Introductions

Hi new people, this thread seems a bit dead, but it actually is a good place for you to introduce yourself and/or your projects, if you like. Or start a new thread for something specific if that works for you. The OAE is generally a pretty loose network, where a lot of people follow along with the discussions or projects they are interested in, and people meet others they might want to collaborate with. Usually these projects are happening elsewhere and just report or connect in here for the OAE crowd. Anyhow, welcome to the people who have joined in (yipes!) the last year.

Welcome new people! If you feel so moved, you can introduce yourselves here, optional of course.... :)

I love the spirit of this @olisb thanks for posting. At the same time there's no way in this or a future life I mean to be a code hacker. When Zach/coolguy says " The future is one where technology is reclaimed by everyone; it is open and welcoming and asking to be built by hand" I absolutely get it (one of my alter egos is 'barefoot doc'. And I do have an engineering degree). But there's so much in 'modern life' that is technical and needs rebulding by hand. Myself, I'm a culture hacker - genres of communicating and collaborating, 'the dance of knowing' (code is a department of this), 'the moral economy of the crowd', commoning, facilitation . . and on, and on: all rendered pretty technical in this professionalised corporatist propertarian world. I won't write my own apps, translate protocols into working code, run my own server (DAT maybe yes?) or maintain a presence in gitHub, any more than I'll grow my own cabbages, bake my own bread and cook my own medicinal herbs. I'm just very happy if there are kind devs who will carefully build platforms on ActivityPub within the OAE under OpenValue. Etc. These infrastructures are vital for achieving all the OTHER technical handmade things for living and working in a commons of commons. Right on Zach! Strength to the Scuttleverse!

Not sure how I found this, or where exactly to repost it but here seems appropriate as it is the best intro to what we are trying to do here, there, and everywhere, that I have read in a long time - https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical/index.html
Cool to see @bobhaugen get namechecked in 'requirements' too ;)
It's a quick read and highly worth the time.

Reminder to new people: we have this lovely Introductions thread and would be happy and interested if you introduced yourself and what you are interested in and/or working on that fits into OAE somewhere...

Hi again @christopher7 - I ran through your Prezzie - thanks for sharing that. It does sound a little like you are angry at Holo for loss of employment and using your internal knowledge to try and do them reputational damage. It is true that they have taken on a huge challenge - essentially re-designing the internet - and I am sure there would be disagreements in any software development team which is trying to do that, since to be effective a project of that nature has to follow a certain vision, or it will get lost in divergence... It's hard to comment about anyone getting "fired" without knowing the details from both sides of the story - but I hope you find other work building another part of the OAE somewhere...
best,
Oli

Holo is one of the most impressive projects I have ever seen - and I've been looking since 2004. People here might enjoy the 2 interviews I did with Matthew Schutte from the Holo team - which explain some of the principles behind Holochain and Host and where they are going with it https://open.coop/2018/06/14/holochain-perfect-framework-decentralised-cooperation-scale/

I have seen no evidence at all that there is any "vendor lock in" (especially since I can run my open Holochain/s with whoever I chose in my own network - without requiring any central authority, by simply using the Holochain - open source code) and @christopher7 I would be interested to see how you can demonstrate it is a dead end? It's always better to back up claims like that, don't you think?

Tough stuff. I'm not deep enough into the architecture after making a brief walk-through, but I understood some of the issues in there. Wonder whether they choose to do "difficult"(?) business practises by design - or whether the task at hand is just too big, their priorities are set in a way so they can't spend time on dealing with these issues by now. At the very least, firing people who provide critical input seems a rather bad move.

I was the core team from within a month of the start of the project. lol. they are I their "third" core team now. since they fire anyone with industry experience and morals.

here is the breakdown of their software https://prezi.com/view/NvRAZ35fln9i70V3YCrl/
I tried very hard to address this, but since it is deliberate policy, I was driven out of the organisation.

can't really overstate how their public face is different to their corporate internals

I don't agree with this characterization. I know the core team pretty well and if you follow their decade-long work you'll probably change your opinion.

Hmmm... Doesn't sound all too helpful then. I was still digging through the *chain stuff on their website.

holo are a pretty nasty corporate group with demonstrably dead end, vendor lock in technology.

Thanks for the pointer. Actually, still am trying to figure out what's already "out there" in terms of approaches, companies, actors dealing with such issues. Got to take a deeper dive into holo, then; so far it didn't really appear on my radar. This is one of the reasons I'm here for, I guess. ;)

Read your blob post. I am very surprised you didn't mention https://holo.host/ and holochain

Hi, I'm Kristian. Invited here by Strypey on mastodon, thought I'd just join in to see what happens here. Studied computer science in the 1990s, been working in systems administration earlier and software development later ever since. Working as technical lead for a mid-sized company now. Been into GNU/Linux and Software Libre ever since I read the GNU manifesto for the first time during my studies; been using both excessively on professional systems (servers) as well as my working and personal computers. At some point however I started wondering whether we run into issues claiming that we actually want Software Libre, software and services that are free-as-in-free-speech, while at the same time accept that most of these services end up being free-as-free-beer as well. At the very least in days in which we see massively advertisement- and tracking-funded "gratis" infrastructure out there, we might need different ideas how to solve these problems. Plus, with all distrust in large services such as Google, Amazon AWS, ..., I also see they do have quite some advantages in terms of ecology and sustainability - make sure infrastructure is operated and managed in a professional, optimized manner rather than having a load of small teams burdened with keeping infrastructure of their own running, keeping them from doing what they actually want to do. My idea to solve this, a while ago, was a scribble I titled "LibreSaaS" (see https://dm.zimmer428.net/2018/11/libresaas-revisited/); I have no idea whether this is smart or even remotely doable. However, I wonder which ideas to solve these problems might be around here. :)

I see some new people mentioning blockchains in their requests for membership. Might be interesting to learn what you have in mind for blockchains and ecosystems of open apps...

Ill dig out the actual whitepaper for @ in the next few days

they werent trying to hide it, we just didnt realise how much it was needed

No prob. No hurry. When it happens.

so the CPU control tool is based here: github.com/jaydayzee/at

The data stuff I am negotiating next week with a team to open the project. They are up for it, but we have a bunch of p's and q's to cross with the people their funding came from. They are in Canada. I can try and get some documents, but the entire project should be open within the next month. They are working on community projects, but this tool was created as an underlying support for their products. Having been to Open COOP, its become clear that a need for this stuff is a huge need of the industry, and they werent trying to hide it, we just didnt realise how much it was needed

Anything I can look at? Code, demo, more details?

Thank you Bob.

So... there are two parts to our infrastructure. One stems from deep data requirements, producing the minimum possible storage infrastructure in order to implement what everyone seems to be saying that they want - this is based on a mixture of hashchains and dynamic data filters, its also designed to support a complex ecosystem of services whilst being completely GDPR compliant up to the highest level of compliance requirements (the NHS, for example).

The second tool is about interacting with a runtime machine. How best to interact with a CPU, from the perspective of a human being. At the moment, programming and development tools are developed from the perspective of making it easier to control the CPU. Our tools are built from a completely different perspective, and should help to address both the very large gap between community designers, and systems developers, and also provide much more human languages than "English" [ or any other written or audio language ] to communicate about complex ideas, or between large numbers of people.

@christopher7 you wrote:

We are working on deep software infrastructure that should support or cohere with what is going on here.

Please say more about that?

Could someone help me out, can I reverse the dates of posts on a loomio channel?

Sorry, I don't know, but there should be a menu if you click on your profile picture with Help and Contact Loomio.

Dear Everyone.

So I was at the open coop 2018 event. I met some good people. We are working on deep software infrastructure that should support or cohere with what is going on here. Im very pleased to have such a large, active community to communicate with and work with.

Could someone help me out, can I reverse the dates of posts on a loomio channel?

