Somero 2015 – P2P Foundation

GNU social and cities

Manuel Ortega — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 10:59:05 +0000

The SocialCapital plugin is a key piece for the promotion of GNU social as an operating system for cities.

Overcoming the limitation of seeing GNU social as a mere alternative to centralized services like Facebook or Twitter was the most important contribution of the first GNU social camp. With this limitation overcome, GNU social becomes a platform on which we can build a thousand social and distributed applications.

The first set of applications designed with this thinking aim to offer a new operating system for cities. This is a new operating system meant to facilitate and drive participation and interaction between the people in a neighborhood, and, through federation, in the city. In the end, it’s about promoting social cohesion.

Let’s imagine for a second that we will create a system of rules to measure those interactions and estimate their impact on the community. Let’s imagine that a good part of that virtual skin of sharing is blended with neighborhoods, with neighborhood spaces that have their own nodes. We could at least have a index and a series of indicators of social capital in each neighborhood. Additionally, we could measure how the actions of an NGO influence social capital in its surroundings, or how incentivizing exchanges between two cities has an influence on the wealth of your neighbors. Let’s add to all this Juan’s latest reflections, returning to the relationship between common knowledge and social change. Far beyond “karma” or “popularity,” having a measure of what freely is shared would allow any city agent to have a much more effective plan of social action.

The development and specifications of this index us brings us to the first component in this set of applications: SocialCapital.

In a first development effort, we have created the basic structure of this plug-in and some early functionality. The core of this plug-in is the class SocialCapitalIndex where queries on users’ interaction are encapsulated and each one of them is assigned an index of social capital provided to the network. The early functionality of the plugin adds the index created by the class SocialCapitalIndex to the profile of each user.

In parallel to this early development effort, we’ve also written a first specifications document for the development of SocialCapital.

Starting from this first version of SocialCapital and its specifications document, our objective is to open up development of this important piece for the promotion of GNU social as an operating system for cities.

Among the next steps to continuing development are the improvement of current database queries, interaction, and visualization in Qvitter. But, the most important point is designing and improving the algorithm that creates the user index, or, as Andrés commented on GNU social, we want to have a number or set of labels associated with each user. Also, we would have to consult and evaluate other similar algorithms that can serve as a guide–for example, the reputation system at Stack Overflow.

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish)

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The pattern of the coming changes

David de Ugarte — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 17:18:39 +0000

What we take away from Somero 2015 is a model and a map of social, economic, and technological change that forces us to rethink and refine the framework of work. And internally, for the Indianos, it is the beginning of a new time with a new way of understanding what las Indias is.

Last night we said goodbye to the last participants from Somero 2015. Somero is meant to be our end-of-summer party and beginning of a new year, but also a succinct “Somero” catalog of the socio-economic change created by technological development. In both categories, it was a great success: we learned so many things and we met many new friends that it has forced us to stop and re-order the main reference points from which we understand reality.

The pattern of the emerging change

Throughout the presentations, interviews, and talks, we gradually discovered a common pattern in the changes in the production of software, objects and appliances, in energy, and in the coming finance system, but also, to the surprise of more than one person, in areas as apparently distant from each other as local development and the new missions and operational capacities of the FFAA. This is a radical change that also became transparent in the global view of the economy and geo-strategy.

It’s a relatively invisible but unstoppable change that uses the keys of what we have called the Direct Economy.

The heart of the change: less scale, more scope, lower cost

This common pattern is an across-the-board reduction in the scale of productive units and the growing centrality of economies of scope. What are economies of scope? The disproportionate improvement of productivity obtained from two things:

The capacity obtained through the intensive use of multi-purpose machines and systems–3D printers in prototyping, “recyclable” production chains in manufacturing, systems integrated into logistics–of multiplying the diversity of low-cost supply, marking a tendency towards low-cost customization.
The capacity for reaching, at a low cost, across greater distances by using networks and identifying concrete identarian networks, to make them customized offers.

