It has been roughly a decade after the days that people first discussed Open Design. It has hitherto evolved from a concept, to a movement, to a viable business choice.

The RepRap 3D printer has been one of the first and most successful examples of open design. A 3D printer that could replicate itself is more than a design solution; it is a bold statement on the technological capacities of our time. A thing built to create other things, now creating copies of itself. Creation, being one of the core human characteristics, is now embedded in our creations.

It is, thus, no wonder it has sparked a wave of enthusiasm across diverse communities. Different visions of open innovation, distributed manufacturing and an automated self-sufficient society embody, to a lesser or larger extent the notion of open design. Though as much as the vision extends, the actual practice remains rather restrained. And while RepRap based 3D printers may have evolved to a billion dollar industry, industrial uptake of open design and open manufacturing is, arguably, still not there to see.

Part of the problem, as it is often the case, is structural. As a social activity, the open sharing of ideas and collaboration to create useful things by the users themselves has a self-evident merit. It can lead to better technologies, more learning from the side of the users, broader access to means of making and less waste, due to on-demand production and better maintenance capacity. But as a business option it goes almost against the foundations of everything we understand as the purpose of an enterprise.

In the end of the day, is able to survive to the extent it succeeds to exchange their products and services for money. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations, identifies this practice of exchange as a core survival tactic amongst individuals too. In a society where people produce themselves only a small fraction of the things they need, they exchange the products of their labour with these of other people to get the rest of it. It is then the common sense that markets and money is in fact the very purpose of the economy.

From a different perspective, the economy is about provisioning. It is the sphere of human activity that serves to cover societal needs: from the basic means of subsistence, to things and actions meant for pleasure and self-actualisation. From this point of view, sharing is actually a very economic function. Even more, on many instances it serves to create and distribute vital resources much more efficiently than markets. However, at least until recently, sharing could not be generalised as a capacity providing for human needs at scale. Therefore, it was mainly restrained to those domains where the costs of enforcing the rules necessary for market exchange were simply too high to bear.

But what the internet revolution brought about is much higher capabilities for communication and coordination based on shared information and human sociality. The sphere of these domains where market exchange is not the common sense has rapidly expanded. It became possible for people to pool, rather than exchange, the products of their labour on much greater scale, thus creating a much more generalised capacity for societies to serve their needs.

That is of course not to suggest that markets and money are simply done away with sharing and open design. Nevertheless, they no longer serve as the sole imperatives stimulating human creativity and coordination, if they ever have been. And it is vital for the flourishing of our societies to recognise, support and further stimulate these dynamics in our economic institutions. Even when access to better design and user experience is now more available than ever, businesses, especially small ones, will not invest in these possibilities before clear returns can be foreseen, in terms of covering their overheads, wages and taxes.

In the transitioning from the feudal order to the industrial one, no markets could ever exist and no exchange could take place if there weren’t for the provisions and enforcement of property rights and trade agreements. Likewise, in order to reap the benefits of the new technological capabilities, we need legal provisions to re-establish the relationship of businesses with their user communities now largely participating in the design and production; support measures like universal basic income for workers to be emancipated and devote their creative energy where it most needed in their local societies; and collective institutions that generalise and support pooling of productive capacities wherever possible, from digital platforms of open design, software and knowledge to open spaces for collaborative production, distributed manufacturing and needs-based design for societal needs.

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On Sunday 9th of June, four selected makers presented their agricultural solutions at Tzoumakers, our rural makerspace in Kalentzi (Ioannina, Greece). The workshop has enabled participants to explore a new dimension in making, to increase their competences and to discover that open source solutions in agriculture can be developed through knowledge diffusion and collaboration for mutual benefit.

Here are photos of the four solutions:

The project will continue with a final promotion of two developed prototypes in a European design event. Updates will be provided on our Facebook page.

We want to thank all the participants and wish them all the best for their future!

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Makers and the related  activities are more often observed in vibrant cities, encapsulating diverse communities of designers, engineers and innovators. They flourish around luscious spaces and events, where talent and ideas are abound. Pioneer cities, like Barcelona, Madrid, London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, have gradually evolved to prominent centres of the maker culture.