Done: https://www.loomio.org/d/hI1V2nfq/turning-externalities-into-internalities

of course Bob, go ahead,

Michel

Dear Michel, may I suggest (and is it ok if I copy your comment into) a new Loomio thread in this same group? I think it is related to open apps, and vice versa, and will explain the relationships I see in that other thread.

dear Bob,

probably not the right place, but I'd like to share our latest provisional ToC on a eco-system for sustainable and fair production of 'material' necessities,

it seems to me related to open apps as well,

so for info:

Title: Turning Externalities into Internalities

Subtitle: Is it possible to produce for human needs without externalities

Chapter 1: Introduction and Context

1. The emergence of post-subordinate autonomous workers: the role of labor mutuals and platform cooperatives in the commons economy (the blockchain economy as a tool for contributory cognitive labor)

** crypto economy as a re-balancing of power between labor and capital

** crypto economy as network-dominant economy beyond corporate and state power

** role of labour mutuals

1. Value in the Commons: a summary of previous findings (value sovereignty, transvestment stragegies, reverse cooptation of capital for the commons)

2. Evaluating the Emergence of the Crypto Economy from the point of view of the commons (mobilizing competency networks for common goals; towards commons-based DAO’s ?) so

** critique of market totalitarianism (leviathan, hobbes and gaia)

** crypto as sovereignity of the corporate class vs sovereignty of civil society (need to disentangle both) (five scenario’s of manski)

** distinguishing distrlbuted ledgers from the blockchain (explain ledgers and DLT’s), also in relation to trust

** rebalancing capital and labor for cognitive production: learning from the token economy

** transforming the token economy for the commons (in detail, what the shift entails, f.e. From competitive to cooperative games, from smart contracts, to ostrom contracts)

** two kinds of economics (Polany’s distinction)

** scaling trust (big brother to little brother)

** from govt and corporate, third party coordination to autonomous network coordination

1. The Role of Accounting in the Shift towards the Peer Production of Everything (accounting as mediation with the physical, bringing stigmergy to material production through open and shared supply chains, )

** history of ledgers ?

** explain 3 layer model

** explain functional governance transition

** local vs global (example from city graph 3.6)

1. Solving the Problem of Externalities: towards an externalities-free mode of production ? (how can externalities be normalized as internalities in predistributive social distribution and regenerative ecological production)

Chapter 2: Evolutions in Accounting

• Accounting for contributions (positive social)

** predistribution within commons

** basic income in society

• Maintaining acceptable social distribution, i.e. relative equality in the distribution of value (negative social)

** from redistribution to predistribution

** acceptable inequalities

** learning from the past (hunter-gatherers, ancient democracies, medieval communes)

• Respecting the Doughnut (negative ecological): how to stay within planetary boundaries while providing for human needs

• Thermo-dynamic Accounting or: biophysical accountability (positive ecological): accessing thermo-dynamic flows in open and shared supply chains

Chapter 3: The Emerging toolbox

• Supply chain projects: Provenance, Oxchain, Open Motors, Wikifactory, Envianta ?

• Distributed ledgers Holochain): going beyond extractive blockchains

** distributed ledgers as the open and shared supply chains

** tokens for valuing non-mercantile value

** generative finance: social and ecological

• Ostrom Contracts ? (David Dao): smart contracts for commons-based DAOs

• REA Accounting for Eco-systems (from corporate to ecosystemic open and shared supply chains)

• Ethical current-sees? Monitoring flows and rewarding contributions: The Economic Space Agency: mutualizing investment, risk-taking and speculation (commons-based derivatives for financing future common production), Faircoin/Commoncoin + learning from labor allocation in intentional communities (Allen Butcher’s work)

• Tokens for Regenerativity (Regen’’s Ecological State Protocols; circular financing of regenerative practices)

• Impact Accounting through the Common Good Economy

• Global Thresholds and Allocations for biophysical accountability (the Reporting 3.0 framework)

• Large scale governance (Daostack’s holographic governance)

• Designing Cooperative games instead of competitive games (RChain) ?

• DAO’s for natural agents: the Terra0 project for augmented forests

• ? Trustlines Network ?

We just got a few new members, could be from that Open Coop thing that @mayel presented at, and I think @olisb was one of the organizers.

New people, maybe you would like to introduce yourselves and explain what interests you here?

That's excellent news @christopheparot1! Looking forward to e-meeting you there!

Great to see you here @progcodepj ! There seem to be a lot of us thinking along similar lines (do you know anyone from Drutopia or Community Builder, for example?). One of my goals as a lurker around the OAE is to bring in informal reps from as many projects as possible (apps, platforms, support orgs etc), to have nuts and bolts discussions about what folks are building, and how we can avoid reinventing the wheel, so we can do more together. Please put the word out to everyone at ProgCode that we'd love to have a rep or two here from any projects they're involved in.

Hi Pamela, I have signed up with progressive coders

Hey all! My name is Pamela and I'm a co-director at Progressive Coders Network. ProgCode is a radically inclusive all-volunteer non-profit tech/activist collaborative of 1.4k members and growing! Members contribute a variety of tech and non-tech skills and experiences to bring open source projects from ideation to implementation. Our roots are in the Bernie 2016 campaign and our mission is to remove or reduce the influence of big money in politics by supporting the creation of open source tools to empower the grassroots movement. In short, we want to democratize democracy. :slight_smile: Here's a bit more about our origin story and work.

Like @wouter, I joined OAE at the invitation of @olisb to continue discussions on the making of the CommonsCloud. Otherwise just very interested in learning what low-to-no cost replacements for Google Suites other co-ops are using/working on and if there is any way the ProgCode ecosystem can assist!

Have been meaning to do an introduction for a while. My name is Liaizon Wakest. I grew up on an anarchist commune in Wisconsin. When I was 17 and moved into a housing coop called Nottingham Coop in Madison, WI and lived there for a year. Thats probably the most direct relationship I have had to coops. Since then I lived for 4 years in Silicon Valley, then 4 years in NYC and now I have been living in New Orleans for the past 3 years. The last year and a half I have been mainly researching and trying to understand a wide scope of decentralization efforts / tech autonomy projects and get as much aquatinted with such fields as I can, mainly to figure out how I can best use my time and knowledge to move forward the world I want to see exist. I have spent most of my adult life working as an artist/designer/nomad. Have lots of diverse skills but wouldn't say I have really specialized in anything. You can find links to various social channels I have a presence on at http://wake.st

Most clients are not members, to join clients (or workers, investors or partners) have to buy shares, see https://www.webarchitects.coop/join

Thought this was interesting https://www.webarchitects.coop/rules

Do all your clients automatically become members of the cooperative, or do they need to do something special to become members?

Hi, I'm from a small multi-stakeholder co-op in the UK and we offer managed instances of things like Nextcloud, see our hosting page and much of the code to deploy these is on our co-op GitLab server at https://git.coop/ and I'm interested in co-operating on this stuff.

Welcome @wouter ! Unfortunately, Loomio hijacked the first 3 of your links.. Here are some unhijacked versions:
* http://freeknowledge.eu/
* https://ca.goteo.org/project/commonscloud
* http://www.femprocomuns.cat/

(Let's see if they stay unhijacked after I post...)

Hi, I'm Wouter from the Free Knowledge Institute. Today I joined this group, as Oliver Sylvester-Bradley encouraged me to, and I'm glad to see so many familiar faces :-) After some 15 years in the field of free-as-in-freedom software and knowledge, this year we are going live with the CommonsCloud (finalising our campaign at Goteo), and we're pretty excited about it. It's challenging, but we've set up femProcomuns SCCL(still just in Catalan, sorry), as the consumer-collaborator-worker coop in BCN and this project is co-produced by an alliance of 10 collectives with a track record working on freedom, commons and cooperative ownership. Here is our post on the making of. We have lots to learn, share and improve. In particular with other collectives working on decentralised clouds for commons oriented ecosystems, with replicable code-knowledge-discourse-sustainability models. We will be joining the Open.Coop conference in July in London. Apart from this group, anyone interested in CommonsCloud specifically might want to join our int'l working group mailing list.

Oh, sounds cool what you guys do.
Are you in production in any city already or not yet ?

Good to see people from HappyDev here.

Communecter is a french mapping tool/open-source citizen network with a strong dimension of interoperability. It is part of the commons movement
Interopérability : http://co.tools/interop
Documentation : https://wiki.communecter.org
The platform itself : http://communecter.org

We just had a long discussion about the diffs between common vocabularies and protocols and APIs, and I think ended up with something like:
* APIs and data formats define a vocabulary and at least the protocols for component interactions. Even better if the APIs themselves are standardized.
* One diff is that you can use the same vocabulary with more than one API, and some higher level protocols will be required that are not very expressible in an API.
* But there's a big intersection in the Venn diagram.

Hi Bob,

Thank you so much for this detailed add on which did make sense to me. I fully agree with the idea that common protocols and vocabularies are key to build interoperable tools.

I'll follow what you guys are doing on the Open Coopératives Ecosystem. I'd be very interested to see this case and am also following what is happening on Coopaname's side.

With Startin'blox we are working on the very same principles (common vocabularies and protocols), but at a much lower level, that is how we express the data and communicate it through are APIs. We follow the Linked Data guidelines from the W3C on this.

If you want to get more deeply mathematical and theoretical about interop, check out https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/compositionality/

I am not very sure how this we make our softwares interoperable ?
Could you elaborate a bit more on that ?

I can elaborate a little. Right now it''s more theory than practice, and you know what that means...

Some of us think that using a common vocabulary and common protocols will help interoperability for domains that have such things. Since some of us work with economic networks, we have been working on a common vocab and protocols for them in the ValueFlows project, which is based a lot on REA.

Some of us are also engaged in a project in FairCoop and possibly some other groups to develop what the devs are calling an Open Cooperative Ecosystem. We'll be using the ValueFlows vocab and protocols and also some of Communecter's tools. If that project succeeds, it will be a proof of concept and also possibly a model.

@luandrovieira is doing a similar project in Moinho Brazil which you can read about in this Loomio discussion, and we're all talking to each other.

So we should have some results from practice this year.

Did that all make sense?

Hi Bob,

I did read all the links you shared. I happened to be on hollidays with Julien Dussard, who know you quite well from what I understood. We had a long discussion on the topic.

I also read the free chapter What is REA ? from Model-Driven Design Using Business Patterns.

So I think I have got the idea of REA now.
However I am not very sure how this we make our softwares interoperable ?
Could you elaborate a bit more on that ? There is something I am still missing I believe.