The result of the balance between large scales that are suffering more and more inefficiencies and a new productive “SME” community that is producing a greater diversity of things, in smaller runs, and selling them globally by differentiating more kinds of customers, is clear: the whole sector of the new “small and global” produces at a lower cost and is simply more efficient.

So the slogan of the change, in any setting, could well be less scale, more scope.

Distributed isn’t decentralized

The main contradiction of this world that we started to map out in Somero 2015 is the tension between the decentralized and the distributed.

The Internet of the giants of scale, the world of finance, and the industrial sector that is still dominant today, are the results of the connection of a series of centralized and centralizing systems. Twitter, Facebook, and Google are such centralized networks that they show the user a single entry page. Volskwagen, Endesa or any other industrial giant are such centralized transnational systems that they can plan not only their margins but updates to their equipment from their providers with their corresponding financial costs. These providers, who live in a true monopsony (a market with a single buyer) have no margin for any other technological innovation than that dictated and funded by the buyer.

But starting at certain scale, decentralized systems not only accumulate more inefficiencies, but turn them into costs that are higher than those of their distributed alternatives. These alternatives are not just more and more competitive in industry and even in the credit market. They are, by definition, more robust and resilient, and with a minimal regulation, as we saw in finance, they have systemic effects that underpin the main path of socio-economic and technological progress in our era: the dissipation of rents.

Additionally, when we joined the logic of distribution to that of free software, the free [of charge] nature of the underlying infrastructure appears easily, and the result is the appearance of resilient and accessible markets, and above all of a social fabric that gives a leading role to the community in the city and in conversation.

The key word is community

And as Juan had already told us on the second day and again remarked in the send-off, the new world doesn’t relate in impersonal ways, talking about “here’s what you should do,” but about many different versions of “here’s what we’re doing,” from many real communities, each one with their own values and ways of being themselves.

Somero 2015 was, above all, a community event. From the first days, we saw the birth of a powerful, imaginative and cohesive development community: that of GNU social. Working in parallel with the seminar of the “Sharing Cities Network,” in less than three days, it made a true show of force by developing the basics of the free and distributed toolbox of the “sharing city.”

But that wasn’t the only community that took shape in those days. The participation of many of our friends of la Matriz, who had jointly rented and organized accommodations and transportation to participate, gave shape to turning An?ovoligo into “las Indias Club.” Their participation in conversations and in software development, their contributions to the development of the event, and their interaction with the speakers were fundamental to everything turning out as marvellously as it did. In the end, as we wanted, we are something closer to a country than a landscape. Now the “Indianos” are not just the members of the cooperatives, but the network of friends of las Indias Club, our “happy few,” our “we,” united by values and ideas, but above all by experiences, feelings, and affections.

Towards Somero 2016

This morning, while the apartment rented by la Matriz was emptying out and its Indianos were leaving for train stations and airports, the other one, that of the cooperators, was ringing with accounts, bills, and telephone calls. Among them were the first preparatory calls for Somero 2016.

We feel that we entered, reinforced and excited, into a new year, our fourteenth year, and into a new stage. This is a stage in which las Indias is no longer only a community with cooperatives but also a Club to think and do together. During the upcoming weeks, we will build its new webpage and we will publicize the first contents published and produced in and as a result of Somero 2015.

Somero 2015 was exciting–it gave us all momentum, filled us with ideas, and let us glimpse a powerful general framework from which many valuable things can be made. None of it would have been possible without all those who came and gave the best of themselves. Endless thanks to everyone!

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish)

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Current economics in comics, video and… “talking objects”

David de Ugarte — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 12:08:36 +0000

This is a new way of communicating economic theory that uses video, popular culture, and comics as a platform for “spimes,” “talking objects” that talk about the everyday importance of the advances in academic economics.

There have begun to be some good MOOCs on Economy that provide the context necessary to be able to access that type of higher education that the continental European university seems to want renounce. But changing the tone and the depth of the social narrative requires much more than that. It’s hard enough to transmit economic culture, and spreading the advances in economic theory and incorporating them into the social debate on topics as hot as intellectual property or innovation seems completely out of reach.