But what about places where these elements are less eminent? It is often said that some of the most advanced technologies are needed in the least developed places. And here the word “technology” conveys a broader meaning than mere technical solutions and enhancements of human capacities. Etymologically, technology derives from the ancient Greek words “techne”, i.e. art or craft, and “logos”, which refers to a form of systematic treatment. In this sense, technology is practically inseparable from the human elements of craftsmanship, ingenuity and knowledge. Elements that are as embedded in our very existence, as the practice of sharing with our neighbours. Especially in situations of physical shortage and scantness, solidarity and cooperation are the most effective survival strategies.

This is the case of a small mountainous village in North-Western Greece called Kalentzi. It is situated in the village cluster of Tzoumerka, a place abundant in natural and cultural wealth, yet scarce in the economic means of welfare. The local population mostly depends on low-intensity and small-scale activities combining arboreal cultivation, husbandry and beekeeping. Investment was never overflowing in the region, let alone in today’s Greek economy in life support.

A local community of farmers assembled around a practical problem: finding appropriate tools for their everyday activities. Established market channels mostly provide with tools and machinery that are apt for the flatlands. Acquisition and maintenance costs are unsustainably high, while people often have to adapt their techniques to the logic of the machines. They begun with simple meetups where they created a favourable environment to share, reflect and ideate on their common challenges and aspirations, facilitated by a group of researchers from the P2P Lab, a local research collective focused on the commons.

Soon the discussion was already saturated and they started building together a tool for hammering fencing-poles into the ground. Several tools and methods have been used for this task for ages, though each one with its associated difficulties and dangers. Some farmers climb on ladders to hammer the poles, while others use barrels. However, it’s the combined effort of hammering while maintaining one’s balance that is particularly challenging, whereas there are often two people required for the job.

Interesting ideas were already in place to solve this problem. Designs were drafted on a flipchart with a couple of markers and the ones more available brought some of their own tools, like a cut saw and an electric welder, to build a prototype.

That has been the birth of Tzoumakers: a community-driven agricultural makerspace in Tzoumerka, Greece. Tzoumakers is more than an unfortunate wordplay of “Tzoumerka” and the maker culture; it is about a unique confluence of the groundbreaking elements of the latter, with the rich traditional heritage of the former. A distinctive synthesis that transcends both into a notion that seeks to create solutions that are on-demand and locally embedded, yet conceived and shareable on a global cognitive level.

It is important to emphasise that Tzoumakers is not a place that develops new tools ‘in house’. Rather it builds upon the individual ingenuity of its community and remains open for everyone to participate in this process. Through collective work, field testing and representation new tools may be released and further shared to benefit others with similar problems. Many of the necessary innovations are already there; the role of Tzoumakers is to collect, formalize and disseminate them.

But it’s also important to understand that Tzoumakers, much like its tools and solutions, cannot provide ready-made blueprints for solutions to be simply copy-pasted elsewhere. The same applies to the projects that have been its inspiration, such as L’ Atelier Paysan and Farm Hack, which cannot convey one unified cosmopolitan vision for the agricultural sector. The same process of connection, collaboration and reflection has to be followed on every different context, whether rich or poor, vibrant or desolate, in abundance or scarcity. But it is this combination of human creativity, craftsmanship, meaningful work and sharing that arguably embodies a true, pervasive and “cosmolocal” spirit for the maker culture.

Notes:

Tzoumakers and the P2P Lab are supported by the project “Phygital: Catalysing innovation and entrepreneurship unlocking the potential of emerging production and business models”, implemented under the Transnational Cooperation Programme Interreg V-B “Balkan – Mediterranean 2014-2020”, co-funded by the European Union and the National Funds of the participating countries.

The post The Birth of an Open Source Agricultural Community: The Story of Tzoumakers appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The selection of the designers was made by members of the local community, informed by the following criteria:

• Does the solution fit with the values and principles of small-scale farming systems?
• Is the solution developed according to expressed user needs?
• Is the solution easily reproduced and adaptable?

