The Open Co-op was founded in 2004 and has a long history of organising events and running projects to help grow the commons. Everything we do aims to build towards our vision of a collaborative econ regenerative economy. We are especially focused on developing the tools, technologies, organisational and economic models and narratives which underpin the regenerative economy to replace the ‘money rules all’ mentality.
Vision
Part of our vision has always included a cooperatively owned ‘everything app’ specifically designed to help people navigate and collaborate in the new economy. You can see what we thought this might have looked like from the screenshots of PLANET and the cartoon story we developed in 2004.
Over the years our vision of PLANET developed into a concept for an Open Source Operating System, which we presented as a mobile app in 2017 and, more recently, as a series of protocols defining the procedures and rules at each layer of the system.
Back in 2004 we did not have the funds or technical skills to deliver on our vision of PLANET.
Fast forward 20 years and we still don’t have the funds! But we have built out some of the core infrastructure to underpin PLANET and other developments in open source have made many of the other technical challenges more achievable. Add in humanities obsession with social media, the catastrophic issues in our social, environmental and economic systems and, it seems, the time is ripe for PLANET: An ‘everything app’, or coordination system to help us explore how to organise, govern, protect and steward our collective resources in a new, collaborative, cooperative way.
Progress
The core infrastructure we have built so far includes:
- A highly performant Index and API which keeps track of decentralised Profiles
- An Index Explorer for searching data in the Murmurations Index
- A Profile Generator for creating Murmurations Profiles
- An Index Updater for adding, updating and removing Profiles from the Index
- A Batch importer for registering CSV data of multiple profiles with the Index
- Several demonstration maps and directories using the components above
- NPM packages launched for the JSON Schema React Form Generator and JSON Schema Instance Generator to enable other sites and plugins to incorporate Profile generation tools
- A Status reporting tool to show the performance of the network
- Docs explaining how all the components can be used
- The MCCS API, which provides matching for Offers and Wants, based on tags, and a mutual credit accounting system which enables people to pay other users in credits
- A Demo of the Open Groups Hub showing how a lightweight aggregator (without a database) can be built on Murmurations to display Groups and their Offers & Needs
All of the tools and building blocks we have developed are available on GitHub as open source code which you are free to use in your own projects.
Roadmap
We are now at an exciting point because we have built the foundations for a fully decentralised data sharing network, which opens up a range of possibilities which were previously not easily achieved – as outlined in our Roadmap working doc.
Our next goal is to update the Murmurations WordPress node plugin to enable WordPress users to publish multiple Profiles for People, Organisations, Offers and Wants, directly from within the Admin area of any WordPress – and to update the Murmurations WordPress Aggregator plugin to make it easy for WordPress users to create and curate detailed maps and directories based on Murmrations data.
The combination of the node and aggregator plugins will also enable groups to share Offers and Wants within and between groups, making it easier to find and trade goods and services without group members needing to be on the same platform.
There are many directions we can build from the foundations we have laid with Murmurations and we need YOUR input to decide where to go next. What is clear is that with more supporters, testers and developers working on separate aspects of the project we would all benefit from each other’s work. After all, that’s what a collaborative regenerative economy is all about!
In order to determine which digital tools would best support local community groups to operate effectively in their local context and to cooperate with other groups, as part of a larger global network for collaborative action, we have launched a survey.
This survey aims to gather feedback and ‘evidence of need’ on the features and functions that local community groups want from their digital tools.
If you run, or are part of an existing, or aspiring community or online group, please fill out the survey to help us identify which tools your group uses and needs and how best we can support inter-group networking and collaboration.