Doing just that was the mission that we gave our companion María Rodríguez a few months ago. Her objective: create a new mode of communication capable of permeating popular culture. The result: Juan Pop, the first economist superhero.

Talking objects, informative content

The formula is simple: a story, a comic, and daily objects that “talk.”

The story: Juan Urrutia is a economist who, while on a visit to a particle accelerator, has his heart broken by a rise in electricity rates. His friend Doctor Generic gives him a free (libre) heart, and he becomes Juan Pop, the terror of crony capitalism. When he returns home, he realizes that he transfers his economist superpowers to all the objects he touches. From then on, with their friends Dr. Generic, D.J. Maresi, and his cow Abundance, he will fight against Count Monopoly to free the market from rents and privileges.

The objects: Mugs, blankets, cookies and all kinds of daily objects illustrated with by a comic strip artist from Buenos Aires, Clara Lagos, will carry a QR code that can be read with a cellphone and that leads to a page in which a video of Juan Urrutia and an informative text explain, in a simple and accessible way, the latest evolution in Economic Theory.

Dreams have no owner

During the recent Somero 2015, María presented the first “Juan Pop” object: a coffee mug illustrated with the slogan “Dreams have no owner” and a QR that leads to an accessible explanation on why Economic Theory no longer defends the need for intellectual property. It’s a polemic topic on which economic theory has advanced spectacularly in the last fifteen years, but without its conclusions and nuances reaching public opinion.

New adventures of the first economist superhero will follow, with new objects and messages. The objective, María tells us, is to create an emotional and attractive hook, taking current topics in economic theory and “give them a body and bringing them into everyday life.”

Bringing economic theory to objects and turning them into a new and informative medium means going from disseminating online content to the manufacture and physical distribution of goods. But that wasn’t the hardest part.

The hardest thing was convince Juan [confesses María with a sly smile]. When we recorded the video, we didn’t tell him that it was going to appear linked on a mug, or that the context was going to be the story of Juan Pop. We wanted him to see it first. And the time to do it was at Somero. We wanted him to see the reactions, to participate in conversations that would be started with the mug… and to realize that Juan Pop could become something really subversive.

And the results didn’t disappoint: few people who attended Somero 2015 left without a mug, and none without talking about it and commenting on the video and the text that accompanies it.

Our launch and first offer

At 4 PM today, we will open the JuanPop.com shop with the first product in the catalog: the “dreams have no owner” mug. For the occasion, a limited run of 200 mugs has been produced that will be our first offer, for only 10€ (VAT included). Don’t miss out — get yours!

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish)

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3 Highlights from the Somero Sharing Cities conference 2015 in Gijon, Spain

Stacco Troncoso — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 12:12:36 +0000

Shareable’s Neal Gorenflo recounts the high points of the recent Somero 2015 event in Gijón Spain. Here’s the original article

Somero 2015’s five days of workshops, hackathons, and keynotes concluded successfully last Sunday. Hosted by Las Indias Coop, Shareable, the Free Software Foundation, the Gijon town council, and the Spanish government, one of Somero 2015’s central ideas was uniting physical and digital urban commons into a more coherent whole, something Shareable has worked diligently toward over the last few years through our Sharing Cities Network, policy guide, and ongoing movement-building editorial.

The uniqueness of the location, hosts, and participants added a highly rewarding dimension to the ambitious conference agenda. Gijon, the largest city in the autonomous region of Asturias, features a gorgeous beach, vibrant nightlife, a city center dating from Roman times, and fabulous cuisine made possible by verdant lands, a productive sea, and influences from many cultures including the Celts (bagpipe music and cider are cultural staples). The members of Las Indias Coop, the lead hosts of Somero 2015, are consultants, Go players, Esperanto speakers, software hackers, science fiction geeks and die-hard intellectuals. There is no way to get bored in conversation with their curious and kind-hearted member-owners. Not surprisingly, they attracted equally interesting participants, which made for great fun and learning.