The selected designers who will lead the manufacturing of 4 prototypes during the workshop are:

• Andrè Rocha, Adjunct Professor at ESELx-IPL and a senior product and interaction designer.
• Aurèle Macé, Assistant Researcher in the Sony CSL Sustainability team with a focus on open-source robotic systems.
• Iason Pantazis, Architect and co-founder of Fab Lab Ioannina.
• Lakis Ioannou, Maker and beekeeper.

We wish to thank all applicants for their contributions. The workshop will take place from June 5 to June 9 at our rural makerspace “Tzoumakers” in Kalentzi, NW Greece. It will be open for everyone so we hope you join us!

This event is organised in the context of the Distributed Design Market Platform Creative Europe project.

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The P2P Lab is happy to announce the launch of “Open source agriculture: Co-create with Tzoumakers” , celebrating the gathering of designers, makers and farmers who are adapting to the digitised world. The workshop will be hosted at the rural makerspace “Tzoumakers”, which is located in NW Greece.

 1. Introduction and background

The P2P Lab is a not-for-profit organisation based in Ioannina, Greece. It is dedicated to research around peer-to-peer dynamics in technology, society and economy. It works for the development and maintenance of a global knowledge commons, encompassing a global community of researchers and activists.

Currently, the P2P Lab aims to create awareness and promote an emerging collaborative productive model of agriculture, based on the conjunction of commons-based peer production with desktop manufacturing. Agriculture is a key activity in the peripheral and less-developed regions of the EU and a crucial productive sector. It is a field in which ready-to-apply open source hardware and software solutions have already been produced and, thus, can be implemented and improved. Considering the fragmentation of the existing abundant ​open source projects in relation to agriculture, the replication, sharing and improvement of solutions is hindered.

To facilitate interaction and create ​feedback loops among makers, designers and farmers, the P2P Lab is organising a 5-day workshop in Ioannina (NW Greece). The workshop will build upon our experience gained from the previous year, when makers around Europe gathered at a local makerspace for asylum seekers in Ioannina and co-created solutions with a local refugee community. The workshop will now take place at Tzoumakers, a rural makerspace situated in a small mountainous village called Kalentzi. The latter is part of the village cluster of Tzoumerka in Ioannina, a place abundant in cultural and natural wealth but scarce in the economic means of welfare.

The main aim of the workshop is to familiarise the local community with open source technologies developed within the EU and, ideally, connect hubs (e.g. Fab Labs) that provide technical infrastructures for development. This may create a network of open source software/hardware communities and local farmers that overcome barriers through knowledge diffusion and collaboration for their mutual benefit.

2. Invitation to apply

The P2P Lab is looking for 4 designers, makers or enthusiasts to join the workshop in Kaletzi (Ioannina). Selected designers will introduce their technological solution related to agriculture to the local community and manufacture it with their help, while keeping local biophysical conditions in mind.

Travel, accommodation and per diems of the grantees will be covered by the P2P Lab.

Ηere are the general requirements for applicants:

• The designers should be based in the EU, while the solution may originate elsewhere.
• The solutions must be available under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0).
• Each solution should be fully developed within 3 days or less.

Please find below the selection criteria and timeline for this call. If you would like to apply, we ask you to fill in the application form and send it to us no later than Friday, 8 March 2019 22:00 CET.

3. Selection criteria and conditions

The submitted applications will be reviewed and selected by the local community in light of the criteria and the conditions described below:

• Does the solution fit with the values and principles of small-scale farming systems?
• Is the solution developed according to expressed user needs?
• Is the solution easily reproduced and adaptable?

4. Procedure and timeline

To apply for this call, please fill in the application form via this link.

The deadline is 8 March 2019 22:00 CET. The decision will be announced at the P2P Foundation blog on Monday, 25 March 2019.

The workshop will take place in June 2019 (exact dates to be confirmed).

For queries, you may contact us at [email protected].

