The DLT4EU program is an accelerator that will identify and link Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) initiatives with leading public and private sector organisations. The initiative aims to promote the development of projects that use blockchain and other distributed technologies (DLT) to solve social and environmental challenges for public good.

The accelerator program will pilot DLT applications by connecting the expertise of leading innovators, entrepreneurs and developers with real-world, unmet challenges in the public and social sectors to create market-ready social ventures.

The programme will focus on two high impact sectors:

• Circular Economy
• Digital Citizenship

The DLT4EU project is led by a consortium of three organisations specialised in distributed technologies, digital social innovation and environmental sustainability: Ideas for Change, (Barcelona); Metabolic, (Amsterdam); and Digital Catapult, (London).

Find out more at DLT4EU’s website.

• Lead image: network by sjcockell
• Republished from DLT4EU

The post DLT4EU: Call for Applicants opens April 14 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There is much hype around circular and collaborative economies over the past few years. From Davos to the European Union, everyone is eager to grab a piece of the new mode of industrial development. But what lies beneath these grand narratives?

In this 3-part short series we attempt to critically review the current discussion on the circular and collaborative economy and provide insights from some alternative trajectories.

This short series based on a workshop on circular, collaborative and distributed production designed and facilitated by Chris Giotitsas and Alex Pazaitis on the occasion of the participation of OD&M project at the 83rd Florence International Handycraft Fair, on April 24, 2019 in Florence.

Part 1: On the circular economy.

The most widely known and basic definition for a circular economy (accepted even by the European Union) entails cycles of production, ranging from repair, to maintenance, to re-use, refurbishment, and last to recycling. For this conceptualization to work, products need to be designed to fit these cycles. Meaning that we need to rethink how we design and make things. For instance, a phone may be designed so that it can be more durable, easier to repair and easier to recycle. So far so good.

However, considering the production and distribution networks today, that would presumably take place on a global scale. A product would be produced in one place, then purchased on the other side of the planet, then repaired or refurbished and resold somewhere else entirely. Until ultimately it is recycled for material and entering the cycle all over again. The question here, then, is: who would do the repair/ refurbishment/ recycling on that scale? As it is currently conceptualized, it is the service provider or the manufacturer that does it. How? Would manufacturers have processing facilities all over the planet, or would the products be sent to their locations thus increasing energy consumption and pollution? Doesn’t this reverse the whole point of circularity related to sustainability?  

Furthermore, how would manufacturers and service providers keep track of all these products? Apparently, it is with the help of the “Internet of Things”, by making products smart and trackable. But if we’re talking about a circular system of this complexity then this means that the “manufacturer” would need to have massive operational capacities and resources as well as tracking (or surveilling really) data to an alarming degree.

From a different perspective, if one looks at the EU reports on the issue of circular economies they will find assessments based on collected data and while there is plenty available on a state and municipal level (regarding, for instance, recycling) there is next to none when it comes to industry. That is hardly surprising. It is costs money to track and collect information and when there is no clear profit foreseen, then why would a private manufacturer do it? The idea is to incentivize industry to change their practices. Allow them to make money in a different, more sustainable way. But even then, why would they share data? And how would the protocols and processes of one huge manufacturer work with those of another. They are competitors after all and the profit of one signals the loss of another. 

So, circularity without being open source, is not really circularity. By making it so, then it would ensure interoperability for start. Meaning the products of one manufacturer would work with those of another. Open licenses and standards for parts, tools, materials as well as the sharing of all relevant information would mean that the product of one manufacturer would be possible to be repaired or maintained by whomever locally. Their materials would also be easier to locate, distribute, and reuse. However, at least for now, this seems not to be the goal.

When it comes to the circular economy, we are attempting to apply a concept on a production system that is incompatible. And the attempts so far, seem either too small or they end up being co-opted to such a degree that they lose any transformative potential.  

Part 2: On the Sharing Economy

As a global society, we are facing what could be understood as an existential dilemma with the sharing economy. As a phenomenon, the sharing economy has been increasingly gaining attention since -roughly- 2004, as it gets more and more share in the global markets. But sharing, as a practice, is not a new phenomenon. It has been present in communities since the dawn of human history. And, frankly, in our current form of economic organisation we have not always been very fond of it…. 

Those of us who have been old enough to witness a primitive type of audiovisual technology called “Digital Video Disc” (aka DVD), have often found ourselves irritated with -and simultaneously amused by- aggressive anti-piracy ads like this one. In all their ridiculousness, comparing a downloaded movie with car theft, what they were basically tackling was early forms of peer-to-peer file-sharing.  

So what has happened in less than 10 years that made sharing (esp. over the internet) from a criminal activity to the whole “sharing is caring” story? 

Apparently, the answer lies in some people making enormous amounts of money through sharing. A glimpse on the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg or the market value of tech start-ups like Uber or AirBnB nicely illustrate this. On the other hand, a closer look in their underlying infrastructures (and also their tax returns) shows that, despite profiting on sharing capacities, they are not equally interested in sharing themselves. So, to put it bluntly, what is interesting about sharing, is the sharing economy. What is less obvious is what it is about the economy that is of the interest of sharing. 

In a broader view, the economy can be described as a system that caters for the production and distribution of the means necessary for our subsistence and well-being. In the specific kind of economic system we broadly refer to as capitalism, economic affairs usually involve two main institutions: (a) private property; and (b) market exchange. The latter is fundamentally dependent on the former, and, respectively, the former rationalises the latter. This line of economic understanding also by and large underpins the definition of the sharing (or collaborative) economy from the European Union (European Commission (2016). A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy. Available): 

“[…] the term “collaborative economy” refers to business models where activities are facilitated by collaborative platforms that create an open marketplace for the temporary usage of goods or services often provided by private individuals” 

And further it is pointed out: 

“Collaborative economy transactions generally do not involve a change of ownership and can be carried out for profit or not-for-profit” 

More or less, the understanding of sharing on behalf of the EU is reduced to the extent it can relate to these fundamental institutions of property and exchange. The focus is then placed on regulating issues evolving around these relations, concerning both things and people, including labour, liability and taxation. 

Nevertheless, the same document still cannot move away from pointing out -even if in a footnote- a certain element that is significantly different: 

“Collaborative economy services may involve some transfer of ownership of intellectual property […]” 

And I would add a hint: often without conventional market-based transactions. Earlier examinations of the phenomenon focus exactly on this dynamic, explaining those conditions that allow them to have massive economic impact. Harvard Law Professor, Yochai Benkler, more than a decade before the EU became interested in the sharing economy (Benkler, Y. 2004. Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Form of Economic Production. The Yale Law Journal, 114(2): 273-358), eloquently argues on sharing as a form of economic production and nicely summarises his position as follows (again in a footnote, yet for different reasons here): 

“I am concerned with the production of things and actions/services valued materially, throughnon-market mechanisms of social sharing […]” 

And then continues: 

“Sharing’, then, offers a less freighted name for evaluating mechanisms of social-relations-based economic production” 

The phrase “valued materially” concerns the real value of sharing, not the one expressed in financial markets or the balance sheets of Facebook’s partner advertising companies. It relates to the very human interaction of sharing stuff and our own time and capacities in things we consider meaningful, from food, shelter and rides, to knowledge, information and technology. The meaning, or value, of this interaction, contrary to the so-called sharing economy, is not guided by price signals between the people, commodities and services. It is a form of an economy, i.e. a system catering for human subsistence and well-being, based solely on social relations. And this is partly why a Harvard professor has to come up with a “less freighted name” for it, as we can all imagine the all-too-freighted name of it that any Fox News anchor would instinctively shout out based on the above definition alone. 

