Socrates Schouten: Digital cities with a conscience — What does a new government mean for Amsterdam?

Was it because of the ‘fake news’ epidemic that blew over the Atlantic in 2016? The steady conquest of urban life by platform powers like Airbnb and Uber? Or did the shocking news about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica tilt the debate? We can’t be sure — but Amsterdam’s radically different tone of voice on the issue of technology is crystal clear. The coalition agreement signed by Amsterdam’s new governing parties demands a digital economy that is social, privacy-assuring and supportive of urban commons.

In March, Dutch citizens elected new city councils across the country. In Amsterdam, a progressive council was elected, with the green party GroenLinks leading negotiations. After two months of consultations, a leftist four-party coalition presented their vision and programme for the city.

Waag president Marleen Stikker’s smile widens when she scans the document for her cherished topics — digital development and civic agency. The city is learning to recognise the value of ‘city makers’, she concludes. The tech-driven ‘smart city’, on the other hand, is regarded with increasing suspicion in the new proposal. Why should large corporations like Cisco and Google be allowed to turn Amsterdam’s data into a money machine without even lending an ear to the preferences and concerns of its citizens? The new coalition programme’s approach to addressing some of these issues is a welcome turn for the better. As just one token of change, the city officially joins the band of ‘Fearless cities’ spearheaded by Barcelona that by and large seeks to obliterate neoliberalism from public office.

Let’s take a closer look at the new coalition’s programme, “A New Spring and a New Sound” (highlights here, full version here).

Firstly, the city’s digital plans begin with instating a Digital City Agenda, setting out Amsterdam’s vision on cyber security, data sovereignty, digital participation and digital services, complex topics that cannot be solved overnight. Outlining the principles of ‘privacy by design’ and ‘data minimisation’, the programme is both digitally ambitious and insightful. It warrants optimism for Amsterdam as a DECODE pilot city and as a test site for digital identity and data innovation work. Moreover, the city also expresses determination to implement the Tada manifesto, a clear-cut guide for responsible data and technology management.

Secondly, the programme sets out to define the purpose of digital technologies: these should be designed and implemented around the needs of the city, as expressed by its citizens (rather than its ‘consumers’). Thus, the coalition supports the development of platform cooperatives that provide alternatives to platform monopolists like Uber, and steps up its efforts to open up city data in ways that allow for active participation. The coalition also reworks the Amsterdam Economic Board into the “Amsterdam Social and Economic Board”, and vastly expands its digital re-schooling programme aimed at skilling the workforce for the digital (and sustainable) age. The “smart city”, the old tech-driven approach favoured by urban digital policy makers, is nowhere to be found.

On the theme of citizen participation, the programme’s proposals are equally ambitious. Of particular interest is the coalition’s promise to actively support the establishment of new commons (resources that are controlled and managed by the community, for individual and collective benefit) in the areas of ‘energy transition, healthcare, and neighbourhood activities’. (I have discussed the commons in relation to digital social innovation earlier here.) Politically, the idea of the commons has not had much traction until now, but Amsterdam’s support for establishing new commons is a sign of a shift in political discourse. The city of Amsterdam isn’t alone in this: the Belgian city of Ghent recently completed an extensive mapping of commons in 2017, and Barcelona’s minority government led by Barcelona en Comù is working with projects such as D-CENT, Procomuns, DECODE and DSI4EU.

Not coincidentally, the topics of ‘Democratisation’ and the ‘Digital City’ are merged together under one heading in the programme. If we want to prevent the smart city from becoming a digital dystopia, a diversified and intensified urban democratic practice is key. Citizens and communities need to have control of how measuring, tracking and profiling is being done and by who. By developing the democratic or participatory toolbox — including public debate, voting systems, having rights to ‘challenge’ and suggest self-managed alternatives — many digital ills can be avoided. Already the city has reached out to many Amsterdam initiatives that work on democratisation, participation and stronger neighbourhoods to start working on this agenda together. Rutger Groot-Wassink, the responsible Alderman, has also pledged to arrange budgets for communities, commons and intermediaries so that they can share in the design, implementation and execution of these practices, instead of having the administration lead on everything itself.

Of course, all of this will prove quite challenging. I expect it will take certainly a year before this new way of working will really emerge, and some years of teething problems after that. The same goes for the digital agenda itself. Whereas the coalition agreement discusses digital rights and digital participation in detail, the crossover between digital technologies and other themes is considerably less developed. The city’s vision on digitalisation in issues such as logistics, mobility, crowd management, environmental management, healthcare, and internet infrastructure is yet to be confirmed. However, for the moment we can be pleased with Amsterdam’s progress, and hopeful for the future.

This blog was originally published in June 2018 on Waag.org and updated on November 25.

Header photo: City of Amsterdam (Amsterdam.nl), public domain.