Here's https://www.valueflo.ws/

REA is a good model for economic networks, as you can read here: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Resource-Event-Agent_Model

Christophe Combelles of Coopaname did some experiments with REA here: https://bitbucket.org/ccomb/rea

Indeed, I am quite close to Stéphane Veyer who carried this reflexion as far as I know in Coopaname. I know very little about REA and ValueFlows myself but I would be happy to dig into it if you provide me with cool material on the subject. In the meantime I'll DuckDuckGo around and see what I manage to grab on my own.

I fully subscribe to your conclusion. We really try hard to converge as much as possible, at least with Coopaname and several similar initiatives.

We've had conversations with all of those groups.

Communecter is a regularly participant here, represented by @tiborkatelbach among others.

A couple of people in Coopaname have experimented with REA, which is the ontology behind ValueFlows, which in turn is one of the keys that some of us think will allow flocks of tiny apps to coordinate themselves as an ecosystem. Those conversations have mostly happened in emails where I have been involved, but I am sure other media are used more intimately.

@michelbauwens1 who stops in here now and then is connected to Smart and possible others of these groups.

So, all told, a lot of groups in France and thereabouts that have potentials to come together into something really amazing!

I am impressed by this question ! You seem to know the ecosystem quite well.

Short answer : around 20 people are involved in both Coopaname and Happy Dev. Both structures are in very good term are share a common vision of empowering freelancers

Long answer : Coopaname helps freelancers by providing them with the social status of "employee", which means better social coverage and financial aid from the government if you end up unemployed later on.
Happy Dev helps freelancers to organize themselves and mutualize some services such as a brand, a juridical service, an administrative service, some open source tools, etc. All this happens in a decentralized way, meaning the services are provided by several different organizations owned by the freelancers themselves.

Smart is a Coopaname like. I know them mostly through Coopaname, but way less than Coopaname so I am afraid I can't be more precise here. They are doing a great job at scaling as far as I know, I really respect that in their initiative.

Communecter I didn't know about them.
I hope this answer clarifies a little bit what we do.
If it doesn't, please ask again and I'll do better 🙂

Thanks, @alexandrebourlier1 - I see Coopaname in one of those presentations. What's the relationship and difference between Happy Dev, Coopaname, and http://smartbe.be ? Are they all related in some way?

How about Communecter?

I do. The links about about dev are all in french so far.
I am very sorry about this, we are internationalizing for a few months only, and we haven't proper english material yet. Here we go :

Happy Dev :
- http://happy-dev.fr/manifeste
- https://zevillage.net/future-of-work/happy-dev-federation-freelances/
- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OiT8mKo87O61eFZtFuy2KH9YFWPwlJRu
- https://vimeo.com/261706321

Startin'blox :
- https://git.happy-dev.fr/happy-dev/ldp-display
- https://drive.google.com/open?id=14ZeeJ-QDbUqqcEZryFlKILTBgS5sESJN

Welcome, @alexandrebourlier1 ! Got anything published yet about Happy Dev and Startin'blox that we could look at? They both seem very interesting.

Hi everyone,

I co-founded Happy Dev, a french, soon to be European cooperative network of freelancers.

We are now launching an open source framework called Startin'blox, that allows to easily build interoperable platforms.

It feels the right place to talk about the topic, so here I am. I am very happy to see those reasonings are shared and debated here for several years. I'd love to learn about your experience and if I can help in any way, I will as well as the Startin'blox team

Hi new members! Please feel free to introduce yourselves here, look around, ask questions! We're fairly loosely organized around here, so it is not always easy to see how to fit in, but we're glad to help! Or, we hope you feel comfortable to start something new too....

Reminder: New members, introduce yourselves (if you like)? Some interesting collaborations have spun out of conversations here. :wave:

Hi all
It could be an opportunity to map and reference all these great communities
we can then sort out needs , offers, competence, services, tools they all have
wdyt ?

Hi Michel! As you are in Belfast, do you think there is the appetite in Northern Ireland for an initiative similar to P2P Scotland, which may want to coordinate under something like Commons Transition UK?

Dear Vicenzo,

Peter Doran from Belfast, where I'm staying right now, might be interested in your work, so I put him in cc,

thanks a lot for the details an links, which I will check,

Michel

Hi Michel,

thank you. I am working for a "Mindfulness in context" approach with my colleague Don McCown and this will help.

I wonder if you are available in case i will be able to schedule an online Late Summer School on "Wise Commoning in the post Covid-19 phase " in September. It is expected to last for 2 days. You could be involved for the time we agree and about what you choose; i will see about fees compensation from my university.
Faculty (expected): Viviana Zelizer, Julie Nelson, Margunn Bjornholt, Donald McCown, you and myself.

Best,

Enzo

re on the contemplative commons, some material from our wiki

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Towards_a_Contemplative_Commons

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Wisdom_Commons

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Interspirituality

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Collective_Enlightenment_Through_Postmetaphysical_Eyes

more at

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Introduction_to_the_P2P_Foundation_Wiki_Material_about_Spirituality

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Spirituality

Great!

Thank you.

Warm wishes,

Enzo

I’m not an engineer. But @Graham is actively developing care coops, and might have some design/supply connections in the health field?

@amcewen@mastodon.me.uk is part of a fablab in Liverpool which has been making Covid equipment (visors), and perhaps has wider fablab connections.

Yes, a complicated nested thing like your mychosomething
image.png

Right?

Much easier to change or substitute Amazon or Google than a religion!

Now I am involved in an unexpected Call about Covid-19. Part of the project is about checking the quality (compliance and conformity to standard health PPEs) and costs of self-produced PersonalProtectionEquipments in a project oriented to the commoning and self-organization of prevention and insurance from the risk of the next CoronaVirus. Are you an engineer? Any interest in additive manufacture and self-organization in the health field?

Cheers,

Enzo

Hi Enzo / Good to pick up these interconnections and resonances, thanks - especially ‘contemplative social sciences’. This is such a tangled weave! Mycorrhizal, even ;-)

Hi Mike,

thank you for your inquiry.

I guess what others and I do is consistent with the patterning you care about.

The knowledge and practices of the traditions of wisdom can today be interpreted, and lived, in secular form as a common resource of the community, beyond their original forms and peculiar characteristics, including enclosures, in which they have been built socially over time. They relate to existential suffering and are methods inherent to life skills.
The blog at this link is part of the efforts in this direction: https://www.loomio.org/g/oVUOrcTq/contemplative-commons
Moreover, I edited a book with Zach Walsh (see the link below) on the encounter between contemplative social sciences and radical knowledge in co-designing the economies in transition.
This article could also be of help: http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-11-city/experimental-format/life-skills-for-peer-production-walking-together-through-a-space-of-not-knowing/

Best regards,

enzo

@vincenzogiorgino coming late to this thread, pardon me . . Could you say more/give links regarding 'contemplative commons'? I'm wondering whether this notion is related to 'emotional commons' or commons of heart-mind, which is one of my own main development areas, in approaching a 'pattern language for commoning.

I cant find the subject :/

Good idea.

Maybe you can be interested in the topic of the contemplative commons group (in this ECA space).

In the Open App Ecosystem blog I have just answered to a message from Michel Bauwens (not new I am afraid) adding a link to a recent paper on the JOPP.

BTW, Donald McCown and I are planning one retreat in Milan next July but we will be happy to share our experience wioth others.

Best,

Enzo

It's already happening I think :D @olisb wants to create a workshop during the open 2018 event : https://2018.open.coop/ about open app ecosystem : how to create it all together ?

I'm gonna create a thread about it.

My main aim is to share the idea that life skills are fundamental for us as human beings. We can deal better with personal and collective suffering of any kind. And we can be more creative in general, including the object of this blog. Maybe one day we can plan a one-day or two-days workshop in which digital skills in software co-design are intertwined with contemplative practices. I am ready.

wonderful to have people like you onboard!

Ok. It's fine. We submitted a proposal just today and we will have some more time for a talk. I wait for Vasiilis for some possible timeslots.

hi vincenzo, I am copying Vasilis Niaros who coordinates our research cooperations and can help coordinate this skype,

are there any date limits, just to know as my March agenda is chockful

Michel

Hi Luandro
By “geographically oriented tools” do you mean oriented for local communities? That’s exactly what I’m aiming for, and would love to propositions for the first experiments.

yep with geographical front ends check it out on communecter.org ( http://communecter.org )
it also runs on mobile
It would be amazing to think how we could connect it with an ssb server
for all the great reasons you listed in your introduction
we discussed it a bit with Piet from Protozoa.nz, but it's something we'll soon get into
so if it can help, don't hesitate
I’ve been tutoring a young girl in the village I live. It’s been a big challenge since she has 0 computer and english knowledge, but it’s awesome to see her slowly progress. Ideally I would like to build a boilerplate that would be easy enough for people from the community themselves to create the applications, based on their needs.

excellent, we are in the process of modularising everything to the smallest possible features
that will al work in standalone and interconnected mode
instead of a big collections of fixed together features

Thank you @bobhaugen @lynnfoster and @tiborkatelbach for the warm welcome :slight_smile:

I've been diving deep into mmmmm, which is the mobile SSB client, for the past week. I'm almost done extracting out the very basics in order to make it easily forkable, and in order to add Dat, which is essential to complement full p2p apps. There's still some work to do but you can check out progress here.