This event is organised in the context of the Distributed Design Market Platform Creative Europe project.

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(e.g., open knowledge and design) with local manufacturing and automation technologies (from 3D printing and CNC machines to low-tech tools and crafts). This convergence could catalyze the transition to new inclusive and circular production models, such as the “design global, manufacture local” (DGML) model. DGML describes the processes through which design is developed as a global digital commons, whereas the manufacturing takes place locally, through shared infrastructures and with local biophysical conditions in check. COSMOLOCALISM is a pilot-driven investigation of the DGML phenomenon that seeks to understand relevant organizational models, their evolution, and their broader political economy/ecology and policy implications. Through the lens of diverse case studies and participatory action research, the conditions under which the DGML model thrives will be explored.

COSMOLOCALISM has three concurrent streams: democratization; innovation; and sustainability. First, DGML governance practices will be studied, patterns will be recognized, and their form, function, cultural values, and structure will be determined. Second, the relevant open innovation ecosystems and their potential to reorient design and manufacturing practices will be examined. Third, selected DGML products will be evaluated from an environmental sustainability perspective, involving both qualitative and quantitative methods. The interdisciplinary nature of COSMOLOCALISM will explore new horizons to improve our understanding of how to create sustainable economies through the commons.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

The candidate is expected to focus on the sustainability stream of the COSMOLOCALISM project. The objective is to assess the environmental sustainability of DGML artifacts empirically. What is the ecological footprint of a product (e.g., a 3D printer, a digitally fabricated beehive) that has been globally designed and locally manufactured? How well does it fit into the existing natural and cultural environment of its application?

The candidate will conduct life-cycle assessments (LCA) of at least two DGML technological solutions. The candidate should have a strong background in the field of LCA with relevant technical skills and practical knowledge. Master students with practical experience in LCA will also be considered. The position is an excellent opportunity for engineers looking to expand their expertise in social science research given the interdisciplinary nature of the project. Feel free to contact Prof. Vasilis Kostakis for any inquiries: vasileios.kostakis at taltech.ee.

The ultimate goal is to contribute to sustainable transitions research, formulating a groundbreaking research and action agenda which will identify techno-economic opportunities and challenges that are often fundamentally different from any our society has experienced before. COSMOLOCALISM attempts to advance our understanding of the political ecology of alternative technological trajectories; and of the future of the organization in the age of automation and beyond.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

The primary responsibility of the doctoral candidate is to conduct an LCA of at least two technological solutions that have been globally designed and locally manufactured, vis-a-vis similar products of conventional industrial production. This also includes primary data gathering and analysis, as well as involvement in the respective scientific publications and reports.

SALARY AND BENEFITS

The successful candidate will receive a three-year contract, renewable for six months after positive evaluation (so 3,5 years in total). Depending on qualifications and previous experience, the net salary will range between 1,100 to 1,300 euros per month (including Ph.D. scholarship and salary). Thus, a Ph.D. from TalTech will be acquired, for which residency in Estonia would be required.

APPLICATION
The position will only be filled when a potential candidate fully meets the project’s requirements, but not later than 1 June 2019. The application procedure can be found here. Should you have any question, feel free to contact Prof. Kostakis before application.

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Its main objectives are to foster the development and recognition of emerging European Maker and Design culture by supporting makers, their mobility and circulation of their work, providing them with international opportunities and highlighting the most outstanding talent; improve the connections among makers, designers and the market, providing thus tools, strategies, guides, contents, education, events, networks in order to enable them to commercialize their creations; stimulate and develop a genuine Europe-wide programming of Maker activities in order to contribute to the development of a vibrant and diverse European Maker and Design culture that can be experienced by a broad range of audience across Europe and beyond as well as to enhance the creation of work and of financially sustainable business activities by makers and designers.

P2P Lab has the pleasure to collaborate with DDMP by organising a cultiMake event concerning the crowdsourcing of open source agricultural solutions.