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Procomuns 2017

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Ajuntament de Barcelona. Economia Cooperativa, Social y Solidaria y Consum, 2017

Download the original document here.

The Impetus Plan for the Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona, is the result of a municipal initiative. Its aim is to offer a transformative socio-economic vision of the urban reality. It includes an action programme and aims to contribute towards reducing social and territorial inequalities, while promoting an economy at the service of people and of social justice.

The Impetus Plan comprises a diagnosis, the development process and the set of actions desired to be carried out in the city over the coming years. It is structured into the following parts:

•  The social and solidarity economy in Barcelona: analyses the reality of the transformative socio-economic fabric of the city and its roll-out across the territory
•  The Planning Process: explains the process involved in drafting the Plan and related co-production and co-responsibility dynamics.
•  Contents of the Plan: describes the general and specific objectives, lines of work, measures and actions to be implemented.
•  Development of the Plan: indicates the different agents involved in the Plan’s execution and spaces for joint and participatory work.
•  Budget, Monitoring and Evaluation: details the budgetary allocations, as well as the impact assessment criteria used.
•  Annex. Towards a New Socio-Economic Policy: offers an overview of the plural economy and of the proposal for the city’s socio-economic transformation.

Excerpts:

As explained below, this Impetus Plan is the product of dialogue between the SSE sector and the City Council, which gave rise to a shared diagnosis. The report The Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona developed a compilation of needs that are summarised in the following challenges tag cloud.

These challenges, detected by the SSE fabric itself, show those aspects that require input in order to consolidate and strengthen the social and solidarity economy movement. This Impetus Plan contains measures and actions related with these challenges, which often require internal work by the sector itself. In this sense, co-production and co-responsibility in achieving them are essential.

To highlight those that enjoy the greatest consensus, efforts need to be channelled towards improving the coordination of the sector in a global sense. This will make it possible to create a greater shared identity; increase communication outreach to disseminate the principles and values of the SSE among citizens; make spaces available to the SSE so that it can become the backbone of neighbourhoods and districts; improve inter-cooperation to strengthen social market construction; place emphasis on disseminating and training in democratic and participative governance as an eminently transformative element; and influence socially responsible public procurement, based on eco-social values, as a fundamental strategy.

Tag cloud of challenges, Impetus Plan for the Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona

Commons collaborative economy sector

Meetings were held, along with the sharing of spaces for diagnosis, with BarCola, the collaborative economy hub that groups together 18 organisations. In March 2016, the city hosted the Commons Collaborative Economies: Policies, Technologies and City for the People (“Procomuns”) event whose sessions featured participation by over four hundred people and led to a declaration of 120 measures for public policies on commons collaborative economy matters, which were then put forward in the Municipal Action Plan (PAM).

The Planning Process for the Impetus Plan for the SSE in Barcelona

Statistics on the Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona

According to the study The Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona (2016), the city is home to 4,718 socio-economic initiatives that, according to their legal structures, form part of the social and solidarity economy.

Some of the most significant data are:

—— 2,400 third social sector organisations —— 1,197 worker-owned enterprises —— 861 cooperatives —— 260 community-economic initiatives

In total, they account for 53,000 people employed, over 100,000 volunteers, over 500,000 consumer cooperative members and approximately 113,000 mutualists.

SSE initiatives exist in all sectors of economic activity: from energy through culture to the food sector.

Barcelona is home to 861 cooperatives of all types, representing 20% of all the cooperatives in Catalonia. The large majority are worker cooperatives: these account for 77% of the total (numbering 667, of which 36 are social initiative cooperatives).
Furthermore, the city is home to 31 consumer and user cooperatives, which operate in a very wide range of activity fields: food, paper, energy, health, etc.
Since 1993, the city’s main housing cooperatives have built 2,093 homes in Barcelona, and today a new model is emerging known as housing cooperatives with assignment of use rights.
In the education area there are 19 education cooperatives, of which 80% are worker cooperatives, 10% consumer cooperatives and 10% mixed.

They concentrate around 2,500 members, over 5,600 students and they employ over 750 people.

There are also 13 free schools running plus various child-rearing and shared education initiatives for ages between 0 and 3 years.

Worker-owned enterprises enjoy a significant presence in the city: they represent 25.4 % of Barcelona’s SSE enterprise fabric, although a challenge in this sector’s articulation is detected. All local development projects must count on the strength of the third social sector because, with 2,400 organisations in the city, it represents over 50% of SSE initiatives: 48 of them correspond to special work centres and 20 are work integration social enterprises (WISE).

The seven ethical finance organisations operating in Catalonia are all based in Barcelona. Furthermore, in the insurance sector, the EthSI (Ethical and Solidarity Based Insurance) seal exists to certify insurance products, brokers and agents in line with SSE criteria. In Spain there are seven certified companies, four of them based in Barcelona. Community economies have emerged in the city as self-managed and innovative projects in the creation of new forms geared towards resolving people’s needs. In this respect, especially worthy of highlight are 23 citizen-managed facilities, 59 agro-ecological consumer groups, 13 exchange markets, 21 time banks and 20 community market gardens.