And here lies the real transformative dynamic of sharing as a form of economic production. It is this element that allows a group of uncoordinated software developers create better a web-server than Microsoft; or thousands of people, contributing their knowledge with no predefined structure, roles or economic incentives, create a digital encyclopedia that outgrows Britannica. But such sharing-enabled success stories typically don’t mobilise huge cash flows and don’t create “added value”, which basically entails an understanding of value stemming exclusively from selling stuff to people.  

Going back to our existential issues with sharing, our general position as societies is that we basically think of sharing as a nice thing to do, but lack the institutions to really appreciate its value for our economic system. This massively restrains the actual dynamics of sharing, which are gradually subsumed by the dominant private-property-and-market-driven system. 

There are of course great alternatives in the digital economy alone that build on this sharing capacity in a more humane and socially-minded way, from early neighbourhood tools and rides sharing platforms, to Free and Open Source Software, open design projects and Wikipedia. There is frankly as much sharing taking place on Facebook as in Wikipedia, at least on the front end. But the underlying value models and, subsequently, potential outcomes for the majority of the people involved are vastly different. 

For this we need to finally mature with regards to our issues with sharing and, eventually, make a choice for the kind of sharing for which we would design our institutions and societies. And hopefully that would be the one that would help us escape the current dead ends on the social and ecological front. 

Part 3: Needs-based design as an alternative paradigm 

Despite the serious conceptual and systemic problems described in the previous parts of this short series, it does not necessarily mean that there are no examples of true implementation for collaborative and circular practices right now. In fact, there are several technological development communities that make it happen to some significant degree. More specifically,  needs-based design and grassroots innovation as community-driven endeavours offer a serious alternative paradigm. 

In other words, communities can harness these ICT-enabled capabilities to collaboratively create technology for themselves, and promote sustainable practices based on shared values, knowledge and infrastructure. For instance, small-scale farmers in the agricultural communities of L’atelier paysan and Farm Hack, collaborate to produce tools and machines, often from recycled scrap material, suitable for their type of agriculture, which conventional market channels often fail to adequately cover. 

Yet, this type of self-construction activity is limited in simpler, frugal solutions, whereas  to address today’s challenges we need a broader engagement of design and engineering. But for a community to create complex technologies and systems, advanced skills still need to be employed, including designers, engineers and software developers. The main difference is the type of relationship they have with the community of users. This means the experts would act according to their own motives for engagement but with an explicit purpose to provide a solution which best serves the users of the technology. 

As far as the users are concerned, designers take up a specific purpose. They serve the role of guides or “Sherpas” (with reference to the ethnic group of the Himalayas that are expert mountaineers helping other groups). In that sense, the design process begins after a need within a community is made explicit. Then the designer meets with the community several times to discuss the parameters of the problem that needs solving and uses her expertise to design the solution, which is then reviewed by the community. This is an iterative process until a final artefact is produced, often through a collective process.

Nevertheless, engaging in such a creative activity  and simultaneously making a living out of its is no easy task, yet it is better than the alternative. Having a community as a base of support beats deciding to engage in “social innovation” on your own. At least if we are defining social innovation as something that you make for the common good rather than a thing to make money out of. For instance, designers in the agricultural communities mentioned above, could receive funds to help farmers refurbish or redesign an existing tool, or they could crowdfund within the community for the creation of a new tool. 

Such hybrid and radical models may lead to some sustainability for the designer willing to engage in social production. In our view however, for these terms to be genuinely meaningful in terms of sustainability, openness and equity, structural changes need to take place starting from a policy level. These communities provide a certain blueprint to inform the direction which needs to be taken. 

For instance, instead of incentives for manufacturers, perhaps more focus could be placed in empowering communities to tackle parts of the extremely complex problems of circular production. Likewise, user-communities can harness favourable licences and legal tools to build on shared capacities for collaborative forms of production and distribution. Individuals like designers could also be given incentives and support to engage with these communities in a relationship that is not profit-driven but informed by mutually shared values. 

What this would look like may take many forms, especially depending on local cultures and social contexts. For instance, such a community in the US, which generally lacks serious welfare structures, means that farmers need to rely largely on themselves and each other. Designers that work with them, manage to secure limited funding through the national agriculture organisations and donors while doing also something else to secure their personal sustainability. A similar community in Europe, on the other hand, which still manages to maintain basic social welfare amidst austerity obsessions, means that designers and engineers working with the farmers can secure state funding. So the volume of the work, as well as the quality of tools and documentation can be significantly increased. 

In conclusion, collaborative and circular economies are possible. But we need, as a society, to engage with these ideas in more radical ways than it is happening at the moment.

The post OD&M: Designing for Sustainable Economic Transformations appeared first on P2P Foundation.

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 century”—a restorative company that does no harm to society or the environment. In it Anderson recounts his eureka moment as founder and leader of Interface, Inc., one of the world’s largest carpet and flooring companies, and one that was doing business in all the usual ways. Bit by bit, he began learning how much environmental destruction companies like his had caused, prompting him to make a radical change. Mid-Course Correction not only outlined what eco-centered leadership looks like, it also mapped out a specific set of goals for Anderson’s company to eliminate its environmental footprint.

Those goals remain visionary even today, and this second edition delves into how Interface worked toward making them a reality, birthing one of the most innovative and successful corporate sustainability efforts in the world. The new edition also explores why we need to create not only prototypical companies, but also the prototypical economy of the twenty-first century. As our global economy shifts toward sustainability, challenges like building the circular economy and reversing global warming present tremendous opportunities for business and industry. Mid-Course Correction Revisted contains a new foreword by Paul Hawken, several new chapters by Ray C. Anderson Foundation executive director John A. Lanier, and interviews with Janine Benyus, Joel Makower, Andrew Winston, Ellen MacArthur and other leaders in green enterprise, the circular economy, and biomimicry.

A wide range of business readers—from sustainability professionals to green entrepreneurs to CEOs—will find both wise advice and concrete examples in this new look at a master in corporate and environmental leadership, and the legacy he left.