Partners: Institute of Advanced Architecture Catalonia (ES), Fab City Grand Paris (FR), Pakhuis de Zwijger (NL), HappyLab (AT), Polifactory – Politecnico di Milano (IT), Machines Room (UK), P2P Lab (EL), Republica (DE), Dansk Design Center (DK), Fab lab Berlin (DE), Fab Lab Budapest (HU), Innovation Center Iceland (IS), Foreningen Maker (DK).

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This is the prospect we’ve been trying to understand for the last decade. In the next two years, we aim to ground our ideas for a commons transition on stronger empirical evidence.

The main questions we’ll try to answer, which make for four different projects, follow:

• First, the Phygital project seeks to understand how globally designed products could change how we work, produce and consume and study the sustainability potential of a commons-based mode of production..
• Second, Transvestment attempts to figure out how commoners can become economically sustainable.
• Third, Wikiart explores whether a theatrical play or a piece of music, inspired by the social design of Wikipedia, could be developed as a digital commons.
• Fourth, the Deschooling project sets out to investigate how commons-based peer production could change our educational system(s).

The P2P lab is sustained on a modest budget and is financially sustainable till September 2019. Thus, in parallel with our research endeavours we will be working towards successful research funding. Of course, we are constantly on the look-out for co-operation on interesting projects and will gladly provide our services in a pro-bono manner if the output is a commons.

Find out more about the P2P lab here.

Photo by Erik Schepers

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Which knowledge, skills and learning environments can boost Open Design & Manufacturing at meaningful scale? How can OD&M  become the ground of collective experimentation and co-creation between Universities, Makerspaces and Enterprises?

OD&M is a Knowledge Alliance dedicated to create and support communities of practices around the Open Design & Manufacturing paradigm, making the most of openness, sharing and collaboration to create new value chains of innovation in design and manufacturing oriented to the social good.

Through inspiring international mobilities, dedicated events, project-based trainings and innovative systems of learning outcomes certification, the OD&M community is committed to create a valuable environment of capacity-building for students, university staff, enterprises and highly creative and passionate people.

The P2P Foundation and its sister organization, the P2P Lab, are part of Open Design and Manufacturing platform, which has recently released an report. The report can be downloaded in it’s integral and reduced versions. Below you will find the report’s introduction, (written by Laura Martelloni, from LAMA agency) followed by its Executive Summary.

Introduction

Often, new professions and jobs emerge from transformations in the market.

They tend to remain in a grey zone where they mostly take shape through progressive adaptation and training on-the-job, until institutional education and training systems are able to recognize, codify, embed and scale them up into coherent learning journeys and learning outcomes, understandable by the labour market and the wider society.

Manufacturing in Europe is going through a major, almost unprecedented transformation. While it is suffering heavily from the effects of the global crisis and ongoing globalization, we are witnessing the emergence of a social technology-based movement, the Maker movement, spreading fast across the globe. Supported by ICT networks and by the establishment of physical spaces such as Fablabs, this movement is expanding its outreach across the globe, involving people with different backgrounds and mindsets that converge around common values such as ‘sharing’ and ‘openness’, generating a multi-faceted and complex knowledge.

The maker movement has opened the way for a new paradigm of production, called from time to time open manufacturing, p2p production, social manufacturing, maker manufacturing; although the plurality of definitions hints at the lack of maturity of the sector, its keywords – open hardware, open software, distributed networks, collaboration, transparency, among others – all point to the movement’s vocabulary and narrative.

These new forms of production are enabled by open source ICT and rooted in social innovation principles, they adopt open-ended business models and act at the level of ecosystem, they harness distributed networks and ubiquitous communities to unlock the inventive of peer to peer collaboration, and are able to imprint production processes, products and organizational forms with social purposes and outcomes. Considered in its potential to infuse production processes with social innovation principles and values, open manufacturing opens room to cultivate radical changes in the economy and society, able to preserve and grow the public good while steering disruptive paths of innovation (Johar et al., 2015). Open manufacturing has already reached a stage that offers the prospect of new jobs and businesses, but education and training systems across Europe are still stuck in the grey zone of unaware and fragmented intervention.

