In his brilliant book, How The World Really Works, Vaclav Smil concludes: …of all the risks we face, global climate change is the one that needs to be tackled most urgently and effectively. And there are two fundamental reasons why this combination of speed and efficacy will be much harder to realize than is generally …
The conventional funding model, in which grant making bodies hand out six figure sums to qualifying organizations, is broken. At it’s best the standard grant funding model is woefully inefficient: Huge amounts of funds are wasted on ‘administration’ Time-poor NGOs and smaller orgs are forced to compete for limited funds, guaranteeing that the vast proportion …
A new model for grant funding – to finance the collaborative Commons Read More »
Business as usual is unsustainable. Capitalism has legitimised the externalisation of various ‘costs’ to such an extent that it has become normal for companies to exploit the natural world – and their customers at the same time. Take the example of a large video conferencing company that enables people to chat and run webinars. At …
The self-reinforcing nature of cooperation and ethical business Read More »
OPEN 2020 took place entirely online over two days of talks and discussions and even some poetry – the videos are below in chronological order. You can also view them in the OPEN 2020 playlist on our YouTube channel – which includes all the pre-event webinars too. OPEN 2020 – Introduction OPEN 2020 was a …
In the run up to OPEN 2020 we interviewed Enric Duran, a founding member of the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC – Cooperativa Integral Catalana) and Faircoop, who developed the Faircoin project. OSB: How are things going with Faircoop and Faircoin? ED: We’ve been working on Farcoin since 2014 – and it helped to develop the …
Building the commons economy – Q&A with Enric Duran from Faircoin Read More »
The Open Co-op has a vision that we have championed for some time: That an open source platform which provides all the online tools a community needs to thrive could radically catalyse collaboration at scale. We spoke to the Founder and CEO of Open Collective – one of the front-runners in the race to deliver …
OPEN 2020 is a collaborative online event for anyone that is interested in creating a world which places people and planet before profit. Recognising that there are hundreds of thousands of groups and communities working on this general objective… but a lack of inter-connection and collaboration, OPEN 2020 aims to bring together as many people …
OPEN 2020 – Reinvented: Networked commons initiatives Read More »
In the run up to OPEN 2020, which will now be an online event, we caught up with Samer Hassan from P2P Models, where they are investigating decentralizing power and value to deliver the collaborative economy using blockchain. OSB: What’s the latest news from P2P Models? SH: We’ve been mapping the ‘blockchain/DLT for social good’ …
The main challenge we need to solve in the platform co-op community is how to reach critical mass… and how to pass users from one platform to another. Fairbnb.coop is a platform co-op whose name precedes it. Everyone’s heard of the venture-capital-backed alternative that’s putting hotels and traditional B&Bs out of business, and Fairbnb.coop is …
Introducing Fairbnb.coop – Q&A with Damiano Avellino Read More »
I see a real need for “scaled connectivity” to advance our work as part of a viable ecosystem. In the run up to OPEN 2020 in London in June, we interviewed Sarah, Mckinley, Director for European Programs for The Democracy Collaborative and the European Representative for the Next System Project. OSB: What is The Democracy …
Introducing The Democracy Collaborative – Q&A with Sarah McKinley Read More »