Reviews and Praise

• “Unlike most business leaders for whom ‘the business case for sustainability’ is all that really matters, Ray Anderson unapologetically advanced a moral case as well, constantly focused on our duty to future generations. This is more important today than ever before, as we come to recognize that an incremental, softly-softly approach to corporate sustainability is pretty much a busted flush—we’ve simply run out of time. The Interface story is as inspirational today as ever, but it needs to be read for its deeper, radical reckoning: If not now, when? If not you, who?”—Jonathon Porritt, founder and director, Forum for the Future; author of The World We Made
  
• “I’m so glad Ray Anderson’s story is getting another telling—few sagas are more inspiring or more timely. We desperately need more and more people following in his footsteps with the same blend of humility and determination!”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter
  
• “Twenty years after its first edition, there is still so much for us to harvest and learn from Mid-Course Correction. When it came to the precariousness of our shared future, Ray Anderson was both impatient and relentless in fighting for a world of beauty, abundance, justice, and fairness. When Ray asked me to join the Interface board, his exact words were, ‘Come help me change the world!’ Those words stayed with me throughout my seventeen years working with him. This twenty-year update provides the perfect guide for others to join in climbing Mt. Sustainability, the most critical mission of our time.”—Dianne Dillon-Ridgley, CEO, Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future

• “So far, Ray C. Anderson is the twenty-first century’s undisputed master of making business a potent force for saving people and the planet. As his winning carpet and textile firm, Interface, now wrings out the last few percent of its fossil-fuel use, his bold strategy—take nothing, waste nothing, do no harm, do very well by doing good—inspires visionary leaders everywhere. This valuable update, with additions from his grandson, John Lanier, maps out necessary next steps.”—Amory B. Lovins, cofounder and chief scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute; author of Reinventing Fire

• “Twenty-one years ago my friend Ray Anderson brought an engineer’s insight, a businessman’s rigor, a grandfather’s love, and a poet’s heart to what he called ‘the creative act of business.’ He challenged his company to ‘first to attain sustainability and then to become restorative,’ reminding all who would listen that ‘if your sustainability program is costing you money, you’re doing it wrong.’ And in this book and in his countless speeches—with a vision as clear as any since, to our peril and shame, and with a roadmap still valid—he challenged us all to do the same.”—Gil Friend, CEO, Natural Logic, Inc.; founder, Critical Path Capital

• “Ray Anderson was one of the most extraordinary business leaders I ever met—and I have met and worked with scores. He was extraordinary in his early embrace of the sustainability agenda, years before most of his peers were even aware of the term. And he was extraordinary in his willingness to admit he had got parts of his response wrong, which is the remarkable tale brought bang up to date in Mid-Course Correction Revisited. Highly recommended for anyone wanting leadership in these challenging times.”—John Elkington, founder and chief pollinator, Volans; originator of the Triple Bottom Line

• “When I began my personal journey from a traditional business career to this world of ‘sustainability,’ Ray Anderson’s Mid-Course Correction was the first book I read. I felt the same ‘spear in the chest’ that Ray described, and so I followed his intellectual path of discovery. I am indebted to Ray’s legacy, and I know it is long past time to revisit his work. The global challenges we face are more daunting than ever, so the imperative Ray described has only gotten more urgent. We must convert ‘business as usual’ from an obsession with short-term profits to a relentless focus on using business to build a thriving world. Ray saw it clearly years before almost everyone, and it’s a critical time to bring his vision to a new generation of business leaders.”—Andrew Winston, founder, Winston Eco-Strategies; author of The Big Pivot and coauthor of Green to Gold

About The Author

Ray C. Andersonwas founder and chairman of Interface, Inc., one of the world’s leading carpet and flooring producers. His story is now legend: Ray had a “spear in the chest” epiphany when he first read Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, inspiring him to revolutionize his business in pursuit of environmental sustainability. In doing so Ray proved that business can indeed “do well by doing good.” His Georgia-based company has been ranked number one in a GlobeScan survey of sustainability experts, and it has continued to be an environmental leader even after Ray’s death in 2011. Ray authored the 1998 classic Mid-Course Correction, which chronicled his epiphany, as well as a later book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist. He became an unlikely screen hero in the 2003 Canadian documentary The Corporation, and was named one of Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2007. He served as cochairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and as an architect of the Presidential Climate Action Plan, a 100-day action plan on climate that was presented to the Obama Administration.

Connect with this author

• Ray C. Anderson Foundation
• Ray Anderson on Facebook
• Ray Anderson on Twitter

Interviews and Articles

• Fast Company – How a Carpet Maker Became an Unlikely Hero of the Environmental Movement
• Atlanta Business Chronicle – Family of Interface Founder Ray Anderson Carrying on his Environmental Mission
• New York Times – Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet

Author Videos

• Ray Anderson: The business logic of sustainability

About John A. Lanier

John A. Lanier joined the Ray C. Anderson Foundation as executive director in May 2013 to advance the legacy of Ray, his grandfather. He is chair of the board of directors for Southface Energy Institute, the southeast’s nonprofit leader in the promotion of sustainable homes, workplaces, and communities through education, research, advocacy and technical assistance. Previously, Lanier was an associate attorney with Sutherland, Asbill and Brennan, LLP (now Eversheds Sutherland), specializing in US federal taxation. Lanier earned his juris doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law, and he holds bachelor of arts degrees in history and economics from the University of Virginia. He blogs regularly and his TEDx can be viewed on YouTube.

The copy in the post is reprinted from chelseagreen. You can find the original post here. The video is reposted from the YouTube channel of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.

The post Book of the Day: Mid-Course Correction Revisited appeared first on P2P Foundation.

We invite you set up a local event in your city, develop and use open circularity solutions and connect to people world wide. Here is how and why:

WHY

‘Planet earth is doomed’. Is it?

Humanity faces enormous challenges: Climate change is marching, resource shortages accelerate, species extinction is faster than ever, and the current rise of fascism in some parts of the world presents us a first impression how people react when they get scared by things changing to the worse for them.

But,

You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.

-Albert Einstein

We need to recreate our economy – our methods of collaboration and production – to build a future worth living in.

Open Source is a transparent, distributed, collaborative methodology made possible by the internet. Though still in its infancy outside of software, we firmly believe that Open Source offers the most rapid and transformative pathway to create a truly ecological ‘circular’ economy that can meet humanities needs while staying within planetary boundaries and enabling all life forms on earth. And this is what we are working for!

But changing habits isn’t easy. The current methods of production and collaboration are effective and deeply embedded in our everyday life and thinking. Open Source – collaboration methodologies based on transparency – on the other hand is still an unsolved riddle in many areas. Let’s solve it! Let’s experiment and make progress. Let’s use and build upon existing open circularity solutions and create more of them. First pioneers have created projects and business that show us the potential of openness and the ecosystem thinking that goes with it. We all can start with Openness and Circularity right now.

So once again we invite you to join us for a global event. Switch on your brains and creativity, activate your optimism, zest for life and local community so that together, we can imagine and build a positive future. Here is a Guide for Participation:

Create A Local Event – FAQ

OSCEdays connects people on the subject of Open Source Circular Economy. In the past 3 years more than 100 cities participated with local events contributing to the progress. In 2018 & 2019 we continue the journey focussing for the first time on using/implementing the resources that were created by the community in the past. It is a big moment :-). Join us, set up your local event, and let’s make progress together. Here is how:

Date & Size

There is no required minimum size for a local event. A room with a smaller group of people working for a few hours or hundreds of people working several days, everything is possible.

You can set up your event whenever you like. Every year so far we announced a global date. This date is not mandatory. And there is no date set for 2019 yet.

Program

What are good activities for an event?

