OPEN 2019 – Lightning talks – Solutions for the regenerative economy

The Following talks took place at OPEN 2019 where The Open Co-op community tackled the calling question:

How can we support each other to take more effective action to catalyse the collaborative, regenerative economy?

Cooperation among Cooperatives: How to foster an Ecosystem of Platform Coops

Inter-cooperation, as one of the core coop principles, is more than just a networking strategy. Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures. Advocating for political recognition, building business support institutions, creating livelihoods within communities and providing shared apps & technologies are key factors for growing an environment in which coops can flourish. In this lightning talk Ela Kagel, from Super Markt Berlin, will share and gather ideas and concrete examples of inter-cooperative strategies.

From Brexit to Extinction Rebellion and beyond – Citizens Action Networks

In the mainstream headlines, news about climate breakdown competes for space with the spectacle of Westminster breakdown. But at the community level the problem is the same – people disconnected from power, enslaved to the growth economy destroying our planet. How can we build Citizen Action Networks that attract not only those who share our values, but also those that don’t?

Making time to be

Efficient and effective are not the same thing. All too often people are efficiently doing useless or harmful things and thus not being effective – and they would realise this if they just slowed down… Slowing down – making time to be – is connected to re-generation – if you let soil lie fallow, the following years crops will be better. In this lightning talk, Patrick Andrews from Human Organising will explore: How can we learn to be more effective by making time to be? Let the tech do the work…

Building a movement

Lynne Davis shares details of the processes and techniques which helped the Open Food Network build a movement of trust, openness, strength and resilience. In this lightening talk, Lynne reveals how sharing their deepest vulnerabilities helped OFN become one of the most effective decentralised collaborative open source software food projects in Europe.

Using Mutual Credit to undermine the monopoly of the banking cartel

Central and investment banks have had a monopoly on credit creation for too long. The Open Credit Network helps businesses avoid bank charges and interest on loans whilst building a world of equity and trust through mutual credit. In this lightning talk Dave Darby will introduce Sardex, the Sardinian mutual credit scheme that handled over €40 million worth of trades in 2017 and inspired The Open Credit Network, and explain how business can benefit from using mutual credit whilst helping to build a new economy which puts people and planet before profit.

Developing a platform co-op fund

Interest in the platform co-operative model is growing rapidly in the UK. However, platform co-ops are still few in number and limited in scale. One of the main difficulties faced by platform co-ops is the need to raise substantial amounts of capital to start and grow at scale – an obstacle particularly hard to overcome in the tech sector where the main forms of investment look for high profits and returns and are not usually compatible with co-operative values and business models.

Following research with Nesta and support from Open Society Foundations, Co-operatives UK is looking to mobilise a dedicated institutional investment fund for platform co-op that draws on the success of introducing institutional investment in the community shares market. In this lightning talk, we will introduce the platform co-op fund proposition and explore how this can be translated into action.

P2P Models: prototyping organizations to challenge the collaborative economy

Our challenge in P2P Models is to co-create inclusive decentralized tools and theories to create a real collaborative economy and avoid concentration of power and profits, centralized monopolies and disempowered communities. In P2P Models we aim to harness the potentials of blockchain technology for the commons and take collective action to foster social and economic justice.

Open source tools for humans to organize

Aragon provides the necessary tools for human collaboration. Whether you want to collaborate with your co-founder, start a non-profit, or just organize an online community, Aragon is there for you.

Colony: peer to peer organisations on the internet