Read the entire document; download the PDF here.

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Anna Bergren Miller: When the City Council of Barcelona asked democracy activist and researcher Mayo Fuster Morell for policy recommendations regarding the sharing economy, she suggested that the City Council take a different approach: Rather than relying on an expert to dictate policy from the top down, why not use a collaborative process to build a sustainable set of institutions and practices that would draw strength from the grassroots?

Fuster Morell crowdsourced a sharing economy policy framework through a series of in-person and online interactions with a range of stakeholders, including city residents, representatives of sharing economy initiatives, and municipal authorities. From the 120 policy recommendations initially drafted, Barcelona’s city council has since developed a collaborative economy action plan and provided funding to specific projects. Meanwhile, the broader conversation on the sharing economy in Barcelona continues through organizations including Procomuns, which started in March 2016 as a policy brainstorming forum.

I spoke to Fuster Morell recently about the process behind and the prospects for the Barcelona policy recommendations. We talked through what Fuster Morell calls Barcelona’s collaborative economy “ecosystem,” the status of the collaborative economy plan, and the replicability of the Catalan capital’s particular approach to sharing.

Anna Bergren Miller: You were instrumental in helping craft a series of policy recommendations regarding the sharing economy in the city of Barcelona. How did the policy recommendations come to be? Specifically, how did you involve city residents in the process?

Mayo Fuster Morell: Barcelona City Council asked me to advise them about what to do regarding the collaborative economy. I suggested that we build an ecosystem of public policies involving the different stakeholders. This way, even if there is a change of government in the next election, the city will have a structure of actors and relationships already in place.

At the City Council of Barcelona there is a lack of expertise in this matter. They don’t know about the technologies, or the companies involved because it’s pretty new. We have an historical tradition of commons production in the city. But until this government, there hasn’t been an institutional interest in supporting collaboration.

We built the stakeholder ecosystem in layers. The first layer is BarCola, a coworking group between the city council and the sector. To join BarCola as an initiative, you have to be active in Barcelona. We privilege organizations that take a commons approach, which means that they are based on cooperatives, foundations, or enterprises that have a democratic government system. We prioritize projects that are based on open source or open data, that are connected to social challenges in the city, and that have socially inclusive policies.

BarCola meets every month or month and a half. We also communicate frequently on a mailing list and Telegram. Our main concern is promotion. For example, we are not so much about penalizing Airbnb, as about how we build an incubating system and funding for new initiatives, to promote the modalities that we are more in favor of. The second layer of the ecosystem is Procomuns, which started as an event in March to open the proposals for policy recommendations for the city council. Four hundred people participated, and spent three days discussing how the city council can do support a commons development, and a collaborative economy. The event resulted in the Procomuns declaration with 120 policy recommendations. We sent it to Barcelona City Council, obviously, but also to European Commission and other organizations.

Now Procomuns is a monthly Meetup. At each meeting, we address different issues. We are going to do another big event at the end of June, in Barcelona. Out of the initial 120 policy recommendations emerged the third layer of the ecosystem, which is Decidem Barcelona. Decidem Barcelona is a participatory democracy platform for citizens to provide feedback on municipal policies in every area. Using Decidem Barcelona, we selected the policies that were more supported by Barcelona residents. With that, we defined the Barcelona collaborative economy plan, which has 80 percent of the 120 policies generated by Procomuns. It doesn’t have them all, because there are some areas that are not under the competency of Barcelona City Council.

Now we have a final layer of the ecosystem. We created an inter-area body inside of the city council, which coordinates what we are doing regarding transport, housing, tourism, and labor. This layer operates solely within the municipal government.

Tell me more about the city council’s response. Was creating a collaborative economy plan something that they were encouraging you to do, or did you bring it to them? How receptive were they, and where have they taken it since?

The current Barcelona government started 18 months ago as a citizens’ candidature with many non-professional politicians. For example, our mayor Ada Colau was very active in the housing movement. All of them were very much in support the idea of injecting the citizens into the policy process. There was not resistance.

But some of the city council, when they think about the collaborative economy, they only think about Uber or Airbnb. They are not aware of the other movements. So the first step actually was a bit hard. We had to say, okay, the collaborative economy is not only the big for-profit actors.

What is the current status of the Barcelona policies?

The city now has a collaborative economy plan and budget. The plan is not available online, but to give you some examples of the measures involved: We created a program of entrepreneurship on the collaborative economy. We did a call for new initiatives, and we selected 30, to which we will provide mentorship, legal advice, and match funding. Like with BarCola, we prioritize the initiatives that are more connected to the commons. We have also been mapping the city council’s underutilized infrastructure resources, starting with computers, in order to put them to collaborative uses by the citizens. We have also begun a €100,000 match funding program, and are designing a collaborative economy incubator.