By "geographically oriented tools" do you mean oriented for local communities? That's exactly what I'm aiming for, and would love to propositions for the first experiments. I've been tutoring a young girl in the village I live. It's been a big challenge since she has 0 computer and english knowledge, but it's awesome to see her slowly progress. Ideally I would like to build a boilerplate that would be easy enough for people from the community themselves to create the applications, based on their needs.

@luandrovieira brilliant and welcome , if you are interested we would love to think and propose a (multiple ) front end to your backend refexions :) we work on a very geographically oriented tools, We also worked on interoperability but still haven't connected to ssb and DAT, we are just starting to investigate that path.

@luandrovieira indeed welcome! We can for sure use some help figuring out the backend infrastructure(s)! Your experience is super interesting, and you are way ahead of us in many ways.... :slight_smile:

@luandrovieira ! Compadre! Warm welcome! I am so happy you joined this conversation!

Hi I'm Luandro, free person living in a quilombola village in a national park in the center of Brazil.

Around 6 years ago while still studying Cinema and Media in university I began to dream of applications which could assist decentralizing human civilized culture. To pursue this I started to code, which led me to realize that the web couldn't be the medium for such applications. Just a few years back I began on thinking of a self contained network that could contain these applications and be taken to an isolated culture, such as indigenous or quilombola villages. The idea being to get to them before the corporate web, and thus I learned about Secure Scuttlebot and Mesh networks, which seem to be the perfect infrastructure for these applications. Before joining SSB I thought I was a lonely anarchist hacker living in the woods dreaming of a free solar punk world. Now there are lots of people realizing this dream together with me, and I just feel like our utopia is not only possible, but it can be the future for anyone who choses. I'm happy to say that I live in my utopia, while helping to build it.

I'm currently working on setting up a mesh network of LibreRouters and Raspberry Pi's on the Moinho quilombola village, in Alto Paraíso de Goiás. I'm also working together with the SSB community to get a basic version of Ssb and Dat running on a mobile device, so that we can get a fully p2p network for the app ecosystem. I just learned about Open App Ecosystem on ssb thru @bobhaugen, and it is the dream I had 6 years ago coming to reality.

I hope to help out creating the backend infrastructure for the ecosystem with Ssb and Dat over a GraphQL layer for easy migration. Really glad to meet you all :)

I've seen some interesting new members from the recent join requests. Please introduce yourselves? I know some of you have interesting stories to tell.

Hi Michel: I remind you that we are still interested as Blockchain-UniTorino for a possible Skype meeting

Thank you Michel.

sharing what I am doing within a H2020 program called Co-City
Please do.

Hi Bob, first of all reading the available documentation and sharing what I am doing within a H2020 program called Co-City

Hi Michel,

actually I am getting into the matter of the Holochainand I appreciate their approach.
About the contemplative stuff, I co-created with Zach Walsh a group in this ECA space and I recently published with Don McCown a non academic paper on the #11 - City of the Journal of Peer Production
tThe link is http://peerproduction.net/editsuite/issues/issue-11-city/experimental-format/life-skills-for-peer-production-walking-together-through-a-space-of-not-knowing/
It's the mindfulness approach revisited within a non individualistic, non brain-centered perspective. In one word, an enactive perspective.
My project is to develop en enactive ecosystem based on this approach. We - with Don and others - are just looking for a software developer who wishes to share this perspective.

Best,
Enzo

for we are all independently dependent on our interdependence. namaste

and by the way vincenzo,

you may be interested in the material we have collated at

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Spirituality

Welcome, @vincenzogiorgino !

Many of the people here are interested in a collaborative commons economy. How do you see yourself participating?

@michelbauwens1 jf might also want to comment in this thread about Holo that @draft just started: https://www.loomio.org/d/SU1KiLVn/holo

I am copying J-F Noubel, who has been working around consciousness and cultural change for decades, lives in the gift economy, but is also one of the founders of the metacurrency, now 'holochain' project, and may have an interesting perspective for you,

note that the holochain does NOT commodify as the token economy does, but jf can explain,

I am not normally following this group, but the universe decided I should see this today,

Michel

Hi! I am a sociologist and I am interested in contributing to a digital ecosystem based on distributed ledgers facilitating the collaborative commons economy. I am also a contemplative practitioner and I believe that a smart environment needs to be wise in order to be effective and coherent with its premises. So far, life skills can come into the picture as basic resources on which people can rely on. I am curious about the commodification/tokenization of attention skills, especially when they are part of commons-based proposals. It is a topic still unclear to me that I would like to understand better.

^ That whole Commons Transition Primer may become my go-to introduction to commons & p2p networking principles for a general audience. I think @staccotroncoso and others have done great research, interpretive and explaining work.

I also hope it may spark added interest in Open Apps Ecosystem.

Hey, this group got a mention on Commons Transition (P2PF), hat tip @gregorycassel

https://primer.commonstransition.org/1-short-articles/1-8-how-can-i-take-part-in-the-commons-transition

P.S. how could I possibly forget? @ahdinosaur helped to develop SSB, persuaded me to join, and was also one of the originators of the Open App Ecosystem!

Future responses in SSB.

hmmm - not certain it's the right Tim - want to point me in the right direction, somehow?

I think I may have found Tim, too :)

Ok, gotcha. We are now connected.

I'm on this pub: ssb.exitsystemcall.com

I can't find the user glowkeeper. Are you on a pub? Which one? I am @bobhaugen there, as well as here.

That was a new feature, allowing people not to be exposed on these external links, which apparently happened after I posted that URL.

@bobhaugen - so I have scuttlebutt running and I've created the user glowkeeper. I've read about pubs, too. Can't find Tim, though -
https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25syripONuNRP71yHvqmJOJBdF%2BPjt7AIz4sUf%2Fds2lAs%3D.sha256 doesn't do a lot for me (other than returning the message User has chosen not to be hosted publicly). Am I missing the point of that URL, somehow?

I think you meant:

./the-appimage-filename

...right?

ooops. Yes, period slash, not comma.

No prob, the appimages are a lot easier.

ps. aha! Loomio supports Markdown! Cool :)

@bobhaugen so, from memory, I think I was building from source, and npm install failed. At which point, I gave up, I think :( Sorry!

@bobhaugen from memory, it had trouble building or linking a library (on Ubuntu 16:04). Usually, I manage to get things running, so from memory, I might've given up a bit easily 'cause it didn't look like a totally trivial fix, and I'm a little busy ;)

I'll give that new image a go in the morning....

I think you meant:

./the-appimage-filename

...right?

Then read about pubs here: https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork

Download the latest appimage from https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/releases
Change the Properties/Permissions to allow executing as a program.
Either double-click the appimage file or in a terminal, in the directory of the appimage, enter

,/the-appimage-filename


@bobhaugen no - I had problems getting it to run on my Linux box :( I don't remember exactly what, but that gives me a good excuse to go into uni' tomorrow and try again.

@stevehuckle did you ever get into the scuttleverse?

Tim in SSB is looking for an academic to talk to about it.
https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25syripONuNRP71yHvqmJOJBdF%2BPjt7AIz4sUf%2Fds2lAs%3D.sha256

have you seen patchwork/scuttlebutt?

Yeah, I'm in the scuttleverse, as is tatha @ivan116 .

We're having some early-stage conversations about SSB as a medium for OAE. Here's a thought experiment in that direction: A minimal bottom-up P2P economic system. Scuttler conversation bubbling on a related topic now.

@bobhaugen, hi! Well, I like the aims of the GitHub repository, "to integrate open sourced apps which support transparent, democratic and decentralised organising". I like the sound of that world, so I'm happy to help wherever I can there - be it programming or coalescing likely resources. To that end, have you seen patchwork/scuttlebutt? https://github.com/ssbc

@stevehuckle welcome!

Happy to pick up whatever's required

What do you want to pick up on? What interests you here?

PhD Researcher at the UK's University of Sussex, working on blockchain technologies. Interested in distributed, p2p, open source ecosystems as a means of collaboration and as a different way of doing things. Happy to pick up whatever's required ;)

Co-founder of www.sensorica.co passionate about the p2p, participatory or collaborative economy, call it however you want. I work on the open value network model (OVN)

@strypey those are good ideas for usable outputs.

Agree with @bobhaugen -- and to generalise, the focus on usable outputs is a good touchstone for the higher purpose of keeping us "architecture astronauts" together with the down-to-earth "tool-oriented people". Perhaps we could have an ongoing dialogue between these kinds of people, to keep us all on board?

Kia ora koutou, I'm Danyl Strype. I'm a professional volunteer, social and environmental activist, and community developer. I've been involved in a number of tech activist projects over the years, including helping found Aotearoa Indymedia (no longer involved though, long story), and CreativeCommons Aotearoa/NZ. I've helped with setting up and sustaining a number of activist co-working spaces, some of which are still going in some form. I've lived in a few arts communes, and crew on various community festivals, including co-directing a circus and fire dancing festival for a couple of years.

