Where open meets co-op
There is a growing consensus that enabling groups, and networks of groups, to work together, is essential to delivering exponential impact in collaboration and solving humanities multiple challenges. The Magical Number Seven, ideas about committees, decision making, teams and productivity all suggest that small groups are the most effective… whilst Hagel suggests that … [Read more...]
One of our key projects at The Open Co-op is The Open Credit Network, which evolved out of OPEN 2018 and our previous work on ideas for a co-op coin. Having tested a proof-of-concept and visited Sardex, a successful mutual credit network in Sardinia, we have now developed a bespoke directory and accounting system to enable UK businesses to trade via mutual credit. The … [Read more...]
In the run up to OPEN 2018, Oliver Sylvester-Bradley from The Open Co-op interviews Claire Tolan, a developer at Resonate, the music streaming co-op, about RChain, a new framework for scalable blockchain applications, which aims to enable 'glocal' cooperation. The technical design of RChain has foundations in 'rho calculus' which requires a little mind-power to comprehend in … [Read more...]
Holochain is a new technology project with huge potential for the cooperative economy. Members of The Open Co-op have been promoting the idea that new software could, potentially, revolutionise both our failing democracies and our predatory capitalist economies, since 2004. Back then we weren't quite so clear on exactly how the required information architecture should be … [Read more...]
It might come as a surprise – but something innovative is happening in Hull. Hull is one of those cities, like Swindon and Slough, that’s long been the butt of jokes – like the one about the guy that typed ‘Hell’ instead of ‘Hull’ into his Sat-Nav, but still got there – it’s not that funny, or even really justified. In the 2003 book of Crap Towns Hull came in at number one … [Read more...]
Co-owned web infrastructure is a clear goal for the co-op movement. As well as ensuring our data is not abused by big corporates a co-owned 'cloud' of services like email, docs, spreadsheets and calendars could do wonders for collaboration. A cooperative cloud would also provide a clear stepping stone towards the open source, collaborative working environment we have … [Read more...]
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 vision which aims to illustrate some of the concepts and … [Read more...]
A nice talk by Loomio's Ben Knight at the 2015 Bioneers Annual Conference Emerging in response to the need for a scalable way to make inclusive group decisions during the Occupy movement in 2011, Loomio, an activist-driven tech co-op, developed an open-source tool for democratic organizing now used by 80,000 people in 93 countries. Change-making communities, social movements … [Read more...]
Alanna from Loomio met Romain Chanut at POC21, a 6 week innovation camp in France focused on open source hardware for sustainability. Romain was there with his “Do It Together”JerryCan – a low cost computer you can assemble from recycled materials. We took a break from hacking on hardware to learn more about his other role, as a digital transformer in a social media … [Read more...]
At a recent Solidarity Economy event hosted by Locality and organised by Pat Conaty, Robin Murray put a tenner on the table and encouraged others to join him in order that we can together create the first UK based member of RIPESS Europe, the European wing of RIPESS, the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy. I thought it was a great idea, … [Read more...]