We support a lot of events. We provide funding for OuiShare; we provide funding for the local annual meeting of the social economy. We support the annual meeting of the city’s cooperatives. We also supported an event about do-it-yourself technology. We have a study underway on the level of participation in the collaborative economy within Barcelona. We are also developing a framework for understanding its impact.

What’s the timeline for the study?

The study will be ready in July.

A lot of what you’ve been able to do seems specific to Barcelona, to the political climate and the history and culture there. But have you heard from other cities that have wanted to model your process? Or were you looking at other cities as examples?

I think it’s very unique to Barcelona, this element of believing that collaborative economy policy should be built collaboratively. We also have a very clear position regarding which initiatives are the best models to promote. But we are not unique in providing some programs of support. For example, Seoul has put a lot of resources into promoting the collaborative economy. Also, Amsterdam is providing a lot of resources, but with a different perspective.

The geographer David Harvey has recently written and spoken about so-called “Rebel Cities.” Barcelona has been identified as part of a nascent network of Rebel Cities. What is a Rebel City? Why do they matter now? And what evidence is there that they are beginning to work together?

In the context of Spain, “Rebel Cities” refers to the cities that are governed by citizens’ candidatures as of the last municipal elections. In each case, a unique coalition won power — so they have their independence. But, recognizing the affinities between then, we built a network of Rebel Cities in order to exchange experiences and learn from each other. We recently suggested a similar process, building on Spain’s experience, for Rebel Cities in the United States.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Header photo of the city of Barcelona by Bert Kaufmannvia Flickr. 

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 By Rachel O’Dwyer

Mayo Fuster Morell is the Dimmons director of research on collaborative economy at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Catalonia. Additionally, she is faculty affiliated at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and at Institute of Govern and Public Policies at Autonomous University of Barcelona (IGOPnet). In 2010, she concluded her PhD thesis at the European University Institute in Florence on the governance of common-based peer production, and have numerous publications in the field. She is the principal investigator for the European project P2Pvalue: Techno-social platform for sustainable models and value generation in commons-based peer production. She is also responsible of the experts group BarCola on collaborative economy and commons production at the Barcelona City Council.”

ROD: What brought you to work in peer-to-peer?

MFM: The first time I heard the term peer-to-peer was from an “artivist” friend Leo Martin when we were travelling from the Geneva Contrast Summit to the World Summit of Information Society in Geneva in 2003. In other words, the Internet itself and its defense, and the network as a political metaphor for its decentralized character brought me to work on P2P. Commons appreciation came later.

ROD: What is ‘participative action research’? How have you used it? And what groups have you worked with?

MFM: ‘Participative action research’ refers to research that tends to inform a process in action or depart from explicit aims, and is developed in a participatory manner. This could refer to how the research questions are defined (they could emerge in the context of mobilization), the methodologies (more participative and egalitarian, positioning the researcher as facilitator more than owner of the process) and the distribution of the research outcomes (such as adopting open access and open data). There are different traditions and sensibilities. One of the first books and articles I wrote back in 2004 as part of the collective Investigaccio was on what at that time we called “activist” research and social movements. A later version of this article was published at: Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 1 (1): 21 – 45 (January 2009). Fuster Morell: Action research 21 Action research: mapping the nexus of research and political action http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/interface-issue-1-1-pp21-45-Fuster.pdf

My first action involvement was as part of the global justice movement with the Seattle and Praga mobilization against global institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and European Union. Through that experience I realized how we were generating useful data and how ICTs could contribute to systematizing the knowledge generated in social processes and democratizing access to that knowledge. This brought me to an action research framework.

ROD: You have developed some very interesting research on gender and the commons. In what ways can gender politics inhibit participation in commons-based peer production? And how can we become more aware of it?

MFM: I think it is not accurate to state that I developed research on the commons and gender. There are experts in gender, and gender studies is a specialized field, but I am not one. What happens is that commons theory and practice tend to be dominated by male voices (with the great exception of Ostrom), a lack of engagement with gender perspectives and feminist theories (see for example Bauwens’ work), and an emphasis on class as opposed to identity politics. Sometimes inequality dynamics are even worse than market dynamics (for example, only 1.5 % of FLOSS participants are women, while proprietary software has a 30% female involvement. So in that context, someone like me that has some gender sensibility and feminist appreciation – even if she is not an expert or very involved – becomes the ‘gender voice’ in the room. This makes me feel uncomfortable, because I do not know much and have not written much or made good contributions; my area of expertise is on governance of the commons and public policies for the commons.

ROD: At procomuns, an event that you helped to organize, there was an emphasis on the ways in which women’s contributions had been hidden from peer-to-peer practices. How can we challenge this?