I've given a lot of advice to activist groups and community organisations over the years, some of it helpful, all of it focused on putting them in control of the software they use, rather than vice-versa. For example, I've done a bunch of work helping Permaculture in NZ to identify what their members and organisers need from their website, and what supplementary software could be integrated with their Drupal site to achieve that (eg replacing a GoogleDoc spreadsheet with CiviCRM for more useful membership management).

My current core project is Disintermedia.net.nz, which was originally intended to be a sort of neutral platform for coordinating tech activism in Aotearoa (NZ), but suffered badly from the 'if you build it, they will come' syndrome that @wolftune quite rightly laments. In practice, so far anyway, Disintermedia has just been me researching ways internet tech can be used to distribute power, blogging about my research, and proposing projects(really more like thought experiments).

Disintermedia's main web presence at present is a blog and wiki hosted by CoActivate.org. I've getting more involved in community development for CoActivate, and I'd like to see it becoming more interoperable with other open apps and services. I'm also intending to get involved in Disroot.org, which I recently discovered, and so far it's looking like a great model for a community hosting organisation. My current aspiration for Disintermedia is to become a community hosting org along the lines of what Disroot are doing, but probably invite-only (happy to talk more about the cancerous growth and scaling headaches caused by open membership "startup" models if anyone is interested).

Open-ended, long-term discussion about the 'big picture' is valuable in itself. But I find that the more tool-orientated people tend to drift away if things get too abstract or directionless, leaving us "architecture astronauts" to drift around in circles in a vacuum of infinite potential, but no specifics. The contribution I'd like to make to the development of the Open App Ecosystem concept is to push us towards producing some usable outputs. Possible examples;
* models or maps of the existing and potential relationships between groups doing code dev, deployment dev, and community dev (eg how do deployers give feedback to code devs?)
* documentation of inter-project collaboration attempts that have and haven't worked, with some analysis of why from those involved
* stack documentation; mapping what combo of apps, OS/ distro, and hardware (bare metal, VM, "cloud". other) deployment groups use to run their existing services, and why they chose them, and how they'd like to improve what they offer

BTW apologies for the novel length comments I tend to write. Walls-of-text-R-US! ;-P

If the link includes pointing to the desire for more collective organisation, then yes, post it!

But what about the organization? There are plenty of good questions one could ask...

Actually, given the latest round of posts, I think it is still premature, and your question is very pertinent. We have to sort through some things or it will just be confusing in the best case. So I personally will wait.

Thank you, Lynn!

If the link includes pointing to the desire for more collective organisation, then yes, post it!

But what about the organization? There are plenty of good questions one could ask...

Hi @asimong and welcome to this new upsurge in interest in the open apps ecosystem, which was dormant for quite some time. I thought we should probably post a link over in Commons Transition once this got a little more organized, but maybe no time like the present....

Hi everyone — seems like I've been missing out on a discussion among people most of whom I know and respect already — how come? :smiley:

For those who don't know me, what should I say? (would be great to get other people to introduce me!)

I am, and have keenly been, for most of my life
* interdisciplinary systems thinker
* human AND computer
* socio-technical, not just social or technical

and more recently
* into consensus and non-hierarchical governance
* and joining that governance with well-being concerns

For a while now I've been intimately acquainted, first hand, with governance in the context both of a workers coop (Cetis LLP) that I work with and a Cohousing project (Lancaster Cohousing) where I live.

I've also in recent years been around the edges of the P2P Foundation and EdgeRyders. By the way, I am aware of the sensitivity of some people here to one or other of those groups. I don't take sides — I try to understand all sides, and work for reconciliation where possible.

I didn't quite understand what you meant :D

(Nice to meet you too btw ;) )

Hello Draft, I pasted some links after reading this. Great to meet you!

-Brent

Hi there !

I am 27, I love music, travelling, games, and share things with others :D

I am currently on a world trip. The purpose of my journey is to meet local activists to share our different experiences on the field. The objectives are :
- To create common resources about our experiences and our knowledge that anyone can use in the whole world.
- To create links between all the activists of the world who want to open their projects to permit anyone to contribute to them.
- To use common digital tools to improve everyone’s intern and extern communication and permit anyone to take part of a project even if he’s far away or don’t know the person in the project.
- To make videos about the original places I see and mixe them with my personnal knowledge about the commons.

I was in Lille working with the commons Assembly.

I hope we will be able to build our shared dream of a society based on sharing together ;)

See you in a bit, I have a lot of questions/thread to discuss on my mind !

Hi @joshuavial could I contact you with a chat or by visio ? It would be easier to me to talk to you really easily.

You can come and talk to me here : https://chat.lescommuns.org/live/draft_world . This is the chat of commons, there are a lot of commoners in there. So I guess you will feel at the right place.

Thanks @joshuavial

@olisb I've added you as a coordinator

@joshuavial and @ahdinosaur are admins :)

Does anyone know who the "owner" of this group is or, more importantly, how we get the 19 "pending" applications (to become members of the group) accepted?

It would be so sad to see this group fizzle out... I think it is one of the most important discussion on the web!

Thanks
Oli

I've been developing on (bugfixing) and working with (installing and managing) Loomio for a few weeks now, and I am totally enchanted by the breadth of the discussions here. I look forward to contributing ideas (and where necessary code).

@xekoukou thanks for the mentions. @edwardlplatt we really need to update our website; we don't do PR well. Apostolis put the link to the software repo on his documents page, but here's some recently-published info on the value equation and income distribution.

We consider our current software to be approaching something like a version 1.0 (more than a working prototype, but less than versions 2.0 and 3.0, which we hope will emerge from these Open Apps conversations or Apostolis's parallel project). We think our job is working out the model and logic for OVNs by working with living networks, but we're pretty sure this is not the ultimate technology.

Practical examples of open value networks can be found in @bobhaugen and @lynnfoster 's site:

http://mikorizal.org/groups.html
http://locecon.org/nova-story/

More documents on the open value network(legal and other) can be found here:

http://ovns.github.io/wiki.html

On the problem of accounting the p2p work in order to distribute back the revenue, again Bob's work is the most complete at the moment.
It is based on the widely accepted in acedemia REA accounting model:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resources,_events,_agents_%28accounting_model%29

I am working on something parallel at the moment, but it is incomplete. (reactive programming languages)

By the way, your lab director, Joi Ito is an advisor of another technology STELLAR, which with some modifications is what I am working on with ryaki.org .

@xekoukou Yes! Sourcemap was actually a spin-off from the lab I work for (though under its previous director). I think the code is open source, although the company itself may not be "open."

I'm very interested in learning more about open value networks. Any good introductory lectures or other resources online?

@brentshambaugh - do you know that some of us are working on this very project over here? (Except not very enterprisey...)

But you are welcome to jump in and help.

Hi All,

I posted here awhile back. I am not sure how to introduce myself I have been spending my days wire framing a peer-to-peer enterprise information system for peer production with semantic web and linked data technologies. I have a lot of slides. Over 100. There is a lot of research behind it because to me, I could be wrong, there is a lot to it. Well anyways, I have been wondering if there would be some people that would be willing to take a look at it and construct a better presentation as it is not my strong suit. Then maybe it might be appropriate to talk to some of the researchers, including at MIT, as it is still an active research area? It has been a dream to me. In any case, "cross my fingers" I hope we are on the same page. I could be way off because my formal education is not computer science. But in any case...hoping for mutual success. I hope to be here soon. There are a lot of conversations in queue.

@edwardlplatt have you looked at the open value network project? It aims at allowing massive p2p cocreation of value and the subsequent distribution of the revenue to the producers. There are many challenges around designing such a system because it needs to be able to protect itself from malevolent actions. The network needs to be distributed all over the world and there are valuable assets that need protection.

Does this have anything to do with civic technology?

One useful tool that MIT made was sourcemap.
Though from what I know it is only used to find supply chain risks.
And it is a closed platform built for enterprises.

Also learned there about Appsembler, which I should have known about but didn’t. I need to get out more…

@bobhaugen With Appsembler, I also think about 5apps.com and their support for the Unhosted remoteStorage.

@edwardlplatt - both i3 and Seltzer look really interesting. I liked this a lot "i3 Detroit prides itself on being an open community, but that doesn’t mean anyone can just walk in, hand over $49, and get a key. We like all of our members to come check the space out and meet a few of the members before becoming a part of the community. Our signup process requires prospective members to get familiar with a community-run organization before joining."

Hi All,

I'm a civic technologist working at the MIT Center for Civic Media, as well as a co-founder of the i3 Detroit hackerspace and maintainer of Seltzer CRM.

I'm here because I see potential for technology to enable non-hierarchical organizing and I'd like to share ideas, find collaborators, and make sure I'm not duplicating efforts. I'm specifically interested in improving software that allows member-run associations and cooperatives to self-organize more effectively and at larger scales.

Welcome @stevenpalmer! Great to have you here.

Hi there y'all. Took me a while to catch up on everything so it's good that the message is gradually becoming unified.

My day job is web development and design, mainly small to medium business. I was born in the UK, lived in Australia for six years, on the beautiful Sunshine Coast.