Below are three highlights from Somero 2015:

1. Sharing Cities Seminar. Shareable’s Tom Llewellyn, Las Indias’ Carolina Ruggero, and I lead a two-day sharing cities seminar with a small group of local changemakers and politicians. We shared our concept of sharing cities, our policy guide, and our community organizing strategy. Carolina gave a primer on network technologies and their role in social change. We learned that the knowledge we’ve gained over the last few years, and sometimes take for granted, is much appreciated. We plan to do more education in 2015 as a result.

2. GNUbnb. Hackers Manuel Ortega (Las Indias), Hannes Mannerheim (Quitter), Mikael Nordfeldth (GNU Social), and others coded an alpha version of an open and distributed hospitality network based off of GNU Social’s codebase and Quitter’s interface (similar to Twitter’s). What Quitter’s says of itself gives you just hint about the motivations for this effort, “We are a federation of microbloggers who care about ethics and solidarity and want to quit the centralised capitalist services.” GNUbnb is a module of GNU Social and features a distributed but connected architecture. That means that even though you install your own instance of GNU Social / bnb for your community, your users can interact with users on other instances as if it’s one platform. This is yet another bold initiative in the growing platform coop movement, which Shareable has written extensively about and is helping to catalyze.

3. The End of Banking. Journalist Jurg Muller introduced his new book, The End of Banking, on the impact of distributed technology on traditional banking. His presentation outlined how ambitious professionals leveraged network technologies to hide risk, create new shadow banking empires, and nearly crashed the global financial system in 2007-08. What he suggested was that rather than using network technologies to bolster traditional banking as in the past, it should be used to obsolete it. Digital technologies offer a new, more stable, transparent, and fair way to organize our financial system. The book offers a blueprint for this.

I also enjoyed hearing from Alex Simon about Kano, the open source computer kit for kids, Paul Blundell of Acorn commune on success factors for intentional communities (have a sustainable business), General Asarta on resilient cities, and the always intelligent commentary by Indianos Natalia Fernandez, Carolina Ruggero, David de Ugarte, Manuel Ortega, and more.

I could go on and on. Somero 2015 was an embarrassment of intellectual and experiential riches. I’ll end by simply recommending that you come next year.

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Las Indias: The Anchovies become a club

Natalia Fernandez — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 14:04:58 +0000

The League of the Anchovy changes its statutes, name, and logo to become a tool for the network that was born over this last year.

A little more than a year ago, we took a radical turn: we refounded our life-long association, the Library of the Indies. With Juan Urrutia, Neal Gorenflo, Matt Scales, Antonin Leonard and other friends—all of them cutting-edge people and pioneers in collaborative consumption, the direct economy, P2P production, free software, etc.—we took a very Cantabrian myth, the birth of the anchovy, and convened our network to Gijón to ask ourselves how to reach “beyond the Sharing Economy” and turn all those ideas and explorations into real opportunities for growth.

We called it the “League of the Anchovy,” because we thought that it would develop, above all, as a way of working among groups to join resources and reach concrete accomplishments. Our main contribution at that time was to bring the development of Bazar towards the standard of distributed communication that the Free Software Foundation was promoting: the OStatus protocol and GNU-Social. Then la Matriz was born, and we develop its connection with blogs and promoted what, the day after tomorrow, Wednesday the seventh, will be the first “GNU-social Camp.”

The result was not a league of groups, but an extraordinarily active network with a much richer conversation than anyone could have expected. It is a club facilitated by the Indianos that has not stayed at the talking stage, but rather, has already begun to produce innovation, giving it the form of code and initiatives.

The day after tomorrow, we will begin Somero 2015, the great convening of our network. We’re beginning a new year, and we want do it with a new skin that reflects change and growth.

So we members of “the League of the Anchovy” approved a change in statutes, allowing the members of the network to be integrated into the association and make it theirs. The name itself will reflect the change, becoming “Las Indias Club ~ The League of Abundance“; the main domain will be lasindias.club and will become a space that is self-managed by the network of members; Somero will officially become our annual conference, and the logo will go from being our dear traveling anchovy to a pomegranate about to burst with thousand seeds.

What better symbol we could have?