MFM: Regarding how we can change the current gender inequality dynamic of the commons, I think the first step is to recognize that commons approaches have obfuscated reproductive work as much as capitalism. Commons is presented as a third mode of production distinct from the state and the market, but where is domestic work, families and reproductive work – mostly developed by women – in this equation? And where is nature? I really think commons can benefit a lot from engaging with ecofeminist perspectives – with authors like Cristina Carrasco or Yayo Herrero here in Spain for example. This connection can not only bring more justice to the commons but also be very powerful. I think one of the key insights which explains the rise of Barcelona en Comu is the combination of feminism and commons.

What is clear is that there is a lot to be done on gender. I contribute to a wiki for monitoring the inclusion of women in digital commons and ICT conferences, where there are also resources on commons and gender (see http://wiki.digital-commons.net). Conferences with less than at least 35% of women inclusion in the program are shame conferences. The lack of reference to women’s work in the academic literature and in the field literature is even more problematic.

ROD: What distinguishes the commons for you from other traditional hierarchical public and private forms of organization? And do we need a partner state to develop and protect the commons?

MFM: At this moment in time, yes. Neoliberal globalization has constituted an enclosure of global commons, and the expansion of the capitalist dynamic to new areas previously organized through commons and social logics. Digital commons were expanding with the Internet, but now certain layers of the Internet are controlled by corporations, resulting in the enclosure of the digital commons also (see for example the emergence of on demand /corporate collaborative economies and the enclosure of collaborative production online). In this stage of things, I think we need to gain political control over political institutions in order to create public-commons alliances to confront the commons enclosure. A private – public alliance has resulted in the kidnap of political institutions; together they are creating what I call (glossing feminist theory) the “glass ceiling”, working to ensure that the greater capacity for the commons to expand and gain centrality in the digital era is kept under control, and that commons are enclosed for profit purposes. But the process of organizing to gain political power in political institutions should happen in parallel with the reorganization of economic power under commons logic. We need external, social movements to push for policy change, and economical affinity activity in order to be able to perform political changes inside the institution.

ROD: In the last decade we are seeing a growing centrality of forms of commoning and commons-based peer production to capital, particularly in informational and digital spheres. You call this relationship ‘wiki-washing’. What strategies exist to protect forms of commoning from commercial expropriation? Or is this an inevitability? Or maybe not always a bad thing?

MFM: Regarding the case of the collaborative economy, commons collaborative economy was original to the internet with FLOSS, Wikipedia etc. Then we have witnessed several waves of incorporation of collaborative dynamics for capitalism innovation, with the case of platforms like YouTube and Flickr first, and now with the “collaborative economy” of Uber and AirBnb. These have popularized collaboration, but they have also emptied it of its empowering dimension. We should keep working on alternatives that scale (being aware that it is not only a matter of lack of ability, but a ‘glass ceiling’ that I mentioned earlier that ensure such efforts remain small). We must denounce the bad practices of unicorn modalities and their wiki-washing (for a discussion of the use of the wiki ethos to further corporate interests see my article The unethics of sharing: wikiwashing”). Still, we have also to be tactical and take advantage of the situation created – to play the game in our favor. For example, the European Commission did not get interested in commons production until the debate on the collaborative economy gained importance with the controversies connected to the disruption of Uber and AirBnb. I’m often asked to speak about the collaborative economy by organizations who have AirBnb and Uber in mind because they do not know anything else and I take advantage of these opportunities to explain that they were not the first to appear and that there are other running models based on commons logic which can favor a more inclusive economical “growth”.

The capitalist market adoption of commons creativity has ambivalences, and we should be tactical and practical in taking advantage of these depending on the period. This ambivalence of the market can also be applied to social networks. The appearance of Facebook and Twitter was a defeat to autonomous communication alternatives, but nowadays it has also become a tool for social mobilization, and it is right to use it as such. But we also have to keep in mind how we might gain them back for commons governance? There is, for example, a campaign to buy Twitter by the Twitter community and transform it into a cooperative. In sum, politics is done with “what there is”, advancing with the opportunities of each moment – not with great conditions that are not there.

ROD: What does the term ‘digital commons’ mean to you?

MFM: Commons is an ethos and an umbrella term that encompasses many practices and transformative changes. The commons emphasizes common interests and needs. It includes collaborative production, open and shared resources, collective ownership, as well as empowering and participative forms of political and economic organizing.

It is, however, a very plural concept with very diverse ‘traditions’ and perspectives. Some commons, for example, are connected to material resources (pastoral, fields, fishing etc.) and others to immaterial ones (knowledge etc.).

In the area of knowledge commons, the emphasis is on the conditions of access – open access and the possibility to access resources and intervene in their production without requiring the permission of others. It emphasizes knowledge as a public good, a patrimony, and a human right.