A while back on Google+ I started the Democracy community, then more recently the Collaborative Commons community. Which have been handy for learning, but I must apologise here since it is a poor proprietary tool ;)

To have a better understanding of the commons I recently completed a mooc 'Psychology of Negotiations - A Focus on Commons', and in January I look forward to attending 'U Lab - Transforming Business, Society and Self', a free mooc hosted by M.I.T.

I like the idea of slowing down to reflect with intelligence on the big picture, whether this be individual mindfulness or systems based mindfulness through our global brain and collective intelligence. I believe greater systems based thinking is the way forward as apposed to the current tyranny of categorical and linear thought that strips context, nuance and awareness, disconnecting us from nature and each other. Hence my interest in the Open App Ecosystem.

Reading earlier posts I'm glad to see a clash of perspectives and a willingness to transcend these conflicts with a decent amount of empathy towards each other. This is great because collaboration can be more productive when we have diversity of ideas and perspectives. Yes collaboration can also hinder, but I'm confident that there's enough wisdom here to work that out. It's easy to be blinded to another's view by taking up opposing perspectives, so glad to see the bear was poked. It looks like everyone is heading in a thrilling direction which is more or less similar. Glad to be here, whether as participant or spectator.

@wolftune - I finally got a chance to read your history rundowns. Excellent! Thank you!

Also learned there about Appsembler, which I should have known about but didn't. I need to get out more...

Informed experiment is much better than
careless experiment.

I fully agree.

@bobhaugen Indeed! (except that the livelihood for developers is, for me, a means to the end of better commons for the general public, and not the main end in itself). Just to clarify something (I think you'll appreciate this), quantity of experiments isn't the problem today. But anyway, what I want to encourage is that experimenters do their homework and accept some burden of learning the scope of things. In our case, we reviewed all 700+ donation-style platforms we could find on the internet, see our summary: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/othercrowdfunding

And we researched the whole history of Free/Libre/Open software economics: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/status-quo-floss

So, other experimenters can get a quick start on their own background research because they can read what we've already shared there! Informed experiment is much better than careless experiment.

@wolftune - it's all ok. We do have the same goal (I think): to make it so that people can survive working open source software projects without being hired by IBM, Red Hat, or Canonical.

@bobhaugen Thanks for the thoughts, and argument is not a good end in itself (nor is the intro thread a good place for it). I accept your well-wishes sincerely, I assume we're working for the same overall values. Please do consider my concerns and please understand that (given text lacking tone and nuance) I don't mean to be combative or all that blunt. I look forward to further constructive discussion in other places here. Cheers!

@wolftune - I don't want to argue with you. Good luck, sincerely.

@bobhaugen I'm very wary of that attitude. First of all, the majority of "experiments" are not actually new ideas at all, they are just people not doing the homework to see if it's been tried. In many cases, they eat up time and do nothing besides reinforce things we already know. More importantly, many different experiments eat up resources and inherently mean all these different things often all struggling and under-supported instead of more cooperation and coordination among the community.

Put plainly, if someone is debating between helping the Snowdrift.coop (by the way, we use the full .coop as the name) versus running their own new experiment, obviously I'm biased here, but it's perfectly reasonable to think that they might do far more for our mission by helping the existing efforts succeed rather than run yet another experiment. I even think that fragmentation among too many efforts may not serve our goals. None of this is black and white, but I do not accept a simple "more experiments the better" at all.

We won't even get to see how Snowdrift.coop works unless it gets enough help and support to fully operate well, and we're trying but it's not easy…

@wolftune - we'll see how snowdrift works. I hope it does. The more experiments the better right now, I think.

@bobhaugen I should probably sop this thread and focus on actually taking the time to address specific discussion as it occurs here, but for some ideas… Among the continually suggested ideas generally are:

"pay what you like" — which is poorly worded when/if it implies that the amount of payment is a judgment of value — far better to embrace the idea that non-rivalrous resources are non-rivalrous and make it clear that it is good for the commons for people to utilize the commons. We want people to use them, and the contribution you make is about supporting the work and helping, not about paying a self-selected "price". In other words, too often "pay what you like" encourages everyone to treat this as a variation on standard market/exchange thinking. We need to kill that. Engaging with the commons is not engaging with a market exchange. It's not, "pay what you want, now you have paid and you get the thing", it needs to be "you are using the commons, please help support it". It's a completely different social and psychological frame.

Another common suggestion people keep trying is "bounties" where you encourage people to set a price for specific features. Freedomsponsors.org for example is the site I like best of the several that exist. For some ridiculous reason, people keep making more and more of those sites and they keep failing (there have been maybe two dozen come and gone over the years). It's a very problematic approach that has, at best, a modest niche. It's not a good solution to the overall issues.

@wolftune - which are "the same suggestions that have continually failed (that’s a gross generalization but relates to some discussions I’ve seen here...)"?

@bobhaugen My post was a bit hasty (I edited it since), and anyway I'm not assuming people are oblivious or lack recognition, but I just don't see people generally framing the issues the way we do, e.g. the "snowdrift dilemma" (see https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/snowdrift ). I'm sure at least some people are aware of the general topics of these economic dilemmas / tragedy-of-the-commons etc. but I just often see long discussions happening where somehow these elements aren't brought up or people keep suggesting the same suggestions that have continually failed (that's a gross generalization but relates to some discussions I've seen here and elsewhere).

Anyway, I really hope to help add to the discussion here and also hope folks here will come help us at Snowdrift.coop, critique things and help us see if there's anything we're missing and help us get launched and make a difference…

Cheers

@wolftune - I like snowdrift, but what about the basic dilemmas do you think nobody here recognizes?

Hi, I'm Aaron. I'm aligned basically with what this whole topic is about, and I have a range of critical thoughts about it all. Most of my time and energy goes into Snowdrift.coop, so I won't be able to come here and reproduce all the ideas I've already written about there.

I'll try to get involved a little. I really want all of us to work hard to think about how to avoid fragmentation in the commons. Diversity is great but also works best when cooperative rather than competitive. I'm super wary of the proposals for new, incompatible licenses that threaten to bring about additional fragmentation. And I want to see Loomio and Enspiral more fully stick with the commons (Enspiral's use of Squarespace is far from ideal for example).

Anyway, hi everyone!

I got into a discussion with @wolftune from snowdrift.coop over on the Loomio Financial Sustainability thread. Feel free to introduce yourself :)

Hi everyone

I am a tech savvy social worker that became an entrepreneur in HR software and is now re-aligning his company from a for-profit to a for benefit company. I currently live in Antwerp, Belgium, Europe and have lived in Leuven, Belgium and Toronto, Canada before. We have been developing software to detect, nurture (through peer feedback) and use talent in a way that makes the employee happy and productive as a result of their happiness. Due to an internal power struggle with our developer/co-owner and ensuing halt in our development, we had the fortunate opportunity to reinvent our purpose from the ground up. When I learned about Enspiral a few month's ago, it helped form my vision, thanks for that! We are now shifting from proprietary software to AGPL, from for-profit to for-benefit and generally from 'hoarding and control' to 'sharing and enabling'.

My current focus is to refine the concept of the app that is now called 'Fractalent', gather people that want to collaborate around the project and make it happen. I aim to have it distributed in the future, but don't really know how to achieve that now (technically) and contemplate starting with a classic server based saas (free for all non-commercial use) to get the users that demand such a solution served. I have no development skills myself but like to translate between developers and end-users and I also like building organisations.

I am particularly interested in this project because I think it has tremendous potential to develop an ecosystem of 'good' applications that can speed up 'good' forms of organisation and working together. I think I could use some building blocks in Fractalent, as well as build some in the process of creating Fractalent and put them back in the ecosystem for others to include in their apps and visions to make a dent.

As said before, I can't develop myself but can probably provide other aspects that can reinforce the OpenApp project. We have a Belgian Limited company, that has access to local and European grants for example. I have been granted one grant for the development of Fractalent, I can't execute on right now due to a lack of like minded developers and a required 50% funding to unlock the grant. We also have several hundreds of dollars AWS credits that I can use to support the development. If people resonate with building apps in around 'Personal Talent' sphere, that can reinforce the OpenApp project, feel free to get in touch.

Either way, I love what is taking place here...

Hello Everyone :)

I specialize in Internet technologies, mostly The Web, and for more then 5 years now I live nomadic, moneyless and stateless on european continent. In last years I participated in and followed various developments related to decentralized&distributed social networking technologies. Including various W3C groups like Federated Social Web CG and just launching Social Web WG, JSON-LD CG, WebPayments CG, Hydra CG and now slowly trying to start WebCurrencies CG etc.

I also try to stay in touch with various Networked Communities including OuiShare, MakeSense, Open Knowledge Foundation, Code for All, Transition Network, Edgeryders and many more. A year ago I helped with organizing relevant panel during OuiShare Fest 2013 http://youtu.be/ACiLdi6tuFs and this year Shane Huges presented there his work on Network of Networks http://youtu.be/UjMSi3AULGQ which I also get more involved in.

In last months I participated in coliving+coworking project http://unmonastery.org and now together with few other hackers living nomadic we look at enabling more people to work on community projects by finding creative ways of gaining support from broad communities which benefit from our work. Myself mostly focusing on moneyless support!

