Open

Charge My Street – platform co-op seeking investment

The following blog is a guest post from Daniel Heery, from Charge My Street – a platform co-op that installs and operates community chargepoints for electric vehicles, which is currently raising money through community shares. An the first Open Conference back in 2017, I took part in the #DigiDen session with 2 other putative Platform …

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OPEN 2018: Platform Co-ops

See also the videos from the Main Hall, Workshop space and Open space. What happened at OPEN 2018? Connections Aside from all the presentations on the Main stage, the workshop sessions and the open space gatherings the main benefit, that people who attended highlighted, were the connections that were made at the event. Our mission …

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PLANET – An open source operating system for a collaborative, sustainable economy

The following post presents a vision of an open source operating system, which we at The Open Co-op believe would help create a collaborative, sustainable economy. See the video at the end of this post for an introduction to the concepts and ideas behind PLANET. PLANET is not actually a software project, it is a …

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Re-writing the core code of business: A Q&A with Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff is a writer, documentarian, and lecturer whose work focuses on human autonomy in a digital age. He is the author of fifteen bestselling books on media, technology, and society, including Program or Be Programmed, Present Shock, and most recently Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. He recently authored a chapter of the new …

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Democracy spreads like a virus: A Q&A with Nathan Schneider

In 2015, Nathan co-organised “Platform Cooperativism,” a pioneering conference in New York, which kick started a wave of global discussion about online democratic platforms. He recently co-edited the book, Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet. In the run …

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An introduction to Platform co-ops

Just like traditional co-ops, platform co-ops are organisations that are owned and managed by their members. While traditional co-ops are normally based around a physical community of members, platform co-ops live online and are normally populated by online communities of members. The word ‘platform’ is often used to describe an internet service which brings together suppliers …

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Platform Co-ops – Definition and history

What are ‘Platform Co-ops’? Platform cooperatives are online organisations which are owned and managed by their members. Platform co-ops follow the principles of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA). They are democratically governed and support the development of informational and material commons. They provide a viable alternative to the standard internet model based on monopoly and …

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Introducing Open 2017 – what are platform co-ops?

Platform co-ops, and the burgeoning movement behind them, are big news. For the first time since the inception of the internet a consensus is forming around a new model of economics and governance. At The Open Co-op we have been working on this concept since 2004 and continue to advocate that the internet provides the …

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