The Open Co-op was founded in 2004 to help people collaborate and co-operate on a global scale.
The co-op grew out of a shared vision of a better world including Gary Alexander’s book eGaia, Growing a peaceful, sustainable Earth through communications, Oliver Sylvester-Bradley’s paper Participatory Democracy Networks, Josef Davies-Coates’ and Tom Salfield’s work on Quality Quids and other collaborative and open source ideas at United Diversity and Mamading Ceesay's work on free and Open Source Software.
Later in 2004 we presented a series of screenshots to demonstrate our vision for an online collaboration system to support a sustainable economy.
The designs might look old now but bear in mind that Facebook did not exist until February 2004 and Google Earth was not launched until June 2005, so the screenshots were quite forward thinking at the time.
We also developed a cartoon story to demonstrate how PLANET would be used in practice. The cartoon story was set in 2010 - in an attempt to show what the future could have been like...
In 2005 we developed a prototype collaboration platform, built on TikiWiki, and started to grow a community of people interested in developing a collaborative, sustainable economy.
In 2006 we developed ideas for how The Open Co-op could be developed as a viable system, building on the ideas of Stafford beer and John Walker.
In 2016 the world finally woke up to the idea of Platform Co-ops, Corbyn published his Digital Democracy Manifesto and we started planning, attending and promoting platform co-op events.
In 2017 we hosted OPEN 2017, the UK's first 2 day event focused on Platform Co-ops, at Goldsmiths University in south London. With panel sessions from leading Platform Co-op experts, open space sessions and a £2000 prize for a one lucky startup platform co-op, the event generated a lot of interest in the platform co-op model and was attended by over 350 people.
In 2018 we hosted OPEN 2018, another 2 day event on Platform Co-ops, at Conway Hall in London. The event covered platforms vs protocols, alternative economics, co-ownership structures, decentralised mapping, introduced Holochain and explored the need for a changing narrative.
In 2019 we launched The Open Credit Network, which was born out of discussions at OPEN 2018. OCN provides a template for a cooperatively owned mutual credit network built on a detailed Membership Agreement and some open source code to which is freely available for anyone to use to set up a mutual credit trading network in their local community.
The OPEN 2019 Community Gathering took place at Tech City College in London. We came together to tackle the question:
How can we support each other to take more effective action to catalyse the collaborative, regenerative economy?
OPEN 2019 happened mainly offline in a series of talks and workshops and we also heard from Paul Mason on Beyond Carbon and Capitalism – the Role of the State?
Murmurations is a decentralized data sharing protocol, which grew out of discussions in the mapping sessions at the OPEN conferences and ideas about a collaborative sustainable economy. In 2019 we published a blog post about defining the DNA of collaboration and, working with Adam McKenty we build the first version of the Murmurations index, WordPress Plugin and demo aggregator. Murmurations has since undergone major redevelopment and features an open source API and library to help others manage decentralized data sharing.
OPEN 2020 took place entirely online over two days of talks and discussions and even some poetry – all the videos are online including the pre-event webinars. We explored mutual credit, Tools of collaboration, Coordination in decentralised networks and Governance in collaborative projects.
In 2021 we joined the international collaboration Meet.coop which provided the open source platform for OPEN 2020. We helped develop the Meet.coop brand and peer-reviewed remuneration process, and collaborated on the marketing and development of the co-op.
In 2021 we launched Co-op Data Club to grow the co-operative economy by helping co-ops support other co-ops. Our initial strategy focuses on networking Co-ops together, to enable them to connect and arrange inter-co-op promotions. Co-ops agree to promote each other via email newsletters, social media or other channels. Co-op Data Club aspires to become a fully-fledged data cooperative to help its members benefit from owning and managing their data as part of a data trust.
In 2022 we launched Open Web Systems to provide open source, co-owned, surveillance free, email, office and collaborative tools powered by renewable energy. OWS grew out of ideas for a cooperative cloud and is a collaboration with Collective Tools.
In 2023 we launched Murmurations WordPress Plugins for open source mapping and data sharing, and published details on the advantages of collaborative mapping and a checklist for map builders.
In 2024 we published videos explaining how Murmurations provides a Protocol for sharing Offers & Wants between networks and how How PLANET paves the way to a collaborative economy.
In 2025 we concluded our work on Murmurations, launched MurmurMaps, and started researching Decentralized Identity and Auth Solutions for PLANET.
In 2026 we re-launched our work on PLANET which will leverage the excellent work being done on Decentralised Trust Networks.
In 2026 we launched The Collaborative Groups Protocol, a practical formula for creating and sustaining small, effective groups — designed to work together at scale.
In 2026 we launched CoBot - an AI-powered search tool which aggregates data on regenerative economy organisations to make them easier to find.
The Open Co-op is an open, cooperative project, which aims to build the tools, technologies and protocols of a collaborative, regenerative economy. Join us, and help create a better future.
System change advocate, marketing consultant and freelance writer who stewards The Open Co-op events and projects. Oliver’s paper on Participatory Democracy Networks, from 2004, helped form the vision for PLANET.
Networker and researcher helping people discover intelligent responses to climate, energy and economic uncertainty. Josef works on projects to empower people, build community, develop co-ops and create commons via United Diversity.