Open Source and Circular Economy are pretty new questions. So some local organizers struggled in the past to find content for an event. But with the work of the past years there are now first good resources to use and build upon at your local event. We invite you to implement open solutions and develop them further. There are also other options for content like talks, workshops and challenges. But let’s start with the solutions:

1) Play With ‘Open Solutions’

The OSCEdays forum contains many valuable things. Really well documented and ready to use resources are marked with “Solution”. Here is a list with a collection of them. For most it is self explanatory how to use them for interactive hands on sessions in an event. Some have extra remarks to support this. So browse the list and find possible activities and content.

Examples from the list:

• Open Source Business Models For Circular Economy. A design-thinking tool and workshop format on open source (business) ecosystems and the practical design of products & services for them. >
  
• Precious Plastic: Well documented machines you can build yourself to recycle plastic locally, build new products with it and set up a business around. >>
  
• ‘Make It Circular’: An open poster on circular making you can translate, print, hang up and run prototyping sessions with. >>

• Circular Wedding (Or Celebration): Learn from Seigos wedding tutorial and create a zero waste event circular style! You can have a circular wedding or adapt the methodology to any other event or celebration. >>
  
• PRe-Use & Re-Use Sessions: Find existing circular modularity in your environment and build infrastructures or products with them. >>
  
• Circular City Hacking: A list of urban interventions/city hacks to transform your city – and to experiment and campaign for the open source circular city. Run a hackathon or implementation session with them. >>

(more here)

Think about combining things! Build an urban garden with reused infrastructure and structures based on a unified grid for example

Call For Open Circularity Solutions!

Do you have great, open and well documented circularity solutions people could use locally, run events around and implement them in their city? For example a hardware that can be built during an event? Let us know Here!

Facilitation Of Open Solutions 

For most if not all of these resources you’ll need someone to facilitate a public session about them. Do it yourself: Pick a resource and implement it. This is already an event. But if you want to run a larger event with several sessions try to find people in your community interested in doing the same with other solutions. Sessions can be well prepared upfront or you can come together and have a deep look at the resource only at the event.

You can do this also university like: Build a group that wants to set up an event and then each of you picks one activity (solution) to prepare and run.

You can also reach out to the creators of the solution. Maybe they have some time.

2) Challenges, Talks, Workshops Of Your Local Actors

In almost every city there are people working on sustainability solutions. This might be companies or startups or other types of organizations like NGOs. They probably don’t use or build a lot of Open Source resources yet. Invite them to your event. There are a couple of things they can do:

TALKS

Most of them are probably ready to do a presentation. Talks are good, inspiring stories are important. But try to make your speakers not just deliver advertisement talks, but share really meaningful, enabling information and details (how is it working). You can ask your speakers about Openness, Open Source and transparency in the Q&A. Some might have heard about it already and have some ideas or opinions. You don’t have to convince them about Openness. All ideas are welcome.

WORKSHOPS

But maybe you can get them to do more than a talk. They can bring their product, open it – invite people to screw it open, ask questions about technical details, improve it together and so on. Find someone who can teach how to grow mushrooms, how to solder, how to avoid waste in your house etc. Some inspiration how to share solutions in other formats than talks can be found here.

‘CHALLENGES’

Challenges have been the core of the OSCEdays in the past. In a challenge a person, project or company presents and prepares a question or problem and invites people to help solving it. This often needs facilitation. Try to make sure there is good documentation of the problems and solutions afterwards. To get inspiration for challenges have a look here (formats) and here & here(content)

Ok. With this you should have some ideas what will or might happen at your event.

Some Helpful Resources

Pointers and resources for organizing and communicating your event.

• Funding: There are plenty of options how to fund an OSCEdays event: Sell tickets, try to find sponsors, apply for grants. Practical tips and resources that might help you to fund your event are collected and shared here.
  
• OSCEdays Graphic Design Files: We share all OSCEdays graphic designs under open licenses and in editable formats. You can use them and adapt them as you like. Many did in the past and created really beautiful remixes and additions to the available graphics. Have a look into our public graphic design folder.
  
• Video: In the °OSCE TV° category on our forum you can find tutorials how you can document and connect your event with video streamings.

Sign Up! How To Register Your Event

To get your event officially on the map we like you to register it by creating a topic about on our forum. With this you become visible on the global level and a start is made to connect your local activities to the global community.

The forum might look complicated at first but it isn’t. And we have an easy to follow step by step guide for registering your event. Continue here!

In that topic you will also find some suggestions how to make your local community use the forum to share information and collaborate with other cities. Start here!

Reprinted from oscedays. Find the original post here!

IMAGE CREDITS: 18L Module, by Nikusha Chkhaidze, CC-BY-SA; Bee, by Jon Sullivan, Public Domain; Mushrooms, by Dax & ZeroWasteLabs.Com; Open Structures Part, by Lukas Wegwerth, CC-BY-SA; Cargo, by The City Is Open Source, CC-BY-SA; Beer, by The City Is Open Source, CC-BY-SA; Make It Circular, by OSCEdays, CC-BY-SA; Biohof_arche_5012, by: Arche Zürich, CC-BY-SA; Extruder, by Precious Plastic, CC-BY-SA

The post OSCEdays Call For Local Organizers appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In this podcast, Michel Bauwens joins some dots together and explains why the open source movement, the growing prevalence of peer-to-peer sharing economy platforms and new technologies like blockchain create the potential to create a fundamentally different economic model that circulates vale between businesses, people and the environment, rather than extracts it. Bauwens believes that we should move to an economy that is built on infinite resources like knowledge, rather than finite materials, and we have the structure and technologies to achieve it.

Ken Webster is a leading author, teacher and thinker when it comes to the circular economy.

Photo by Theen …

The post Podcast: Michel Bauwens, How Peer-to-Peer Can Change the World appeared first on P2P Foundation.

And the more we grow, the more we eat away at the web of life on which we all depend.

We have known about this problem for decades now, but we’ve been told not to worry: As technology improves and becomes more efficient, we’ll be able to keep growing the economy while nonetheless reducing our impact on the natural world. The technical term for this is “green growth,” which requires absolute decoupling of GDP from material use. According to the theory, we can speed this process along by incentivizing innovation; if we tax carbon emissions and material extraction, we can spur companies to invest in more efficient tech.

It sounds great, it’s promoted at the highest levels by tech billionaires like Elon Musk and international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations, and it sits right at the center of big global plans like the Paris Climate Accord and the Sustainable Development Goals. We’re all hanging our collective future on this hope. But is it really possible?

Here’s the magic number: 50 billion tons. That’s how much of the Earth’s materials and life forms we can safely use each year. That includes everything from wood to plastic, fish to livestock, minerals to metals: all the physical stuff that we consume. Right now, we’re using about 80 billion tons each year–way over the limit. So for growth to be green, we need to somehow get back down to 50 billion tons despite expanding the GDP.

When green growth theory was first proposed, there was no evidence on whether it would actually work–it was purely speculative. But over the past few years, three major studies have set out to examine this question. All have arrived at the same rather troubling conclusion: Even under best-case scenario conditions, absolute decoupling of GDP growth from material use is not possible on a global scale.

