Oli is a co-founder and steward of The Open Co-op and works on systems change projects and marketing and communications for purpose-driven brands. See also LinkedIn.
He graduated in Product Design from Central Saint Martins and holds an Masters Degree in Advanced Architecture and Energy Studies. He wrote his thesis on Encouraging Environmentally Responsible Behaviour and consults on marketing strategies for brands that encourage a more just and sustainable world.
Oli has been the main steward of The Open Co-op for many years, promoting systems change ideas and organising a range of events and conferences in London UK on topics surrounding open source and cooperative ownership models, to encourage the development of open, co-operative organisations which are owned and managed by their members.
In 2010 he founded Smart Home Energy, which provides independent news, views and reviews about smart home energy saving products and technology to help people save money and cut carbon.
In 2016 he came up with an idea to help make data interoperable across networks, which evolved into the Murmurations protocol. The project provides an open protocol for decentralised data sharing, a suite of open source tools called MurmurMaps and two WordPress Plugins, to help people publish open data and create collaborative maps. The project has been under active development and as of January 2026 there are more than 120k nodes registered in the index.
In 2018 he co-founded The Open Credit Network, a UK network and open source directory, matching and notification system for mutual credit payments. The project developed an open source mutual credit source software system to enable others to set up and run their own local mutual credit groups.
In 2021 he founded Meet.coop together with a coalition of other international tech co-ops, to provide a surveillance free, cooperatively owned alternative to Zoom and in 2022 he founded Open Web Systems, a worker co-op, which provides web hosting, web development, open source email and collaborative tools that are free from surveillance and powered by renewable energy.
In 2025 he collaborated with an international team brought together by Allelo to prototype the first Networked Adaptive Organism (NAO). Oli lead the UX team for the development of a distributed network graph built on NextGraph.
Oli continues to work on the PLANET project via which The Open Co-op collective is co-creating a cooperating system for the collaborative, regenerative economy.
Previously he worked in publishing, designing magazines and videos and numerous web sites for a wide range of clients. From 2005 to 2011 he worked as the Marketing Manager of Solarcentury and helped initiate the UK solar feed-in tariff with the We Support Solar campaign.
Articles
19 Dec 2002 – Water and energy conservation through efficient design.
5 Mar 2003 – Pernicious Plastics and the Precautionary Principle
1 May 2003 – Does Environmental Impact Assessment actually promote Sustainability?
1 June 2003 – Natural Materials for Social Change
1 July 2003 – Advancing Environmental Strategies: From Compromise to Collaboration in the Design Process
19 July 2003 – Is Hydrogen Sustainable? A critical review of the sustainability of a hydrogen economy – Published on EV World – and as above as the following PDF: Can the Hydrogen economy provide a sustainable future
1 Jan 2004 – Vote with your money: Redefining the debate on environmentally responsible behaviour
This is a 15 page synopsis of a 15,000 word thesis of the same title.
20 Apr 2004 – Participatory Democracy Networks
1 July 2004 – PlaNet: The Open Co-op’s dream communications system
1 August 2004 – 25 May 2016 – How entrepreneurs are putting SolarAid out of business on Virgin Unite
6 December 2016 – Introducing the World’s most affordable solar light on Virgin Unite
10 Jan 2017 – PLANET – An open source operating system for a collaborative, sustainable economy
18 April 2018 – Championing the Energy poor on Virgin Unite
11 June 2018 – How Project Switch is taking people out of the darkness on Virgin Unite