we promote new governance structures

The Open Co-op is working to promote new governance structures, which provide democratic methods to steward our collective endeavours. Cooperatives, and Platform Co-ops, provide a blue-print for democratic business in which all members get a say in how the business is run.

Our two main projects in this area are Co-op Data Club and Meet.coop, which are both member-owned.

A co-op of co-ops that flips the standard data model
via inter-coop marketing and promotions.

Open source meeting and conferencing tools,
powered by renewable energy

Read more about our work on governance in the posts below:

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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? Nathan Schneider kicked things off with an excellent introduction explaining some of the history of cooperative ownership. Nathan also questioned where...
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OPEN 2018 Videos - Main Hall sessions
OPEN 2018 – Welcome and reflections from day 1 Oliver Sylvester-Bradley provides an explanation of platform co-ops and a few thoughts from Day 1. OPEN 2018 – A shared social vision Gary Alexander presents ‘A shared social vision’ including...
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OPEN 2018 - Questions
Here’s the list of questions that were asked via Slido at OPEN 2018 on the Main Stage… a lot of them were answered (see the videos and collaborative notes), but a lot were not, so if you want to chip in and answer any of them feel free to...
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OPEN 2018 Videos - Workshop Space sessions
DAY 1 The workshop space at OPEN 2018 featured a range of session covering many different projects and approaches to building a more collaborative, cooperative future. We’d like to extend a big thank you to everyone who contributed and especially...
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OPEN 2018 Videos - Open Space sessions
DAY 1 The Open Space sessions at OPEN 2018 were a chance for attendees to put forward their own discussion topics. People put forward proposals on Loomio in the run-up to the event, others voted and the most popular sessions took place over the two days...
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RChain - a blockchain 3.0 framework for 'glocal' cooperation
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’...
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Holochain - The commons engine for cooperation at scale
This article is the second part of our interview with Matthew Schutte, Communications Director at Holochain, which covers their plans to build a “Commons engine” to help provide co-ops with the tools they need to communicate, coordinate and...
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Holochain - the perfect framework for decentralised cooperation at scale
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...
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Resonation - An interview with Peter Harris
Resonate is a music streaming co-op and a great example of a platform co-op which is changing the way business works. In the run up to the OPEN 2018 Platform Co-op conference we interviewed Peter Harris, Resonate Founder and CEO. OSB: I love your #stream2own...
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Decentralized co-operation at scale
The following post is transcript of a recent webinar on “Decentralized co-operation at scale. What patterns work? What are the main drivers and hindrances?” organised by our friends from the Digital Life Collective. The discussions covered...