OPEN 2020 - Propose a session

Some others you may already be aware of: Faircoin and the FairCoop, Bank of the Commons, Open Credit Network, Counter Coin in Stoke on Trent, HullCoin, (there are many more). Lots of tools, approaches, technologies. Does traction and sustainability comes through protocols of interoperability and exchange, coupled with useful applications that make practical day-to-day sense to ordinary people?

great links and brilliant question - I'd love to see that discussed at OPEN 2020

Thanks Graham - already ready in touch with some of them, but not all, so will look at them. But the answer is yes - and that's precisely what we're trying to build.

@Graham - I'm not sure I understand what you're asking (so forgive me if I'm answering the wrong question), but interoperability is one of the features of some of Ethereum's token standards, such as ERC20 and ERC777.

Hi @Steve Huckle - I guess I was making the point that there is a plethora of platforms, solutions, tools and approaches out there that can be used, and different things that might work best in different contexts, but that in order to build some real traction and get dots joined into something bigger and more robust what's needed are common protocols that enable all these different things to inter-operate. I'm certainly no expert and have at best a limited knowledge of the inner workings of things like Ethereum, Rchain, Holochain, etc, etc. Some or all or none of these may be of use. I'm looking for robust simplicity and straightforward trustworthy tools that everyone can use securely.

@Graham - I guess the imperative is to design useful apps that utilise the interoperability of the platforms and tools that are out there. I'm a fan of the Ethereum ecosystem - it appears to be maturing and moving into a great space - but I recognise there are other platforms out there.

The line I was struggling with was: "Do traction and sustainability come through protocols of interoperability and exchange". Lots of worthy and important terms in there, so if you have time, I wouldn't mind you unpicking them a bit more, so I can get a good understanding of what you mean.

I was also intrigued by what you were inferring by "ordinary people". I think you were implying some form of top-down techno-determinism. That concerns me too, so I'd like to hear your thoughts there, also.

@Steve Huckle wrote . . if you have time, I wouldn't mind you unpicking them a bit more . . traction and sustainability, protocols, interoperability, exchange, techno-determinism

Likewise. Maybe spring this out into another OpenCoop thread? It's getting large for a topic within 'Propose a topic'? Or maybe not - is this falling within 'Community payment platforms' or is it now spreading wider? How d'you feel about the scope of this @Graham @Diana Finch ? Might it evolve into another, closely linked, session? Diana's proposal wasn't specifically on the tech infrastructure, more on the local strategy?

I like the idea of a thread for the conference on this. You're right - at this stage it is not about what tech solution to plump for, it is more about scoping how to combine different sorts of currencies on one platform (fiat / tokens / timebanking / LETS / barter / mutual credit), the potential for using that interchange to start to radically change our current economic model, the research that is needed to ensure those interchanges work, the regulatory frameworks this would trigger, the ethics around incentivising behaviour change, governance and co-design and the space between that and research-based methodologies... I'd like to present our thoughts so far, as well as our learnings from the original Bristol Pound model, as I think this will help us work creatively together to find solutions that work. But equally, I want to listen and learn from others.

I don't think there's anything particularly deep in what I'm saying. Looking back at the origins of this, by and large these community currencies, Bristol pound et al, don't appear to have delivered significant change in the way perhaps envisioned by those that created them (maybe I'm wrong on that). So I'm suggesting that rather than build yet more platforms and currencies and whatever else, the energy may be better invested in making the behind-the-scenes plumbing that can let all these things work in concert.
By the term "ordinary people" I was getting at the generally very low level of tech understanding that I see. I'm certainly no wizard when it comes to technology, but as a result of spending 25 years or more in proximity to it and interested in various aspects of it I can see that there is a very wide spectrum of knowledge. Many of the people I work with day to day, bright intelligent folks, struggle with very basic things when it comes to tech, stuff like email, how to use Slack, logging in to an online service, for example. Stuff needs to be easy to use and obvious.

I have posted some info about FairCoop in the CommonsEngine course forum which you might find interesting @Diana Finch.