It was a team of scientists led by Monika Dittrich that first pointed this out. They ran a model showing that under business-as-usual conditions, growth will drive global resource use to a staggering 180 billion tons per year by 2050. At more than three times the safe limit, that means game over for human civilization as we know it.

Then the team ran the model with the optimistic assumption that every nation on Earth immediately adopts best practice in efficiency, with all the best available technology. The results were a bit better: We would end up hitting 93 billion tons per year by 2050. But that’s not absolute decoupling, and it’s a far cry from anything approaching green growth.

A second team of scientists tested the same question again in 2016, and found that even aggressive measures like a carbon price as high as $250 per ton and a doubling of technological efficiency don’t do the trick. If we keep growing the global economy by 3% each year, they found, we’ll still hit about 95 billion tons by 2050. No absolute decoupling. No green growth.

Finally, last year the United Nations itself weighed in on the debate, hoping to settle the matter once and for all. It modelled a carbon price rising to a whopping $573 per ton, added a material extraction tax, and assumed rapid tech innovation spurred by strong government policy. The results? We hit 132 billion tons by 2050–even worse than the two previous studies found. Worse because this time the scientists included the “rebound effect”in their model. As gains in efficiency reduce the cost of commodities, demand for those commodities goes up, cancelling out some of the reductions in material use.

And let’s not forget: All three of these models use radically optimistic assumptions. We’re a long way from even testing a global carbon tax, much less a tax of $573 per ton; and we’re not on track to double our efficiency. In fact, quite the opposite: Right now our efficiency is getting worse, not better.Why the bad news? The main reason is that tech innovation just doesn’t work the way most of us assume. We know that Moore’s law says that chip performance doubles about every two years–but this doesn’t apply to material use. There are physical limits to material efficiency, and once we start to reach them then the scale effect of growth drives material use back up in the long run. For instance you might be able to produce a wooden table more efficiently, but you can’t produce a table out of nothing. In the end you’ll need a minimum amount of wood, and once you reach that limit, then any growth in table production is going to come along with a corresponding growth in wood use.

It would be hard to overstate the impact of these results. Right now, our only plan for dealing with the ecological emergency that’s staring us in the face is to hope that tech innovation and green growth will mitigate the coming disaster. Yes, we’re going to need all the wizardry we can get–but that alone is not going to be enough. The only real option is in fact much simpler and more obvious: We need to start consuming less.

The tricky bit is that our existing economic operating system–capitalism–has a design flaw at its core. It requires that we produce and consume more and more stuff each year. If we don’t, then firms collapse and people lose their jobs and livelihoods. So it’s time to make room for new systems to emerge–systems that don’t require endless exponential growth just to stay afloat. This is where we need to focus our creative energy, rather than clinging to the false hope of “green growth” fantasies.

There are lots of ways to get there. We could start by ditching GDP as an indicator of success in favor of a more balanced measure like the Genuine Progress Indicator, which accounts for negative “externalities” like pollution and material depletion. We could roll out a new money system that doesn’t pump our system full of interest-bearing debt. And we could start thinking about putting caps on material use, so that we never extract more than the Earth can regenerate.

The old generation of innovators believed that tech would allow us to subdue nature and bend it to our will. Our generation is waking up to a more hopeful truth: that our survival depends not on domination, but on harmony.

Jason Hickel is an anthropologist at the University of London who works on international development and global political economy, with an ethnographic focus on southern Africa. He writes for the Guardian and Al Jazeera English. His most recent book, The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets, is available now.

Photo by eelke dekker

The post Better Technology Isn’t The Solution To Ecological Collapse appeared first on P2P Foundation.

That’s how much of the Earth’s materials and life forms we can safely use each year, without destroying the web of life.  That includes everything from wood to plastic, fish to livestock, minerals to metals: all the physical stuff that we consume.

Right now, we’re using about 80 billion tons each year – way over the limit.  So for growth to be green, we need to somehow get back down to 50 billion tons despite expanding GDP.

When green growth theory was first mooted, there was no evidence on whether it would actually work – it was purely speculative.  But over the past few years, three major studies have set out to examine this question.

A team of scientists led by Monika Dittrich ran a model showing that under business-as-usual conditions, growth will drive global resource use to a staggering 180 billion tons per year by 2050.  At well over three times the safe limit, that means game over for human civilization as we know it.

Then the team ran the model with the optimistic assumption that every nation on Earth immediately adopts best practice in efficiency, with all the best available technology.  The results were a bit better: we would end up hitting 93 billion tons per year by 2050. But that’s not absolute decoupling, and it’s a far cry from anything approaching green growth.

A second team of scientists tested the same question again in 2016.  They chose a different approach: they put a price on carbon rising to $250 per ton, and assumed that we double our efficiency with rapid tech innovation.  The results were almost exactly the same. If we keep growing the global economy by 3% each year – which is what the World Bank and IMP say is required to stop this economic house of cards from collapsing  – they found that we’ll still hit about 95 billion tons by 2050. No absolute decoupling. No green growth.

Finally, last year the UN Environment Program itself – one of the main cheerleaders of green growth theory – weighed in on the debate, hoping to settle the matter once and for all.   They modelled a carbon price rising to a whopping $573 per ton, slapped on a material extraction tax, and assumed rapid tech innovation spurred by strong government policy.  The results? We hit 132 billion tons by 2050 – even worse than the two previous studies found. Worse because this time the scientists included the “rebound effect” in their model.  As gains in efficiency reduce the cost of commodities, demand for those commodities goes up, cancelling out some of the reductions in material use.

And let’s not forget: all three of these models use radically optimistic assumptions.  We’re a long way from even testing a global carbon tax, much less a tax of $573 per ton; and we’re not on track to double our efficiency.  In fact, quite the opposite: right now our efficiency is getting worse, not better.

We cannot rely on the myth of ‘green growth’. It’s trustworthy as ‘healthy cigarettes’ or ‘clean coal’.

So it’s time to make room for new systems to emerge – systems that don’t require endless exponential growth just to stay afloat.

There are lots of ways to get there.

We could start by ditching GDP as an indicator of success in favor of a more balanced measure like the Genuine Progress Indicator, which accounts for negative “externalities” like pollution and material depletion.   We could roll out a new money system that doesn’t pump our system full of interest-bearing debt. And we could start thinking about putting caps on material use, so that we never extract more than the Earth can regenerate.

The old generation of innovators believed that tech would allow us to subdue nature and bend it to our will.  Our generation is waking up to a more hopeful truth: that our survival depends not on domination, but on harmony.

More information on post-growth economics

The Post-Growth Institute – https://www.postgrowth.org/post-growth-economics

Culture Hackers towards #PostGrowth: share, remix, create your own content.

Cross-posted from The Rules. 

The post Can We Trust ‘Green Growth’? DIY Fact Check appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Extracted from: http://www.audacities.co/#about-audacities

Productive Cities are Prosperous Cities

Cities are where the battle for a sustainable, equitable world will be won or lost.

The majority of people in the world live in cities, and cities are now the epicentre of economic power (600 cities will generate 60% of GDP by 2025) as well as the primary drivers of impacts on planetary life support systems.

Cities are positive human creations in so many ways, but right now, they are also often extractive and destructive to both people and planet in how they are built and maintained.

