming together of commons-oriented projects seems to be intensifying.  Even as the Le Temps des Communes festival in dozens of Francophone cities convenes thousands of commoners, an organizing meeting for a Chicago Chamber of Commons in planned for Saturday, October 10. (You can register for the event here.)

This idea has been kicking around for a while – see this 2013 blog post  – but it seems that the folks in Chicago are serious about making it work. They want to foster deeper collaboration among the many groups focused on shared ownership, the collaborative economy, co-operatives and other mutual-benefit initiatives. The organizers say they want to “connect social entrepreneurs, L3C’s, B-Corps and other enterprises focused on triple bottom line, sharing-economy approaches to commerce and community development.” People involved with economic transformation, environmental protection, community life and culture are also invited.

The day will start with a consensus workshop that will try to come up with a shared definition of the commons. This will be followed with discussions for startup plans for a Chicago Commons, which organizers hope will be the first of many Chambers of Commons across the nation and globe.

In May, Huffington Post writer Sally Duros wrote a piece about the envisioned Chamber of Commerce in which she quoted Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation:

“The old way is this. Here’s a problem. We need resources to solve that problem. We create a hierarchy to direct resources at the problem,” Bauwens says.

“Here’s another way. There are enough people in the world with time, skills and energy who would be willing to work to solve that problem. The new solution is to create a commons and a platform that allows people to self-aggregate and collaborate to solve that problem.”

Here’s hoping that the organizing meeting is productive!

The post Now Organizing: A Chicago Chamber of Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Participants at the Cooperation 2015 conference in February, 2015, a precursor of the Chamber of Commons event. Photo provided by Steve Ediger.

The following article is cross-posted from our friends at Shareable.

By Nina Misuraca Ignaczak

That stalwart community institution known as the Chamber of Commerce may soon have its counterpart in the sharing economy.

The US Chamber of Commons, a startup organization dedicated to “recognizing, supporting and highlighting the “green shoots of a budding Generative Economy,” is trying to get a new form of chamber off the ground: one to connect social entrepreneurs, L3C’s, B-Corps and other enterprises focused on triple bottom line, sharing-economy approaches to commerce and community development.

The group sees its role as advocating for the four broad categories of organizations outlined in Marjorie Kelly’s Owning our Future: (1) Commons Ownership and Governance (2) Stakeholder Ownership (3.) Social Enterprises and (4) Mission Controlled Corporations.

On October 10, the group will hold an event in Chicago and in 30 other cities across the globe to call for the establishment of Chambers of Commons.

The Chicago event is designed to plant the seed for a larger movement. The day will start with a consensus workshop, with a goal of arriving at a shared definition of the Commons. Next up is an action planning workshop to develop a start-up plan for a Chicago Commons, which will be the first iteration of what organizers hope is the first of many Chambers of Commons across the nation and globe.

“We plan on discussing and coming to consensus on what we (the people in the room) mean by the Commons, both material and immaterial,” Steve Ediger, one of the project coordinators, said in an email to Shareable. “Then we will plan the startup of the first chapter of a ‘Chamber of Commons’, an organization that will work to bring other commons-oriented entities together in development and protection of the Commons.”

The discussion will address an array of Commons-relevant topics such as the environment, public land, the food supply, public education and transportation, open-source software, the internet, arts and culture and taxpayer-funded scientific research. Unclaimed realms such as the oceans, Antarctica and outer space will also be on the agenda.

Organizations, projects and individuals in the Chicago area working on Commons-oriented initiatives in the economic, environmental, community, and cultural sustainability spheres are invited to participate. National and international organizations with a Chicago presence are also invited to participate.

In an article for the Huffington Post, writer Sally Duros quotes Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation, on the need for a Chamber of Commons:

“The old way is this. Here’s a problem. We need resources to solve that problem. We create a hierarchy to direct resources at the problem,” Bauwens says.

“Here’s another way. There are enough people in the world with time, skills and energy who would be willing to work to solve that problem. The new solution is to create a commons and a platform that allows people to self-aggregate and collaborate to solve that problem.”

You can register for the Chicago event here.

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