Within this framework, the OD&M project (A Knowledge Alliance between Higher Education Institutions, Makers and Manufacturers to boost Open Design & Manufacturing in Europe)[1] works to create a trust-based and collaborative Alliance between Higher Education Institutions, traditional manufacturers, and innovation communities of digital-savvy makers and open manufacturing businesses across Europe and beyond. The Alliance’s ultimate goal is to build a European enabling ecosystem that fully embeds the key approaches, values and principles underlying the open manufacturing paradigm, and turns them into drivers for a more competitive, sustainable and socially innovative manufacturing in Europe.

Focussing on the co-creation of new teaching and learning processes, as well as on new methods and models of knowledge exchange and capacity-building between the nodes of the Alliance, OD&M works to unleash a new generation of highly skilled and entrepreneurship-oriented designers and manufacturers, able to boost open design and manufacturing towards meaningful impacts.

The present report contains the results of an action-research carried out by OD&M between March and August 2017. The core objective of the research was to analyse how and to what extent the emerging open design and manufacturing paradigm (OD&M) is currently becoming the ground of progressive convergence and synergy between Universities, enterprises and maker communities, and how this ‘knowledge triangle’ is collaborating towards the creation of effective and meaningful value chains of innovation.

The research started by investigating the key competences and skills that presently identify and characterise the ‘maker profile’, in order to draw a general picture of how these are developed, in which contexts, and through which particular teaching and learning processes (formal, informal, non formal). Further, the research explored existing experiences of making-related activities and initiatives promoted or partnered by Universities, and discussed with Higher Education’s representatives the drivers, barriers and possible scenarios connected to the introduction of making education within formal learning. Then, the research involved professional makers and OD&M enterprises (that is, enterprises that show strong and direct connections with the open design and manufacturing paradigm) in order to get an in depht understanding of how making-related values, skills and competences are contributing to shape and inform their businesses. Lastly, the research explored the perceptions and opinions of ‘traditional’ companies regarding these topics, and discussed with them the potential risks and benefits that may emerge for them from the OD&M paradigm as a whole. The overall goal of the action-research was ultimately to identify gaps and opportunities for strengthening connections and collaborations within the OD&M Knowledge Triangle, enabling in particular Higher Education Institutions with new capacities and assets to play a valuable role in this field.

The action-research has been coordinated by LAMA Agency and has actively involved teams of researchers from: University of Florence – DIDA (Italy), University of the Arts London (UK), University of Deusto – Faculty of Engineering (Spain), University of Dabrowa-Gornicza (Poland), University of Tongji (China), P2P Foundation (Netherlands), Furniture and Furnishing Centre (Italy). The other partners of the project (i.e. Fablab London, Fablab Lodz and Tecnalia) have contributed as key informants and hubs of connection with relevant stakeholders in the targeted countries.

As the report will highlight, the action-research confirmed that the maker movement is a complex phenomenon that is nurtured by a continuous serendipitous melting-pot among cultures, skills, knowledge, learning styles, languages and attitudes. If this richness represents a fertile ground for innovations across manufacturing sectors – and probably beyond them -, it also represents a challenge for the codes through which Higher Education Institutions embed new topics and shape new mindsets on the one hand, and through which companies demand and search for new, innovation-oriented skills and competences on the other hand.

More research is needed to further encompass and systematize the wide geography of knowledge, competences and skills underlying the maker movement, as well as to better understand how and to what extent they can be encoded in a framework that is portable across life’s domains, and recognizable by different actors. However, the OD&M research represents an important step in this direction, providing insights and identifying a possible scenario of education, training and business innovation built upon an unedited Alliance between Higher Education, manufacturing businesses and maker communities, able not only to prepare the next generation of designers and manufacturers, but to spur innovation – and, in particular, social innovation – across the whole open design and manufacturing value chain.