I proposed a definition of digital commons as “information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be non-exclusive, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources” (Fuster Morell, M. (2010, p. 5). Dissertation: Governance of online creation communities: Provision of infrastructure for the building of digital commons. http://www.onlinecreation.info/?page_id=338).

ROD: What do we need to do to cultivate and defend the digital commons?

MFM: The same that we have to do with any common.

At this moment there are, in my view, three key strategies and goals: 1) Create public commons partnerships. Push for political institutions to be led by commons principles and to support commons-based economic production (such as reinventing public services led by citizens’ participation, what I call ‘commonification’). Barcelona en Comu is providing a great model for this. 2) Reclaim the economy, and in particular develop an alternative financial system. 3) Confront patriarchy within the commons – in other words embrace freedom and justice for all, not just for a particular privileged subject (male, white, etc.) and help foster greater diversity in society.

ROD: What for you is the key difference between the digital and the material commons? Do these distinctions hold? Or are they holding us back?

MFM: Over time I think there is less and less of a distinction.

ROD: What do you think of proposals for new forms of technology that scale commons-based peer production such as distributed ledger technologies, the blockchain or new reputation and trustless systems? How do these fit within the broader projects of commons-based peer production?

MFM: Certainly, technological development is important, but much less that what is framed in the blockchain hype. For a period around the early development of the Internet, I thought – and I think this was a general collective feeling – that technological development and creativity towards decentralized modes would be the more effective strategy to gain commons space. I no longer think this (as I previously discussed, I think we have to combine several strategies: political, economical, technical and “genderal”). I think we were wrong. The evolution of the Internet is the best proof of this. This is why I am so surprised by the wave of naïve enthusiasm for the blockchain and its technological solutionism and apolitical vision. It assumes there are not also power struggles and asymmetries in networked and decentralized modalities.

ROD: Can you tell us a bit about your own work on infrastructure governance?

MFM: My doctoral thesis was on the governance of infrastructure for the building of digital commons (the thesis is available here). In this research I challenged previous literature by questioning the neutrality of infrastructure for collective action and demonstrating that infrastructure governance shapes collective action.

ROD: I’ve read that your research challenges the idea that oligarchy, bureaucracy and hierarchy are inevitable products of scaled forms of cooperation. How can we prevent these from kicking in? Are these always bad things? Joe Freedman, for example, writes of the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ and how the ostensible idea of no structure allows for more insidious forms of structural power i.e. gender/class/race to play a key role and to develop oligarchies.

MFM: The research I developed in my thesis provided an empirical explanation of the organizational strategies most likely to succeed in creating large-scale collective action in terms of the size of participation and complexity of collaboration. In hypothesizing that the emerging forms of collective action are able to increase in terms of both participation and complexity while maintaining democratic principles, I challenged Olson’s classical political science assertion that formal organizations tend to overcome collective action dilemmas more easily, and challenges the classical statements of Weber and Michels that as organizations grow in size and complexity, they tend to create bureaucratic forms and oligarchies. I concluded that online creation communities are able to increase in complexity while maintaining democratic principles. Additionally, in light of my research, the emerging collective action forms are better characterized as hybrid ecosystems which succeed by networking and combining several components, each with different degrees of formalization and organizational and democratic logics. Wikipedia is a great example of hybridism. Wikipedia kept its community decentralized, autonomous and allowed open models of organizing to scale, while at the same time having the Wikimedia Foundation with a more hierarchical and labor-based form. Each piece is necessary for the whole ecosystem to scale.

Regarding your question on the tyranny of structurelessness. It is an important question. I think the work of Ostrom questioning Hardin’s conception of the commons is in the same line of what I want to argue here. Ostrom critiqued Hardin’s piece on ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, because the example he used (farmers coordinating grazing rights) was not that of a commons organizational form, but an open field without a social contract around its use, as commons provide. So in this line, yes, there is the need for social organizing in order to preserve resources and organize equality and justice etc.; without structure there is no organization and no commons. Then, the question is what type of organizing, what type of structure and how to govern it. And here I want to recall that network forms are also an organizing structure. But its governance should be transparent and inclusive to all its members. Informality is one of the channels for injustice, such as male domination or corruption, and in this sense I agree with Freedman. It is ok to have open and networked forms, but their governance should be transparent and inclusive. By themselves, network decentralization does not assure power equality (this goes back to the debate on the blockchain).

At the same time, I think we have to go beyond Freedman’s critique and say that it is not that we need structure generally. Structure is not enough to solve inequality, but we need an explicit gender equality plan too. Without a specific set of norms and forms to confront the patriarchy, any commons is going to reproduce it – even reinforce it. The case of FLOSS is very clear here. Studies suggest that only 1.5% of contributors to FLOSS communities are women, while in proprietary closed software production, the proportion is closer to 30%. Similarly, communities that manage natural resources, such as fishing commons institutions in Albufera, Valencia restricted women’s participation until very recently. Equality regarding social and economical dimension is not the only aspect to have present, as it is quite common in commons approaches. Patriarchy is previous to capitalism, and to move towards a commons paradigm, as an alternative to capitalism does not assure a solution to a much deep violent system that works against women and diversity generally.