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish)

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The strategy of las Indias for the new year (which begins in October)

Natalia Fernandez — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 08:26:32 +0000

Three axis: To give those around us a space to contribute and collaborate, to co-produce with more people, and to provide an integral education for a good life.

Yesterday we had an intense morning meeting with Juan. It was time to catch up and discuss the beginning of our plan for the next Indiano year (which begins October second, the thirteenth anniversary of the founding of las Indias). Changes are coming, but above all, we’re enjoying a change of mood. We’re no longer trying to get somewhere in the middle of a storm. The storm has passed. And as the sky clears, we’ve have discovered some things:

The most important one is, many restless and valuable people identify with us and with what we’re trying to do. We have to give them a space to contribute and collaborate, because we want share our bet on community and abundance.
While we’re getting underway with new consultancy projects, which we enjoy a lot, the work that has fulfilled us this last year was what we’ve done together with other businesses and friends, in the logic of the direct economy. Continuing in that line, making products in alliance with others for the general public and launching them in the market, is what we’re most looking forward to in the new year. We’ve spent time laying the foundations to scale that experience and give it greater scope. This year, we have to start to create results.
We are not the only ones to realize that the current growth model is broken, and that the alternative is either degrowth or radical change. What we learned this year is that if we want that radical change, it’s fundamental to promote cultural change, and to do this, we have to bet on promoting a new kind of training that provides “an integral education that leads to the good life.” With universities turning more and more into training centers to reduce costs and inefficiencies for Big Businesses, there’s an obvious need for a place of learning for multispecialists, that provides a profound philosophical and practical base to people who don’t see themselves becoming corporate functionaries, but “making an economic life” and entering the market for themselves or with their community.

Yesterday we started to put down in black and white these three ideas and, most importantly, taking concrete steps towards them. It was no small advance. So, we have to thank our friends for the conversations on la Matriz both on and off the blog, which have been very valuable. While we don’t yet have everything planned down to the last millimeter, thanks to the meeting yesterday, we do have a first draft that will be developed through practice beginning in October. When we finished, we were so happy that we went out to celebrate by having two delicious Peking ducks and talking about a thousand things that came into our heads with Juan, starting with his most recent posts and his upcoming books.

What’s next?

First stop: Somero 2015, the point of departure for a new year, the presentation of ideas, and the first concrete plans to materialize the three main points. You’ll want to be there. Reserve your place now!!

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What days should you choose to participate in at Somero 2015?

David de Ugarte — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 17:05:05 +0000

Which days are meant for you at Somero 2015? Reserve them now!!

This year Somero offers between two and six days of activities. We know that few of you can come the whole time, so it’s organized into topics and conversations so you can choose the ones that interest you most, and you can get the most out of your visit to Gijón. Of course, we’ve done everything possible to make each day the most interesting, to make it hard for you. ?

Wednesday the 7th and Thursday the 8th are the “GNU social Camp” and the “Sharing Cities Seminar”

“GNU social Camp” will interest you if you want to discover the Swiss Army knife of the distributed web and learn to develop it. This is the most “techy” part of the event. You don’t have to develop software professionally to benefit from it, but it is recommended that you at least have a basic level of PHP.
The “Sharing Cities Seminar” is a work group of a dozen experts in the participatory transformation of cities. The idea is that they will work to give us a guide to transform cities based on the experiences of places like Seoul, New York, or Bologna. Initially, it will be a closed, by-invitation meeting, but if you’re very interested or believe that you can make a difference, please write us.

It’s safe to say that you’ll be interested in the official opening of the event Thursday the 8th at 8:00 PM. We’ll interview Mikael Nordfeldth, who will tell us the conclusions of GNU social Camp, we’ll discuss the results of the “Sharing Cities Seminar” with Neal Gorenflo, and, along with Juan Urrutia, we’ll give context to ShareableLab and make an important announcement about las Indias that will certainly interest you. We’ll conclude the opening with an espicha [informal talking over local drinks] in which you’ll be able to chat and exchange ideas personally with the speakers from all of Somero, and with other participants, in a relaxed and festive environment. While all of Somero is based on collaborative work and conversation, this will be our main “networking time.”

