Blog – WP

You pick up your phone to do something.Twenty minutes later, you’re still scrolling - and you’ve forgotten what it was

Across the world, thousands of projects are quietly building a regenerative economy: community gardens, repair cafés, ecovillages, food co-ops, social

The Dawn of Decentralised Trust Networks At The Open Co-op we’re starting 2026 with a sense of profound optimism. After

Imagine a world where every individual and organisation working towards a regenerative future could seamlessly connect, share resources, and collaborate—without

The Open Co-op was founded in 2004 and has a long history of organising events and running projects to help

Have you ever considered how much information Google harvests about you? Google creates ‘shadow profiles’ of every user by tracking,

Business as usual is unsustainable. Capitalism has legitimised the externalisation of various ‘costs’ to such an extent that it has

By definition our government should be decent. But it is not. Being decent requires ‘conforming with generally accepted standards of

This webinar starts with a presentation of the history of the Bristol Pound and the learnings gained from running the

Although Mutual Credit has a strong pedigree, both theoretical and practical, it cannot be said to have ‘moved the needle’

At the end of Day 1 of OPEN 2020 - after 6 hours of focused discussion about co-creating the collaborative

There are hundreds of thousands of groups and communities working on building a new economy, but no centralised control or

What is mutual credit? How does it work? How can we enable local mutual credit networks and transition away from

OPEN 2020 is a collaborative online event for anyone that is interested in creating a world which places people and

In this webinar we hear from Ferran Reyes of Vocdoni. Vocdoni is a FLOSS project building a privacy-centric platform for

Inn this OPEN 2020 Webinar we hear from Dandelion Mane at SourceCred and discuss how we can reward collaboration. SourceCred

In this second intro webinar of OPEN 2020 - Christina Bowen, Joachim Stroh and Graham Mitchell introduce the Digital Life

Watch the first intro webinar of OPEN 2020 with Stacco Troncoso and colleagues from Guerrilla Media Collective discussing DisCos, Distributed Cooperative

OPEN 2020 is a collaborative online event for anyone that is interested in creating a world which places people and

As event organisers the safety of our community is paramount and for the last few weeks we have been closely

The main challenge we need to solve in the platform co-op community is how to reach critical mass… and how

In my previous post on making groups work I argued that a centralised, cooperatively owned platform could be one of

There is a growing consensus that enabling groups, and networks of groups, to work together, is essential to delivering exponential

In his paper on ‘Democracy and E-Democracy - A discussion of the possibility of supplanting traditional representative democracy with e-democracy’,

The OPEN 2019 Community Gathering took place on the 27th and 28th of June in the event space at Tech

The Open Co-op is proud to announce Paul Mason will be attending at OPEN 2019. Paul wrote the important and

The exploitation of temporary, freelance and out-sourced workers is a serious issue. As companies get bigger and more powerful, and

Having re-watched the webinar on Catalysing Collaboration at Scale I wondered if it might be possible to identify some of

Below is a recording of a session from the OPEN 2018 conference about "When communities of practice meet the collaborative

See also the videos from the Main Hall, Workshop space and Open space. What happened at OPEN 2018? Connections Aside

Here's the list of questions that were asked via Slido at OPEN 2018 on the Main Stage... a lot of

DAY 1 The Open Space sessions at OPEN 2018 were a chance for attendees to put forward their own discussion

Have you ever wondered why the world works like it does? Why things seem skewed in favour of the rich

This article is the second part of our interview with Matthew Schutte, Communications Director at Holochain, which covers their plans

Holochain is a new technology project with huge potential for the cooperative economy. Members of The Open Co-op have been

The following post is transcript of a recent webinar on "Decentralized co-operation at scale. What patterns work? What are the

We're very excited to announce that Riverford Organic's boss, Guy Watson, will be speaking at OPEN 2018 about giving the

Co-owned web infrastructure is a clear goal for the co-op movement. As well as ensuring our data is not abused

At OPEN 2018, one of the in-depth breakout workshops where we dig into the practicalities, will feature co-op experts explaining how

Trebor Scholz speaks at OPEN 2017 about the new role for co-ops, unions and tech within the burgeoning cooperative economy.

After an extremely successful event in February 2017 at Goldsmiths University The Open Co-op conference is back with a new

This superb discussion about Platform Co-ops entitled "What happened to the future?" was the plenary at the recent event "The

At OPEN 2017 one of the open space sessions which was proposed by Phil Carey focused on "Inter-generational Collaborative Platforms".

Brianna Wettlaufer is the CEO and Co-founder of Stocksy, a platform co-op which offers a highly curated collection of royalty-free

In this mini video the Rt Hon John McDonnell MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaks about Labour's thoughts on

Budding tech entrepreneurs offered chance to win £2,000 PRIZE and business support for co-op tech entrepreneurs. People with ideas for

Douglas Rushkoff is a writer, documentarian, and lecturer whose work focuses on human autonomy in a digital age. He is

Just like traditional co-ops, platform co-ops are organisations that are owned and managed by their members. While traditional co-ops are normally

Platform co-ops, and the burgeoning movement behind them, are big news. For the first time since the inception of the