Finally, the third pillar is the preservation of nature. We have to overcome the current “commons” framework in order to create a new framework based on the confluence of the social and the commons, one that includes gender and diversity feminism, and nature and environmental preservation. Any approach that lacks any of these three pillars explicitly does not have much potential.

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A lot of it comes down to how people are welcomed.

Last April, I joined a group of activists and academics in Madrid, Spain, to build software that helps communities self-organize. This group was part of the P2Pvalue project, a three-year research initiative that looked into what makes peer production sustainable in commons-based communities.

To see things in action, I reached out to dozens of community spaces, from meditation centers to pop-up events. My visits, interviews, and workshops with organizers only brought up more questions: Why are the most thriving community spaces often led by volunteers? How do some spaces accomplish so much without the help of any digital tools? And what about these spaces made it possible to charge people either very little or nothing to participate?

At the end of August, I honed in on one space: The PLACE for Sustainable Living in Oakland, California. PLACE, as it’s known to friends and neighbors, is an experiential learning center. It’s a thriving space, where people cowork, garden, repair bikes, make art and music, and so much more. The organization gets people involved through a concentrated effort — a monthly “Action Day.” Every month, PLACE invites people to explore the space, connect with peers, and learn how they can join.

At PLACE, I learned a key lesson: organizers can improve their community space simply by looking at where things break down in welcoming new people.

Translating this and other lessons made it possible for the group in Madrid and me to build a better self-organizing platform. It is now online at http://teem.works and serves dozens of communities.

And to create a second, more accessible resource for community spaces, I repurposed the stories, data, and cartoons from the software development process and created a guide and worksheet to help community space organizers welcome people.

To download the guide and worksheet, scroll to the bottom of this blog post

Here are key points from the guide:

1. What Happens When Someone Shows Up To a Community Space

Welcoming new people is the first step to getting them involved in the space — first impression matters. The next steps after welcoming can lead to three different outcomes: failing, struggling, or thriving.

• Failing

  The community space is a one-time stunt. At first, it enjoys waves of excited visitors — a grand opening party, friends inviting friends, and more. But without organizers showing the work behind the scenes or asking people to get involved, only a few people offer to help and fewer end up actually helping. Sooner or later, the space closes.

• Struggling

  A group manages to keep its space open. Organizers spread the word about activities and projects and open decision-making meetings to the public. Once in awhile, someone “gets it” and takes initiative. They might do neighborhood outreach or balance the books. But without defined roles and responsibilities, even for the core group of organizers, participation is unpredictable and limited. Managing the space involves all kinds of unexpected, unsteady work.

• Thriving

  The healthy, sustainable participation most groups hope for. A critical mass of volunteers show up to help at the community space one day, thanks to word-of-mouth, an article with a call to action, or good timing. After a positive experience, many volunteers come back. Some become active organizers, taking on defined roles and responsibilities. The space grows organically.

In all three of these cases, different practices might lead to better outcomes. What principles are behind better practices?

2. Principles For Welcoming People

How can organizers lift up the vision and values of their community space without shutting down volunteers who bring new perspectives and capacity? The two principles of alignment and affirmation can help turn frustrating questions into productive conversations. This helps bridge the gap from a visitor to a volunteer.

1. Find alignment

   Work towards a common goal by integrating diverse opinions instead of rejecting them. For example, when people are in alignment, they listen to and respect one another — any stakeholder can support a decision even when they have concerns.

2. Offer affirmation

   Encourage and support people, especially as they try new things and take initiative. For example, organizers can encourage everyone to help — even if they fail at first — by sharing positive stories and recognizing effort.

How can we apply these principles?

3. Improve a Space by Making it More Welcoming

One way to explain what happens in welcoming new people at a community space is to break it down into three steps to help people:

1. Visiting – getting curious

2. Trying – seeing connections

3. Joining – making a commitment

To help understand these steps in action, I’ll use the PLACE for Sustainable Living as a case study:

1. Visiting

• Goal: To help people experience the vision of the space.
• Practice: Helping people get curious and explore instead of simply explaining how things work.
• Avoid…
  • welcoming people half-heartedly.
  • making requests for help that are vague or ad-hoc.
  • deferring to outdated documentation, a dense wiki, or a messy Facebook group/page.
• Consider…
  • doing regular outreach to build local relationships.
  • hosting a regular action day.
  • outlining a clear path for volunteers to become organizers.
• Example: Because PLACE is dedicated to spreading its model, it invests heavily in making visits a positive experience by hosting a monthly Action Day, when people can see everything for themselves.