We need to rebuild cities from the inside out so that they are regenerative.

Remaking Cities

Creating prototypes of more self-sufficient cities, through relocalised and distributed production of food, energy and manufacturing, will help cities progress towards carbon and waste reduction objectives.

Relocalised production can also help contribute to developing more meaningful, secure livelihoods for people in a world where traditional jobs are fast disappearing, through automation, offshoring, casualised work, and an increasing number of people working as freelancers.

Enabling people to produce more of what they need for themselves – through providing open access to productive technologies, fostering a circular economy, and the availability of a shared design commons – can contribute to making cities regenerative.

This approach is known as ‘design global, manufacture local’.

Extracted from: http://www.audacities.co/#what-we-do

Prototypes
AUDAcities will establish a prototypes in interested Australian cities based on the Fab City Global Initiative’s Poble Nou district in Barcelona, which aims to demonstrate how relocalising production of food, energy and manufacturing can work. These ‘fractals’ of self-sufficient, productive cities can help inform and catalyse a wider agenda of industrial and economic transformation.

Photo by michelle-robinson.com

The post Project Of The Day: Audacities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“The proposal did not get through the second phase due to the ‘lack of impact and concretion’. We believe that this project needs to happen, and we will make it happen.

Introduction:

There is a pressing need to reimagine cities and how they operate in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our time. Cities hold the potential for the reinvention of the current linear economy paradigm to a Circular Economy, and the Fab City Prototypes project aims to accelerate this paradigm change, allowing consumers to become actors of the design, prototyping and production processes at the local scale, while sharing knowledge globally. We build on the premise that individual change is essential to catalyse a collective transition towards more sustainable lifestyles. In this regard, citizens need to engage in self-transformation — which can be enabled through new product cultures and new cultures of design and production. The immediate outcome of the project will establish the necessary urban frameworks and lighthouses to guide policy makers to scale the results to metropolitan and bioregional levels. This will be fostered by partnerships with industry and local authorities. Linking micro-enterprise and citizen-led spaces with corporate and government sectors will create an ideal test ground to develop and implement approaches for an inclusive and impactful Circular Economy. The ambition is to pave the way for locally productive and globally connected cities, that foster social cohesion and well-being.

1.1 Objectives

The main objective of the Fab City Prototypes project is to set up a European experimentation playground — on- and offline — to implement, test and iterate innovative business opportunities at the local scale in cities’ neighbourhoods, and create open markets for products and services that support the development of Circular Economy. The project will consolidate a global knowledge network that shares tools and best practices for the construction of new productive and sustainable models of urban living. Such an approach needs the co-creation of implementation strategies with key stakeholders: local communities of citizens, SMEs, policy makers, industrial partners and corporations. The results of these activities will fulfil the following objectives:

STRATEGY > To develop a joint multiscalar strategy for the relocalisation of production between pilots based on the RIS3 process specified in the Smart Specialisation Strategy. Such a strategy has a focus on leveraging local capacities, capabilities, and resources in neighbourhoods, and to connect them with larger-scale ecosystems, including Smart Specialisation Regions and trans-European partners.

PROTOTYPES > To select a series of experimentation areas (pilots) in partner cities in order to pilot interventions and deployments together with citizens (users, producers, co-producers), using Fab Labs as innovation and cultural hubs at the local scale. Local consortiums will be established in the pilot cities in order to bring together stakeholders: ideally SMEs, startups, makers, communities, policy makers and companies — carefully considering gender balance and inclusion. In all the pilot cities there are established consortiums, or they are being organised. Experimentation areas will focus on five thematic lines which facilitate the comparison and sharing of results to inform the iteration process. Each one of the themes will involve consortium partners and third parties who already expressed interest in participating in the project, and will be open for new collaborators to join. So far there are confirmed:

• Fashion and textiles, partner: Nike (confirmed as a third party for the next stage);
• Furniture and household products, partner: IKEA (Corporation, third party);
• Electronics, partner: Fairphone (SME, consortium partner);
• Food, partners: local restaurants and food supply businesses (SMEs);
• Mobility, partner: Open Source Vehicle (third party).

DIGITAL TOOLS > To integrate ecosystems of various open datasets and APIs in a common platform in order to:

• Identify: map local source materials, manufacturers, producers, artisans and other activities connected to circular economy and local production at neighbourhoods, and scalable to cities. The goal is to bridge with larger scale supply chains, in order to connect supply and demand for local production.
• Measure: metrics that measure the impact of Circular Economy products and services in the construction of the Fab City Prototypes vision. A common open standard for cities will be developed, based on previous work done by the consortium partners including UN-Habitat’s Urban Data, EU Open Data Portal, Smart Specialisation Platform, and Fab City Dashboard.
• Catalyse: to support the use of existing marketplaces and platforms that enable sharing practices, re-use of products and distributed manufacturing in each city using local supply chains and infrastructure.
• Share: a platform to share best practices and evidence among cities and consortium partners, concerning policies adopted, projects tested and citizen engagement strategies used. This platform will include instructional materials and resources to implement circular economy practices in design, innovation and digital fabrication processes.

1.2 Relation to the work programme

The Fab City Prototypes is a large scale demonstrator. It can be understood as a distributed city connected through online tools: the pilots in cities (Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Milano, London, Zurich, Ioannina) will allow onsite experimentation with end-users and local ecosystems, while the sharing platforms will allow common metrics, knowledge and information exchange. For example: designs can travel across the demonstrator without having to be shipped physically — bits travel while atoms stay in cities.

Pilots will provide opportunities to prototype, test and demonstrate the value generated from new relationships between different stakeholders in cities/regions, following the Smart Specialisation Strategy in each one of these, and existing guidelines such as the European Commission’s Blueprint for cities and regions as launch pads for digital transformation. A major challenge in transitioning toward and achieving a Circular Economy is its viability for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and its implementation at local levels. This is an area where the greatest impact can be achieved. It is also the connection and interrelation of the small scale with global markets and global factors where ICT technologies (such as open source platforms to share and commercialise designs) will play a significant role in connecting all pilots.

The project aligns with the ambition of Europe to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. The key goals of the project are aligned with the primary directives of the Circular Economy Action Plan by contributing to the reduction of municipal waste and packaging by 2030. The project will prioritize the implementation of ecodesign principles, food waste as a resource for local materials that could be inserted in supply chains, and co-creation activities where users can become co-designers and co-producers in places like Fab Labs and community production spaces. We aim to scale best practice not only at the European level but also globally through the existing network of Fab Labs (1.100 labs) and maker-spaces which will be following the project, together with the existing Fab City Network (16 official members). The European Commission has promoted an ambitious program on Circular Economy by establishing “a common EU target for recycling 65% of municipal waste by 2030; a common EU target for recycling 75% of packaging waste by 2030; a binding target to reduce landfilling to maximum of 10% of municipal waste by 2030.” To be achieved, these goals require the involvement of civil society in creating new opportunities for materials to be used as resources for local production, and by establishing new supply chains between SMEs and industries at the city and regional levels. The Smart Specialisation Strategies can be used as a common approach between regions.

