You pick up your phone to do something.Twenty minutes later, you’re still scrolling – and you’ve forgotten what it was you meant to do. You’ve seen hundreds of posts.You can’t remember any of them. You almost shared something — but didn’t.Because what’s the point?None of it really goes anywhere. And if you’re honest, it doesn’t …
You’re Not Addicted to Your Phone – You’re Starved of Connection Read More »
Across the world, thousands of projects are quietly building a regenerative economy: community gardens, repair cafés, ecovillages, food co-ops, social centres, organic farms and maker spaces. But regenerative organisations are often hard to find. Search engines are optimised to surface large brands with thousands of backlinks, not small, obscure, well-meaning projects quietly doing important work. …
Introducing CoBot: Your AI Guide to the Regenerative Economy Read More »
Humans were not designed to work alone. Cooperation is a natural aspect of our humanity. Research comparing children with chimpanzees reveals that children strongly prefer to work together to obtain food, whereas chimpanzees show no such preference. At scale, humanity’s collaborative instinct is even more powerful. When Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared in 2014, three …
The Dawn of Decentralised Trust Networks At The Open Co-op we’re starting 2026 with a sense of profound optimism. After years of foundational work on PLANET and related projects, the pieces are finally coming together to create decentralised trust networks. Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Relationship Credentials (VRCs) are no longer theoretical curiosities—they are technically …
Business as usual is unsustainable. Capitalism has legitimised the externalisation of various ‘costs’ to such an extent that it has become normal for companies to exploit the natural world – and their customers at the same time. Take the example of a large video conferencing company that enables people to chat and run webinars. At …
The self-reinforcing nature of cooperation and ethical business Read More »
Watch the Introduction to day 2 and discussion with Esther Foreman from the The Social Change Agency. Esther and team helped set up and support over 110 mutual aid groups via Open Collective during the Covid pandemic and their work, supporting people-powered networks, is paving the way for a world in which people and planet …
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 many of the subjects which will be discussed at the OPEN 2018 conference and are a great intro to …
There’s something exciting happening in the world of co-ops which harks back to the very beginning of the movement. Although Rochdale is normally credited as the “birthplace of cooperation” records show that in 1761, sixteen weavers in Ayrshire set up “The Society of Weavers in Finnick”, arguably the first co-operative organisation of the industrial age. …
Trebor Scholz speaks at OPEN 2017 about the new role for co-ops, unions and tech within the burgeoning cooperative economy. Join us for OPEN 2018 in London in July and “find the others” that are part of this growing movement.
If you work in any type of co-op, or non-hierarchical group, with open and inclusive values and aspirations for horizontal management, this post is for you. It summarises a workshop from the founders of Loomio, at which they shared their distilled wisdom for effective collaboration within groups. You’ve probably heard of Loomio, the simple but …
Belonging is a superpower – Patterns for decentralised organising Read More »