Looking forward to learn more about your work on OpenApp :)

@alexrollin are you still around? Are you involved in KDIM in Indonesia by any chance? I met some of the KDIM folks at the recent Platform Cooperative Conference in Hong Kong.

Alex Rollin, in Bogor, Indonesia. I am a changemaker by training and a technician by necessity. I was part of making Drupal what it is, and I've been working on creating demand for cooperative production and commons based peer production. A lot of elegant systems have been designed to facilitate decision making and resource sharing, but, what are we doing about creating demand? Since 2005 I have had my head down to develop a roadmap for engaging those systems, yes, and I spent most of my time developing alternatives to everyday services to create demand.

I am currently inviting individuals around the planet to get involved with this system, now. It is a cooperative that does advertising. We do it well and cheap, competitive with other services. We are different because we build equity between rich and poor countries through a cooperative production, supporting a boarding school for orphans and plans for community training facilities across the developing world using a social franchise model and extending the cooperative production model.

I am interested in the openapp framework because it might be a way to extend information to the edge, where our people are working. It seems to me that if we co-create a network with thousands of change agents, then, each of those agents will not only be doing work for their community, but they also need to hold on to the global context of the organization itself. They need to stay in touch on the fly while they are interacting with the "custom-collaborators" within their local community.

Welcome @elfpavlik @martinpruvostbeaur @stijndewinter @alexrollin @theodoretaptiklis @stevenpalmer @paulmackay1 @michaelduanemoorin @milesthompsonkapit and everyone else who joined in the last month.

Feel free to post up introductions below or just lurk as you like :)

P.S. the diagram got added to quite a bit by some other folks... which is the idea after all... now has become a collaborative work in progress....

Darn, my link doesn't work - try this one - https://cacoo.com/diagrams/CTiWEGzpikqWLHOt. Sorry about that.

Hi everybody, I'm Lynn from Wisconsin, USA. I live with @bobhaugen in the canyon in the woods, and work with him on the software at http://mikorizal.org/.

I have been doing business application development for a while - anyone remember COBOL-CICS? :) I've coded off and on over the years, also have done a bunch of modeling of various sorts, development methodology work, design.

Like Bob, software for me is something I can contribute because I have some skills, but it is only a means to the goal of changing the system to something much more cooperative and sustainable and just.

We would like to collaborate with others on providing infrastructure for groups experimenting with economic alternatives - from local to regional to the cyber-connected networks.

We are working right now with some people in the Open Value Network community, and I wanted to share with you the rough draft I pulled together with several people's input, to start to get our heads around what such an infrastructure might include - https://cacoo.com/diagrams/CTiWEGzpikqWLHOt/. The rectangle labeled "NRP Engine" is what Bob and I are working on. (NRP = Network Resource Planning, kind of like ERP for networks.) Also has been called VAS and Valnet. And the picture is a rough draft, could be developed a lot more - in fact, let me know if you want to contribute, I'll send you an invitation. :)

In any case, the NRP takes a different approach than a series of small apps for specific problems. We have a core model of very interconnected data. It is a simple model, but it covers a lot of territory - all the economic operational activity of a network or group.

So I'm really glad to have met you, love the good work going on here, and am looking forward to seeing if we can be of any help in the App Ecosystem!

Hi, I'm Boris Filipov from Camplight, Bulgaria :)

I'm interested in software development, design & concepts. I've been coding for the past 12 years all day and night. During that time I've been doing professional products in various technologies/languages and ecosystems (full list can be found here http://obi.wizartworx.com/cv). When nodejs 0.1 got out I jumped in and from that point of time till now I'm actively contributing to the ecosystem (full list of contributions as usual can be found at http://github.com/outbounder).

I have technical and practical background in distributed systems and lately I'm playing a lot with 'organic software development' concepts and practices.

I'm one of the founders of the local hackerspace in Varna, Bulgaria - http://varnalab.org and I'm one of the starters of Camplight Ltd.

That said I'm not experienced business guy but I strongly believe in open concepts and natural/organic growth of decentralized organizations.

I'm keen to work on developing software in all its aspects (backend, frontend, infrastructure, concepts, design patterns). Especially I'm interested in large scale distributed systems following organic/evolution patterns and of course my interests end up with AI :)

I can contribute also time and efforts in regards to opencompany/cooperative concepts, team leadership/organization and all technical stuff around.

I'm here aiming towards a better future for the upcoming generations as I believe that people always can do more together.

Hi, I'm Aseem. I work as Data and Tech Manager at the Participatory Budgeting Project in the U.S. We're really excited about the potential for these tools in the app ecosystem to be used to enhance participatory budgeting (PB) processes. We're here to provide any perspective or experiences from our work that might be helpful.

(off topic: @charlieablett re how coding is taught, same deal with math, see this talk from my friend Jo Evershed about her ideas for changing that based on learning from the cognitive sciences - she points out how when teaching english we start with reading to children and and getting them to love stories BEFORE teaching the alphabet etc. Need to do the same for STEM skills https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npUcauzIENs )

@matthewbartlett Will do :-)

I'm a lurker, Loomio team member, designer, publisher, bad programmer etc. Presently investigating setting up a housing co-op in Wellington, NZ.

I'm in awe of the above intros. @charlieablett could you turn that intro into a blog post or article somewhere immediately?

Hello, I'm Vitaliy from www.camplight.net :)

I think of myself as a startup generalist. That's why I consider my knowledge in game design/gamification, programming, UX/IA/IxD as part of my toolbelt skills not as a job role. I've grown a habit of going out of my comfort zone so I think I can contribute in every possible way for the App ecosystem.

I like playing ultimate frisbee and in my "spare time" I write my sci-fi book called "The last galaxy war". I regularly sing to my flowers which makes them pretty happy & blooming :D

I've been involved in 6 startups to date, unfortunately I didn't finish my last year in university, subject "Information Systems". I still have a lot to learn in this life but I wish to do it in a more sustainable environment. Unfortunately our civilization is still fighting over scarce resources and other stupid stuff. That's why I focus my skills in participating in the building of next-generation organizational structure that can thrive on creativity, freedom and collaboration (namely Camplight). I was very happy to see that this is not something foreign in our world and the success of other similar organizations just validate the extra efforts we put in.

I believe that we're creating the base foundation for something more sustainable than the current "corporation" alternatives. That's why I'm super excited from the "journey" ahead of us all :)

P.S. I am very interested in Enspiral's App Ecosystem developments. We are not about our code and we do not create or sell products, we are about changing the world. If our existing software can fit into the App Ecosystem, we're in. But if it cannot fit in, and the App Ecosystem looks like it can solve the problems we want to solve, we will just jump onto your ship and help.

I am an old man. I live in a canyon in the woods. (Not joking.)

I used work on business application software, starting with little mrp, if anybody remembers that, then MRP+, then ERP, then Supply Chain Systems, then B2B ecommerce, then standards for B2B ecommerce in W3C, ISO, UN/CEFACT, and OASIS.

Now working on http://mikorizal.org/

I might approach things a lot differently from what I see in some of the conversations here so far.

I am not so interested in the technologies for their own sake, but only insofar as what they allow to happen.

We work with real organizations that want our software, and try to keep in sync with their organizational development and needs. We do not implement anything that nobody will use yet.

We do use a small tight domain ontology, that you can read about here: https://github.com/valnet/valuenetwork/wiki/Core

Then we build out from that.

This describes some of the more recent extensions:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ztnDX-Cf-PmQPUNxAfntNBBpLH9mhsQ2lrJ77Ty8Plw/edit?usp=sharing

I'm interested in collaborating with other projects because the set of problems we want to solve is a lot more than we can do by ourselves (two old people with occasional help from friends).

Greetings from Sweden!

I have a background in cinematography, directing, video art, urban planning and social entrepreneurship. I´m anti planning and are more into serendipity and synchronicity and believe in the collective intelligence of life and the healing and balance of life (humans, environment etc)

I´m a co-founder of www.citizenhive.se and some other start-ups doing personal and organisational transformative work and IT-solutions.

I´m very fond of Enspiral and other organisations following more or less the same journey.

http://cocoonprojects.com/en/
http://reospartners.com/
http://company.edgeryders.eu/
http://www.merakicollective.org/
http://www.sensorica.co/

... and this project is in line with my personal values and the values of Citizen Hive, so I simply want to contribute, and take part of the fruits that will come out of this, so I can keep developing Citizen Hive and help other like minded organisations and people to move on towards game change and wellbeing!

I also understand that we all need to integrate into each other and that we have to keep the ecosystems open and thriving, but off course that today demands a certain level of trust, consciousness and empathy.

I would like to contribute with my network, knowledge of needed user interfaces, design skills, do some apps with the teams in Sweden and do some customer development work.

Most of the first computers that I worked on would make a fine addition to any museum of computing. I first used a computer in the late 1970s, and, even as a kid, I immediately saw that computers could take what was in my head and somehow make it real. My dream was to become a video game programmer.