Sex and gender considerations

The participating organisations actively promote equal representation of men and women in employment and decision-making, and removing institutional barriers to gender equality. The project will ensure women’s participation as active members in the different consortium entities. We support the mainstreaming of gender issues in circular economy business model research and policy, as a balanced gender composition improves the sustainability and quality of European business development. Gender consideration and equality will be carefully considered in our deliverables and overall communication strategies, as well as promoted and ensured through the composition of the Working Groups, and business models and policies to be developed. The current personnel making up the consortium (from all partners) results in near gender parity, with 35% female and 65% male staff at its first stage, aiming for a 50% and 50%, at least, for the final submission in phase two. Gender equality and gender balance will be a concern if there are any changes in personnel and activities within pilots and events.

1.3 Concept and methodology

1.3.1 Concept

A key aim of the Fab City approach is to change how cities source and use resources materials by shifting from a ‘Products In Trash Out’ (PITO) model to a ‘Data In Data Out’ (DIDO) self-sufficiency model. This means that more production of energy, food and products takes place in the city in response to local needs, fostering innovation in local SMEs and startups. As a result, the city’s imports and exports mostly occur in the form of data, ranging from knowledge to design and code. The application of this model can potentially reduce the energy that is consumed and the pollution that is generated when cities import goods and materials, which accounts for 70% of global carbon dioxide emissions. However, for this to be effective the city needs to be connected to a larger innovation ecosystem that produces the open source designs, code and knowledge — a digital “commons” — necessary to nurture the productive ecosystem at the local level.

The benefits of such an approach are not only environmental, but cultural, social and economic. The Fab City model has the potential to foster economic prosperity by creating new types of jobs and professions related to the knowledge economy and the development and implementation of new approaches and technological solutions. This includes advanced manufacturing (digital fabrication, Industry 4.0), distributed energy production, new cryptocurrencies for value exchange, and food production (community supported agriculture) and circular economy (urban permaculture). Moreover, the approach aims to foster new collaborations between the government and citizens as well as a renewed education system based on learning-by-doing, finding solutions for local needs through digital fabrication technologies, and sharing them with others through the global network.

1.3.2 Methodology

Multi-scalar approach: From neighbourhoods to cities, to systemic change. The Fab City Prototypes project applies a new approach to the re-localisation of production in cities and the use of digital fabrication technologies at different scales: from domestic 3d printers that could use recyclable materials coming from food waste; to the neighbourhood community production spaces (Fab Labs) as co-creation platforms; the city-wide smart and flexible factories that manufacture products on demand based on open source designs; and the global supplies of highly standardized products and materials. Each one of these scales needs to be connected and articulated to act as a complementary ecosystem for local production. The city pilots will enable the articulation of these ecosystems in order to test new forms of value and business generation within the city consortiums, informed by Smart Specialisation Strategies in regions, which will be synchronised with the transversal tools and research supported by the consortium as a whole. The Fab City Prototypes project has a strong emphasis on business model innovation for circular economies, commons-based production and open source. The project will explore, through practical experimentation, how businesses can leverage open source and circularity principles to develop sound business models that can boost economic growth, employment and resilience. The project will design and test a modular integrated toolkit based on the existing sustainable and commons-based business model innovation platforms and methods: Circular.academy, Pentagrowth, and Remodel.

Work Package structure:

The project is structured in 7 interconnected work packages (WP), which comprise activities based on existing frameworks and experience from consortium members. These activities will focus on the role of end-users and SMEs in a new paradigm of distributed production.

Consortium as a whole: The Fab City Prototypes will build a transeuropean demonstrator in cities that allows 25 different organisations — including SMEs, corporations, city governments (all participating cities will count on their local government as a consortium partner) and research centers — to develop sustainable business models for the local implementation of Circular Economy products and services emerging from SMEs and startups.