2. Trying

• Goal: To help people imagine being part of the community and understand its priorities.
• Practice: Creating ways for people to connect with opportunities instead of just matching skills and tasks.
• Avoid…
  • recruiting only for narrow, predefined roles.
  • using jargon, rituals, and “inessential weirdness”.
  • setting a do-it-yourself standard that favors connected people.
• Consider…
  • creating a buddy system.
  • hosting regular trainings and orientations.
  • showcasing projects and the groups behind them.
• Example: PLACE has a vision of resilience that combines self-sufficiency and mutual aid. People become stronger by supporting one another. Getting a real taste of that experience is key for new people to believe another way of life is possible. It also adds capacity to get work done.

3. Joining

• Goal: To grow participation in a healthy way and minimizing growing pains.
• Practice: Making it easy for new people to commit and come back.
• Avoid…
  • sending visitors custom-tailored instructions on how to help.
  • assuming everyone can take initiative alone, or feels comfortable asking for support.
  • hosting one meeting for internal work, for welcoming visitors, and for reviewing proposals.
• Consider…
  • conducting trainings on how to become an organizer, with supporting resources.
  • supporting new people in making decisions in working groups, committees, pods, etc.
  • asking, “Who has power and control in our community? Is it us? Why?”
  • scheduling regular meetings, and regular retreats.
• Example: Stewardship is essential to the way PLACE runs. Its organizers are actually called “stewards” and they take responsibility for everything from facilities and administration to education and events. More broadly, PLACE is organized as a set of groups called “pods” where stewards and others collaborate. Joining the space happens through these pods, where people can propose a project they bring with them (like a pedal-powered pasta maker) or simply work until inspiration strikes.

4. Practice Makes Progress

In community spaces, welcoming people often leads to collaborations on projects that keep everything growing and thriving. However, some people may never feel welcomed in a space.

Progress means returning to these issues time and again. For example, you can continually develop community agreements, a statement of solidarity, or a set of policies. This is where the principles of alignment and affirmation matter most, because they emphasize the role of practice in bringing intentions to life.

Please fill out this form to get PDFs of the full guide and worksheet.

And if you use this resource, please let me know how it goes! Email danny@peakagency.co.

The post How to Welcome and Engage People in Community Spaces appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Note: All Procomuns videos feature simultaneous translation, please switch from left to right channels to change languages.

This plenary was filmed at PROCOMUNS, a 3 day event which was held in Barcelona in March, 2016 to discuss commons-oriented approaches to public policy, peer production and the commons collaborative economy. Key goals included proposing public policies and providing technical guidelines to build software platforms for collaborative communities. You can find more Procomuns material on the P2P Foundation blog, compiled under this tag.

The post Procomuns Plenary 12: Value and Collaborative Production appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Note: All Procomuns videos feature simultaneous translation, please switch from left to right channels to change languages.

This plenary was filmed at PROCOMUNS, a 3 day event which was held in Barcelona in March, 2016 to discuss commons-oriented approaches to public policy, peer production and the commons collaborative economy. Key goals included proposing public policies and providing technical guidelines to build software platforms for collaborative communities. You can find more Procomuns material on the P2P Foundation blog, compiled under this tag

The post Procomuns Plenary 11: Open Source Circular Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

We believe that on the part of government institutions it is time to define and advance the promotion of viable production and entrepreneurship alternatives, ones that fulfill the conditions for transparency and open resources as an engine of real progress, resilience and multiplication of opportunities. It is time for governments to act and stop the enclosure of knowledge and digital commons.

If you enjoyed our in-depth report on Procomuns (the Commons Collaborative Economy event held in Barcelona last March), you’ll surely be interested in the set of European Commission policy proposals put together by our colleagues at Barcola and Dimmons with support of the P2Pvalue project. We have transfered these recommendations to the Commons Transition Wiki, so they can be easily consulted or commented on. Alternatively, you can download the PDF’s linked below.

The main objective of the Commons Collaborative Economies is to discuss the potential and the challenges of the collaborative economy, but also to define public policies that could help to promote the “Commons side” of the collaborative economy.

Following the discussions at the first international event we organized on March 2016, which gathered more than 400 participants, we have been working together experts, citizens and sector representatives on a series of proposals and more than 120 policy recommendations for governments, ending in a joint statement of public policies for the collaborative economy.

The measures (in Catalan) have been sent to the Barcelona City Council as concrete actions for the Municipal Action Plan of the City following a consultative online participatory process. The Declaration has been sent to other local authorities and the Government of Catalonia. This version of the Declaration in English has also been sent to the European Commission and various General Directorates which are currently working on the regulation of the collaborative economy. A version in Spanish has also been sent to various institutional authorities.

Following new and open sessions we will continue encouraging the debate and the development of new versions of the declaration and of useful resources.

Executive summary of the document, with the 10 policy proposals which received more support.