[1] The OD&M project is funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme, Knowledge Alliances strand. The project started in 2017 and will run over three years. It actively involves the following organizations: University of Florence – DIDA, University of Dabrowa-Gornicza, University of the Arts London, University of Deusto – Faculty of Engineering, University of Tongji, Furniture and Furnishing Centre, Tecnalia, Fablab Lodz, Fablab London, P2P Foundation, LAMA Agency. The project also involves a number of Universities, SMEs, Foundations, local innovation communities and networks across Europe as associate partners.

Executive Summary

The present Report contains the results of an action-research developed in the context of the OD&M Project (A Knowledge Alliance between Higher Education Institutions, Makers and Manufacturers to boost Open Design & Manufacturing in Europe), funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme, Knowledge Alliances strand.

The main objective of the research was to analyse how and to what extent the emerging open design and manufacturing paradigm (OD&M) is currently becoming the ground of progressive convergence and synergy between Universities, enterprises and maker communities, and how this ‘knowledge triangle’ is collaborating towards the creation of effective and meaningful value chains of innovation.

The research started by investigating the key competences and skills that presently identify and characterise the ‘maker profile’, in order to draw a general picture of how these are developed, in which contexts, and through which particular teaching and learning processes (formal, informal, non formal). Further, the research explored existing experiences of making-related activities and initiatives promoted or partnered by Universities, and discussed with Higher Education’s representatives the drivers, barriers and possible scenarios connected to the introduction of making education within formal learning. Then, the research involved professional makers and OD&M enterprises (that is, enterprises that show strong and direct connections with the open design and manufacturing paradigm) in order to get an in depht understanding of how making-related values, skills and competences are contributing to shape and inform their businesses. Lastly, the research explored the perceptions and opinions of ‘traditional’ companies regarding these topics, and discussed with them the potential risks and benefits that may emerge for them from the OD&M paradigm as a whole.

Indeed, the different levels of maturity of the maker movement – and, more generally, of the open design and manufacturing paradigm – in the different countries, poses clear challenges in the implementation of this type of research; on the other hand, it reflects the reality of an emerging phenomenon and points to both the challenges of a common path, and the opportunities of building common experimentations at European level.

Read the full version of the report here

Read the reduced version

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Our intention with this site is to make the ideas of the Commons and P2P accessible and attractive to commoners and communities worldwide. The site is organized into several sections:

1. Short: Q&A-style illustrated articles presenting some of the P2P Foundation’s main positions
2. Long: In-depth, longer articles
3. Library: Downloadable PDF versions of P2P Foundation research publications
4. More: Video, audio and other content, plus site information and other links

We’ve built some other useful features into this site, too. In the Short articles, Key Concept pop-ups offer definitions of specialized terminology. Case Studies outline the practices of existing commons communities, often adapted from our own research publications. Infographics and illustrations have sections of their own, for easy sharing. To keep things light, we’ve added a tab with a “TLDR” summary (internet slang for “too long/didn’t read”, if you didn’t already know), plus a tab for Resources which links to source and reference materials for the specific article.

This website was produced with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and is an outgrowth of our previous Commons Transition and P2P Primer in print form, which was co-authored with Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis and produced in cooperation with the Transnational Institute (TNI). It will be followed in 2018 by a publication from Westminster Press titled Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto and written by Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis and Alex Pazaitis. We’d like to thank Heike Loeschmann, Joanna Barelkowska and Joerg Haas of the Böll Foundation for their consistent support and feedback during the process.

The Commons Transition Primer website project was coordinated, edited and/or co-written by Stacco Troncoso and Ann Marie Utratel (except where other authorship is noted). Elena Martínez Vicente led the design and UX, Mercè Moreno Tarrés provided the illustrations while Javier Arturo Rodriguez took care of the technical details and backend. Thanks are due to David Bollier, Vasilis Kostakis and Rajesh Makwana for reviewing the texts in the “Shorts” section. Special thanks are also due for the technical expertise and last-minute interventions of our colleague, Lisha Sterling.

We offer thanks to the growing, worldwide P2P Foundation community for continuing to enthusiastically share, research, promote and experiment with the ideas and tools of the Commons and P2P. We hope you enjoy this site (and your feedback is welcome!)

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