• Fab Lab Barcelona | IAAC: Will act as coordinator of the Fab City Prototypes project, and will conduct the main project management tasks in order to articulate the development of experiments in the pilot cities, and the development of online tools for distributed assessment and production. Fab Lab Barcelona will provide existing ongoing projects such as fablabs.io, Fab City Dashboard and Smart Citizen.
• City of Barcelona — Ajuntament de Barcelona: The City of Barcelona will support the local pilot activities, linking them with the Barcelona Digital City 2017–2020 plan, which is the city’s roadmap to drive technological sovereignty for citizens. Poblenou experimentation area will be linked to the Maker District and Ateneus de Fabricacion (the public network of Fab Labs). The city will facilitate the access to open data and public infrastructure to support the project activities.
• Waag Society (Research): Waag Society, home to Fab Lab Amsterdam, Textile Lab Amsterdam and Open Wetlab, is in charge of coordinating project pilots at large and coordinates the local pilots in Amsterdam in close collaboration with Metabolic and Pakhuis de Zwijger. Pilots in Amsterdam are concentrated on finding linkages between the city center and the surrounding countryside — and between the HORECA industry and makers inside the city — to find the opportunities for transforming consistent volumes of food waste into valuable inputs for decentralized agricultural and industrial processes in and around the city.
• Danish Design Center (Research and Development): Danish Design Centre will be responsible for planning and executing the Copenhagen pilot project, which aims to investigate and uncover the potential of local manufacturing as well as test the feasibility of the alleged new manufacturing revolution on industry-level as well as within new waves of smaller, yet scalable, digital manufacturing startups and SMEs. It does this by focusing on two objectives: Exploring the demand side, and exploring the supply side.
• Royal College of Art, London (Academic Research): The RCA will be responsible for providing design expertise (product, service and system) building on previously funded re-distributed manufacturing network and development of a design framework for viable circular and distributed production. In collaboration with Machines Room they will lead the executing of the pilot in London.
• Fab City Grand Paris (Association — Network): The role of the association Fab City Grand Paris is to coordinate the works on the Fab City Paris Prototype as well as to facilitate the collaboration between the fablab ecosystem, industries and the authorities. The Paris prototype will leverage the local expertise of the association’s member organisations, in areas like industrial design and digital manufacturing, architecture and urban planning, circular and collaborative economies, open source, urban agriculture, food innovation and social entrepreneurship.
• Metabolic (Research and Development): Metabolic is responsible for providing the circularity and sustainability expertise to the project, particularly knowledge of circular and resilient city development through the valorization of new streams of materials and information. In practical terms, Metabolic aims to bring the expertise on creating and running “De Ceuvel” (De Ceuvel). De Ceuvel is an award-winning, sustainable planned workplace for creative and social enterprises on a former shipyard adjacent to the Johan van Hasselt kanaal off the river IJ in Amsterdam North.
• Joint Research Centre (Research): The JRC contributions will stimulate and develop evidence-based and future-oriented policy strategies, using a wide range policy lab toolbox, and engaging an extended network of local, regional, national, EU and other international stakeholders through co-creation and foresight workshops. The Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Policy Unit / EU Policy Lab (JRC.I.2) will be leading, with inputs from the Modelling, Indicators & Impact Evaluation Unit (JRC.I.1), the Territorial Development Unit (JRC.B.3), and the Industrial Leadership and Circular Economy Unit (JRC.B.5).
• P2P Foundation (Research and Development): The main role of the P2P Foundation will thus concern the documentation and sharing of practice-based knowledge produced by the pilots. Its research network along with the broader P2P community will leverage the metrics, assessment and design tools and the common infrastructure to produce, enrich and maintain a knowledge commons.
• i2Cat (Research and Development): Digital platform development such as Plataforma Industrial 4.0 and tools for data treatment developed in projects such as iSPACE. i2CAT will connect Fab City Prototypes project with the existing initiatives such as Smart Specialization Platform “Industry 4.0 & SMEs” with regional strategies such as RIS3CAT and with local industries that participate in the project Anella Industrial.
• OuiShare (Network): OuiShare will support the work on circular, open and collaborative business models, as well as methodologies for citizen participation and urban innovation. OuiShare will also support the dissemination of the project results throughout its vast network of entrepreneurs, communities, policymakers and companies (10K registered members, 40K newsletter subscribers, 100 local group managers) in Europe and beyond.
• UN-Habitat: UN-Habitat’s Urban Data Observatory will provide open APIs to the Fab City Dashboard to develop a common metrics for all the participating cities. UN-Habitat Urban Agenda is aligned with the Fab City vision, and it is now present in 90 countries around the world.
• Ideas for Change (SME): Ideas for Change will support the pilot enterprises in designing and implementing business models and engagement strategies by means of workshops, one to one sessions and mentorship. It will apply the Pentagrowth model and toolkit for open and accelerated growth, which has already been used by companies looking to transition to more contributive strategies while sustaining competitiveness.
• Pakhuis de Zwijger (Cultural organisation): Pakhuis de Zwijger will support the pilot projects in their visibility and connectivity through their Amsterdam based stage and different Dutch and European networks. Pakhuis de Zwijger will organize different events in which relevant stakeholders (a.o. government, businesses, science institutions, civil society and city makers) engage in a dialogue on a.o. (social) innovation, collaboration and financial structures.
• Machines Room (Fab Lab): Machines Room will act as the central node of activity within the Maker Mile, providing digital fabrication infrastructure and an associated education program. As part of the Fab CIty initiative, Machines Room will work with early stage redistributed manufacturing businesses in the local area to test business models and to assess where value lies for local employment, local supply chains, customer attitudes, materials and waste.
• City of Copenhagen — Copenhagen Solutions Lab: Copenhagen Solutions Lab, City of Copenhagen will function as the city strategic partner. CSL will offer expertise in different forms of public-private partnerships and connect the project to a substantial network of local partners. As city partner participation will ensure that the pilot and outcome also will be rooted in city policy. Finally, Copenhagen Solutions Lab will in the project function as access point to Fab Lab UNDERBROEN which offers relevant production facilities and a network of relevant SMV’s works with local, distributed production.
• Fab Lab Berlin by Makea Industries GmbH (Fab Lab): Fab Lab Berlin brings a state-of-the-art digital fabrication infrastructure and a related education program to the Berlin group. As part of the Fab City initiative, Fab Lab Berlin will identify, develop and test both demand- and supply-side potentials of business models based on local small batch design and production. However, the focus is put on the supply-side potentials and more precisely on three categories of potentials: novel materials, processes and applications. Fab Lab Berlin will further leverage the resources of its local, national and international network of research & education partners, makers & startups, industrial partners and policymakers for the sake of the initiative.
• Open State (Research and Development): Offering experience in setting up productive and diversified partner consortiums as well as designing a process for effective group decisions and output. “Transition design” means to form a holistic vision and story among all parts and partners, which are capable to tell one convincing message to the larger public. Documentation and open-sourcing of processes and products developed throughout the project. Winning over institutional and corporate city partners in Berlin.
• Politecnico di Milano (Academic Research): Polimi can embed into the project an evidence-based approach for policy formulation and evaluation, leveraging on the results of the development and application of a framework to evaluate pilots (results and impacts). In cooperation with the JRC EU Policy Lab, Polimi could support the application of a policy lab approach to the development of the Fab City concept, while applying a service design perspective. Finally, it could candidate the City of Milan as a possible site to host a pilot project.
• Ecovala (SME): Ecovala operates the Circular Academy, a training and coaching methodology aiming at facilitating the creation of circular business models. The methodology will support the transition of participating SMEs towards circular economy.
• Provenance (SME): Provenance will bring its knowledge of blockchain technology to create transparency in supply chains — including linking digital with physical, creating blockchain backed materials journeys and visualising materials flows and insights. They will assess, advise and provide a platform (user accounts, API etc) when needed, to develop and test blockchain technology for creating transparent local supply chains in the pilots of the project and in the creation of the Fab City Dashboard platform.
• Zurich University of the Arts (ZhdK) (Academic Research): Leverage links with local maker groups: Fablab Zürich: http://zurich.fablab.ch/; Dynamo (provided by the city of Zürich): http://www.dynamo.ch/; the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society: http://www.mechatronicart.ch/mechartlab/. Implementation of new Tools (Digital Fabrication) to the design process and in Co-Design (Next gen.CAD, OnShape.com etc) to the design process. ZHdK could host a city pilot in partnership with local SMEs and organisations.
• Fairphone (SME): Fairphone will provide their experience in the market with FP2, and will connect with the network of Fablabs as technology knowledge / manufacturing hubs, that can help support activities related to the lifetime extension of modular (easy to repair) devices. Fairphone is looking into opportunities for a more distributed repair experience in which the consumer is involved (similar to repair cafes).
• Zicla (SME): Zicla will contribute in turning waste generated by cities into new products for these cities as business opportunities, and to develop projects based on waste and to create innovative products that contribute to efficient, sustainable and, friendly business growth that pursues attending to cities’ needs.
• Zero Waste Europe (Network): Zero Waste Europe will support the dissemination of the best practices and results of the project through its network of more than 350 municipalities in Europe committed to achieve Zero Waste via its CSO members in 20 European countries. As an NGO specialised on waste prevention and management, Zero Waste Europe will support the work on circular economy business models, local policies and ecodesign, providing the consortium with an expertise developed for many years both on the ground and at the policy level.
• IKEA (Inter IKEA Systems): Inter IKEA Systems will contribute in the facilitation in pilots. IKEA is present in all the cities where pilots are located, and it is expected that material flows will be connected between these and community production spaces (Fab Labs, makerspaces). IKEA will contribute in the theme of furniture and households products.

Read more about the ambition and the potential impact of the project here.

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Open Call For Participants

– A 2 day open collaborative online event dedicated to documenting circular economy solutions –

(Forum Topic)

Good documentation is key for decentralised collaboration and the collective set up of a sustainable circular economy. And good documentation needs its own time and attention. So OSCEdays starts a new and ongoing series of events called: Writers Weekends. And we invite you to join us!

Do you have an interesting circular economy solution, project or methodology? And you always wanted to document it properly – so others can build on it and engage in collaboration with you? But you never found the time to do it? Join our OSCEdays writers weekend.

Over the course of 48 hours we will create together globally connected documentation. We invite you to create documentation in the format of an ACTION protocol. But any form of documentation is welcome. The created ACTIONS and documentation can be used by everyone on the globe – for example during the next global OSCEdays event.

Join us.

For complete information, please go to the OSCEdays site.

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