Friday the 9th, Saturday the 10th, and Sunday the 11th are days of “ShareableLab,” the days of the most daring proposals and most didactic seminars. They are the most like a summer university… the kind that could and would transform the world.

Friday, we will dedicate the day to production. Alex Simon will tell us how to set up a company like Kano.me from crowdfunding to globalization in less than a year. He will be assisted in his seminar by Lucía García, the manager of Laboral and promoter of FabLab Asturias, who will show us how to use Fablabs and their prototyping systems to materialize our ideas within that process. In a parallel program, Natalia will propose an incubator of a new kind in which, for the first time, you’ll be able to reserve your place before public calls are made.
Saturday will be the day of resilience. With General Asarta, we’ll learn to design our cities and think of our projects in terms of the pure logic of resilience: thinking where we need to start from, in the case of disaster, to be able get back on our feet right away. With him, Gijsbert Huijink, creator of Som Energia and member of the directorate of ResCoop.eu, will teach us how to create an energy cooperative that produces clean, local energy for tens of thousands of people, with social objectives and without giving up being competitive with big electric companies. Meanwhile, in the parallel seminar, with the help of Neal Gorenflo and the leaders of GNU social Camp, we will co-design and develop a GNUbnb, a free (in both senses) hospitality service that is an alternative to big businesses like Airbnb, the first step towards a Sharing Economy, which is grassroots and based on sharing.
Sunday is the day of the next revolutions. With Enrique Goñi and Jurg Müller, we will discuss the “end of banking” as a necessary intermediator.

During the seminar, Jurg Müller will design with us the application that is capable of replacing a bank that he presented in The End of Banking, and will then give us a seminar about how build it, and finance the development of a typical city with a system rather than with a formal institution.

In the last seminar, Paul Blundell, one of the most relevant figures in worldwide communitarianism, will tell us how people in the US are going from co-living to productive urban communities, and what we can learn from the experience accumulated by productive agrarian communitarianism.

And of course, we’ll have our evaluation and closing party starting at 6:00 PM. And the whole next day, Monday, for those who don’t want to go home Sunday, will be dedicated to get to know Gijón, Asturias, and the new ciders of the year a little better.

Have you chosen your favorite activity? Is it clear which days interest you most? Reserve them now!!

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish)

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Some keys to GNU social Camp

Manuel Ortega — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 08:31:43 +0000

GNU social Camp will focus on digital literacy, the consolidation of the network of GNU social nodes and their users, and the development of new functionalities and integration of GNU social with other platforms.

The 7th and 8th of October, we will be holding the first GNU social Camp. The main objective is to promote the development of GNU social, the main social platform project supported by the Free Software Foundation, and consolidate the growth of the federated and distributed social web. We already have a first draft of the program with excellent news, like the participation of Mikael Nordfeldth, the main developer of GNU social, and Pablo Bernardo to talk to us about mobility in relation to GNU social.

We still have time to include chats and workshops in the event, and we would love receive your proposals. So that you have the framework of the event, we’ll give you some of the keys and main topics of the GNU social Camp.

Digital literacy: Why promote platforms to create distributed networks? What is the federated social web? Network topologies. The objective is to promote and spread the theoretical framework of the web of autonomy.
Consolidation of the network: Installation and maintenance of GNU social nodes, manuals and tutorials for new users, frequently asked questions, error correction. Ultimately, any initiative that contributes to consolidating and energizing the current network of working GNU social nodes.
New functionalities and GNU social for the sharing city: Plug-in development, OStatus, topics, integration with blogs. The objective of this topic is to lay the foundation and offer the tools to turn GNU social into the free standard of the Sharing Economy and distributed social networks.

GNU social Camp will focus on digital literacy, the consolidation of the network of GNU social nodes and their users, and the development of new functionalities and integration of GNU social with other platforms.