When it came time to enrol in university (mid 80s) I had decided that I didn't want to get a computer science degree because I was worried that if it became "work" I would lose my love of programming. I had planned instead to enrol in either a pre-law program or music, but by a strange twist of fate, I ended up enrolling in computer science. I obtained a BSc and MSc from the University of Calgary (Canada).

Throughout both my BSc and Masters, I worked as a consultant to industry because there was so much work available. I continued consulting after completing my Masters. Being a consultant meant I was able to work in a large variety of industries: telecommunications, transportating, banking, insurance, electricity generation and transmission, general business, and oil and gas. I have had the pleasure (and sometimes misfortune) to have worked with hundreds of people on numerous projects in Canada, the US, and the UK. Throughout my consulting career, I focused a lot of attention on teaching and mentoring because I have always felt that being a "good" consultant meant educating others.

By 2003, I felt somewhat unchallenged by my industry work (it was becoming repetitive and new challenges became few and far between). I took an opportunity to become a faculty member at the University of Calgary (Computer Science), and enjoyed 5 years of teaching Computer Science at the university level (undergraduate and graduate). In 2008, I decided to obtain a PhD, for which I attended the University of Waikato. I completed my PhD in 2012, and remained a post-doctoral research fellow until now.

Funding models for academia have changed all over the world, and it is very difficult now to obtain research funding. A third of my time over the last year has been spent writing research grant proposals, and I can't help by feel that that model is grossly inefficient, so I have decided to move back in to an indusry role.

My primary concern with moving back in to industry was that the work would again become unchallenging. However, having found Enspiral has really rekindled the spark that first drew me to computers. I could take something in my head and turn it in to meaningful and positive change. If that's not living well, then I don't know what is!

hi, i'm Mikey. :)

a year ago, i dropped out of university studying electrical engineering and computer science, as i wanted to use what i had already learned to create practical technology instead of studying more theoretical concepts for exams. since then, i've spent my time learning what i didn't learn in school, hacking on projects, following and becoming more involved in the bleeding edge of open source, and trying to figure out how best to fulfill my internal mission given my abilities.

i've been living in a student housing coop of 150 people for two years now, as Network Manager, which along with the Occupy movement has greatly impacted my mind and how i live my life. i've become very passionate about creating open source socioeconomic infrastructure, especially using the work of the Web Payments group which i've been loosely following for about 3 years now. two ideas that have occupied my mind probably the most are holons and modular systems. holons started with my simple definition of what i called hives: a hive is an individual or a set of hives. as i learned more about holons, i thought about creating software systems that focus on holonic agents as the building block for our socioeconomic system. within these systems and even before, i would think about modular systems with each module focusing on one tiny part of a larger ecosystem. as i learned more, especially by watching node.js developers who champion modular ecosystems instead of monolithic frameworks, i've become better at understanding how such ecosystems develop. what i was missing was support, as many dismiss such an ecosystem as being against the pattern of a MVP, so i continued watching open source and hacking on random bits and bobs to learn.

about half a year ago, i became friends with Derek, who has provided me with wonderful non-technical support that has pushed me in new directions with new networks. he is the reason i find myself here. together, we have iterated on how to create our own network working towards a positive social mission while providing us with a place to live, food to eat, and water to drink. we are especially interested in using housing coops as the most basic resource in the peer production economy.

i am very dedicated to this project as it fulfills my internal mission of creating modular socioeconomic systems for holons and provides a foundation for my collective network with Derek. as someone who focuses on the highly technical, i hope to do technical work on the app ecosystem. i consider myself jack-of-all-stacks developer / sysadmin as i have a little experience in a lot and always love to expand that experience to improve my understanding and provide references for comparison. as someone who has completed many fewer laps around the sun, i have much to learn from those in the group who are more experienced and can provide historical context to what is "new", meanwhile i hope to share my view of some open source bleeding edges. furthermore, i am able to indefinitely work without immediate pay because such a bleeding edge happened to be "profitable": Bitcoin.

anyways, i hope the above is useful context about me and thank you everyone for allowing me to be a part of this. i look forward to getting to know you all better, especially as i'll be in New Zealand for the social series / retreat and hopefully a couple months beyond. :)

I have an academic background (Masters degree in computer science from University of Calgary) and have taught at a university setting. I've been a consultant for most of my working life and I like it that way.

I'm a serendipitous developer, that is, I didn't realise computer programming was that creative until I already had a degree in it. I knew I liked solving problems, but the courses I took at uni mostly focussed on the tools. Right now, programming is taught as a tools-first endeavour, which makes it seem boring and trivial, and seems to weed out everyone except those who enjoy using the tools. I want to change this.

I'm a passionate advocate for programming as a creative and problem-solving discipline, not tools-focussed. Currently tech is sorely lacking in the sort of creative and problem-solving (specifically OO analysis and design) that it really needs. For me, technology is such an enabler for expression and for creative people like me to make what they want to see as real. For a lot of people, programming isn't a creative endeavour - for a lot of devs it isn't, and for most non-devs it certainly doesn't look like it.

One of my goals is to encourage people who might not be fitted to a university setting (where they just want to weed out those who aren't super-mathy and detail-oriented) and inspire those who had misconceptions about what programming is so that they can see that it's about problem solving, and the technology shouldn't be the main focus (though it is important). Rails Girls and workshops like that are a great step.

I like working at Enspiral because it gives me a chance to really exact change the positive change I want to see in the software industry. I love the emphasis on mutual trust and responsibility rather than hierarchical buck-passing and blame. If Enspiral can inspire more organisations to trust and empower their members, I think we could see more realisation of human potential. Similarly, technology allows for the easy distribution of information, which is a huge enabler for society. I'm totally in to see the internet and its technologies used to connect people and for freedom of information. (I personally think the internet is the greatest invention since the printing press - let's not squander that potential it by privatising it - keep it free!).

As someone who thought they could never fit into most companies due to the unbalanced nature of hierarchies, this is an exciting time to be able to spread that message. The Open App is a great vehicle for that, which is why I'm so stoked about it.

This year I'm moving to the same ecovillage, and I'll also be supporting my family. That said, @craigtaubeschock and I will be interested in this project and how we can contribute to it (I'll let Dr Craig make his own intro).

Hi folks. I dropped out of uni comp-sci in third year in '99 in order to make my fame and fortune with a computer game. Made neither fame nor fortune and worked in the computer games industry for about 5 years. A few years into that "extreme programming" was just becoming popular and I got really excited about these controversial new practices like pair-programming and test-driven-development, most of which I wasn't allowed to use at work. I eventually did move to another games company that was trying XP practices on a playstation 2 project, during which time I had formal training in agile from a consultant, and while the game project went poorly I felt I was just starting to get the hang of it towards the end.

I then moved mainly into web programming and fell in with a bad crowd of design patterns nerds and thoughtworks reprobates. I've worked in a couple of larger agile teams on .NET projects and struggled through a few years of PHP contracting. When ruby became the cool new kid on the block I got involved fairly early and started the Melbourne ruby group (with much assistance from a crew of java refugees from thoughtworks).

I've done about 8 years all up of freelancing by myself or in very small teams, and it probably hasn't been as good for my skills as working in person in teams was.

In general I've found I'm better at higher level languages than assembly and C (although I can manage them) and I'm pretty good at refactoring, TDD, patterns and OO design. Technical challenges, hardware, formal mathematics, are not necessarily my strong points.

I also have a background in group process. I've been living in intentional communities for seven years now, and was part of several groups trying to start one for a couple of years before that. I'm an experienced facilitator of consensus meetings, and reasonably ok at mediating conflict issues. I'm used to working with diverse groups of people, despite being a poster child for white male privilege.

Like all geeks, I'm passionate about a free and open web, and in recent years it's felt so depressing. I got a bit involved in some open social networking projects back before facebook was cool, and nothing came of them. I'm not really a technocrat (I live in a permaculture ecovillage that grows it's own food) but I believe that the internet is the single most important creation of humanity and want to see it remain free and open and promote new structures of organization, governance and civilization.

I've just finished building a house and have a big mortgage and a family, making me more risk averse than I was a couple of years ago. But I do have a fairly stable client base and am keen to work at least some of my time on speculative projects that inspire me.

Hi @draft

I am still heads down on Enspiral and Dev Academy - I find slack, loomio, cobudget, github, gitbooks, medium and google docs provide most of the things I need when it comes to experimenting with organising systems.

I have a healthy dose of pragmatism when it comes to choosing tools, and would ideally like to use tools more aligned with my values but will choose systems with the least friction for people to use.

http://handbook.enspiral.com/ and http://improvements.enspiral.com/ might give you some idea of how we are working.

@joshuavial What do you do now ? And what are the organisational systems that you like ?

I'm a programmer by training and a changemaker by vocation. I love the intersection of business, technology and social change and was the founder of Enspiral - now I'm just a regular member. I am based in the Enspiral Craftworks team where I hold the entrepreneurship stream though I still love to code and am currently spending most of time on www.devacademy.co.nz

I am really interested in using the more radical organisations like Enspiral and co as breeding grounds to create organisational dna which will shift more established organisations to be more decentralised and socially focused.

I would love to do some coding but I think the most effective work for me to do is at the organisational design level and I'm particularly interested in adapting holocracy inspired principles to suit the type of organisations I want to build.