She oversees all of the program’s scaling initiatives, and has been supporting Up & Go’s development, its overall strategy and cooperative member engagement. In this interview we talk about the Up&Go platform, the history, the challenges and their ambitions.

“What the cooperatives are doing on Up and Go is they’re sharing best practices, they’re learning from each other, they’re creating a space where they can see each other as professionals, and learn from each other…things like, the best recipes for organic soap, or, how to clean this one thing that is so complicated. They’re creating policies and standards, developing policies that are innovative. For the first time, cooperatives developed a cancellation policy that was able to be enforced via Up and Go, and everyone thought that was a great idea. So I think there’s more potential for collaboration and improvements of each others’ systems when they come together an operate under one umbrella. There’s also challenges, of course, right? But I think there’s more beauty in the collaboration than in the competition that we could see.” Maru Bautista, Up and Go.

Martijn Arets is an international platform expert, entrepreneur, and part-time researcher at Utrecht University. The last six years he explored the platform economy by doing over 400 interviews in 13 countries, addressing the drawbacks which need to be resolved in order to reach the platform economy’s full potential and establish a sustainable model. At the Utrecht University, he is doing research on chances and obstacles of platform cooperatives and on platform society: new chances for inclusiveness through platforms. Martijn shares his insights, analyses, and thoughts through articles, videos, and books, as well as through presentations at (international) congresses.

Maru Bautista is the Director of the Cooperative Development Program at the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn, New York. For the past 5 years, she has worked with her team and the Sunset Park community to strengthen immigrant-led worker cooperatives in New York City. She oversees all of the program’s scaling initiatives, and has been supporting Up & Go’s development, its overall strategy and cooperative member engagement. She is chair of the Board of the Democracy at Work Institute and a board member of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. She has a M.A. in International Development from the New School in NYC. When not at work, she is in a park or a playground with her two year old daughter.

For more information, visit: Up and Go

Reposted from Youtube

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Perhaps it was a killer app, or 3D print design. Maybe you heard a complaint repeatedly and imagined a service to solve the problem. Or you had a vision of a song, a film, or a book.

Your friends liked your idea. A few of them assured you your idea would make you rich. Others volunteered to help you make your idea a reality.

So, you investigated.  What would it take to convert your idea into a fortune? You could

• set up an account on Fivrr,
• create a shop on Apple or Google Play,
• negotiate crypto-exchanges on Tor
• pitch at SXSW

But these venues all have the same weakness.  And that weakness is money. You’re either trying to raise money, or exchange for money.

What if you could trade your idea for other forms of value?  What if could exchange your idea for:

• products you use, or
• services you need, or
• access to groups you aspire to, or
• expert advice, or
• places to stay
• social validation?

What if your idea, or talent, or service, or product could make you wealthy without “money”?

That is the value proposition of Community Exchange system.

Extracted from: https://www.community-exchange.org/home/

Extracted from: https://www.community-exchange.org/home/how-it-works/

How It Works

The Community Exchange System (CES) is a web service that provides the tools for communities to set up and manage exchange and trade in their areas without using money. It also provides communities with a network that permits them to trade with other communities, wherever they are in the world.

The main object of the CES is to facilitate trade and exchange by providing a range of non-monetary exchange methods. This helps to build community by connecting people and providing a local support network.

By ‘trade’ we mean the normal activities of providing goods and services by ‘givers’, ‘producers’, ‘sellers’ or ‘providers’, and the receiving of these by ‘buyers’, ‘customers’, ‘clients’, ‘patients’, ‘consumers’, ‘receivers’, etc.

The CES serves two basic functions:

• it is an online exchange system that facilitates exchange in a number of different ways
• it is an online ‘marketplace’ where users advertise their skills, offerings and requirements

Photo by thetaxhaven

Photo by brizzle born and bred

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