Translation by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish

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Check out the Top 10 Sharing Events of the Season

Stacco Troncoso — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 11:24:36 +0000

Reposted from Shareable; Ambika Kandasamy takes us through some of the best sharing events happening this fall.

Are you deeply plugged into the sharing movement or simply curious about how the sharing economy works? Whether you’re a veteran of the movement or a newcomer, the sharing events happening around the world this fall are bound to spark ideas for new ways to engage in the collaborative economy.

We’ve pulled together our top 10 sharing events — both large and small (out of a very long list) — taking place this season. Interested in cooperatives, permaculture, skill sharing, free and open software, and/or the commons? We have something for you.

We’re proud to partner with terrific organizations and individuals globally to support the first four events on this list. We hope to see you at one or more of these exciting gatherings!

Shareable Labs

Please join us at Shareable Labs from Oct. 7-12 in Gijon, Spain. Co-presented with Las Indias Cooperative, Free Software Foundation, the Spanish Department of Defence, and other groups, this innovative event begins with a seminar on sharing cities and a GNU social camp. This will be followed by a three-day conference focusing on restoring local production with P2P, sharing cities, creating community resiliency, and financing the future of P2P. Read about last year’s event here.

IASC Urban Commons Conference

We hope you make it to the IASC Urban Commons Conference in Bologna, Italy. The two-day conference, which starts on Nov. 6, will offer thought-provoking discussions on the urban commons and urban governance.

Mountain View Skillshare

Swing by the Mountain View Skillshare on Sept. 26 for an afternoon of hands-on workshops and stimulating conversations. Some of the classes offered at the event, which is hosted by linkAges TimeBank in partnership with the City of Mountain View, include urban beekeeping, drought-tolerant gardening, and time-baking.

Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy

On Nov. 13, check out Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy in New York City for “a coming-out party for the cooperative Internet.” Learn about why owning is the new sharing here.

Western Worker Cooperative Conference

Like cooperatives? Check out the Western Worker Cooperative Conference that runs from Sept. 20-23 in Berkeley, Calif. Learn how to launch a cooperative and how to enhance communication among coop members, among other key topic areas. RSVP here.

Building Resilient Communities Convergence

From social permaculture and community organizing to local currencies and economic resilience, the Building Resilient Communities Convergence has an array of skills-building workshops. The four-day event, which kicks off on Oct. 8, will be held at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, Calif.

Call for a Chamber of Commons

Picture used with permission from Cooperation 2015 conference in February, 2015

If you’re in Chicago on Oct. 10, stop by The Institute of Cultural Affairs (USA) for a meeting on creating an outline for a Chamber of Commons in the city. More details here.

Sharing Day Nijmegen

Live in the Netherlands? Consider attending Sharing Day Nijmegen on Oct. 24 for an exciting day of learning how to share food, transportation, skills, and housing.

Neighborhood Economics Conference

The Neighborhood Economics Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, centers on reimaging the current economic structures in place. The two-day conference kicks off on Nov. 17. Find more details and register for the conference here.

OuiShare Fest Barcelona

The OuiShare Fest in Barcelona, Spain, focuses on the collaborative economy. Beginning, Nov. 19, the event will run for three days, and will provide a platform to discuss how companies and public institute can operate in the collaborative economy.

If you’re organizing or attending conferences, courses, or other events that focus on sharing in your city, please add it to our events calendar — we’ll help you spread the word!

Lead image courtesy of Flickr user Alan Levine.

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Idea for Assemblies of the Commons gaining traction in francophone world

Michel Bauwens — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 07:32:39 +0000

During the important multi-day francophone festival dedicated to the commons, le Temps des Communs, there will be a special day in which events will take place to eventually launch Assemblies of the Communs. On October 10, in parallel, in Chicago, a Chamber of the Commons will also be inaugurated. Another important commons-related events to check out in these dates include Somero 2015 in Gijón, Spain (which includes the Sharing Cities Seminar, the GNU Social Camp and ShareableLab Europe.

This is the first time that institutions will be launched that give a specific voice to commoners, both in their civic capacity, and in their capacity as workers and entrepreneurs taking care of their livelihoods as commoners.

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